In 2007, the Royal College of Physicians issued a 250+ page report. This text is from the Preface:
Even before I found the above report, I had been searching for several years for the perfect substitute for smoking. Nicotine abstinence was unworkable for me, and Plan A (which I tried in 1992) was to stop smoking and ask for treatment for the underlying conditions as they cropped up. Plan A was a dismal failure. Antidepressant medication at least stopped me from considering killing myself, but after six months I was still walking around in a state of confusion, afraid to drive my car for fear of my inattention and about to lose my job due to lousy performance. So much for Plan A. I resumed smoking.
Plan B, was to try to find a product that would provide the nicotine I needed without giving me lung cancer or a heart attack.
One day in 2007 I stumbled across an internet site selling an electronic cigar, the NJOY NGAR. I ordered it, tried it out, but it wasn't for me. I don't care for the taste of cigars and the product tasted just like a cigar!
But then in 2008, I received a phone call telling me that they were introducing a new product that resembled a cigarette. In exchange for answering a survey on how I liked the NGAR, they sent me a free starter kit for the NJOY NPRO. This was more like it! I began using it on occasion and finally in March of 2009 decided to jump in with both feet. I was finally free from smoking! Chalk up one miracle.
When, early in 2009 we read news reports that the FDA had ordered Customs to seize incoming shipments of e-cigarettes from China, I was in a panic.
I had finally discovered a product that might work, and the FDA wanted to ban it?
Shortly thereafter, a company called Smoking Everywhere filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asking the judge for an injunction against the product seizures. When we ECF readers saw this, we cheered!
We began discussing the situation and what we could do about it. It occurred to us that maybe all those organizations that had been nagging us for years to quit smoking would come to our rescue. No such luck. We learned that The American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, and even the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids had been urging the FDA to ban the products!
Shortly after the suit was filed, an Arizona company, SOTTERA, INC. d/b/a NJOY intervened as another plaintiff against the FDA. The anti-smoker organizations named above filed an Amicus (friend of the court) brief in support of the FDA's position. CASAA joined in an Amicus brief filed in support of the plaintiffs.
The rest of 2009 was a time of great angst. On the 14th of January 2010, there was great joy across ECF! Judge Leon ruled against the FDA and told them to stop seizing incoming shipments. Chalk up another miracle!
Then the FDA appealed the ruling. Another year of angst and nail-biting ensued. Then on December 7, 2010, another miracle happened. The three-judge panel considering the case for the Court of Appeals upheld the lower court and ruled against the FDA. Another miracle!
The FDA tried again, asking the Appeals court to consider the case again, using all 9 of the judges. The Court turned them down. (This counts as another miracle.) It did not take long for the court to turn down the FDA's request. At that point the FDA could have asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, but in April of 2011 announced that it would abide by the court's ruling. (Mini-miracle).
The FDA had already established a Center for Tobacco Products and stacked the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee with anti-tobacco folks, including a Harvard School of Public Health Professor, Gregory Connolly.* I considered it another miracle when he was asked to withdraw from TPSAC after insisting that he should be allowed to be one of the people permitted to give testimony during the one hour set aside for members of the public to speak about issues being considered by TPSAC. This is not one hour per speaker, but a total of one hour divided equally among all who signed up to speak. The allotted time can be as short as 3 minutes.
Allowing Connolly to do this would have been akin to letting one of the Appeals Court Judges step down off the bench temporarily and testify on one side of a case it was considering, and then to step back up on the bench to participate in making the decision. I considered it a miracle when he was gone. Do a search for Connolly within this sub-forum and you can read some of the lies he has published in scientific journals about Tobacco Harm Reduction.
There are many more miracles that have come about since, such as when we were successful in quashing Linda Rosenthal's attempt to ban all sales of e-cigarettes in the state of New York and having e-cigarette consumers testify in Illinois to successfully fight a sales ban effort led by the American Lung Association (or was it Heart? No matter...they tend to be clones).
In recent years, we have seen research published by scientists who tell the truth, rather than by the liars who claim that all use of nicotine is evil. The lies are still out there and we can't claim victory yet, but to paraphrase an old cigarette commercial....
We've come along way baby!
* Connolly has authored some of the worst anti-smoker articles and had them published in scientific journals. In one article, he implied that numerous children are dying from nicotine poisoning due to novel products like dissolvable orbs (
Unintentional child poisonings through ingestion ... [Pediatrics. 2010] - PubMed - NCBI) when the truth is that during 27 years only one child has died from ingestion of any tobacco product. They found Valium in the child's bloodstream, which probably explains why the child failed to regurgitate the cigarettes he had eaten, which would have saved his life. (
Frequency and outcomes of accidental... [Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI)