POV: Seven reasons the FDA should regulate e-cigarettes

By Kevin Keenan
In a recent online blog post by Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, it was clearly explained why e-cigarettes should soon be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The CDC recently reported that rates of electronic cigarette use among U.S. youths more than doubled from 2011 to 2012, when 10 percent of high school students reported ever having used e-cigarettes.
These numbers are troubling but not surprising. There has been an explosion in e-cigarette marketing in recent years, and e-cigarette manufacturers are using the same slick tactics long used to market regular cigarettes to kids. The following are seven ways in which makers of the e-cigarette are using the same marketing strategies as the tobacco industry used back in the 1950s through the early ’70s:
1. They have celebrity spokespeople.
Like cigarette ads of old, television, online and print ads for e-cigarettes feature catchy slogans and celebrity endorsers, including actor Stephen Dorff and rock musician Courtney Love for NJOY. Their message: Using these products is trendy and cool.
2. Their magazine ads feature rugged men … and glamorous women.
These ads feature today’s equivalents of the Marlboro Man and the Virginia Slims woman, depicting e-cigarette use as masculine, sexy or rebellious. E-cigarette ads have appeared in magazines that reach millions of teens, including Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, InStyle and Us Weekly.
3. They know sex sells.
Like cigarette companies have long done, e-cigarette makers portray use of their products as sexually attractive. The allure for young people to start using is just as real; particularly in the Internet age we live in.
4. They sponsor sports … and music festivals.
For decades tobacco companies used sponsorships of sports and entertainment events, especially auto racing and music festivals, to promote cigarettes to huge audiences, including kids. Cigarette sponsorships are now banned, however today e-cigarette brands have auto racing sponsorships of their own. The Blu Cig company is one of them.
5. Their products come in sweet flavors.
A 2009 federal law banned fruit- and candy-flavored cigarettes, but many e-cigarette companies gleefully pitch similar flavors. Apollo Vapors, for example, offers Almond Joyee (“the candy bar taste without the calories!”), French Vanilla (“like biting into a deliciously sweet vanilla cupcake”) and Banana Cream (“yummy ambrosia of bananas and whipped cream”).
6. They use cartoons.
The website for blu eCigs has featured a cartoon pitchman named “Mr. Cool.” It was reminiscent of the Joe Camel cartoon character that so effectively marketed cigarettes to kids in the 1990s.
7. Their ads say, “Switch, Don’t Quit.”
Tobacco companies have long tried to discourage smokers from quitting by marketing cigarette changes as reducing health risk. Some e-cigarette ads carry a similar message. No wonder youth e-cigarette use is on the rise. These developments underscore the need for the FDA to quickly regulate e-cigarettes and take steps to prevent their marketing and sale to kids.
Kevin Keenan is project director for Smoke-Free NOW, a program of Genesee/Orleans Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse.
http://thedailynewsonline.com/opinion/article_84e8a47a-32f7-11e3-a8fc-001a4bcf887a.html

Smokers Are Using E-Cigarettes to Get High

By  @elizalgray
Marijuana smokers are using electronic-cigarettes to get high, say local reports from across the country.
Electronic cigarettes are a growing industry in the United States, having ballooned from $300 million in retail sales in the U.S. last year to $1.8 billion by the end of 2013, according to Bonnie Herzog, a senior tobacco industry analyst at Wells Fargo Securities.
Marijuana users are seeing some of the same benefits in the devices, which produce a vapor of nicotine liquid or, in the case of marijuana, cannabis oil, liquid, or wax, that can be inhaled without the inconvenience of smelly, carcinogenic smoke.
Marijuana users, who explain their methods of using e-cigarettes to vaporize cannabis liquid in videos online, can make their own hash liquid and put it inside an e-cigarette, a lithium battery-powered device that heats liquid into vapor.
Local reports from Florida, New York, and Philadelphia, have reported on the trend of using electronic cigarettes to vaporize marijuana, citing concerns of parents, law makers, and law enforcement agents who worry that electronic cigarettes allow users to get high without detection. Both products are legal in some states and not in others, making enforcement even more challenging.
While states and cities across the country have begun to limit the use of electronic cigarettes–banning their sale to minors or indoors–the federal government has yet to regulate them, raising concerns about their safety. TIME explored the pros and cons of vaping in a feature on electronic cigarettes in September. While electronic cigarettes are believed by many in the public health field to be safer than regular cigarettes, without regulation by the FDA, there is no way for consumers to be sure about the safety of the products they are buying, whether they contain nicotine or marijuana
http://nation.time.com/2013/10/11/smokers-are-using-e-cigarettes-to-get-high/#ixzz2i1ElVhkY

