26
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012
TMA REPoRT
Writing in
The Commentator,
David Atherton, chairman
of Freedom To Choose, an unincorporated membership
association that aims “to protect the informed choices of
consenting adults on the issues of smoking,” said a leaked
version of the draft text of the European Commission’s revisions
to the
2001
Tobacco Products Directive
reveals a plan to ban
electronic cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products in what
he called is an “absolute disgrace” and which appears to be
the result of “cynical lobbying by pharmaceutical companies to
keep a monopoly on nicotine replacement therapy” products.
…
Criticizing the New Zealand Health Ministry’s recent move
to
ban the nicotine electronic cigarette
brand Hydro on the
grounds that their sales are in violation of the Medicines Act,
End Smoking New Zealand Chairman Dr. Murray Laugesen
said the prohibition of non-medicinal nicotine is a “step too
far,” adding that the ban is against public interests as it would
force hundreds of former smokers back to smoking regular
cigarettes, thus undermining the country’s goal of becoming
smoke-free by 2025, which, he noted, requires nearly 600,000
smokers to quit.
…
University of Louisville Prof. Brad Rodu notes that a study
of 20 dual users of
snus and cigarettes
in Sweden, led by
Helena Digard of BAT and published in
Nicotine and Tobacco
Research
,
found that cigarettes produced a rapid nicotine
spike with peak blood nicotine levels of about 12 nanograms
per milliliter observed seven minutes after starting to smoke,
followed by a steep decline, whereas snus produced similar
nicotine levels but with a slower peak and decline, which
Rodu said provides snus a “distinct advantage” as cigarette
smokers who switch to smokeless products “generally use
fewer pinches or pouches of smokeless tobacco compared
to the number of cigarettes they smoked.”
…
A
LondonDailyTelegraph
articleon the tobacco industry’s
“
quest” for a
“
safe cigarette”
says that while manufacturers
have spent hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing this
“
impossible dream” since the 1950s, early research initiatives
were rarely admitted publicly because the companies feared
that their acknowledgement of a link between smoking,
addiction and health problems would prompt government to
regulate them, cause a drastic decline in sales, and make the
industry vulnerable to “ruinous” lawsuits, but now a “brave
new era is upon us” and all of the major tobacco companies
are openly “working on finding new and fascinating ways of
lessening the harm of the most fatal habit of all, even if they’re
not entirely sure they’ll succeed.”
…
Commenting on a study by a group of researchers
from the University of Athens, who found that e-cigarette
use for 10 minutes increased airway resistance in smokers
without existing lung disease, Prof. Michael Siegel of Boston
University’s School of Public Health notes that the finding is
not new, while the authors’ press release, which said “[w]e
do not yet know whether…
e-cigarettes are safer
than normal
cigarettes,” ignores all existing evidence that smoking is more
dangerous than “vaping,” and points to the authors’ financial
conflict of interest with drug companies like Pfizer, which
stands to lose revenues if e-cigarettes become popular.
…
A study led by Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos from the
Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens, Greece, which
measured heart function
in 20 young smokers before and
after they smoked one regular cigarette and in 22 e-cigarette
users before and after they used the product for seven
minutes, found that cigarette smokers suffered significant
heart dysfunction, including elevated blood pressure and
heart rate, while those using e-cigarettes had only a slight
elevation in blood pressure.
…
The September 2012 issue of
Addiction
features a
commentary by Drs. Michael Siegel of Boston University’s
School of Public Health, Theodore L. Wagener of the
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and Belinda
Borrelli of Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, who
argue that the
potential harms of electronic cigarettes
have
tended to be exaggerated or over-emphasized relative to the
potential benefits, while acknowledging that more research is
needed on the “cost-benefit equation of these products and
the appropriate level and type of regulation for them.”
…
In a follow-up blog, Dr. Siegel explains that these
e-cigarette attacks
were by Drs. Cobb and Abrams both of
whom are at the American Legacy Foundation’s Schroeder
Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies and have
substantial conflicts of interest in that they, as well as ALF, are
paid consultants by the pharmaceutical industry concerned
that e-cigarette sales will hurt NRT sales.
…
In what analysts say was a bold and “audacious” step,
Reynolds American Inc. launched in retail outlets in Des
Moines, Iowa, on September 3 the
Zonnic nicotine gum
made by its Niconovum subsidiary, available in 2-milligram
and 4-milligram mint styles and sold in packs of 10 pieces
costing about $3 per pack, which, according to RAI, is about
a third of the cost of similar NRT gums, with Niconovum
officials hoping to earn smokers’ confidence in Zonnic in part
through “an inspirational, positive approach by speaking to
adult smokers in a nonjudgmental, respectful manner.” An
editorial in the
Winston-Salem Journal
says it is “a little ironic”
that RAI will enter the smoking cessation products market,
since RAI “may not be the most trusted name in smoking
cessation,” but “any solution is worth a try if it succeeds”
given NRT’s low success.
…
At the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the
American Chemical Society in Philadelphia on August 22, Dr.
Stephen Hecht of the University of Minnesota said his National
Cancer Institute-funded study identified a
nitrosamine
called
(
S)-NNN as “a strong oral cavity carcinogen” in smokeless
tobacco products, and suggested that its levels be decreased
to below 10 parts per billion to “make it more consistent with
the levels of nitrosamines in food products.”
…
Weekly news magazine
The Week
reports on the
“
skyrocketing popularity” of e-cigs due in part to celebrity
use by Johnny Depp and Katherine Heigl, saying the price
for a non-disposable fell from $200 per device a few years
ago to as low as $21 today even though an ongoing “debate”
continues on whether science has shown that e-cigs are
“
better for you than real cigarettes.”
ToB