E-Cigs in the Chicago Tribune

[TropicalBob]

Cage, they need you over at Right to Vape. That was very well written, but did not argue why people should be allowed to use these drug delivery devices, as the FDA calls them.

Better get some peer-reviewed clinical trials under your belt for that.

I like your words, however. Nice, even if not applicable to e-smoking.

BTW: The fight is no longer anti-smoking, not even anti-tobacco. It's already anti-nicotine as proved by cotinine testing of employees. Thou shalt not use nicotine is the new commandment.

[Cage]

My apologies TB...

Just another one of my clumsy attempts at humor.
That (edited) speech was from "Independence Day", one of my favorite movies.
Your "What else needs to be said?", seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Sometimes the inner clown is hard to restrain.
No disrespect intended or I hope, taken.

With that said, I was wondering what your feelings are about our devices surviving any ban, if properly marketed with absolutely no nicotene whatsoever?

[TropicalBob]

It was a wonderful parody, Cage. Well done. If someone wrote that well on the side of e-smoking, we'd be halfway home.

There are so many "what ifs" to qualify your last question. Like many, I'd prefer to leave everything as it is for awhile. I'm better off by using e-cigs. I've done this a little over a year now. Liquid hasn't killed me. Etc. Our personal experiences are joined by others to get a consensus that this is not dangerous. It may not be healthy, but that's another claim. Me? I think it is.

The End Game I see, based on all I've read, is that these will become medical devices available by prescription only, with liquid supplied in restricted strengths from Big Pharmaceutical companies. I don't think vaporizing nicotine will be banned, just strictly controlled by Big Money interests. We have to "protect the children," they will say.

There is a strongly expressed public desire to move people off smoking tobacco. But what can replace a cigarette for the addict? The failure rates -- recidivism or return to cigarettes -- show the NRT devices are essentially expensive failures. E-smoking is likely -- likely -- to have a higher rate of successful quitters than anything presently available.

That means there is money to be made by making devices and liquid, and selling them. Enter Big Pharma (Big Tobacco is losing customers already and is placing its bets on other tobacco products like snus and snuff). Big Pharma will demand of government that these upstart e-smoking devices meet the same quality standards demanded of any drug and/or drug delivery device.

Our made-in-China, purchased-on-the-Internet metal tubes cannot. Everything imaginable is wrong about the present situation. And we know nothing, really, about them -- except they work for us. Science is desperately needed, and pleading won't help if science is not there to back up reason.

And that's where I see a shift to classifying these as medical devices for treatment of nicotine addiction -- a situation the government can declare and Big Pharma can meet.

It's the interim I worry about. Can I keep my stuff another year? Two years? Lordy, I hope so.

* * *

Possibility from left field:

Only disposables will attain a mass market. I've bet on that for the past half-year. Watch the Ruyan Jazz and others as truck drivers discover e-smoking. If disposables really catch on, Philip Morris buys Janty, RJR buys Crown7, Lorrillard snaps up Sedanza, E-Cig goes bankrupt but we get Big Tobacco lawyers to argue the case for e-delivery nicotine devices as the wave of the future. Easily met regulations follow.

[sherid]

Originally Posted by Cage

If I may:

Soon, anti-smoking forces from here will join others from around the world, and they will be launching the largest no-smoking campaign in the history of mankind.

Mankind... that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences any more. We must be united in our common interest.

Perhaps it's fate that we were all brought together in this great forum, to once again be fighting for our freedom. Not only from tyranny, oppression, and persecution, but from annihilation.

We're fighting for our right to live, to exist, and should we win the day, this forum will no longer be known as a place for e-smokers, but as a place where we declared in one voice, 'We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on... we're going to survive.' Today we celebrate... our independence day!"

Who's with me?

I am wholeheartedly with you, and despite some of my fellow e smokers opinions, we need to also join with others against bans and against those who smoke whether it is electronically or otherwise. The more divided we are, the less likely we are to succeed.