New fears as wave of smokers are now using E-cigarettes to smoke marijuana in public

By ALEX GREIG
Marijuana smokers are using battery-powered e-cigarettes to smoke marijuana.
E-cigarettes are being touted by manufacturers as a healthier alternative to traditional cigarettes, but officials believe creative smokers are using the the devices to smoke marijuana undetected.
Cannabis, in liquid or wax forms, doesn’t emit the pungent odor that marijuana smoked in plant-form does, making it easy to use the drug with the discreet gadget.
‘I was on the train from New York to Baltimore and I enjoyed the pen the whole way there and back with no one noticing,’ one anonymous marijuana user told NBC.
‘I absolutely was thinking “This is not bad at all.”‘
The portable vaporizers don’t contain tobacco, but instead vaporize liquid nicotine.
Sales of e-cigarettes have soared in the past few years as more and more people take up the gadget, which emits no smoke and little to no odor, in favor of cigarettes.
Vaporizers for cannabis users have been around for a while, but now people are using e-cigarettes for the same purpose – and it’s impossible to tell what exactly someone who is using an e-cigarette in public is inhaling.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that shows the number of middle school and high school students who use e-cigarettes doubled between 2011 and 2012.
Authorities are troubled by the prospect of minors catching on to the trend and graduating from nicotine to marijuana.
As evidenced by the number of YouTube videos instructing smokers on how to doctor an e-cigarette for marijuana use, people are finding ways to use legal products illegally.
To combat e-cigarettes becoming a gateway for other more harmful substances, New York assembleywoman Linda Rosenthal introduced a bill last year making it illegal to sell e-cigarettes to minors.
‘Once you try electronic cigarettes, you can become hooked to them, move on to cigarettes and then move on to other drugs,’ Rosenthal told NBC.
Some other states, including New Jersey, New Hampshire and Maryland, have also banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.
There are currently no federal regulations in place for e-cigarettes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2454693/E-cigarettes-used-smoke-marijuana-public.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

City mulls underage e-cigarette ban

By Lucas High
lhigh@wyomingnews.com

CHEYENNE — The Cheyenne City Council is considering an ordinance that would add electronic cigarettes to the city’s list of tobacco products that cannot be sold to minors.

Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, are “products often shaped like cigarettes, cigars or pipes that are designed to deliver nicotine or other substances to a user in the form of a vapor,” according to the Tobacco Control Legal Consortium.
“Typically, e-cigarettes consist of battery-powered heating elements and replaceable cartridges that contain nicotine or other chemicals, and an atomizer that, when heated, converts the contents of the cartridge into a vapor that a user inhales.”
The state already has laws banning the sale of e-cigarettes to people under the age of 18.
But by adding the proposed ordinance to city code, fines collected from violators would flow into city coffers, rather than to the state, city attorney Dan White said.
White added, “That’s the principle reason for having this as a violation under city code, because it’s a city fine and would then become part of the (city’s) budget.”
The Legislature voted earlier this year to amend the state’s smoking laws to include e-cigarettes on its list of regulated tobacco products, placing them alongside items like cigarettes, cigars and snuff.
The city has not yet done so.
Councilwoman Georgia Broyles, the sponsor of the proposed ordinance, said she introduced it to increase awareness of the dangers of e-cigarette use, especially in minors.
“I believe they are poisonous,” Broyles said. “I don’t see any good in them at all.”
A secondary goal of the ordinance is to bring city code in line with state law and improve uniformity, she said.
Lisa Ammons with the Prevention Management Organization of Wyoming told the council’s Public Services Committee on Tuesday that while e-cigarettes have been around since the 1960s, they have exploded in popularity recently.
The percentage of sixth- through 12th-graders in Wyoming who have tried e-cigarettes more than doubled between 2011 and 2012, Ammons said.
Electronic cigarette manufacturers have marketed their products, especially flavored e-cigarettes, toward minors, Ammons said.
“No one really buys an e-cigarette in bubble gum flavor as an adult,” she said.
Part of the reason for the increased popularity is the nationwide spread of smoke-free laws that ban smoking in places like bars and restaurants, Ammons said.
Electronic cigarettes are often not included in these bans, which allows smokers to use them inside bars and restaurants.
“E-cigarettes aren’t usually addressed (in smoking bans) because they are so new,” Broyles said.
Broyles’ proposed ordinance only addresses the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, not whether they can be used indoors.
But Broyles said she is “certainly open to looking at (adding an indoor e-cigarette smoking ban) as an amendment” to Cheyenne’s citywide ban on smoking indoors in public buildings.
While the proposed ordinance was recommended unanimously by the committee, several of its members expressed some skepticism about its necessity.
That skepticism was based on the redundancy of the ordinance, which mirrors the state law already on the books.
Councilman Bryan Cook said while he understands the problem of e-cigarette use by minors, he needs some more information before he can “really stand behind this (ordinance).”
“I’m still on the fence with the need, and maybe the push, for this,” Cook said.
Councilman Sean Allen expressed a similar sentiment.
“I just don’t know if it is necessary if (selling electronic cigarettes to minors) is already illegal by state statute,” Allen said.
The proposed ordinance goes to the full council for second reading next Monday night, then back to committee and back to the council again for a third reading and final vote.
http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2013/10/10/news/01top_10-10-13.txt

The risks are still unclear as the use of e-cigarettes grows

Article by: EDITORIAL BOARD , Star Tribune
The offerings at Fridley’s eCig & Supply Company store sound like something a kid might choose as a slushie or smoothie flavor on a hot summer day: Melon Mist; Blueberry Cream; Lemon Blast, and Papa Smurf’s Brother, a root beer and vanilla combo named for the iconic cartoon character.
Instead, these are among the more than 50 flavorings of “juice” — a liquid vaporized and inhaled through a pen-shaped device — that the store and others like it offer to those who want a nicotine hit without puffing on a traditional cigarette. Earlier this week, the number of customers streaming into the Fridley store attested to the rapidly growing popularity of e-cigarettes and “vaping.” (Since these devices produce a vapor, e-cigarette users say they “vape” instead of “smoke.”)
While e-cigarette sales are still a small fraction of the $80-billion-plus annual market for traditional tobacco cigarettes, sales of these essentially unregulated delivery devices for a highly addictive drug are skyrocketing, with 2012 sales of $300 million to $500 million expected to double in 2013, according to the Economist magazine. Neither regulators nor researchers assessing the potential health risks have kept up. That needs to change.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is still sitting on the sidelines when it comes to e-cigs. The agency has oversight of regular cigarettes and smokeless tobacco but not e-cigarettes unless they are sold along with a health claim. What that means is that minors in many states can buy e-cigs. Manufacturers may also advertise their often candy-flavored concoctions in ways that traditional cigarette companies are restricted from. An e-cigarette ban would go too far, given the uncertainties regarding their effects, but restrictions on e-cig sales and marketing to minors are common sense and overdue. Forty state attorneys general, including Minnesota’s Lori Swanson, recently sent a letter to the FDA demanding that the agency finally issue its expected but much-delayed regulations by the end of this month. An FDA spokesman this week declined to say if that deadline will be met.
States and cities also need to set parameters on e-cig use to protect public health while researchers determine the safety of their use — both for those who vape and those who may be exposed secondhand to the vapor.
While Minnesota does prohibit e-cig sales to those under 18, the state’s Clean Indoor Act does not restrict adult use. Legislators in 2014 need to ensure that the state’s smoke-free laws are up to date. Large tobacco companies, which are buying up e-cigarette makers, should not be able to exploit loopholes to get new Minnesotans hooked on nicotine and, potentially, their traditional tobacco products.
It’s unclear if e-cig users are more likely to eventually smoke cigarettes, but respected public-health experts, such as Minnesota Health Commissioner Dr. Ed Ehlinger, are concerned that e-cigs “normalize” smoking behaviors and may be a gateway to traditional tobacco use. This could potentially undo hard-won progress to cut smoking rates.
E-cig advocates, particularly those on social media, fairly point out that these products likely are safer than traditional smoking. It’s also clear from talking with customers at the Fridley store that e-cigs may have an important role to play in helping people quit tobacco. For Lisa Stegeman of Brooklyn Park, e-cigs are the only stop-­smoking product that has worked for her.
Still, data on e-cigs’ effectiveness is mixed, with a recent study in the Lancet showing no significant efficacy compared with a placebo. Data on the risks of long-term use is also inadequate. And with little oversight of the manufacturing of these products or the “juice,’’ who’s to say what’s in them? Not every proprietor is as conscientious as eCig & Supply Company’s Scott Huber, who uses only a reputable “juice” supplier based in Minnesota.
Medical research is also insufficient to determine the risk of secondhand exposure to the vapor. One study found that metal and silicate particles from e-cig aerosol were present in bystanders.
The Duluth City Council recently voted to prohibit e-cig use in public places, putting the city at the forefront of municipalities in Minnesota and elsewhere when it comes to e-cig safeguards. Duluth’s elected officials got it right. Medical researchers are only starting to determine e-cigs’ risks and potential benefits. Until these are known with more certainty, spaces free of cigarettes should be e-cig-free as well.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/editorials/227144351.html

