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Forum News Service: Proposed ND ballot measure would boost tax on cigarettes by $1.76 a pack

By Mike Nowatzki / Forum News Service
A group frustrated with the North Dakota Legislature’s repeated refusal to raise tobacco taxes will attempt to put the issue to voters in November, announcing a ballot initiative Wednesday that would hike the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1.76.
Backers will need to gather 13,452 signatures by July 11 to place the initiated measure on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Dr. Eric Johnson, a Grand Forks physician and chairman of the measure’s 30-member sponsoring committee, estimated the higher tax would reduce youth smoking by 20 percent, preventing 5,800 youths from ever starting smoking.
He noted North Dakota voters approved a tobacco use prevention and control program in 2008 and passed a smoke-free workplace law in 2012, calling the higher tax “kind of the missing leg of the three-legged stool.”
“We do know that it reduces usage, and that saves money for everybody,” he said.
Supporters estimate the tax increase would generate more than $100 million every two years. Half of the money would be dedicated to a new trust fund to support services and programs for military veterans, while the rest would go into a community health trust fund.

Poll results as of 9:30 am on March 17, 2016

Poll results as of 9:30 am on March 17, 2016


North Dakota’s current tax of 44 cents on a pack of cigarettes ranks 47th lowest among states and hasn’t been increased since 1993, despite several attempts in the Legislature, including two bills defeated last year after strong pushback from retailers and distributors.
If approved by voters, the proposed new tax of $2.20 per pack would be lower than Minnesota’s $3-per-pack tax but higher than Montana’s $1.70 and South Dakota’s $1.53. The national average is $1.61 per pack.
The measure is being pushed by the Raise it for Health Coalition, which consists of 10 groups: the North Dakota Medical Association, American Lung Association in North Dakota, North Dakota Veterans Coordinating Council, Tobacco Free North Dakota, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, North Dakota Nurses Association, North Dakota Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, March of Dimes, North Dakota Association of Counties and the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch.
 
 

Wahpeton Daily News: Study: More nicotine found in smokeless tobacco

By Carrie McDermott • Daily News

Users of smokeless tobacco are exposed to equal or higher levels of nicotine and NNK, a cancer-causing chemical in tobacco products, than cigarette smokers, according to a study from the federal government.
Researchers from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say more data is needed on the toxic components of smokeless tobacco products and the health of those who use them.
In the study, researchers analyzed information from more than 23,000 participants in national health surveys between 1999 and 2012. They looked for markers used to measure the addictive stimulant nicotine and cancer-causing NNK from blood and urine samples. They found the level of cotinine, the marker for nicotine exposure, to be .043 nanograms/milliliter in nonsmokers compared to 180 ng/ml among smokeless tobacco users, about 131 ng/ml in cigarette users and 184 ng/ml among people who used both smokeless tobacco and cigarettes.

Jason McCoy, tobacco prevention coordinator at PartnerSHIP 4 Health in Moorhead, Minnesota, said he’s eager to get this surprising information out to the public.
“We know that in rural parts of the state, one in 10 young white men, basically high school boys, are using Snus and chewing tobacco, thinking it’s less dangerous than smoking,” he said.
He said the only difference is when they use chewing tobacco, they aren’t affecting others with secondhand smoke.
“The individual is potentially damaging themselves more,” he said. “It’s surprising.”
And many young smokeless tobacco users are choosing flavored products, which make it more attractive.
“This ties into other research we have that shows flavored tobacco is viewed, in self reports by teens, as less addictive than regular tobacco,” McCoy said. “On the other end, we know the flavoring makes it more addictive. The part of the brain that ties into the flavor of the product, similar to why you may like Coke over Pepsi, it’s the same triggering mechanism that happens. The flavor gets assigned in your brain along with the nicotine.”
McCoy works with four counties — Becker, Clay, Otter Tail and Wilkin — and gets reports showing that often high school athletes know they don’t want to smoke because of the smell, so they choose smokeless tobacco, also thinking it won’t affect their athletic performance.
“We know that short term, it’s going to cause gum disease and tooth decay, long term, possible mouth, throat and stomach cancers,” he said. “It’s every bit as dangerous as cigarettes.”
He said he’s been told by teachers that students are taking the Ice Breakers mints and filling those containers with Snus, so they can surreptitiously carry the smokeless tobacco around with them.
“When they open it up, it just looks like they’re getting a mint,” he said.
About 3.6 percent of Minnesotans regularly use smokeless tobacco, according to the latest Minnesota Adult Tobacco survey.
For those wanting to quit their nicotine use, the state of Minnesota offers QUITPLAN which provides proven methods of quitting successfully. The program offers phone counseling and nicotine replacement tools at no cost. To find out more, visit www.quitplan.com or call 1-888-354-7526.
http://www.wahpetondailynews.com/news/study-more-nicotine-found-in-smokeless-tobacco/article_a81d5b36-9a9f-11e5-9849-3facbacf33f9.html

