Officials report biggest fall in adult smoking in decades

[Katmar]

@Robino1

Here's the latest:

Majority Media | Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee | Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee

As chairman of the primary oversight Committee of the United States Senate, I urge the FDA to be transparent and accountable in its regulatory actions. I ask that you please respond to my requests for information so that the Committee and the American public may fully understand the FDA’s rulemaking and its consequences for small businesses and the public’s health. With this in mind, please respond to each of the questions in the letter I sent on May 17, 2016. In addition, because of the significant public interest in this matter, I ask that you please provide all documents and communications referring or relating to the FDA’s regulation of the e-cigarette industry.

Please provide this information and material as soon as possible but no later than 5:00 p.m. on June 20, 2016. If the FDA does not provide an adequate response to these inquiries, the Committee may be forced to resort to other means to compel the production of this information. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

YES!!!!

There is an area where you can contact them. I told them my story, thanked them, and said how many MORE millions of lives could be saved by e cigs, especially the more technologically advanced ones...

 

[sonicdsl]

@Robino1

Here's the latest:

Majority Media | Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee | Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee



YES!!!!

There is an area where you can contact them. I told them my story, thanked them, and said how many MORE millions of lives could be saved by e cigs, especially the more technologically advanced ones...

Thanks Katmar! I also sent a note thanking them and telling them my story.

Here's a contact link for the committee in case anyone needs it: Contact | Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee

 

[NealBJr]

I have used vaping to stop smoking, so for me its a smoking cessation device.

The smell of cigarette smoke now repels me, so Im not sure where they get the argument that vaping leads to smoking....just unsubstantiated BS theyve made up. Like saying [Other Stuff] leads to [Worse Other Stuff] addiction.

Now, when I smell cigarette smoke, I want to remove myself from its path...so I won't be going back even if I dont have any vape gear at hand. Ive seen the way things should be, so smoking analogs now is a step backwards for me.

I agree. Their logic is: "if A=C, and B=C, then A=B".... It is a valid point mathematically, but we're not talking mathematics. If Smoking = Nicotine, and Vaping = Nicotine, then Vaping is Smoking.... that's their logic. Apply it to anything else and it sounds absurd. If Walking=Travelling, and Driving=Travelling, then Walking=Driving... start selling Walking licenses... or... if Alcohol=Drinking, and Water=Drinking, then Alcohol=Water... Start raising the limit of water drinking to 21.

The Truth is..... It's not a mathematical equation. They have studied smoking, and how nicotine works through smoking. There has been little study on pure Nicotine itself separated from smoking. There has been some, and it is proven that although it is addicting, it's not as addicting as when taken from a cigarette. They have even been told that cigarettes ADD chemicals to Enhance the Nicotine... this was proven through several documents that they found a use for ammonia even though they knew it would enhance the nicotine (Ref) .

It is known that nicotine obtained from a cigarette is on a totally different level than just the straight nicotine itself. That fact needs to be publicized and made open. Nicotine is NOT a carcinogen, it does have some benefits to the body if taken moderately. (ref1) (ref2) (ref3). The main guilt that nicotine has, is it happens to be consumed by combustion with thousands of other chemicals. And those other chemicals cause cancer/lung disease.

In conclusion... people are convinced that cigarettes and nicotine are one and the same... which they're not. The FDA needs to realize this, and talk to scientists that have done the studies. In all honesty, I doubt they will due to the fact that they're paid quite well to keep those two on equal terms.

 

[MacTechVpr]

According to this link nicotine doesn't cause dependency to life time non-tobacco
users.

The myth of nicotine addiction - Formindep

The information in the link I posted is the single and only sole
reason for the hysteria around nicotine especially nicotine and
the chillin'.
When the little darlings graduate from high school and enter the real
world and it is discovered the first rational thing they do is drop vaping
to save money for other expenses (beer drinking) there will be a awful
lot of eggs on some peoples faces.