Forum editorial: Minn. tax on tobacco is a health tax

Opponents of Minnesota’s new tobacco tax seem to believe the $2.83 per pack of cigarettes tax is about only revenue and business. It’s not. It’s first and foremost about public health.
While the tax has had expected impacts on revenue and business since it went into effect July 1, its primary purpose is to discourage smoking. The tax is having the predicted results: Sales of cigarettes are down. Early evidence suggests the steep rise in the tax will generate a corresponding decline in smoking. That has been the experience of every other state that raised its cigarette tax substantially. Young smokers or potential smokers are especially sensitive to price.
Even as sales of cigarettes slipped as the tax took hold, revenue increased, as forecast. The tax is up 30 percent, after all. Some of that additional revenue will be used to fund the new Vikings stadium.
However, as fewer Minnesotans take up the habit and others quit or reduce cigarette purchases, revenue will decline. The ideal situation, of course, would be that tobacco use falls so far as to make revenue from the tax unimportant to the state’s overall financial picture.
Reacting to the decline in sales, one person at a retail store said: “It’s very bad.” No, it’s not. In the long term, fewer people smoking cigarettes is a good thing. It’s good for their health, their medical bills and the nation’s health care system.
Often characterized as “sin taxes,” taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products are in effect health taxes. There is no sin in public policy that aims to improve and protect health. The real sin is peddling a product that sickens and kills people.

Forum editorials represent the opinion of Forum management and the newspaper’s Editorial Board.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/414349/

E-Cigarette trend catching on, but what are the effects?

by Stephanie Zepelin
BOISE — It might be a trend you have noticed: electronic cigarettes. The devices use battery power to heat a liquid (usually containing nicotine) the user inhales. Some folks are choosing this option over traditional cigarettes.
Electronicstix, a company that started in Utah, just opened their first store in Boise.
“We have three stores that have been pretty seasoned down in Utah,” said Devin Norager, who works at ElectronicStix.
Norager smoked traditional cigarettes before switching to vaping, and says a lot of people are in that same situation.
“Ninety-nine percent of it is people that do smoke and want a healthier alternative,” Norager said.
Kody Girard smoked for more than a decade, and is using vaping to cut costs from purchasing traditional cigarettes. Girard said he doesn’t know much about the health effects of vaping.
“It’s just like smoking,” said Girard. “You don’t know much about it you try to ignore it the best you can because it’s bad. So this might not be, but it’s gotta be better than cigarettes.”
Doctor Jim Souza, Vice President of Medical Affairs at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Boise, talked with KTVB about the health effects of e-cigarettes.
“I think the state of the science right now is there’s not enough information to draw a conclusion,” said Souza.
Dr. Souza said the main concern in health care is e-cigarette marketing targeting to kids.
“It’s estimated now that 10 percent of high school seniors have used e-cigarettes, of that 10 percent, 75 percent of them also use tobacco,” Souza said. “So because nicotine is so powerfully addictive, the concern from a public health perspective is that this could be a gateway into traditional tobacco for young people, and that would be a public health disaster.”
However, the reserve effect could be good for public health.
“I think most folks in health care think that if all smokers could convert to e-cigarettes, that would probably be a public health boon, although we don’t know that for sure,” said Souza.
He said it does help people kick the habit.
Audra Johnson started smoking years ago, and has been vaping for about three months.
“I figured it would help because I’ve tried patch, the pill, everything else, Chantix, nothing has really worked,” said Johnson.
Johnson said she is saving money by switching over to e-cigarettes, and feels better.
E-cigarettes range anywhere in price from a few bucks for a disposable one to several hundred dollars for the high-end products.
http://www.ktvb.com/news/E-Cigarette-trend-catching-but-what-are-the-effects-226619581.html