STAT: E-cigarettes widely seen as harmful in STAT-Harvard poll

By DAVID NATHER And SHEILA KAPLAN
WASHINGTON — Most Americans believe electronic cigarettes are harmful to people’s health, according to a new national poll — even though scientists have not reached a consensus on the risks of the increasingly popular products.
The results of the poll, by STAT and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, could bolster the Food and Drug Administration as it moves to regulate e-cigarettes for the first time. There is solid support for a broad range of government restrictions among both Democrats and Republicans, with virtually no partisan differences to be found.
E-cigarettes have been around only since 2004 — too little time for researchers to have completed definitive studies on their health effects — but already they are more popular among teenagers than conventional cigarettes.
Manufacturers market the products as safer than tobacco cigarettes and as an effective way to help people stop smoking. The poll results, however, suggest that the public isn’t buying this pitch.

Read the full poll results here

E-cigarette users don’t inhale cancer-causing tobacco smoke. Instead, the devices produce a vapor from heated liquid nicotine. For many public health experts, though, the concern is that they still contain nicotine — which is addictive — and may expose users to various toxic chemicals.
Americans do think they’re less dangerous than tobacco cigarettes, but that doesn’t mean they think the products are safe. The survey found that 65 percent of adults believe e-cigarettes are harmful to the people who use them. That’s less than the 96 percent who say tobacco cigarettes are harmful, but more than the 58 percent who say the same thing about marijuana.
Those results appear to be the main reason the public is ready to embrace regulations that would treat e-cigarettes largely like tobacco cigarettes, including rules that go beyond what are actively being considered at the federal level.
“They believe it’s less harmful than tobacco, but they do think it is harmful, and that sets off all the other answers,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard who directed the poll.

