E-Cig Ban/License Requirements Proposed in Boston!

[cigarbabe]

Elaine we did get his name but not his title or last name.
Unfortunately Boston will pass this regulation.
The BPHC has already stated it's intention to do this regardless I feel to any opposition.
Even though the head of BPHC said "we aren't making them illegal" that I fear is her real intention.
There were only two members of the board present on Tuesday at the other hearing the full board sat in.
I did submit the papers I had with me to add into the public comments and Italy's intent to use them as a cessation device.{?}
C.B.

[upStomp]

I believe this to be the case as well, CB. An editorial writer in Boston put it best recently...

"Nothing, one suspects, so quickens the pulse of a regulator as the prospect of new terrain."

Nowhere is this more true than in Massachusetts. I think we're looking at the beginning of an extremely steep uphill battle staged across the entire state within a year. That's not to say we shouldn't fight, but in states where government bodies have zero respect for private property rights or personal responsibility, reason and liberty nearly always give way to power and privilege.

3 years ago, when my Wife and I were shopping for a new home to raise our family, we had the opportunity to move to New Hampshire. Not a week goes by that I don't regret our decision to stay.

[Vocalek]

Maybe you could change the name of the state (slightly) to "Messachusetts".

[rothenbj]

I believe this to be the case as well, CB. An editorial writer in Boston put it best recently...

"Nothing, one suspects, so quickens the pulse of a regulator as the prospect of new terrain."

Nowhere is this more true than in Massachusetts. I think we're looking at the beginning of an extremely steep uphill battle staged across the entire state within a year. That's not to say we shouldn't fight, but in states where government bodies have zero respect for private property rights or personal responsibility, reason and liberty nearly always give way to power and privilege.

3 years ago, when my Wife and I were shopping for a new home to raise our family, we had the opportunity to move to New Hampshire. Not a week goes by that I don't regret our decision to stay.

Seems very strange for a city and state so significantly involved with the founding of this nation.

[cigarbabe]

Maybe you could change the name of the state (slightly) to "Messachusetts".

Elaine that is the perfect name for this place.
It sadly accurately describes the climate and goings on here.
C.B.

[upStomp]

Seems very strange for a city and state so significantly involved with the founding of this nation.

It's a running joke with many of us: "Massachusetts - freedom started and ended here."

[ChipCurtis]

Maybe you could change the name of the state (slightly) to "Messachusetts".

My father-in-law calls it "Mass-of-two-.....s".

[Bill Godshall]

I sent the following comments to the Boston Public Health Commission today.


The following comments are submitted by Smokefree Pennsylvania and Bill Godshall to the Boston Public Health Commission (PHC) regarding two recently proposed regulations: "A Regulation Limiting Tobacco and Nicotine Access By Youth" and "Clean Air Works Workplace Smoking and E-Cigarette Use Restrictions".

Since 1990, Smokefree Pennsylvania has advocated organizational, local, state and federal policies to protect people from tobacco smoke pollution, reduce tobacco marketing to youth, increase cigarette tax rates, preserve civil justice remedies for injured smokers, increase funding for smoking prevention and cessation programs, and inform smokers that smokefree tobacco/nicotine products are far less hazardous alternatives to cigarettes. For disclosure, neither Smokefree Pennsylvania nor I have ever received any funding from tobacco, drug or e-cigarette companies or their trade associations.

A Regulation Limiting Tobacco and Nicotine Access By Youth

Two federal laws [1992 Synar Amendment and 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA)], and a Massachusetts statute already prohibit tobacco sales to minors, and already require compliance checks/inspections of tobacco retailers to ensure compliance.

Persuant to the 1992 Synar law, 40% of retailers nationwide were found willing to sell tobacco to minors in 1997, a percentage that declined to an all time low of 9.3% in 2010 New national report shows that state/federal partnership has reduced illegal tobacco sales to minors to an all-time low.

In 2010, 13.7% of retailers in MA were willing to sell tobacco to minors in 2010, and an average of fewer than 15% of retailers in MA have been found willing to sell to tobacco to minors since 2000.
http://www.samhsa.gov/prevention/201...nar_Report.pdf
http://www.samhsa.gov/prevention/Tob...esFFY97_08.pdf

In the past year, the FDA has awarded contracts to many states, including MA, to enforce the youth access provisions in the FSPTCA States Awarded FDA Tobacco Retail Inspection Contracts.

According to the FDA, 97 youth access compliance inspections of tobacco retailers have been conducted in Boston
Compliance Check Inspections of Tobacco Product Retailer, and just three (out of 97) retailers were caught selling tobacco to a minor, with the following warnings letters sent to the three retailers.
Alizach, Inc d/b/a Downtown Convenience
Brothers Mini Market, Inc 7/21/11
One Stop Convenience 7/21/11

Subsequent violations (of the FSPTCA) by tobacco retailers are very likely to result in graduated fines, as the FDA had previously imposed $250 fines for retailers caught with a subsequent violation of this same youth access regulation prior to the Supreme Court striking down the 1996 FDA tobacco regulation.

Since virtually every tobacco retailer in Boston has refused to sell tobacco to minors during compliance inspections, and since federal and state laws already prohibit tobacco sales to minors and require/fund compliance inspections of retailers, there is no public health justification for establishing a tobacco retailer permit regulation. Even if the proposed regulation is enacted and aggressively enforce, there will be little if any reduction in tobacco sales to minors since very few retailers sell to minors.

Similarly, since there is no evidence that any youth use electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) in Boston or anywhere else, nor evidence that e-cigarettes are marketed to youth, there is no public health justification for establishing a retailer permit regulation for e-cigarette retailers.

While banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors is sound public health policy, the Boston PHC probably doesn't have the legal authority to ban e-cigarette sales to minors unless/until the Commownwealth of MA does so first. Furthermore, the Boston PHC probably doesn't have the legal authority to ban internet and mail order sales of e-cigarettes to adults.

Daily cigarette smoking in the US and MA has declined sharply since 1998 (with 8th grade prevalence declining 75%, 10th grade prevalence declining 66%, and 12th grade prevalence declining 50%). Past-month smoking also has declined dramatically in the past decade.

But since nearly all 12th graders are 18 years of age, and since many/most underage smokers now primarily obtain cigarettes from friends or relatives (who are 18 or older), the proposed PHC regulation would do very little to further reduce youth smoking or youth access to cigarettes. The most effective way to reduce youth smoking and youth access to cigarettes would be to increase MA's mininum age for cigarette sales to 19 years. Claiming a desire to reduce youth smoking while allowing tobacco sales to most 12th graders makes no sense.

The proposal to require cigars costing less than $2 to be sold in packages of 5 will do little if anything to reduce cigar consumption, and could be challenged in court by cigar companies. It is important to note that cigars aren't as hazardous as cigarettes as the vast majority of cigar smokers don't inhale the smoke, and the vast majority of cigar smokers don't smoke daily. While some people (primarily urban blacks) use cigars/wrappers to smoke ........., cigar regulations (similar to ......... parapernalia bans and regulations) aren't likely to reduce ......... smoking.

For these reasons, the Boston PHC should reject its proposed tobacco youth access regulation, and instead encourage the MA legislature to enact a statewide law banning sales of tobacco products (including e-cigarettes) to any minor under the age of 19 years of age. Four states (AL, AK, UT, NJ) currently prohibit tobacco sales to minors under nineteen, while e-cigarettes sales to minors have been banned in CA, UT, MN, NH, CO and TN.

