Senators look for e-cigarette marketing limits

By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM AP Tobacco Writer
RICHMOND, Va.—Several U.S. senators on Wednesday introduced a bill that would curb electronic cigarette marketing while the fast-growing industry awaits regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.
The bill is co-sponsored by California Sen. Barbara Boxer, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, both Democrats, and others. It would ban marketing to children based on standards set by the Federal Trade Commission and allow the agency to work with state attorneys general to enforce the ban on advertising. The battery-powered devices heat a liquid nicotine solution and create vapor that’s inhaled.
Companies vying for a stake in the electronic cigarette business are reviving the decades-old marketing tactics the tobacco industry used to hook generations of Americans on regular smokes. Those tactics, such as running TV commercials and sponsoring race cars and other events, are raising worries that e-cigarette makers could tempt young people to take up something that could prove addictive.
While the FDA plans to set marketing and product regulations for electronic cigarettes in the near future, for now, almost anything goes.
And Harkin said e-cigarette makers are attempting to create “a new generation of nicotine addicts.”
“When it comes to the marketing of e-cigarettes to children and teens, it’s ‘Joe Camel’ all over again,” Harkin said in a statement.
A 2009 law gave the FDA the power to regulate a number of aspects of tobacco marketing and manufacturing, though it cannot ban nicotine or cigarettes outright.
The agency first said it planned to assert authority over e-cigarettes in 2011 but hasn’t yet. The proposed FDA regulation was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for review in October.
While FDA regulation of these products remains critical, Harkin said the legislation would complement the agency’s oversight.
http://www.twincities.com/nation/ci_25233292/senators-look-e-cigarette-marketing-limits

Hookah is not harmless, experts say

By: REUTERS/SUSANA VERA
Smoking hookah can be addictive and harmful, though many dabblers may not realize the dangers, according to a new review.
“The cooled and sweetened flavor of hookah tobacco makes it more enticing to kids and they falsely believe it’s less harmful,” Tracey E. Barnett from the University of Florida in Gainesville told Reuters Health.
Barnett has studied the recent rise in teen hookah smoking. She was not involved in the new review, published in Respiratory Medicine.
“One-time use can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning or other diseases, including but not limited to tuberculosis, herpes, respiratory illnesses including the flu, and long-term use can lead to heart disease and many cancers,” Barnett said.
To read more, visit http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/02/24/hookah-is-not-harmless-experts-say/

Colorado, Utah Want To Raise Tobacco Age To 21

DENVER (AP) – Two Western states with some of the nation’s lowest smoking rates are considering cracking down even more by raising the tobacco age to 21.
Utah and Colorado lawmakers both voted favorably on proposals Thursday to treat tobacco like alcohol and take it away from 18- to 20-year-olds, a move inspired by new research on how many smokers start the habit as teenagers.
“By raising the age limit, it puts them in a situation where they’re not going to pick it up until a much later age,” said Marla Brannum of Lehi, Utah, who testified in favor of the idea there.
In Colorado, the testimony was similar – that pushing the tobacco age could make it harder for teens to access tobacco, and possibly reduce usage rates among adults.
“What I’m hoping to do is make it harder for kids to obtain cigarettes,” said Rep. Cheri Gerou, a Republican who sponsored the measure.
To read more, visit http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/02/22/colorado-utah-want-to-raise-tobacco-age-to-21/

A Hot Debate Over E-Cigarettes as a Path to Tobacco, or From It

By , The New York Times

Dr. Michael Siegel, a hard-charging public health researcher at Boston University, argues that e-cigarettes could be the beginning of the end of smoking in America. He sees them as a disruptive innovation that could make cigarettes obsolete, like the computer did to the typewriter.

But his former teacher and mentor, Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is convinced that e-cigarettes may erase the hard-won progress achieved over the last half-century in reducing smoking. He predicts that the modern gadgetry will be a glittering gateway to the deadly, old-fashioned habit for children, and that adult smokers will stay hooked longer now that they can get a nicotine fix at their desks.

These experts represent the two camps now at war over the public health implications of e-cigarettes. The devices, intended to feed nicotine addiction without the toxic tar of conventional cigarettes, have divided a normally sedate public health community that had long been united in the fight against smoking and Big Tobacco.

The essence of their disagreement comes down to a simple question: Will e-cigarettes cause more or fewer people to smoke? The answer matters. Cigarette smoking is still the single largest cause of preventable death in the United States, killing about 480,000 people a year.