Roughly 9 out of 10 Americans support banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors under age 18 — a law already passed in most states. A similar number favor requiring warning labels stating that e-cigarettes contain nicotine.
About 7 out of 10 say people shouldn’t be allowed to use e-cigarettes indoors in public places like restaurants and workplaces, and 6 out of 10 say the government should ban e-cigarette ads on TV, just as it bans ads for tobacco cigarettes.
Even the biggest partisan differences are slight. The warning labels on e-cigarette packages are supported by 98 percent of Democrats and 87 percent of Republicans.
And on taxes — a subject that usually sets off food fights in Washington — there is solid support from both parties: 63 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of Democrats say they support taxing e-cigarettes in the same way that tobacco cigarettes are taxed.
The results suggest that Americans have largely made up their minds on how e-cigarettes should be treated, and that they’re using tobacco cigarettes as their frame of reference — even as scientists are still trying to determine what the health consequences of e-cigarettes are.
“For a new product … you wouldn’t have expected that people would have reached as firm a judgment about this as they have,” said Blendon. On the proposed policies the poll asked about, he added, “their responses are nearly identical to what you find asking about tobacco cigarettes.”
That’s how Anna Glasscock, a Republican retiree who lives near Springfield, Ill., decided her views on e-cigarettes. She’s a former smoker who knows the health risks of tobacco and said e-cigarettes “shouldn’t even exist” because “any addictions are not good.”
Glasscock, one of the people in the poll who agreed to a follow-up interview, said e-cigarettes should be regulated and taxed — she considers it a “sin tax.” Even though e-cigarettes are different from tobacco cigarettes, she said, “I don’t see that replacing one with the other makes any difference.”
Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, the main advocacy group for e-cigarette makers, blamed the poll results on “unethical propaganda campaigns” against e-cigarettes that have led to “a confused populace.”
“This poll is not measuring public opinion, but the effectiveness of a well-funded corporate strategy to destroy a category that is eroding a cash cow for Big Pharma,” he said.
But Vince Willmore, a spokesman for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said it was “not surprising that the public wants to apply common-sense regulations to e-cigarettes” and urged the Obama administration to issue the FDA’s e-cigarette regulations as soon as possible.
The one issue the public is split on is whether to ban the sale of flavored nicotine cartridges — an issue that doesn’t have any parallel with tobacco cigarettes. Fewer than half of Americans think that’s a good idea.
Supporters argue that flavored cartridges attract young people to start using e-cigarettes, and that they will later move on to tobacco cigarettes.
The telephone poll of 1,014 adults was conducted Oct. 7-11 and has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
John Dunn of Garland, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, said he has used e-cigarettes to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes. But a friend who tried the same thing got hooked on e-cigarettes.
“I think they’re pretty different, but also I’ve seen people get on the vapors and not be able to stop,” said Dunn, 33, a Democrat. He’s in favor of some regulation, including warning labels: “They should know they might get addicted.”
E-cigarette makers say that e-cigarettes help smokers quit, and there is some evidence from a small number of studies that they do — although scientists say more research is needed. The survey found that 38 percent of Americans believe e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking, but that 47 percent don’t think they’re effective.
At the same time, public health advocates — and government regulators such as the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — have strong concerns that e-cigarettes serve as a “gateway” for non-smokers to start using tobacco products. More than half of Americans — 56 percent — believe e-cigarettes make teenagers more likely to try tobacco cigarettes, according to the poll.
At a panel discussion on e-cigarettes last month, CDC Director Tom Frieden declared that e-cigarettes are “highly addictive” and that the goal should be to “keep kids away from all forms of nicotine.” The CDC reported earlier this year that e-cigarette use tripled among high-school and middle-school students from 2013 to 2014.
The FDA is preparing to issue a final version of a rule that would extend the agency’s authority to regulate e-cigarettes. The proposal, recently submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for final revisions, would likely require pre-market reviews of e-cigarettes — a process that is used to prove whether potentially risky products are safe. The FDA is also expected to ban e-cigarette sales to minors under age 18 and require warning labels stating that the products contain nicotine. The regulation drew 135,000 comments from the public when the original proposal was published.
The agency is also considering a separate proposal that could require broader warnings about the dangers of nicotine — especially accidental exposure to infants and children — and possibly require child-resistant packages for e-liquids, which are liquid nicotine combined with colorings and flavorings.
Some in Congress, however, are trying to prevent the FDA from taking action that might damage the industry. A House spending bill includes a provision by Representative Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) that would keep the FDA from requiring premarket review for e-cigarettes that are already being sold in stores. Aderholt’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Even if much of the public is ready to regulate e-cigarettes, Aderholt will find at least some support from those who don’t think they are dangerous enough to need new rules.
“They’re not a cigarette. The only thing you’re inhaling is vapor,” said Chris Grieser, a Republican from Cheyenne, Wyo. who participated in the survey. “That’s no different from standing over a pot of boiling water.”
Researchers aren’t so sure about that, though. One study earlier this year found that e-cigarette vapor can contain cancer-causing formaldehyde at levels far higher than those found in tobacco cigarettes.
The original e-cigarettes were manufactured by small companies, but when it became clear that they were catching on, the more established tobacco companies such as RJ Reynolds and British American Tobacco bought out or partnered with some of these smaller businesses, or launched their own divisions. This has given more clout to industry groups such as the American Vaping Association.
This is the first of a series of monthly polls being conducted by STAT and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
http://www.statnews.com/2015/11/09/e-cigarettes-widely-seen-as-harmful-in-stat-harvard-poll/