I got to thinking about the posts I have seen here and other forums
from people saying goodbye because they not only quit smoking but,
they have lowered their nic levels and are giving up vaping also.
Think how much this happens that we do not hear about. I have been
reading posts like this since the day I came here almost 3 years ago.
The powers that be know very well that nicotine is not the problem.
They have known this since the 1964 Surgeon Generals Report on
Smoking said as much.

"page 41
The habitual use of tobacco is related primarily to psychological and
social drives, reinforced and perpetuated by the pharmacological actions
of nicotine.
Social stimulation appears to play a major role in a young person’s early
and first experiments with smoking. No scientific evidence supports the
popular hypothesis that smoking among adolescents is an expression
rebellion against authority. Individual stress appears to be associated more
with fluctuations in the amount of smoking than with the prevalence of smoking.
The overwhelming evidence indicates that smoking-its beginning,
habituation, and occasional discontinuation-is to a very large extent psychologically
and socially determined.
Nicotine is rapidly changed in the body to relatively inactive substances
with low toxicity. The chronic toxicity of small doses of nicotine is low
in experimental animals. These two facts, when taken in conjunction with
the low mortality ratios of pipe and cigar smokers, indicate that the chronic
toxicity of nicotine in quantities absorbed from smoking and other methods
of tobacco use is very low and probably does not represent an important
health hazard."
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/nnbbmq.pdf


Note this part:
"The habitual use of tobacco is related primarily to psychological and
social drives, reinforced and perpetuated by the pharmacological actions
of nicotine."
Related primarily to. The problem lies in the fact everyone and their brother
believes nicotine is what makes smoking cigarettes addictive. Smoking
cigarettes is what makes smoking addictive. It did before BT did anything
to the tobacco and still does now. This is why vaping is going to be destroyed.
When it becomes more than evident that tobacco use spirals downward as
vaping spirals upwards and people give vaping up in their 20's with no
problems the jig is up.

Regards
Mike

Couldn't get into this with Neil yesterday, no time (not today either). But I did want to acknowledge you [first] posted this in a reply to me last Nov. Right as I made the decision to rejoin the political fight alongside helping new vapers. Thank you. Definitely enlightening. I can't believe 6+ months have passed and that the deeming has come down as treacherously articulated by the FDA as I had dreaded.

As for addiction, yes I do believe a very minor few of us are organically genetically predisposed. Overall practically all of us are convinced we are by the constant stream of false rhetoric manipulating our perception of tobacco. I for one, believed. Never thought any alternative would help much but perhaps to help reduce my intake somewhat. Yet I quit after 47 years and 8 failed attempts in two days vaping.

FDA is stuck between a rock and a hard place of their own making. Nicotine is not a drug. They must convince us of its equivalency to a dangerous narcotic to justify their budget and existence. To do so they must lie. So NO MORE social engineering at our expense!

We must cut them off at the knees and extract vaping from tobacco legislation. The only dependency that is credibly worse than tobacco itself is our addiction to their false paradigm which serves to preserve their bloated redundant incumbency.

Good luck.

 

[LV_VAPE_LIFE]

Of course they are going to be silent. If vaping was touted as a safer alternative to smoking cigarettes as it should be, less people would become sickly due to smoking cigarettes and there goes funding for the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the countless doctors who are specialists in cigarette-causing illnesses and each and every one of the little cogs in the Big Pharma machine.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to money, plain and simple. Too many people are going to see their wallets getting lighter and they are not happy about it.
The true shame in all of this is that the vaping community, strong as it is, does not have the money or the power of BT, BP of Uncle Sam. We simply can't win this fight.
Part of me wants to say 'Get in there and fight!' Then the other part of me figures 'what's the point?'

From what I understand, most of the larger pro vape groups are combining forces. Organizations like CASAA and SFATA are aligning with much smaller companies. They are preparing for a very large lawsuit and they are working on the platform for the influx of cash from industry partners like shops, manufacturers etc. If the vape industry is going to survive they need to know where to put their fight money. Sucks talking about money when its all up in the air. We know our government is full of criminals and slobs I just wish these jabroni's would show their faces.