Our view: State, feds can step up for e-cig safety

Duluth News Tribune Editorial
Three weeks ago today, Duluth made headlines across the state, becoming the first city in Minnesota to ban e-cigarettes indoors where tobacco use already is forbidden, among other restrictions and regulations.
Then, last week, Hermantown made news by passing a moratorium on the sale and use of electronic cigarettes inside public spaces. In addition, Mankato restricted e-cig sampling; North Mankato placed a moratorium on sampling; and Beltrami County, Bemidji and other communities all are considering their own restrictions, bans, regulations and other measures related to a suddenly booming e-cigarette industry, an industry dogged by serious and legitimate questions and concerns about health and safety.
“There are so many communities that have taken action or are percolating right now on this issue,” Pat McKone of Duluth, director of the American Lung Association of Minnesota, told the News Tribune Opinion page on Friday. “There’s so much unknown. We have to take a serious look. It’s not just a fad.”
With so many communities in Minnesota and around the country scrambling to catch up to ensure safety, especially the safety of a growing number of young people who are using unregulated e-cigarettes, the Minnesota Legislature and the federal government could step up and take a lead. Then, rules, regulations and restrictions would be uniform rather than the patchwork of policies taking shape now that change from border to border and community to community.
“Would it be better if the state regulated this? I do believe that’s the way, but we’re going to have a short legislative session, and I don’t think (lawmakers) are swift enough to do anything this (coming) year,” McKone said. “We do the heavy lifting at the local level and then the state takes it on. That’s a common pattern. And that appears to be what’ll eventually happen here. But every month (we) delay another group of young people is making decisions and poor choices.”
In most communities, kids can buy e-cigarettes easily and legally. And they are. The percentage of U.S. middle school and high school students taking their first drags on e-cigarettes more than doubled from 2011 to 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this month. In 2012, more than 1.78 million middle school and high school students nationwide had tried
e-cigarettes, a precursor to tobacco cigarettes.
And no wonder. E-cigarettes, as addictive, dangerous and harmful to health as they may be, are actively being marketed to kids, just the way tobacco cigarettes used to be. Remember Joe Camel and the portrayal of smoking as cool and hip and what everyone who’s anyone was doing? This time — powered by nearly $21 million in advertising in 2012, according to the New York Times — it’s kid-friendly flavors such as watermelon and cookies-and-cream milkshake and the portrayal of e-cigarette use as cool and hip and what everyone who’s anyone is doing.
And just what are those kids inhaling? Because e-cigarettes aren’t regulated, no one can say for certain.
So shouldn’t the U.S. Food and Drug Administration step in, test e-cigarette products for safety and regulate what’s in them to ensure continued safety?
Attorneys general from around the country think so. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson joined 40 of her colleagues in a letter last week to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, urging her “to take all available measures to meet the FDA’s stated deadline of October 31, 2013, to issue proposed regulations that will address the advertising, ingredients and sale to minors of electronic cigarettes.”
The American Heart Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and 13 other agencies think so, too. They sent a letter Sept. 19 to the president, urging him to ensure that the FDA “moves forward promptly with a rule that would assert the agency’s authority over all tobacco products, including
e-cigarettes, little cigars, cigars and other tobacco products not currently under its jurisdiction. More than two years ago, FDA announced its intent to take this action, yet no progress has been made. This delay is having very real public health consequences.”
Delay no more, FDA.
Or state Legislature.
Local communities are scrambling and doing their best to do what’s right. They and the health and safety of our nation need authority and leadership that can only come from St. Paul and other state capitols and from Washington, D.C.
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/279202/group/Opinion/