Dr. Siegel, whose graduate school manuscripts Dr. Glantz used to read, says e-cigarette pessimists are stuck on the idea that anything that looks like smoking is bad. “They are so blinded by this ideology that they are not able to see e-cigarettes objectively,” he said. Dr. Glantz disagrees. “E-cigarettes seem like a good idea,” he said, “but they aren’t.”

Science that might resolve questions about e-cigarettes is still developing, and many experts agree that the evidence so far is too skimpy to draw definitive conclusions about the long-term effects of the devices on the broader population.

“The popularity is outpacing the knowledge,” said Dr. Michael B. Steinberg, associate professor of medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University. “We’ll have a better idea in another year or two of how safe these products are, but the question is, will the horse be out of the barn by then?”

This high-stakes debate over what e-cigarettes mean for the nation’s 42 million smokers comes at a crucial moment. Soon, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to issue regulations that would give the agency control over the devices, which have had explosive growth virtually free of any federal oversight. (Some cities, like Boston and New York, and states, like New Jersey and Utah, have already weighed in, enacting bans in public places.)

The new federal rules will have broad implications for public health. If they are too tough, experts say, they risk snuffing out small e-cigarette companies in favor of Big Tobacco, which has recently entered the e-cigarette business. If they are too lax, sloppy manufacturing could lead to devices that do not work properly or even harm people.

And many scientists say e-cigarettes will be truly effective in reducing the death toll from smoking only with the right kind of federal regulation — for example, rules that make ordinary cigarettes more expensive than e-cigarettes, or that reduce the amount of nicotine in ordinary cigarettes so smokers turn to e-cigarettes for their nicotine.

“E-cigarettes are not a miracle cure,” said David B. Abrams, executive director of the Schroeder National Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the Legacy Foundation, an antismoking research group. “They need a little help to eclipse cigarettes, which are still the most satisfying and deadly product ever made.”

Smoking is already undergoing a rapid evolution. Nicotine, the powerful stimulant that makes traditional cigarettes addictive, is the crucial ingredient in e-cigarettes, whose current incarnation was developed by a Chinese pharmacist whose father died of lung cancer. With e-cigarettes, nicotine is inhaled through a liquid that is heated into vapor. New research suggests that e-cigarettes deliver nicotine faster than gum or lozenges, two therapies that have never quite taken off.

Sales of e-cigarettes more than doubled last year from 2012, to $1.7 billion, according to Bonnie Herzog, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities. Ms. Herzog said that in the next decade, consumption of e-cigarettes could outstrip that of conventional cigarettes. The number of stores that sell them has quadrupled in just the last year, according to the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association, an e-cigarette industry trade group.

“E-cigarette users sure seem to be speaking with their pocketbooks,” said Mitchell Zeller, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Tobacco Products.

Public health experts like to say that people smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar. And the reason e-cigarettes have caused such a stir is that they take the deadly tar out of the equation while offering the nicotine fix and the sensation of smoking. For all that is unknown about the new devices — they have been on the American market for only seven years — most researchers agree that puffing on one is far less harmful than smoking a traditional cigarette.

But then their views diverge.

Pessimists like Dr. Glantz say that while e-cigarettes might be good in theory, they are bad in practice. The vast majority of people who smoke them now also smoke conventional cigarettes, he said, and there is little evidence that much switching is happening. E-cigarettes may even prolong the habit, he said, by offering a dose of nicotine at times when getting one from a traditional cigarette is inconvenient or illegal.

What is more, critics say, they make smoking look alluring again, with images on billboards and television ads for the first time in decades. Dr. Glantz says that only about half the people alive today have ever seen a broadcast ad for cigarettes. “I feel like I’ve gotten into a time machine and gone back to the 1980s,” he said.

Researchers also worry that e-cigarettes could be a gateway to traditional cigarettes for young people. The devices are sold on the Internet. The liquids that make their vapor come in flavors like mango and watermelon. Celebrities smoke them: Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Leonardo DiCaprio puffed on them at the Golden Globe Awards.

A survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2012, about 10 percent of high school students said they had tried an e-cigarette, up from 5 percent in 2011. But 7 percent of those who had tried e-cigarettes said they had never smoked a traditional cigarette, prompting concern that e-cigarettes were, in fact, becoming a gateway.

“I think the precautionary principle — better safe than sorry — rules here,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the C.D.C.