 

[cookiebun]

What will the ......s do for tax $ to waste if everyone stops using tobacco products?
Vaping has converted me into a full blown anarchist.

 

[rwoodin]

If and when big tobacco is the only remaining player in the ecig industry, they will quickly...
1.) Phase out production of ecigarettes because profit margain from regular tobacco cigs is higher.
2.) Figure out how to make ecigarettes more addictive (and toxic) through additives.

 

[Steamix]

Made it a few more minutes into that 'deeming webinar clip'.

So mr Zeller is ticked off that vapes have been sunk as drug delivery devices. So they got hijacked into 'tobacco' products and blaming the vaping industry itself for that ... have to - grudgingly- admire the sheer chuzpah of that.

Especially since he knows bloody well that costs of a drug approval make the price tag on a PMTA look like a steal from the bargain bin. Getting it past the FDA as a 'drug delivery device' would have killed 99.9% of the industry. So now it rubs out a mere 99.0 % . Nice going indeed.

Maybe mr zeller doesn't mind who is a sycophant to ( BT or BP) as long as they have big d.. dollars that is.

Vaping dodged getting hung, don't expect it to stand still for getting shot.

 

[crxess]

The myth of nicotine addiction - Formindep

Tweeted - Dr.JJ - Hallmark Channel Fraud and linked the paper.
The myth of nicotine addiction - Formindep

Claiming Nicotine as addictive as........well Both are Censored here.
Lets just say Cola and Wonder Woman

 

[VNeil]

THAT right there is why they're considered tobacco products. The FDA did do a small test on certain cigalikes back in 2009.. guess what, they found tobacco alkaloids in the tobacco flavors...(ref) go figure. That is what is fueling their whole "it's a tobacco product"... and it's what's infuriating me the most. I have long since given up tobacco flavors, but even if I didn't, they found trace amounts.. and what they claimed as "almost as much as a traditional cigarette" for one alkaloid. in otherwords, even they tested them, and found they were safer. Yet they lump ALL flavors and ALL ecigs in the same category as a 2000+ chemical cigarette.

Now what I can't wrap my brain about is their regulation.. they want us to go back to those prefilled cigalike cartriges where I have no control over what I vape. Not only that, But since then, we've switched to much safer juices than back in 2009. they're saying "Back in 2009, we tested them and found they were potentially dangerous... So, drop what you're doing now, and go back to those potentially dangerous versions and then we'll tax you like a cigarette"...

No sense.. it all makes no sense.. and I'm just wracking my brain trying to figure it all out.

It has nothing to do with alkaloids. It is the 2009 Congress that passed the TCA, which empowers the FDA to regulate anything "derived from tobacco". Nicotine is good enough, no additional alkaloids required.

I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that it was the 2009 Congress that empowered the FDA to effectively ban any new product (introduced after Feb 2007) that contained nicotine. So congress effectively eliminated the creation of any new alternative to leaf tobacco that contains nicotine. Unless, of course, it is a creation of BP, and regulated as a drug or medical device.

It was congress that created this mess and it is congress that must fix it, unless someone convinces the courts to overturn it for some legal reason.

 

[crxess]

Falling Tobacco use.......................The FDA is About to Fix that!

 

[classwife]

In listening to MPR they were interviewing an analyst from the Minnesota health organization responsible for this study. When they asked about e-cigs, the analyst said "The reduction is not from people switching to e-cigs, it is directly due to tobacco tax increases and very aggressive campaigns, if anything we are seeing more troubling evidence of kids starting to use e-cigs and then change to cigarettes." I'm moving to the UK! This is just crazy, I take part in as much advocacy as I am able to and I feel as if I am trying to feed a kid brussel sprouts for the first time. They look yucky therefore they are yucky... Flippn' politicians and ignorant people in control of my future. NOW THAT IS SCARY!

Is there any way to ask for his PROOF of that ??