NY Times Opinion: Clashing Views on E-Cigarettes

By

A British government agency has issued a bullish assessment of the value of electronic cigarettes in helping people to quit smoking. It found that e-cigarettes can reduce the health risks of smoking by 95 percent because they deliver nicotine to satisfy an addiction, but far fewer harmful chemicals than regular cigarettes. It also found little evidence that large numbers of consumers who had never smoked were taking up e-cigarettes. That seemed to challenge the notion that e-cigarettes would be a gateway to more dangerous products.

But the study is hardly definitive; experts in America have drawn different conclusions on usage and on the gateway issue.

The British assessment, commissioned by Public Health England and conducted by academic experts, was cautious in its claims. It noted that the best results are obtained when e-cigarettes are used in combination with professional counseling and smoking-cessation medication.

In the United States, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, e-cigarette use by young people has grown more rapidly than in Britain. The user population includes many children who have never smoked and thus may be vulnerable to being hooked by nicotine and later moving to traditional cigarettes.

By coincidence, a day before the British study was issued, a study tracking more than 2,500 students at 10 Los Angeles schools who had never smoked tobacco, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, came to the opposite conclusion. It said ninth graders who had tried e-cigarettes were far more likely than other students to start smoking “combustible tobacco” (cigarettes, cigars, hookahs) within a year.

Strong regulation is needed in Europe and the United States to protect young people from advertising and promotions designed to lure them into trying e-cigarettes and perhaps getting hooked on them. America’s Food and Drug Administration needs to issue rules it proposed last year and make them even stronger by banning flavors that appeal to youngsters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/24/opinion/clashing-views-on-e-cigarettes.html?_r=0

Reuters: FDA seeks data on e-cigarettes after surge in poisoning cases

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it is seeking additional data and comments on liquid nicotine as it considers warning the public about the dangers of its exposure amid a rise in electronic cigarette use.

The agency has evaluated data and science on the risks, especially to infants and children, from accidental exposure to nicotine and liquid nicotine that is used in e-cigarettes. (1.usa.gov/1GXeSo4)

More Americans are using e-cigarettes and other vaporizing devices than a year ago, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed in June.

ADVERTISING

The surge in e-cigarette use comes as conventional cigarette smoking has declined in the United States to about 19 percent of adults, prompting tobacco companies such as Altria Group Inc, Philip Morris International Inc and Reynolds American Inc to rush into the e-cigarette market.

(Graphic on global market: link.reuters.com/kuk83w)

Recent increases in calls and visits to poison control centers and emergency rooms involving liquid nicotine poisoning have raised public health concerns, FDA said.

The health regulator is now considering if it should warn the public about the dangers of nicotine exposure and require that some tobacco products be sold in child-resistant packaging.

Among high school students, e-cigarette use jumped to 13.4 percent in 2014 from 4.5 percent in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cigarette use over the same period fell to 9.2 percent from 12.7 percent, the largest year-over-year decline in more than a decade.