E-cigarette skeptics have also raised concerns about nicotine addiction. But many researchers say that the nicotine by itself is not a serious health hazard. Nicotine-replacement therapies like lozenges and patches have been used for years. Some even argue that nicotine is a lot like caffeine: an addictive substance that stimulates the mind.

“Nicotine may have some adverse health effects, but they are relatively minor,” said Dr. Neal L. Benowitz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has spent his career studying the pharmacology of nicotine.

Another ingredient, propylene glycol, the vapor that e-cigarettes emit — whose main alternative use is as fake smoke on concert and theater stages — is a lung irritant, and the effects of inhaling it over time are a concern, Dr. Benowitz said.

But Dr. Siegel and others contend that some public health experts, after a single-minded battle against smoking that has run for decades, are too inflexible about e-cigarettes. The strategy should be to reduce harm from conventional cigarettes, and e-cigarettes offer a way to do that, he said, much in the way that giving clean needles to intravenous drug users reduces their odds of getting infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

Solid evidence about e-cigarettes is limited. A clinical trial in New Zealand, which many researchers regard as the most reliable study to date, found that after six months about 7 percent of people given e-cigarettes had quit smoking, a slightly better rate than those with patches.

“The findings were intriguing but nothing to write home about yet,” said Thomas J. Glynn, a researcher at the American Cancer Society.

In Britain, where the regulatory process is more developed than in the United States, researchers say that smoking trends are heading in the right direction.

“Motivation to quit is up, success of quit attempts are up, and prevalence is coming down faster than it has for the last six or seven years,” said Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London. It is impossible to know whether e-cigarettes drove the changes, he said, but “we can certainly say they are not undermining quitting.”

The scientific uncertainties have intensified the public health fight, with each side seizing on scraps of new data to bolster its position. One recent study in Germany on secondhand vapor from e-cigarettes prompted Dr. Glantz to write on his blog, “More evidence that e-cigs cause substantial air pollution.” Dr. Siegel highlighted the same study, concluding that it showed “no evidence of a significant public health hazard.”

That Big Tobacco is now selling e-cigarettes has contributed to skepticism among experts and advocates.

Cigarettes went into broad use in the 1920s — and by the 1940s, lung cancer rates had exploded. More Americans have died from smoking than in all the wars the United States has fought. Smoking rates have declined sharply since the 1960s, when about half of all men and a third of women smoked. But progress has slowed, with a smoking rate now of around 18 percent.

“Part of the furniture for us is that the tobacco industry is evil and everything they do has to be opposed,” said John Britton, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham in England, and the director for the U.K. Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies. “But one doesn’t want that to get in the way of public health.”

Carefully devised federal regulations might channel the marketing might of major tobacco companies into e-cigarettes, cannibalizing sales of traditional cigarettes, Dr. Abrams of the Schroeder Institute said. “We need a jujitsu move to take their own weight and use it against them,” he said.

Dr. Benowitz said he could see a situation under which the F.D.A. would gradually reduce the nicotine levels allowable in traditional cigarettes, pushing smokers to e-cigarettes.

“If we make it too hard for this experiment to continue, we’ve wasted an opportunity that could eventually save millions of lives,” Dr. Siegel said.

Dr. Glantz disagreed.

“I frankly think the fault line will be gone in another year,” he said. “The evidence will show their true colors.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/health/a-hot-debate-over-e-cigarettes-as-a-path-to-tobacco-or-from-it.html?_r=0

