E-Cigarettes R Us Australia

Big tobacco is pushing further into the fast-growing electronic cigarette market with Reynolds American’s plan to expand its Vuse brand across the US next week.

Competition for dominance in the $2.5bn US market is heating up, even as regulators and public health groups grapple over the benefits and risks of the battery-powered devices.

Reynolds, the second-largest US tobacco company by sales, began testing Vuse in Colorado last year amid industry-wide moves to step up investment in alternatives to conventional cigarettes. With traditional cigarette sales in the US shrinking an average 3 per cent a year, tobacco companies have come to view e-cigarettes as an opportunity to retain customers.

“The brand’s nationwide expansion is an important step as we position Vuse as the vapour authority, and continue our efforts to lead the transformation of the tobacco industry,” said Stephanie Cordisco, president of Reynolds subsidiary RJ Reynolds Vapor Company. Vuse will be available in stores across the US from June 23.

The fragmented e-cigarette market is just a fraction of the $700bn global tobacco industry, but has drawn attention from big companies facing declining smoking rates. Last week, Japan Tobacco bought the UK’s E-Lites for an undisclosed amount.

Lorillard, the smallest of the big three US tobacco groups, dominates US sales with its Blu Ecigs brand, which it acquired in 2012 for $135m. Last year Reynolds and Marlboro-maker Altria began developing their own electronic products and testing them in various states. Altria, which has about 40 per cent of the US cigarette market, plans to take its MarkTen brand national in the coming months.

“We expect the national expansion of the Big Three into the vapour category . . . should catapult growth of the entire category,” said Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog, who predicts e-cigarette consumption could surpass traditional smoking in the next decade.

Reynolds and Lorillard are in talks over a potential merger, the Financial Times reported in March. Ms Herzog said the tie-up could accelerate growth in the electronic category.

“We think a combined Reynolds-Lorillard could become a global vapour powerhouse assuming a potential strategic partnership is formed with British American Tobacco (similar to Philip Morris International’s and Altria’s partnership) to expand outside the US,” she said. PMI, which sells the Marlboro brand internationally, and Altria struck a deal in December to license and distribute products including e-cigarettes.

Big tobacco’s moves will probably boost advertising for the devices, including on television, where tobacco ads have been banned since 1971. Marketing spending on e-cigarettes more than tripled to $79m in 2013, according to Kantar Media.

Vuse has been running TV ads in Colorado and Utah, while Blu appears on national cable networks. Njoy, a privately owned e-cigarette maker, ran ads in some markets during the past two Super Bowls.

The US Food and Drug Administration left the door open to more spending when its proposed e-cigarette regulations, unveiled in April, did not include curbs on marketing or advertising.

Reynolds’ expanded bet on the category comes amid a debate over the safety of the products. Advocates argue that the devices, which heat nicotine-laced liquid into a vapour that users inhale, are a less dangerous alternative to smoking because they lack some of the toxins found in cigarette smoke.

But others say there is not enough evidence on the potential health risks and that the products risk “renormalising” smoking after decades of success in stigmatising the habit.

In a letter to the World Health Organisation on Monday, a group of scientists, doctors and academics called on the agency to regulate e-cigarettes in the same way as tobacco, including advertising bans, limits on public smoking and heavy taxes. That followed an earlier appeal from other public health scientists to avoid burdening the emerging category with strict regulations.

“By moving into the e-cigarette market, the tobacco industry is only maintaining its predatory practices and increasing profits,” Monday’s letter said. “Both scientific evidence and best practices are available to support a regulatory framework that will best prevent initiation of use among youth and other non-tobacco users, protect bystanders in public areas from involuntary exposure, regulate marketing, and prohibit unsubstantiated claims.”

The e-cigarette has been pushed centre stage ahead of World No Tobacco Day, with doctors and policy experts urging the UN’s health agency to embrace the gadget as a life saver.

With tobacco smoke claiming a life every six seconds, the tar-free, electronic alternative could help prevent much of the cancer, heart and lung disease and stroke caused by the toxins in traditional cigarettes, the 50-odd experts wrote to World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Margaret Chan.