[sherid]

Originally Posted by TropicalBob

I
* * *

Possibility from left field:

Only disposables will attain a mass market. I've bet on that for the past half-year. Watch the Ruyan Jazz and others as truck drivers discover e-smoking. If disposables really catch on, Philip Morris buys Janty, RJR buys Crown7, Lorrillard snaps up Sedanza, E-Cig goes bankrupt but we get Big Tobacco lawyers to argue the case for e-delivery nicotine devices as the wave of the future. Easily met regulations follow.

This possibility is what I believe will happen. I just read an article about BT focusing more and more on smokeless. You know they are looking as we speak, and possibly they are also negotiating as we speak. They must make that happen though before falling under FDA control, for after that, they cannot develop any new products. They have the research facilities, the lawyers, and definitely the greed to go for this. They recently bought Native Spirit tobacco, so they are looking at anything to keep profit alive. I also see very few differences between the design of the PM Heatbar and the I-inhale. I'm sure it is in the works.

[Cage]

Thanks for the reply TB.
I know a lot of us here look to you for direction... and hope.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by sherid

This possibility is what I believe will happen. I just read an article about BT focusing more and more on smokeless. You know they are looking as we speak, and possibly they are also negotiating as we speak. They must make that happen though before falling under FDA control, for after that, they cannot develop any new products. They have the research facilities, the lawyers, and definitely the greed to go for this. They recently bought Native Spirit tobacco, so they are looking at anything to keep profit alive. I also see very few differences between the design of the PM Heatbar and the I-inhale. I'm sure it is in the works.

So many variables and ways for this to end.
I'm just waiting for someone to appear from the smoke and dust of battle... walk up to the podium and calmly announce that our devices will survive.

I can take it from there...

[sherid]

Electronic cigarettes: A safe substitute?

* 11 February 2009 by Helen Thomson


I HAVE never been a smoker, so as I sit at the bar, chin resting on one hand, I try to remember how Audrey Hepburn did it. I take a gentle drag and exhale. A white mist wafts around my face as I wait for the rush of nicotine hitting my brain. People start to stare. Then the inevitable happens: "Hey, you can't smoke that in here." Only in this case I can, because I'm not really smoking.

I've just "lit up" an e-cigarette, a battery-powered electronic device that I bought for $60 from a UK website. It looks just like a real cigarette - the tip even glows red - and with every drag a few micrograms of nicotine from a disposable cartridge (I got six with my purchase) should reach my lungs. My e-cigarette even produces puffs of "smoke", but it isn't burning, and so it's not banned. I'm not the only one smoking these sticks. In the growing number of public places worldwide where smoking has been banned, a new breed of smoker has appeared puffing on similar gadgets.
The e-cigarette is not burning anything and so doesn't produce any of the toxic products of combustion

E-cigarettes may help smokers evade the ban, but do they also help them evade the health consequences of smoking or give the habit up altogether? In September 2008 the World Health Organization issued a statement warning smokers that there was no evidence to back up claims that e-cigarettes could help them quit. So what do we know about them and is there any evidence that inhaling the chemicals they contain may be harmful to your health? Could they genuinely help people to kick the habit?

E-cigarettes were invented by Hon Lik of electronics company Ruyan in Beijing, China. Ruyan sold its first electronic cigarette in May 2004, and e-cigarettes have been growing in popularity ever since. Accurate figures are hard to come by, but Ruyan - the world's biggest manufacturer - claims to have sold over 300,000 in 2008. Smart Smokers, one company which sells Ruyan's cigarettes in the UK, says sales are rising exponentially. In the US, hit TV show The Doctors featured the e-cigarette in the top 10 health trends of 2008. In a world where smoking is increasingly socially unacceptable, the e-cigarette looks like a success story in the making.