Clean Air Works Workplace Smoking and E-Cigarette Use Restrictions

In 2006, I coauthored a comprehensive scientific report "Tobacco harm reduction: an alternative cessation strategy for inveterate smokers" at HRJ | Full text | Tobacco harm reduction: an alternative cessation strategy for inveterate smokers and in 2007 the Royal College of Physicians
issued a similar report "Harm reduction in nicotine addiction; Helping people who can't quit" at
http://www.tobaccoprogram.org/pdf/4f...239b09c5db.pdf. Epidemiology studies have consistently found that cigarette smoking poses 100 times greater morbidity and mortality risks than use of smokeless tobacco products in the US and Sweden, and the available evidence indicates that all noncombustible tobacco/nicotine products (including e-cigarettes, nicotine gums, lozenges, patches) are also about 99% less hazardous alternatives to cigarettes.

Smokers who switch to smokefree tobacco/nicotine products reduce their health risks nearly as much as smokers who quit all tobacco/nicotine usage, and several million smokers have already switched to smokeless tobacco products, e-cigarettes and/or NRT products. Besides, usage of e-cigarettes or other noncombustible tobacco/nicotine products poses no known risks for nonusers because they emit ZERO smoke.

Approximately one million smokers have quit smoking or sharply reduced their cigarette consumption by switching to or substituting smokefree e-cigarettes. To date, there is no evidence that e-cigarette usage has harmed anyone, which is logical since the products emit a tiny amount of vaporized nicotine (similar to nicotine inhalers that are marketed as smoking cessation aids) and water vapor. All of the dozen plus laboratory tests conducted on e-cigarettes found that e-cigarettes emit no hazardous levels of any constitutents, and that levels of nitrosamines in e-cigarettes are nearly identical (i.e. very little if any) to those in nicotine gums and patches.
http://www.healthnz.co.nz/RuyanCartr...t30-Oct-08.pdf
http://www.starscientific.com/404/st...0tsna%20in.pdf
http://www.healthnz.co.nz/DublinEcigBenchtopHandout.pdf
http://www.casaa.org/files/Study_TSN...NJOY_Vapor.pdf
Lab Reports / E Liquid Facts / E Cigarette and E Liquid from Totally Wicked
http://cdn.johnsoncreeksmokejuice.co...CMS_Report.pdf
http://www.libertystix.com/LibertySt...ysis072309.pdf
http://truthaboutecigs.com/science/8.pdf
http://www.casaa.org/files/Exponent%...DA-Summary.pdf
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/centers-...ticle.jphp.pdf
Taylor & Francis Online :: ANALYSIS OF ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE CARTRIDGES, REFILL SOLUTIONS, AND SMOKE FOR NICOTINE AND NICOTINE RELATED IMPURITIES - Journal of Liquid Chromatography & Related Technologies - Volume 34, Issue 14

A Literature Review for Glycerol and Glycols for Entertainment Services & Technology Association also found no health risks to humans http://tsp.plasa.org/tsp/working_groups/FS/docs/HSE.pdf, while new pharmacology, pharmacokinetic and toxicology studies at ScienceDirect - Toxicology : Non-clinical safety and pharmacokinetic evaluations of propylene glycol aerosol in Sprague-Dawley rats and Beagle dogs found that laboratory animals were not harmed by very high levels of propylene glycol aerosol.

E-cigarettes also have been found to contain/emit similar or lower levels of nicotine than nicotine gums and lozenges
http://www.healthnz.co.nz/2010%20Bullen%20ECig.pdf and http://www.casaa.org/files/Virgiania...ty%20Study.pdf. This indicates that e-cigarettes emit enough to satisfy the cravings of smokers, but may not emit enough nicotine to addict nonsmokers. There is no evidence that any youth or non-tobacco users have become addicted to e-cigarettes.

In a recent Boston Globe article, Nikysha Harding, director of tobacco control for the Boston PHC was quoted as saying: “We don’t know what people are inhaling with these e-cigarettes,” and “We see these as a gateway for youth to become addicted to nicotine.” Based upon the evidence cited above, the Boston PHC should issue a correction of those inaccurate and inflamatory claims by Harding.

