Our focus must be on legalizing our form of nicotine delivery - never aligning ourselves with tobacco products. We must be better than that.
I want to revisit this thread in a month.
While I would agree in principle, and would love to see e-smoking completely replace the practice of "burning tobacco fumes inhalation" without big tobacco's help, I'm pretty sure it is not up to us who electronic cigarettes will end in bed with.
Tobacco companies (like Philip Morris and RJ) are just that -
tobacco companies. They are not cigarette companies, they just happen to make that product along with many others. Entire states almost totally depend on the tobacco industry. The US produced 408 thousand tonnes of tobacco in 2000, with China leading the way at a staggering 2,298 thousand tonnes. According to the IRS: "The tax on tobacco products is now the second largest revenue generated for the U.S. Treasury, exceeded only by
the excise tax collections from gasoline."
Only one guess is needed to understand why tobacco has not been removed from our society. Our modern day society depends on tobacco to survive in it's current incarnation. No matter how much some may hate it,
This is a well matured sector of the global farming industry. Over a
half a million in the US alone are employed as a direct result of tobacco farming, with well over 2 million acres of land devoted to it's production. All that tobacco has to be used somewhere.
Worldwide us humans produce almost 5 millions tonnes of tobacco a year. 4 million hectares used in it's production. A crop that generates $20 billion USD (raw wholesale, not counting taxes and retail activity). WHO states it best: "The economic value of tobacco products is vast, totalling hundreds of billions of US dollars a year".
What is my point with all this tobacco talk? The FDA (and any other regulating agency) is fundamentally powerless in the face of the government which created it. Congress already demonstrated that a couple years ago. We are talking vast amounts of money and human livelihood currently linked with tobacco production. If given a safer alternative to cigarettes that are generally accepted by the public - no matter how half-***sed and silly it seems to some - you can bet they will see that as a golden escape hatch to continue this massive industry. FDA and special interests groups be damned, full speed ahead.
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Thus I see our duty (as e-smokers) as one to educate and demonstrate the relative innocence of e-smoking. If non-smokers say "meh, it seems harmless enough, doesn't really bother me when you do that", then the battle may soon be won.
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If e-cigarettes become popular, the tobacco companies may decide to do whatever it takes to be
the e-cigarette industry. It is simply a matter of survival. e-cigarettes become merely another outlet for there primary product - which is not analog cigarettes, but the tobacco in them. If e-cigarettes are ever to be accepted en-mass as an alternative to cigarettes, only
they could hope to supply the vast quantity of tobacco (nicotine) that such an occurrence would require.
A little voice inside me hints that this may be the eventual outcome, whether anyone likes it or not. Tobacco companies would then be relatively free from law suits and other punitive actions, since they would be selling this worldwide cash crop in a decently non-deadly form.
I'm pretty sure our old nemesis Joe Camel could successfully market electronic cigarettes, how about you?
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BTW - Propylene glycol is currently used as a humectant in raw mass-produced tobacco, so we have already been smoking it all along. Just a fun fact from the HGCA.