E-Cigarette Ads Spark Lawmakers’ Concern for Youths

By 
An advertisement for Blu electronic cigarettes shows a glitzed-up, scantily clad Jenny McCarthy seated in a club, smoking—or “vaping”—a sleek black tube with a blue glow at the tip. “Blu satisfies me,” she says, as the camera pans out to show her chatting with an attractive male suitor who is also holding an e-cigarette. “I get to have a Blu without the guilt, because it’s only vapor, not tobacco.”
Blu is owned by Lorillard, maker of Newport and other tobacco cigarettes. Lorillard was one of nine recipients of a letter sent Thursday from 12 Democratic senators and representatives asking a series of questions about the marketing techniques of the e-cigarette companies. The letter raised concerns that e-cigarette companies are marketing their products to children and teens. Lorillard did not respond to a request for comment from National Journal Daily.
E-cigarettes—which resemble cigarettes but use battery power to vaporize a nicotine-derived solution that the user inhales—are not subject to the same regulations as traditional cigarettes, and their marketing is not limited by the restrictions placed on tobacco cigarettes in recent decades. E-cigarette companies can legally sell to minors, run television and radio ads, and distribute free samples.
“The marketing of e-cigarettes is re-glamorizing smoking and associating young, attractive celebrities with smoking,” Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids President Matthew Myers told National Journal Daily. “Their participation in the last 12 to 24 months has used the exact same images and tactics that made [traditional] cigarettes so appealing to generations of Americans.”
E-cigarettes are available in a variety of different flavors, including cherry and cookies-and-cream milkshake, and they may be purchased online and in mall kiosks. Critics cite these marketing techniques, along with the use of celebrities such as McCarthy, as evidence of targeted advertising toward young people.
“[The ads] are virtual duplicates of the Virginia Slims woman from 40 years ago,” Myers said. “That imagery has been banned precisely because of its powerful impact on kids.”
The issue of this targeted advertising has received attention following a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released this month that showed dramatic increases in the use of e-cigarettes among middle- and high-school students. The percentage of young people who have used e-cigarettes doubled in both groups from 2011 to 2012, jumping from 1.4 percent to 2.7 percent among middle-school students, and 4.7 percent to 10 percent among high-school students.
While e-cigarettes are often presented as the less harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes, lawmakers worry that e-cigarettes could become a gateway to nicotine addiction and increased use of conventional tobacco products. “It would be a terrible public health outcome if children and young adults who do not smoke thought it was safe to begin using e-cigarettes because they do not believe that they pose a risk to their health,” Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and an author of the letter, wrote in an e-mail to National Journal Daily.
What has most worried some critics, however, is CDC’s finding that 80.5 percent of high-school students who use e-cigarettes also currently smoke conventional cigarettes. “This is a fly in the ointment of people saying e-cigarettes are good for harm reduction,” said Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California (San Francisco) and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. According to Glantz, so-called dual users generally smoke fewer traditional cigarettes each day, but smoking tobacco means they are still suffering the full cardio risk. E-cigarettes still contain some carcinogens—albeit less than tobacco—and deter quitting, Glantz says.
These findings increase concern that the advertising of e-cigarettes to young people will increase use of more-harmful tobacco products, and the marketing efforts are only growing.
According to the Kantar Media unit of WPP, the Blu e-cigarette brand spent $12.4 million on ads in major media for the first quarter of the year, compared with $992,000 in the same period a year ago, The New York Times reported. Annual sales of all e-cigarettes are expected to reach $1.7 billion by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration does not oversee the industry. The FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products has the authority to regulate only certain categories of “tobacco products.” The FDA “intends to propose a regulation that would extend the agency’s ‘tobacco product’ authorities—which currently only apply to cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, and smokeless tobacco—to other categories,” an FDA spokesperson said.
The FDA can regulate e-cigarettes only if the manufacturers make a therapeutic claim—including use as a cessation device. According to the agency, none are currently approved for therapeutic purposes.
“Many of the most overt claims as a cessation device were made in earlier years, but they’ve gotten more sophisticated in recent years for fear of the FDA bringing regulatory action,” Myers said. Companies now target adults by making the less direct health claim that they are the safer alternative to cigarettes.
Lawmakers hope the letter and their calls for hearings will bring oversight not only to marketing of e-cigarettes, but to the industry more broadly. “Marketing e-cigarettes to children is problematic,” Waxman wrote in the e-mail. “But FDA also needs to undertake a broad assessment of e-cigarettes, the risks they pose, and the regulation of these products that is necessary to protect the public’s health.”
If the FDA were to institute broader regulations—something that has been discussed for a while now—then a simple claim that e-cigarettes are safer than cigarettes would require FDA approval.
This article appears in the Sep. 30, 2013, edition of National Journal Daily as E-Cigarette Ads Spark Lawmakers’ Concern for Youths.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/e-cigarette-ads-spark-lawmakers-concern-for-youths-20130929