Too much FUD being spread around to unsuspecting people that are being senselessly scared away from stopping cigarettes and using e-cigs.

 

[VNeil]

Let's just call a spade a spade here! The federal government is loosing over a billion dollars a year in revenue in cigarette tax because people are switching to vapor over cigarettes. If they were still making their money they wouldn't be attacking as hard as they are.you look at study after study and depending on who it's done for the findings go opposite ways. Government study the worst thing ever, independent study one of the best things ever. It's a shame the federal government is going to kill a billion dollar industry because their pockets aren't getting lined....

This spade is known as racketeering

 

[VNeil]

I agree. Their logic is: "if A=C, and B=C, then A=B".... It is a valid point mathematically, but we're not talking mathematics. If Smoking = Nicotine, and Vaping = Nicotine, then Vaping is Smoking.... that's their logic. Apply it to anything else and it sounds absurd. If Walking=Travelling, and Driving=Travelling, then Walking=Driving... start selling Walking licenses... or... if Alcohol=Drinking, and Water=Drinking, then Alcohol=Water... Start raising the limit of water drinking to 21.

The Truth is..... It's not a mathematical equation. They have studied smoking, and how nicotine works through smoking. There has been little study on pure Nicotine itself separated from smoking. There has been some, and it is proven that although it is addicting, it's not as addicting as when taken from a cigarette. They have even been told that cigarettes ADD chemicals to Enhance the Nicotine... this was proven through several documents that they found a use for ammonia even though they knew it would enhance the nicotine (Ref) .

It is known that nicotine obtained from a cigarette is on a totally different level than just the straight nicotine itself. That fact needs to be publicized and made open. Nicotine is NOT a carcinogen, it does have some benefits to the body if taken moderately. (ref1) (ref2) (ref3). The main guilt that nicotine has, is it happens to be consumed by combustion with thousands of other chemicals. And those other chemicals cause cancer/lung disease.

In conclusion... people are convinced that cigarettes and nicotine are one and the same... which they're not. The FDA needs to realize this, and talk to scientists that have done the studies. In all honesty, I doubt they will due to the fact that they're paid quite well to keep those two on equal terms.

In fact I don't think you can cite any study concluding that nicotine by itself is addictive at all.

 

[Katmar]

Everything you say is correct. But in the twisted world of science and public possibly, nothing is simple.

Here's the problem - while simultaneously acknowledging that nicotine is far safer than smoking, the FDA is also captured and feeding back into the biggest moral panic of our age: that a new epidemic of addiction is taking place amongst US youths. There is, of course, no evidence for this, and every reason to suspect that the opposite is in fact true.

Nevertheless, the FDA knows which way the wind blows, and is happy to use the cover to push through its regulatory capture of vape products. Remember, all regulatory agencies want to regulate, so this is not sinister - it's just a law of nature.

And the FDA's logic is perfect if you don't know the facts: "we'd rather smokers use nicotine alone, but we can't have adolescents falling prey to its effects" - in other words, it's perfectly acceptible for them to shut down the industry, because it will eventually figure out which products should remain due to the public health benefits to smokers and which ones won't appeal to adolescents.

They've shown no reason for us to believe this is remotely within their capabilities (or even in the realm of possibility), and the recent revelation that they pushed for a full flavor ban shows that they cannot understand why vaping works for people.

And here's the rub for Myers and his crew: in the same way that FDA cannot figure out why vape works for smokers, they'll also never be able to figure out what appeals to adolescents... So the brutal truth is that smokers lives will be traded for a threat against adolescents that hasn't manifested, and won't manifest ever.

It's almost unbelievable this has come to pass. But there we are. The stupid is strong.

But it ain't over, Oliver. So many people on the front lines battling this. It's pretty incredible.

 

[DC2]

Here's the problem - while simultaneously acknowledging that nicotine is far safer than smoking, the FDA is also captured and feeding back into the biggest moral panic of our age: that a new epidemic of addiction is taking place amongst US youths. There is, of course, no evidence for this, and every reason to suspect that the opposite is in fact true.