(Reporting By Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Don Sebastian)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/30/us-fda-ecigarettes-idUSKCN0PA2SD20150630

Cases of kids poisoned by e-cigs increasing in Minnesota

By Andy Rathbun / St. Paul Pioneer Press
Minnesota has seen a jump in the number of children poisoned by e-cigarettes and their liquid refillables, the Minnesota Department of Health said Wednesday.
From 2013 to 2014, the number of e-cigarette and e-liquid poisonings among Minnesota children 5 and younger rose 35 percent — the second year the Minnesota Poison Control System has seen a significant increase of nicotine poisonings related to e-cigarette products, the health department said in a news release. Poisonings from these products rose from three in 2012 to 62 in 2014.
E-cigarette products can contain a fatal amount of nicotine for a child, and about half of the cases last year were treated at emergency departments. Children can confuse the products, which are often flavored, with a candy or drink, the department of health said.
In January, a new state law took effect requiring child-resistant packaging for e-liquid products.
“This past year Minnesota took a big step to keep kids from accidently ingesting these potentially fatal e-liquids,” Minnesota Health Commissioner Ed Ehlinger said in a statement. “But parents should still use caution and store the products out of the reach of children.”
The symptoms that can result from nicotine poisoning include nausea, seizures, diarrhea, vomiting and difficulty breathing.
The department of health issued a nicotine heath advisory Wednesday that also warns teens and pregnant women of possible nicotine effects.
The drug can harm brain development during adolescence and harm fetal brain and lung development, the department said.
http://www.inforum.com/news/3763762-cases-kids-poisoned-e-cigs-increasing-minnesota

LA Times: California Senate votes to restrict e-cigarettes as tobacco products

By PATRICK MCGREEVY

The state Senate on Tuesday approved a bill that would ban electronic cigarettes from restaurants, theaters and other public places in California where smoking is prohibited to address health concerns.

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said his bill would treat e-cigarettes, also known as “vaping” devices, as tobacco products because they often use nicotine and are popular with teenagers.

Youth e-cigarette use rising; heart group calls for regulation

“Of great concern is that the fastest growth segment of new users is among middle and high school students who are now smoking electronic cigarettes,” Leno told his colleagues. “They are advertised on television. They are advertised on billboards.”

The measure, which would also subject e-cigarettes to the same licensing requirements as tobacco, was approved by a 24-12 vote, with Sen. Jeff Stone of Murrietta the only Republican to vote for the bill.

Senate Republican leader Bob Huff of Diamond Bar said e-cigarettes work on vapor that does not spread as much as tobacco smoke, so they should be treated differently in public.

“E-cigs are used by people trying to kick the tobacco habit,” Huff said. He voted against the bill, saying the state should wait until the federal government takes action.

Stone noted that his mother was a former smoker who died of cancer. He said the tobacco and vaping industries are marketing e-cigarettes to young people with flavors including watermelon, tutti frutti and cotton candy while the vapor has nicotine derived from tobacco. He said “vaping” is a gateway to cigarette smoking.

“Now we are exposing a whole new generation of millenials to this fashionable way of smoking tobacco in a way that is going to jeopardize their lives,” Stone said. The measure next goes to the Assembly for consideration.

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-california-senate-votes-to-restrict-ecigarettes-like-tobacco-products-20150602-story.html

TIME Health|Research: 4 Weird Health Effects of E-Cigarettes

Justin Worland

Banana pudding-flavored ecigs disturbed the lungs, one study found

E-cigarette research is heating up, and scientists are starting to show that using e-cigarettes can have some surprising health effects, according to new findings presented at the meeting of the American Thoracic Society.

“Millions of people around the world that are puffing e-cigs,” says Peter Dicpinigaitis, professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and one of the authors of new e-cigarette research, “but when you look at the scientific literature about the effects of e-cigs, there’s nothing out there.”

Here are some of the newest findings:

Using e-cigarettes suppresses your ability to cough

Smoking an e-cigarette makes you less likely to cough, even when coughing would benefit your health, according to research by Dicpinigaitis. Researchers asked 30 nonsmokers to puff an e-cigarette 30 times in a 15-minute period. After puffing, people in the study were less sensitive to capsaicin, a component of chili peppers that induces coughing. You might think stopping a cough would be a positive side effect, but coughing keeps you from choking and removes agents that may cause infection, says Dicpinigaitis. He presumes that those the effects would continue throughout the day for someone who uses an e-cigarette frequently.