Minnesota cigarette sales down, but tobacco revenue up

By: Mark Zdechlik, MPR News 90.3 FM, INFORUM
Cigarette sales in Minnesota have dropped since a $1.60 per pack tax increase took effect July 1, as tobacco sellers have feared.
Early Minnesota Department of Revenue numbers show cigarette stamp sales dropped more than 35 percent this July compared to July a year ago. Tobacco stamp sales for August were down 12 percent compared to the same month a year ago.
Although sales are down, because of the higher tax, the money the state collects from cigarette taxes has grown, according to the department.
“It’s very bad,” said 28-year-old Abdul Habit, who works at New Smokes in Maplewood. “It went down, like people [are] cutting back. People who used to buy a carton, now they buy five packs. People who used to buy a pack, now they just ask for single cigarette.”
Habit said his customers complain a lot about the tobacco tax increase.
“They cry a lot,” he said. “Nobody’s happy about it.”
Before cigarettes can be legally sold at shops like New Smokes, wholesalers apply tobacco stamps they buy from the state to each pack.
The stamps prove the state taxes have been paid.
The stamp machine at M. Amundson Cigar and Candy Co. in Minneapolis has not been as busy as it was before the tobacco tax increase, even though the company still sells more than $1 million in cigarettes each month.
“We’ve lost one-third of our sales,” company co-owner Ross Amundson said. “Stores that we sold to along the Wisconsin border have basically lost most of their volume and the larger cigarette stores around the cities here that we sell to, their volume in cigarettes is probably in half.”
Amundson said while cigarette sales are down sharply he’s selling more “roll-your-own” tobacco and more electronic cigarettes.
“I’m not going to just be laying people off,” he said. “We’ll figure it out somehow. We’ll bring on other products, we’ll bring on new stores — whatever we have to do to survive.”
Amundson said he’s heard cigarette sales are up dramatically in North Dakota where the state tax on a pack is just $.44 compared to Minnesota’s $2.83.
North Dakota Department of Revenue statistics show cigarette sales there were up a little more than 9 percent in August over the same month last year.
Minnesota officials predicted that increasing the cigarette tax by roughly 30 percent would lead to a roughly 30 percent reduction in cigarette consumption.
There’s no way to quantify whether that’s happening. But officials at ClearWay Minnesota, a group that offers free services to help people stop smoking, said interest in its programs is up sharply over last year.
“It’s pretty striking in terms of the number of web visits of people who are checking out Quitplan.com,” ClearWay spokesman Mike Sheldon said. “We’re talking about a 240 percent increase year-over-year. That’s a huge increase and certainly the tax is a big effect of that in making people think about quitting.”
Sheldon said he expects cold weather and New Year’s quit smoking resolutions will sustain that increased demand into the winter for ClearWay’s smoking cessation programs.
Although cigarette stamp sales to Minnesota wholesalers dropped significantly, tax revenue the state collects from cigarettes is up more than 56 percent for July and August compared to the same two months last year.
Tax collections on other-than-cigarette tobacco products such as ‘roll-your-own’ tobacco also are up.
Still, while tobacco tax receipts are up sharply, the initial numbers show tax revenue is $7 million below projections for July and August.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/413402/group/News/