Candy Flavors Put E-Cigarettes On Kids' Menu

By Jenny Lei Bolario
Electronic-cigarettes are often billed as a safe way for smokers trying to kick their habit. But it’s not just smokers who are getting their fix this way. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 5 middle schoolers who tried one say they’ve never smoked a cigarette. And between 2011 and 2012, e-cigarettes doubled in popularity among middle and high school students.
At a middle school in the San Francisco Bay Area, 8th grader Viviana Turincio noticed some kids smoking in class– or at least, that’s what it looked like.
“There was a group at the table and they were just smoking on the vape pen and the teacher was right there, and the teacher didn’t even notice,” she remembered.
That’s because her classmates were smoking an electronic cigarette, sometimes called a vape pen. It’s a hand-held, battery-powered device that vaporizes a liquid, which is often infused with nicotine. You inhale the vapor through a mouthpiece, and exhale what looks like smoke. In this case the smoke smelled like candy.
“My favorite flavor is gummy bears because it tastes really good,” Viviana said.
Vapor liquids come in various flavors but teens prefer dessert-inspired ones, which are more appealing than the smell and taste of burning tobacco. Marleny Samayoa, also in the 8th grade, thinks traditional cigarettes taste too bitter. “It has kind of a weird taste to it, like coffee without sugar,” she explained.
E-cigarettes are easier for kids to buy than regular cigarettes. There’s no federal age limit for how old you have to be. But some states, including California, prohibit the sale to minors. That’s why middle-schoolers turn to sites like E-bay, where independent sellers don’t ask for your age.
“A lot of kids are getting them online and they’re just introducing it to a lot of other kids and it just keeps going from there,” explained Marleny.
She has noticed the growing popularity of e cigs on social media sites like Instagram. Look up #Vapelife and the pictures are endless. “I take pictures and do tricks, like blowing O’s, blowing them on flat surfaces and making tornadoes,” Marleny described.
Swirling clouds of vapor are touching down in theatres, restaurants and malls, while health professionals are trying to catch up with this new fad.
Dr. Cathy McDonald runs a center for Tobacco Dependence, Treatment and Cessation for Alameda County in California. She admitted that, “right now we don’t have as much information as we would like.” What researchers do know, Dr. McDonald explained, is “ten minutes of smoking an e-cigarette for a person who has never smoked a cigarette does cause a noticeable increase in airway resistance in the lungs.”
But, she conceded, “it’s probably better than smoke and I say that because smoking a cigarette is 4000 chemicals, 400 are poison, 40 cause cancer.”
Researchers haven’t had the time to do long-term studies comparing traditional cigarettes to electronic ones. But at least among my friends, the ones who’ve made the switch have noticed a positive change. My boyfriend, Gray Keuankaew, is one of them.
“Within the two months that I’ve been vaping, my body feels a little bit more healthy,” he said. “I’m a runner, so I’m able to run a bit longer without having to catch my breath. So if it’s gonna be any type of positive benefit, then I’m definitely gonna stick to it.”
I’m glad it’s easier for him to run, but he hasn’t outrun his nicotine addiction. E-cigarettes still have nicotine – you choose what amount you want. The Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association estimated that e-cigarette sales will surpass $2.5 billion dollars this year. Geoff Braithwaite owns Tasty Vapor, a company in Oakland that sells and distributes liquids for e-cigarettes.
“Our target customer base is those people who felt doomed to a life of smoking,” said Braithwaite. But he admits that adults aren’t the only ones who may be jumping on this new trend. “There’s going to be that novelty around it, it’s a brand new thing, it’s an electronic device. That kind of stuff will always appeal to kids, it would have appealed to me.”
Anti-smoking campaigns spent decades and billions of dollars to make smoking lessappealing to youth– helping cut teen smoking by 45%. But cheap prices for brightly colored e-cigs, sweet flavors, and the ability to vape anywhere is putting nicotine back on the kids menu. The Food and Drug Administration has said it plans to regulate e-cigarettes, but so far the agency hasn’t issued any rules.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/youth-radio-youth-media-international/candy-flavors-put-e-cigar_b_4833286.html

E-Cigs Becoming More Popular in High Schools

By: Tiffany Huertas
PANAMA CITY- Since smoking is being banned in so many places, e-cigarettes are all the rage for people who still want to smoke in public.
The battery-powered devices provide doses of nicotine and other additives to the user in an aerosol.
They don’t emit the smoke or the smell that non-smokers complain about.
That’s how they can be concealed, even on school campuses.
“The concerning thing is where the students are getting them because I’m sure they don’t see those to underage minors, but the question is where do they get cigarettes,” said Sandy Harrison, Mosley High Schoolprincipal.
Last year Bay County school board member’s added e-cigarettes to the list of products banned on campuses.
According to the centers for disease control and prevention, e-cigarettes used by high school students grew from 4.7 percent in 2011 to 10 percent in 2012.
“The issue with electronic cigarettes is they’re not really regulated. I’m not sure what its doing to their health. The issue is they don’t smell like a regular cigarette, so it’s a little harder to catch them. We do have students that, some of them are fairly bold with their use perhaps in a classroom, when the teachers back is turned or so forth.”
Mosley High School offers classes like life management skills and personal fitness class where they discuss e-cigarettes.
“Additionally we have a school nurse that’s on campus at least once a week and she schedules into classes and speaks to them about, a variety of health issues, including tobacco products and e-cigarette use and so forth.”
“Electronic cigarettes are treated on campus like any other tobacco product. They’re not legal for students to have and they are subjected to the same disciplinary measures as any tobacco product would be.”
The devices are sold nationwide but are not regulated by the FDA and their health hazards are still unknown.
http://www.wjhg.com/home/headlines/246441801.html

