North Shore - I disagree with the notion that anything other than federal and state income tax, as well as state sales tax (when bought in state) should ever be paid on the sale of these devices.
Yes, it would be nice but surely that is not realistic. Billions of dollars in tobacco tax cannot just disappear without some sort of consequence. The consequences are that revenue departments will try to ban e-cigarettes, when they finally wake up, and/or that ecigs will be taxed in some additional way. Right now, ecigs are under the radar for Treasury departments, but they'll wake up sooner or later. There is a reason tobacco sales are ring-fenced by laws and it's not all to do with allowing consumer choice. There has to be a very good reason indeed to allow 400,000 deaths a year to go unchallenged - and it is because of the money. If they leave it too late and ecig users reach a critical mass, and can't then be brushed aside, they will tax ecigs.
Through taxes, government has been in bed with big tobacco, forever. In Massachusetts we have some of the highest taxes on cigarettes in the nation. Yet, our bloated and corrupt system gives us beat up roads and little money for local schools. If every convenience and liquor store sold these products, you would still get a decent revenue from local sales tax. In a short time there would be less people getting sick and burdening health care care resources.
It would be nice if they got in bed with us, though, wouldn't it?
The efficiency of the system, or not, probably doesn't come into this. Many governments or regions worldwide have astronomical sums coming into their coffers but there is little to show for it on the street. That's life.
Lots of stores sell tobacco and it produces a lot of money in tax. If they sold ecigs instead, as things stand, the tax income would shrink to 5% of that, maybe less (just a guess). This is the core of the problem. If you can save money by using an ecig then the government is losing out somewhere. That situation will not go unchallenged by them.
Vicks Vap-oh-Yeah - If they get it through their heads that the PV doesn't deliver any nicotine when used, what's to stop the powers that be from only allowing nic-free juices - "If it doesn't deliver, why have it IN there in the first place, safety, dangers, poison, blah, blah, blah...."
True enough. The FDA will play dirty, without doubt, if/when they lose the current case. They probably have a bunch of tricks they can pull and this could be one of them.
On the other hand, if ecigs are legally being imported and sold, and that process cannot be prevented by them - at least it's a foot in the door. Better than nothing as a result in Round 1. The next step would be to fight to remove restrictions. But that's probably better than an outright ban.
markarich159 - As a healthcare professional, I'm done following this Eissenberg guy. A "clinical Study" with an N (sample size) of 32 proves nothing. He also seems to keep proving (or trying to prove) that ecig usage is tantamount to some type of Placebo effect. He uses ecig brands that I never heard of (NPRO-Hydro EC??) and allowing cigarette users to use their "own brand" (which means they'll all be different) is a terrible control method.
His study methodology with regards to the actual vaping protocol also shows he knows next to nothing about how real word vapers actually vape.
Fair enough, let's assume he has an agenda. Most people have. With a lot of scientists right now, that agenda is to remain employed while the system pumps thousands more scientists out of universities every year. One way to do that is to provide research that is fashionable and has some sort of attraction to corporate employers. I think version #1 of the results was designed to be attractive. Version #2 also covers certain other possibilities.
This research isn't what we'd fund if we were trying to prove efficacy, or efficacy for the purpose of switching from tobacco to vapor use, or lack of health issues - but we weren't funding it, somebody else was. And right now, actually we don't want research that says how good ecigs are at anything in particular. The best possible result for us (at this point in time) is that research proves ecigs don't do anything. It's a winner.
Whether or not the results are true or not, and whether or not the results were designed to be favorable to us or not, is irrelevant in this case. They are just what we need right now. The results say ecigs don't do anything, and are the third such set of results achieved. I'd say that was legally significant, as there aren't currently any published results that say otherwise. And until certain legal processes complete, I hope that remains the case.
The fact is, that the results of clinical trials are easily manipulated to produce any result the provider of the funding wants, and such manipulation is a daily occurrence, and a matter of routine. This was stated recently by an expert clinical researcher and author.
In this particular case I find no evidence of such manipulation because the researchers were simply ignorant - and that fact has coincidentally assisted us enormously. Also, remember that one or two researchers who are sympathetic to us have also produced near-identical results - so it's not hard at all to reach those conclusions, you just need to know nothing at all about the the thing you are researching.
Right now we actually don't want a trial that proves ecigarettes are effective at for example supplying nicotine, supplying nicotine in any amount the user wants, allowing tobacco smokers to switch, being attractive to smokers, being highly efficient at long-term maintenance of tobacco cessation - or anything else like that. We just don't.
Our problem right now is not attracting more smokers to switch, it's simply to survive.
Once we've survived the onslaught then things are different. First we have to survive. Trials like this that 'prove' ecigs do nothing are just the job right now - in fact if we'd paid for this ourselves, we couldn't have had a better result. Next year will be different and we'll get a real one, because our agenda will be different. Today, it's to survive, and this trial is just the job.
I keep thinking we must have a secret patron somewhere, funding this stuff, it couldn't work any better to our advantage. Maybe Warren Buffet is a vaper.