E-cigarettes “could be among the most significant health innovations of the 21st century, perhaps saving hundreds of millions of lives,” the group said.

They urged “courageous leadership” from the WHO in guiding global and national approaches to e-cigarettes, which are banned in some countries like Brazil and Singapore and face increasingly strict restrictions in other countries amid uncertainty about their long-term health effects.

The group fears the WHO plans to lump the battery-powered devices, which release nicotine in a vapour instead of smoke and contain fewer toxins, with traditional cigarettes under its tobacco control policy.

This would compel member countries to ban advertising and use of the gadgets in public places, and to impose sin taxes.

“It would be unethical and harmful to inhibit the option to switch to tobacco harm-reduction products” like e-cigarettes, said the letter.

The WHO is working on recommendations for e-cigarette regulation, to be presented to a meeting of member governments in October.

But it does so in a scientific vacuum on the device’s long-term safety and its true value as an aid to kicking the tobacco habit.

Some fear its use and often unrestricted promotion could glamorise an addictive habit, and hook non-smoking teenagers on nicotine.

An estimated seven million people in Europe alone use e-cigarettes, invented in China in 2003.

Addiction specialist Gerry Stimson, an emeritus professor at University College London who co-signed the letter to Chan, said they have been shown to release “very, very fractional levels” of toxins compared to conventional ones.

“People smoke for the nicotine and die of the tar,” he said.

“If you separate the nicotine from the burning of vegetable matter… people can still use nicotine but they’re not going to die from smoking.”

If it listed e-cigarettes as a tobacco product, the WHO would “preserve the position of cigarettes because it makes it harder or more difficult or less desirable to use e-cigarettes,” he argued.

The WHO says tobacco kills nearly six million people a year, and climbing.

Attila Danko, an emergency department doctor from Ballarat, has established the New Nicotine Alliance Australia, modelled on the similarly titled British lobby group, in a bid to counter a “misinformation campaign” about the risks of e-cigarettes.

The group has latched on to landmark research released last week by Public Health England, an independent arm of Britain’s Department of Health, which found e-cigarettes — battery-powered vaporisers that stimulate smoking, but without tobacco combustion — were about 95 per cent less harmful than cigarettes.

It also found most of the country’s 2.6 million e-cigarette users were ex-smokers trying to give up, with no evidence that young people were being drawn into the habit — a commonly cited fear.

“This compelling report confirms the weight of reliable scientific evidence that e-cigarettes save lives,” Dr Danko said.

“Its message is clear: e-cigar­ettes help people stop tobacco smoking and Australian smokers should legally have that option.”

While there are no laws banning the use of e-cigarettes in Australia, laws relating to ­poisons, medicines and tobacco control complicate their regul­ation.

For example, where a ­nicotine e-cigarette is for a therapeutic use, such as stopping smoking, the device must by registered with the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the liquid nicotine can be obtained only with a prescription.

However, there are no TGA-approved e-cigarettes and doctors have typically been reluctant to provide a prescription for an unapproved product.

Adding to the confusion, importing e-cigarettes for personal use is permitted, yet liquid nico­tine is classified as a “Schedule 7 Dangerous Poison”, making possession without a current prescription a serious offence.

Several states, including South Australia and Western Australia, have banned the sale of non-­nicotine e-cigarettes, which often contain fruit-flavoured liquids. NSW and Tasmania are considering tightening regulation of e-cigarettes.

A smoker for more than 30 years, Dr Danko said he had “given up on giving up” when he switched from tobacco to using, or “vaping”, nicotine e-cigarettes three years ago.

The 47-year-old has a prescription and imports from overseas but said it was ­absurd a person required a prescription for e-cigarettes yet could buy significantly more harmful tobacco over the retail counter: “It sends a strong message that the government would rather you smoke cigarettes.”

In Britain, stop-smoking ser­vices are being urged to consider recommending e-cigarettes as a tool for smokers attempting to quit, but Cancer Council Aus­tralia and the National Heart Foundation have publicly cautioned against the promotion of e-cigarettes, noting that the health effects were still unknown.

Doctors and health academics from around the world are urging the World Health Organisation (WHO) to regulate the sale of electronic cigarettes, which are booming in an uncontrolled global market.

A US study has found the e-cigarette market has more than 500 brands and is expanding at a rate of more than 10 a month with the product often purchased online.

In a trawl of the internet, US researchers found that as of January 2014 there were 466 brands, each with their own website, and 7,764 different flavours.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices which heat a liquid, typically propylene glycol, to a vapour. The liquid usually contains nicotine and flavouring.

Supporters say the gadget can help wean smokers off conventional tobacco, whose bouquet of toxins has been blamed for the death of millions.

Health watchdogs are cautious, saying the long-term impact of e-cigarettes use is unclear.

Sydney health expert Simon Chapman says anecdotal evidence has been used to promote the benefits of the devices.

He says not enough is known about the potential side-effects.

“We need more than a feeling. We don’t proceed like that in the regulation of therapeutic substances,” he said.

“What we do is say: ‘OK, you reckon you’ve got something that does that, let’s put it to the test’.

“Provide all of the evidence to the therapeutic assessment panels and they’ll make up their mind if you’ve got evidence or [if] you haven’t.”

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in April proposed barring sales to minors, placing the product on the same footing as tobacco in this regard.

Shift in e-cigarette marketing: flavour not tobacco alternative

“The number of e-cigarette brands sold on the internet is large and the variety of flavours staggering,” wrote the investigators from the University of California School of Medicine in San Diego.

Over the past two years, the market has been growing at an average rate of 10.5 brands and 242 flavours per month, they said.

The most popular flavour category is fruit, followed by dessert/chocolate, alcohol/drinks or snacks/meals, according to the study.

The study authors also noted a shift in e-cigarette marketing.

Older brands were more likely to claim e-cigarettes were healthier or cheaper than tobacco, or could help smokers kick the habit.

Newer brands, though, tended to shun references to tobacco and focused instead on flavours or models.

“It seems that new brands don’t want to be compared with cigarettes, which are associated with the image of cancer,” said Shu-Hong Zhu, director of the Centre for Research and Interventions in Tobacco Control in San Diego.

The new study was based on two searches of English-language websites at a two-year interval – first from May to August 2012 and then December 2013 to January 2014.

A separate study in the same journal reported that some 29 million people in the European Union had tried the e-cigarette, based on 2012 data.

It also found that most of them were smokers or would-be quitters.

The e-cigarette is a relatively new product, having appeared on the market a little under a decade ago. Partly because of this, there has been a lot of speculation about the safety of the electric cigarette. Three of the biggest myths will be discussed and debunked.

1. The liquid used in e-cigs contains antifreeze
According to some sources, the vapour that an electronic cigarette produces contains the same chemical that is found in the green antifreeze liquid that you put in your car to prevent the radiator liquid from freezing in winter and boiling is summer. This is not true. The active ingredient in antifreeze is ethylene glycol. The main ingredient in e-cigarette liquid, on the other hand, is propylene glycol, which is a totally safe chemical used in asthma inhalers and a number of processed foods. This myth is somewhat understandable given that the two chemicals sound similar.

2. The vapour from electric cigarettes is just as cancerous as the smoke from tobacco cigarettes
Although it is true that the liquid used in e-cigs contain carcinogens, the levels are so small that they cannot possibly harm a person. They are about as small as the levels you might find in fresh milk, eggs, meat, fruit, vegetables and a multitude of other products that you consume on a daily basis. The carcinogens in tobacco cigarettes, on the other hand, are at dangerously high levels and are known to directly cause cancer in humans and laboratory animals.

3. Electronic cigarettes encourage tobacco smoking
Some critics have argued that because e-cigarettes make it seem fun to smoke, some people who would otherwise not have done so might take up the habit of smoking tobacco cigarettes. There is, however, no evidence that this has occurred or is likely to occur. Furthermore, the main purpose of the electric cigarette is to assist people to cease smoking. Those who are already hooked on deadly tobacco cigarettes are encouraged to inhale a harmless vapour instead.