The device itself is pretty simple. It resembles a normal cigarette in shape and size but instead of containing cured tobacco it is mostly full of battery and an LED. The disposable filter holds a cartridge containing nicotine dissolved in propylene glycol, the liquid that is vaporised in nightclub smoke machines. When you take a drag, a pressure sensor switches on an electric heating coil that vaporises the PG and releases the "smoke" (see diagram). The strongest cartridge contains about the same amount of nicotine as a regular-strength cigarette, but lasts for about 300 puffs in comparison with a regular cigarette that lasts for about 15. The cartridges don't "burn down" but deliver a puff whenever you choose to take one. Cartridges come in high, medium, low and zero-nicotine strength and cost around $1.50 each.

However, on a per puff basis, the strongest cartridge only delivers around one-third the amount of nicotine delivered by a puff on a normal cigarette, says Murray Laugesen, a public health researcher who campaigned against tobacco smoking in New Zealand and is now studying the impact of smoking e-cigarettes.
Legal loophole

So far so good. But are e-cigarettes really less harmful than the real thing? Given they contain nicotine, an addictive drug, and are touted as an alternative for smokers, you might think an independent organisation would have tried to substantiate such claims. Far from it. In most countries e-cigarettes escape regulation. "If you make a health claim about a product, it becomes a drug and comes under drug regulation and approval," says John Britton, a lung specialist at the University of Nottingham, UK, and chair of the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group. "If it's a burnt tobacco product, it's a cigarette." The e-cigarette is not classed as either, giving manufacturers free rein to develop and distribute it with little more than an easily obtainable general hygiene certificate.

To complicate matters, some companies claiming that e-cigarettes can help you kick the smoking habit even went as far as to falsely cite the approval of the WHO. News of this led the WHO to recommend in September that all e-cigarettes be banned until proved safe.

So what precisely is the evidence for and against e-cigarettes? Laugesen is one of the few researchers tackling this question. In early 2007, his company - Health New Zealand - began a research programme to investigate what hazards e-cigarettes might pose. The research is funded by Ruyan but Laugesen insists it is independent, a view backed by the WHO. "Dr Laugesen is a respected tobacco control researcher," emphasises Raman Minhas, technical officer of the WHO's Tobacco Free Initiative.
continued at Electronic cigarettes: A safe substitute? - health - 11 February 2009 - New Scientist

[TropicalBob]

Thanks, Cage, but I don't possess extraordinary wisdom. I just read and research a great deal about this, possibly because I'm hopelessly addicted to nicotine. Then I connect the dots, as I say.

Sherid, Altria just bought into Swedish Match, the biggest maker of snus and recently expanded into nasal snuff. For those who haven't read about any of these alternatives, they are red hot right now. Nasal snuff flavors look like the ice cream parlor board over a soda fountain! Following a 15mg snus introduction of a product called Thunder, it was topped this week by a 17mg snus called Odin. 17mg should be enough to drop a Budweiser stallion in its tracks. It's a full-blown nicotine race for snus users.

Tobacco Depot, where I buy some snus, will begin selling Camel snus on Feb. 23 as part of a national rollout. RJR will have dissolvables on the national market possibly as soon as April. These are terrific alternatives for staying off cigarettes.

The mergers and cooperatives are happening right and left as we vape. Yes, we could have an explosion of interest from Big Tobacco. Not to kill us. To acquire us.

Understand that as far as the government is concerned, disposables are the only e-smoking product with a chance. Each can be regulated to design and nicotine delivery, and buy-and-toss products can be taxed just as cigarettes are. These are the natural evolution and maturation of the product.

Refillables will remain a niche market, like pipe smoking, roll-your-own and bongs. When e-cigs are needed, a user will pop into a convenience store, buy a pack and use 'em a week.

I do see that as a possibility to avoid an outright ban.

[sherid]

I agree with the disposable issue. I am so tired of broken parts. My Dura atomizers died last night as did my DSE 901. I found that a truck stop was selling NJoy's, so I picked one up. Right now, I am liking it, and it does have the 30 day return policy, but I want to be able to use and toss.