Library may take action on e-cigarettes

By LeAnn Eckroth, Bismarck Tribune
BISMARCK, N.D. –The Bismarck Public Library board of directors will consider a change to its policy to specify patrons cannot use e-cigarettes in the library.
The topic will be discussed at its noon meeting Feb. 27 at the library.
Mary Jane Schmaltz, library director, said e-cigarettes are already banned in public buildings under city tobacco ordinances and state law, but the law may not be clear in the library patron code.
“We caught someone smoking an e-cigarette in the library last week. Our patron conduct code already says we do not allow the use of tobacco or chewing tobacco in the library,” she said. “We just want to get our patron conduct code in line with city ordinances.”
To read more, visit http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/library-may-take-action-on-e-cigarettes/article_735dd1ba-9a73-11e3-9436-001a4bcf887a.html

Kathleen Sebelius column: Working toward a tobacco-free generation

For Press-Gazette Media

Here’s a sobering statistic about the tobacco epidemic — a battle many Americans think is already won: If we continue at current smoking rates, 5.6 million children alive today will ultimately die prematurely from smoking. That’s one in 13 kids gone too early due to an entirely preventable cause. That is unacceptable.
That’s why we are asking every American to join our efforts to make the next generation tobacco-free.
Today, we are at a crossroads. In the past 50 years, we’ve more than cut the adult smoking rate in half from nearly 43 percent down to 18 percent, and we’ve reduced 12th-grade students’ smoking rate to 16 percent in 2013 from a high of 38 percent in l976.
Yet nearly 500,000 Americans die of smoking-related disease each year. What’s more, the tobacco epidemic costs us nearly $300 billion in productivity and direct medical costs annually.
I believe a tobacco-free generation is within our reach, but it will take commitment from across the spectrum — from federal, state and local governments, but also from businesses, educators, the entertainment industry and beyond.
Already, we are seeing leadership from the private sector. This month, CVS, the second largest pharmacy chain in the country, announced it will no longer sell tobacco products. In doing so, CVS it is at once reducing access to these harmful products and helping to make smoking less attractive.
We know that consumers, especially children, are influenced by pro-smoking messages when they shop in stores that sell tobacco products. This includes the display of cigarettes behind the register known as the “power wall.” For young people, power walls help shape cigarette brand awareness and the sense that smoking is normal and accepted.
In multiple ways, CVS’ decision will have impact. I applaud this private sector health leader for taking an important new step to curtail tobacco use. I hope that other retailers will take up this pro-health mantle.
The stakes are high. Each day, more than 3,200 youth under age 18 in the United States try their first cigarette, and another 700 kids under age 18 who’ve been occasional smokers become daily smokers.
I am thrilled that earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration launched its first national tobacco education campaign, TheRealCost.gov. The campaign is targeting on-the-cusp youth –— the 12- to 17-year-old kids who are open to smoking or have experimented with cigarettes, but are not regular smokers.
But creating a tobacco-free generation cannot start and end with our youngest citizens: working toward this goal begins in the present, and reaching adult smokers is essential.
In that light, I’m very pleased the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has started the third season of its impactful Tips From Former Smokers campaign. The 2012 tips series alone prompted an estimated 1.6 million smokers to try to quit, resulting in more than 200,000 additional calls to 1-800-QUIT-NOW, and helped at least 100,000 smokers quit for good.
I am inspired by the ongoing work that is necessary to drastically reduce smoking rates in our country. Whether it’s other retailers following CVS’ lead, more colleges and universities joining the 2,000 schools that are part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Tobacco-Free College Campus Initiative (tobaccofreecampus.org), or movie studios taking tobacco use and imagery out of youth-rated films, I encourage new partners to help us stop the cycle of sickness, disability and death caused by tobacco.
Victory will require bold action. What will you do to help make the next generation tobacco-free?
Kathleen Sebelius is secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20140220/GPG06/302200419/Kathleen-Sebelius-column-Working-toward-tobacco-free-generation?nclick_check=1

Altria pushes forward on electronic cigarette sales

BY JOHN REID BLACKWELL
Richmond Times-Dispatch
U.S. tobacco giant Altria Group Inc. is pushing more aggressively into the electronic cigarette market, with plans to expand sales of its first e-cigarette brand nationally in the next few months.
Henrico County-based Altria, the parent company of cigarette maker Philip Morris USA, said Wednesday that it plans to start a national rollout of its MarkTen e-cigarette in the second quarter.