Many published surveys have confirmed that e-cigarettes satisfy the cravings of smokers, help many smokers quit and/or sharply reduce cigarette consumption, and provide perceived health benefits to users who switched from cigarettes.
Sign In
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content...458-10-231.pdf
THR2010. (tobaccoharmreduction.org) (see chapter 9)
http://ectoh.org/documents/3B.5%20Et...20efficacy.pdf
http://www.ajpmonline.org/webfiles/i...AMEPRE3013.pdf
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigs): views of af... [Int J Clin Pract. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI
Interviews With
Electronic Cigarettes

A Japanese study similarly found e-cigarettes to be effective for decreasing cigarette consumption.

SEIKATSUEISEI : Vol. 55 (2011) , No. 1 p.59-64, while a recent case study found e-cigarettes effective for smoking cessation among depressed patients http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperIn...ublishStatus=2.

A new e-cigarette clinical trial on smokers at CASAA.org found that 22.5% of participants remained smokefree after 24 weeks and another 32.5% of participants reduced daily cigarette consumption by 50%, including 12.5% who reduced daily cigarette consumption by 80%.

Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler has also acknowledged the benefits of smokeless tobacco, dissolvables and e-cigarettes as less hazardous alternatives for cigarette smokers at Q&A: Former FDA Commissioner talks about tobacco - Westport News by stating "there's no doubt that in terms of risk of death there are some advantages to that substitution."

Other public health organizations that have extensively studied e-cigarettes have also endorsed their use by smokers, including The American Association of Public Health Physicians Regulations.gov and the American Council on Science and Health NEJM editorial: e-cigarette users should resume smoking for their own good > Facts & Fears > ACSH.

In sharp contrast to indoor smokefree policies/laws (which are largely self enforced because of broad public support), enforcing an e-cigarette usage ban is impossible (since the products can be used discreetly without anyone else knowing) and it is very difficult and expensive to enforce outdoor smoking bans at locations where other people aren't directly exposed to smoke. Enacting unwarranted and unenforceable regulations also would reduce the public credibility of the PHC.

Therefore, the Boston PHC should reject its proposed regulation to ban the usage of e-cigarettes where smoking is banned, as the regulation would pose far more harm than benefit to public health.

Sincerely,



William T. Godshall, MPH
Executive Director
Smokefree Pennsylvania
1926 Monongahela Avenue
Pittsburgh PA 15218
412-351-5880
smokefree@compuserve.com

[Bill Godshall]

The deadline for submitting comments to the Boston PHC is today.

[Bill Godshall]

Karen Carey presented and submitted the following testimony on behalf of CASAA to Boston Public Health Commission.


October 7, 2011

Boston Public Health Commission
1010 Massachusetts Avenue, 6th Floor
Boston, MA 02118

Dear Commission Members:

My name is Karen Carey, I am a resident of Massachusetts and a member of The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association. I would like to thank you for the opportunity I had to speak at the hearing held on Tuesday, October 4th, and would like to provide you with some additional comments to consider as you make this important decision.

Like many of my contemporaries, I started smoking when I was barely 13. When I reached high school, it seemed that everyone smoked. We would gobble our lunches and head out to the front lawn of Classical High School in Springfield, were we would all stand around smoking. After school, we would head downtown, where we would often encounter someone handing out free cigarette samples.

I tried numerous times to quit, cold turkey, the patch, the gum, Chantix, hypnosis, you name it, I tried it. Short term success always turned into long term failure, which I have since learned is the norm for typical FDA-approved NRT. After 36 years, I had resolved myself that I was going to be a smoker, even though I understood the risks. Last August I saw an article in one of the local weekly newspapers about an electronic cigarette store that had opened in my town. I was curious, so I stopped in and bought a kit, after trying it out and seeing exactly how it worked. The ability to try it helped convince me that it was worth a shot. I went home, charged the batteries overnight, and began to use it the next day. I was amazed at how easily I was able to transition to this device, but I was even more amazed that unlike other methods I had tried, this actually eliminated my desire to light up a "real" tobacco cigarette. WOW, this was great. But I wanted to know more about it, so I spent hours online, reading everything I could about this invention. I learned that it was invented in China. The inventor was a smoker who saw his own father die of lung cancer, and he was determined to find a safer way of delivering nicotine without all of the harmful side effects found when tobacco is burned. By vaporizing liquid he was able to mimic the sensation of smoke, the user quickly adapts to its similar size and gets the same hand-to-mouth movement so ingrained to long-term smokers, while virtually eliminating any risk to bystanders.

