TOB Magazine May/June 2013 - page 8

20
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
MAY/JUNE 2013
TMA REPORT
By FARRELL DELMAN
…In an online
survey of about 1,400
e-cigarette users
from 33 countries, led
by Lynne Dawkins from the University
of East London in the UK and published
in the journal
Addiction
, 76 percent of
the respondents said they started using
e-cigarettes as a “complete alternative
to smoking,” while 22 percent said they
started using the devices for “other
reasons,” including quitting smoking
(7 percent), improving their health
(6 percent) and avoiding smoking
restrictions (3 percent). Some 86
percent said that they had not smoked
cigarettes for several weeks or months
or that the amount they smoked had
decreased considerably since they
began using e-cigarettes.
…A study conducted by British
American Tobacco scientists and
published in
Chemistry Central Journal
seeking to determine
snus users’
level of exposure
to certain tobacco
constituents—including
nicotine,
four TSNAs, propylene glycol, water,
ammonium, nitrate, sodium, chloride,
linalool, citronellol, linalyl acetate
and geraniol—found that consumers
generally extracted less than one-
third of each constituent during use.
However, researchers said exposure
to snus constituents is a variable
process as uptake may be affected by
the composition and amount of saliva,
pressure and movement applied to
the pouch during use, and differences
in
participants’
physiological
characteristics.
…In April, the
North Dakota Senate
voted 38 to 7 to reject a resolution
directing their Legislative Management
to explore opportunities to reduce
smokers’ risk of death and disease by
considering tobacco harm reduction
strategies that encourage smokers
to switch from cigarettes to less risky
tobacco products.
…Commenting on a study published
in the online journal
PLoS ONE
that reported the detection of trace
amounts of metals in the aerosol from
one e-cigarette brand, Prof. Michael
Siegel of Boston University’s School of
Public Health said that while there is no
question that
quality control measures
need to be in place to ensure that
the presence of metals in e-cigarette
aerosol is minimized or eliminated,
“there is no reason to sound the alarm
from the data reported in the present
study because it fails to provide
any comparison between electronic
cigarettes and other types of inhalers,
including the FDA-approved nicotine
inhalers,” which he noted also produce
aerosol that contains detectable
levels of metals, and, in some cases,
higher levels of metals than those in
e-cigarettes.
…Jeff Stier, senior fellow at the
National Center for Public Policy
Research
, writes in the
Huffington
Post
that U.S. states should embrace
“products of innovation to reduce the
risk of smoking-related diseases.” He
urges legislators to adopt tax structures
that would discourage cigarette
smoking, which he describes as “the
most harmful form of tobacco use,”
and to encourage the use of “harm
reduction products” like e-cigarettes
and smokeless tobacco. Stier cites
Indiana, where the legislature last
year adopted language requiring the
state to take “tobacco harm reduction”
into account when making policy,
and Oklahoma, which is considering
a bill for a tax of five cents per unit
on other tobacco products including
e-cigarettes compared to $1.03 per
pack on cigarettes.
…British American Tobacco said that
the
first clinical trial of its “reduced
toxicant” prototype cigarettes
that
incorporate two tobacco-related and
two filter-related toxicant-reducing
technologies and involves some
300 volunteers in Germany over six
weeks, showed that the cigarettes
substantially reduced participants’
exposure to some toxicants measured
by biomarkers in the participants’ urine
and saliva samples. BAT chief scientist
Chris Proctor said “[n]ot all toxicants
were reduced, and we do not yet know
what level of reduction will be required
to give a meaningful reduction in health
risk,” but the findings “provide impetus
for us to conduct additional further
longer-term studies.”
…Addressing investors at the
Consumer Analyst Group of Europe
(CAGE) Conference in London on
March 18,
Philip Morris International
CFO Jacek Olczak
said the company
is “very close” to deciding where it
will make its new products that it says
pose a lower health risk, with their
commercialization expected to be
ready in 2016 or 2017.
…A study led by Dr. Maciej L
Goniewicz of the Department of Health
Behavior at Roswell ParkCancer Institute
in Buffalo, New York, and published
online this week in
Tobacco Control
,
analyzed
vapors from 12 brands of
e-cigarettes
and a medicinal nicotine
inhaler as a reference product and
found that the vapors contained some
“potentially toxic and carcinogenic
compounds,” but the levels of the
toxicants were 9-450 times lower than
in cigarette smoke, and in many cases,
comparable to trace amounts found in
the reference product.
…Commenting on that same
study,
Prof. Michael Siegel of Boston
University’s School of Public Health
said that the study “provides strong
confirmation that electronic cigarettes
are much safer than regular cigarettes.”
He charged that the FDA should allow
e-cigarette manufacturers to make
this “sufficiently substantiated” health
claim. However, he also noted that the
study “refutes the idea that e-cigarettes
On harm reductiOn…
Farrell Delman,
President, TMA
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