The expansion of MarkTen follows the company’s recent test marketing of the product in Indiana and Arizona.
It also follows Altria’s announcement on Feb. 3 that it would bolster its presence in the e-cigarette market — what some call the “e-vapor” category — by acquiring e-cigarette maker and distributor Green Smoke Inc. for $110 million in a deal expected to close in the second quarter.
MarkTen was Altria’s first venture into the e-cigarette category, which is still small compared with the market for conventional cigarettes.
Yet electronic cigarette sales have been growing quickly and are now estimated at between $1 billion and $2 billion a year. Numerous companies have introduced e-cigarette products.
“It really is early days in e-vapor,” Marty Barrington, Altria’s chairman and CEO, said in a presentation to industry analysts and investors on Wednesday.
“Consumers are still choosing. They are trying to find their product. They are trying to find their brand,” Barrington said, adding that Altria’s goal is to be a leader in the e-cigarette category no matter how much it grows.
MarkTen is made by Altria’s product-development subsidiary, Nu Mark.
That company started test-marketing the e-cigarette in Indiana last August. In December, it expanded the test market to Arizona and made improvements to the product, including a new flavor system and adding a battery charger to the package.
“We are really happy with the performance,” Barrington said, noting that MarkTen has achieved a market share of 48 percent in only seven weeks of sales in Arizona.
Unlike conventional cigarettes, e-cigarettes do not burn tobacco or contain tobacco leaf. The battery-powered devices heat a liquid solution containing nicotine, artificial flavorings, and propylene glycol or vegetable glycerine, which creates a vapor that is inhaled by the smoker, or “vaper.”
Barrington has spoken cautiously to investors and analysts about the potential for e-cigarettes because the category’s growth could be affected by consumer acceptance, taxes and government regulation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering how it might regulate e-cigarettes.
FDA regulation remains a “wild card” for e-cigarettes because restrictive regulation by the federal agency could slow down marketing efforts in the category, said Steve Marascia, director of research at Capitol Securities Management Inc. in Henrico.
While the extent to which e-cigarette sales will grow remains unclear, “the tobacco companies need to do something, because they are looking at 3 to 4 percent volume declines in (conventional) cigarettes going forward, and they need to offset that,” Marascia said.
Barrington said Altria estimates that about 90 percent of adult cigarette smokers are aware of e-cigarettes and about two-thirds have tried them, but only a small number use them daily.
Yet Altria’s decision to expand its MarkTen sales and acquire Green Smoke may indicate that the company’s leaders have become more optimistic about the category, said industry analyst Bonnie Herzog of Wells Fargo Securities.
“Given early success of MarkTen in Arizona where the brand supposedly grew to 48 percent share, (Altria) seems more emboldened to ‘play to win’ in this new category, and ultimately we believe (the company’s) full participation will catapult growth of the category,” Herzog wrote in a note to investors.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/business/tobacco-industry/altria-pushes-forward-on-electronic-cigarette-sales/article_6f5fe50c-9975-11e3-91f3-001a4bcf6878.html

Mandan bans e-cigarettes for minors

By LeAnn Eckroth, Bismarck Tribune
MANDAN, N.D. –The Mandan City Commission on Tuesday approved the first reading of an ordinance that bans selling e-cigarettes to minors under the age 18. The vote was 4-0.
The Mandan ordinance prohibits providing or selling the products to minors, and minors cannot have or use them.
E-cigarettes include any electronic oral device with a heating element, battery or electronic circuit which provides vapor of nicotine or other substances to simulate smoking.
Violators can be fined up to $500 for the infraction, said City Administrator Jim Neubauer.
Police Chief Dennis Bullinger introduced the proposal.
There was no comment from commissioners who quickly moved the ordinance to a final vote on March 4.
To read more: http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/mandan-bans-e-cigarettes-for-minors/article_2923d71c-9905-11e3-9a69-0019bb2963f4.html