But then I discovered that the FDA was trying to ban this life-saving invention. Wait, I thought, how could this be? I couldn't understand how, after being exposed to anti-tobacco campaigns most of my life, the very invention that could satisfy anti-tobacco and smoke-free associations was being vilified by my own government. Surely this couldn't be possible! The more I researched, the more I learned about the actual dangers of tobacco cigarettes in comparison to this product, the more disgusted I became. It seemed that the FDA had found such minimal amounts of anything toxic, compared to the much higher levels of chemical and carcinogenic substances known to be in a tobacco cigarette, that it was obvious that the e-cigarette was exponentially safer. When I found out that current law prevents this truth from being a selling point for electronic cigarette retailers it became clear that something was horribly wrong. It seems the anti-tobacco establishment wasn't satisfied with eliminating the dangers of smoking, now it was trying to vilify nicotine, which, in the dose obtained through vaporization, not only isn't toxic, but poses no threat to others.

Since I've been vaping for over a year, the comment I've heard the most often is "Don't you know that it contains anti-freeze?" Fortunately I am well versed in the actual ingredients, which truly isn't a feat of memorization because there are only four:

1) Nicotine many vapers have successfully weaned down their dose to eliminate that as well

2) FDA-approved propylene glycol used by the pharmaceutical industry in asthma inhalers, used in theatrical fog, and used as an anti-bacterial agent in hospital ventilation systems (perhaps that is why I haven't been sick with cold or flu in over a year)

3) FDA-approved vegetable glycerin used in a myriad of food and health & beauty products

4) FDA-approved flavorings which I enjoy now more than ever, thanks to my improved senses of smell and taste

Why is it when these four ingredients were combined into a product designed to help smokers overcome their smoking addiction by supplying nicotine in a way that is unarguably exponentially safer, the FDA, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma cried foul. Adult smokers have been thrown under the bus, because we've embraced a new technology that was invented to help us, but the financial benefits of this technology are pouring into China, where it was invented. This reduction of revenue to the Tobacco and Pharmacy industries, along with their benefactors The American Cancer Society, The American Lung Association, and countless other organizations, not to mention the funding that cities such as Boston receive for anti-tobacco campaigns, has much more to do with why these organizations are against electronic cigarettes than the lame "we don't know what's in them" excuses.

As a member of the Boston Public Health Commission, it can only be with reckless disregard that you would entertain any action to ban a product that can save countless lives. We don't ban alcohol sales because a 5-year-old sees grandma enjoying wine with her dinner, we understand that parents will explain that wine is for adults. We don't ban raspberry vodka because 15-year-olds like raspberry too, we have existing laws in place to ensure that vodka is only sold to adults. We don't ban coffee from office buildings, because the steam from your morning cup of coffee or tea poses no health risk from caffeine to your co-worker.


Please do not ban the use of electronic cigarettes where smoking is banned. This type of action will cause smokers to mistakenly think that they are just as dangerous as tobacco cigarettes, obviously a falsehood being spread by well-meaning but uneducated nicotine prohibitionists. Show the adult smokers of Boston that you do care about them, and encourage them to use this reduced-harm alternative. Allowing smokers to use an electronic cigarette in the workplace may end up resulting in Boston having a much lower rate of adult smokers than the national average, because they might just be like a lot of us, who ACCIDENTALLY QUIT SMOKING by using this alternative. Shouldn't that be your true mission?

Sincerely,


Karen Carey
Wilbraham, MA 01095