I'm sorry Oliver, but it is SO much more egregious than that.

First of all, yes, nicotine is safer than smoking.
Duh, no-brainer.

They gotta say that to help out their Big Pharma pals.

But this whole business about a new epidemic fails in ways that are truly spectacular...
--Nicotine may not really even be all that addictive in the first place
--And if nicotine is mostly harmless in the first place, then who cares even if it is addictive
--And regardless of any of that, nobody that starts by vaping is going to go to smoking

The whole thing is like going through the Looking Glass.
And the White Knight is talking backwards.

 

[DC2]

In fact the FDA, CDC and their partners in bed with them invented the "epidemic" out of a blank sheet of paper

Well, to be fair, that piece of paper wasn't exactly blank.
It had lots of numbers on it.

And those numbers were put through a torturous process of bending and squeezing...
Until they finally succumbed to the "greater good" as it were...

 

[NealBJr]

Thank you for posting your link from MPR, Dave 8944. The following summary paragraphs really got my attention:

"E-cigarettes heat liquid nicotine into a vapor, delivering the chemical that smokers crave without the harmful by-products generated from burning tobacco.


That makes them a potentially useful tool to help smokers quit, but experts fear it also creates a new way for people to get addicted to nicotine.


Some CDC surveys (which ones??) have shown a boom in e-cigarette use among teenagers, and health officials fear many of those kids will get hooked on nicotine and later become smokers."

Huh? So ecigs are a "gateway" to smoking cigs? Then that would mean that the high-octane, caffeine drinks are a "gateway" to methamphetamine.

The only attraction for kids is to be told that something is "wrong" and they flock right to it. And that is exactly how I got hooked on cigarettes many eons ago.....

Is nicotine a bad thing??

Yup... that's what gets me frustrated. When I smoked, I thought it was the nicotine that kept me addicted. I knew there were other chemicals, but I didn't know how much was in them. I just blindly thought Nicotine was highly addictive. When I switched to vaping, I started doing research to see how safe it was. I did research on propylene glycol, vegetable glyceringe, and nicotine, the chemicals in smoking, and the Master Settlement Agreement. I did research on all the health risks of smoking and got a clearer picture of what was going on when I smoked, what was going on when I vaped, and once I understood what was going on, it then baffled me as to WHY vaping is considered smoking. It all came around to nicotine.

The FDA is preying on the fact that most people believe nicotine is as addictive as ........ Most studies on nicotine were a focus on cigarette addiction. That is what most people read, and it's what I kept reading. The FDA is more of a political organization than a scientific one. Their policies are ruled by lobbyists and mass belief, and less by true scientific results. If the general outlook on vaping was "vaping is a great way for smokers to quit"... then there wouldn't be as much as a surge towards vaping from never smokers.

 

[Steve Tob.]

Over here in Australia, the latest about to become law in my state is that Vape Juice and Vape Products are to fall into the same category as tobacco products and cannot be displayed or sold online. The crappiest part is that in Australia we cannot sell juice with nicotine, we have to import the nicotine juice and add to the juice ourselves.

Now here is a B.S. part of our law, legally we can import nicotine fluid from another country, however, once we take possession we are breaking the law as it is categorized as a class 5 poison. Is that bureaucratic crap or what!!!

 

[NGAHaze]

It's why they are trying to kill off vaping, billions in cigarette revenues lost.

It's funny but not so funny that reports of the e-cig market stalling has improved the outlook for BT ...

U.S. e-cigarette use stalls as health concerns grow: Reuters/Ipsos poll

"In some ways, a move away from e-cigarettes is actually positive for Altria and Reynolds," said Morningstar analyst Adam Fleck, pointing out it may help sustain sales of conventional cigarettes, whose margins are much higher."

The new regs are a win win for BT ( and also for BP but in less obvious ways ), less competition in the vape sector AND more folks continuing to smoke!