E-cigarette temperature may affect how many chemicals you’re exposed to

People tend to think about the effects of cigarette smoke or e-cigarette vapor when they consider how the products harm their health. But the mechanics of e-cigarettes may also contribute to how much smoking harms your health, according to new research from University of Alabama School of Medicine professor Daniel Sullivan. His research found a correlation between coil temperature and the creation of harmful chemicals like acrolein, acetaldehyde and formaldehyde in the e-cigarette. There are no configuration standards for e-cigarettes, and Sullivan’s research suggests that the lack of consistency makes it hard to assess uniformly the health effects of smoking e-cigarettes.

E-cigarette flavors may have different effects

Researchers tested the effects of flavored e-cigarette liquid on calcium in the lungs and found that not all flavors had the same effect. Five of 13 flavors tested caused changes to calcium signaling in the lungs, according to a study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher Temperance Rowell. Hot cinnamon candies, banana pudding and menthol tobacco were among the flavors that disturbed the lungs.

Evidence is growing that e-cigarettes probably aren’t an effective way to quit smoking

E-cigarettes are a popular tool people use to stop smoking, but they may not be the best way, suggests one research review. Using e-cigarettes improved the likelihood that a smoker would quit smoking cigarettes for the first month on the new technology, but the effect dissipated at 3 and 6-month followups, according to a meta-analysis of four studies by University of Toronto researcher Riyad al-Lehebi. He recommended that people who want to quit smoking consider “other more well-established options.”

http://time.com/3860166/ecigs-research/?xid=emailshare

Opinion: E-cigarettes: Doctors' View: E-cigarette, tobacco smoke enough alike to warrant regulation

By Terry Clark, Mary J. Boylan and Joseph Bianco

What are e-cigarettes? Have you ever seen one? Do you know how they work? Are they as bad for your health as traditional cigarettes?

It is fair to say that three or four years ago these were new questions and we did not know the answers. But now we do, and it is certainly time for you to know — and for our St. Louis County Board of Commissioners to know as they consider a vote to help protect citizens of our county from the “invisible” harm caused by these gadgets if being used indoors.

Details about e-cigarettes and their health effects are well-described in a recent report from the California Department of Health, and even more recent good information on e-cigarettes can be found in the News Tribune’s “Our View” editorial on Friday, headlined, “County up next in quest for clear air.”

E-cigarettes is a good news/bad news story. Are they less toxic than traditional cigarettes? Likely. Are they really safe to use? Not likely.

First, how do they work? With no tobacco or cigarette paper to burn, there’s no smoke. They really are electronic gadgets with several sections, one with a small battery, one with a small amount of fluid usually containing some nicotine as well as flavoring and other chemicals, and a high-temperature chamber that converts the liquid into an aerosol or fog to be inhaled by the user (an action called vaping) and then exhaled where it is readily inhaled by those around the user.

What is in this aerosol emitted by the e-cigarette? At least 10 chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm, including nicotine, formaldehyde, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds, according to the report. It’s not what you or your favorite teenager should be exposed to.

Nicotine, a key ingredient in the aerosol, is highly addictive. Of course, that is why so many users of traditional cigarettes said for years that they could quit whenever they wanted but usually never could.

We should all wonder why the three major tobacco companies purchased start-up e-cigarette companies. What do they know that we do not? One thing is this: Kids who start using purportedly safer e-cigarettes often switch and become traditional smokers or, even worse, dual smokers who use both e-cigs and traditional tobacco cigarettes. They are then addicted to nicotine for decades. Is that what the big tobacco companies are banking on?

Our elected county leaders soon will vote on this simple question: Should e-cigarette use indoors be regulated as a public health hazard just like traditional tobacco smoke? That is, no smoking in indoor places such as worksites, bars, restaurants, stores, arenas, etc.

The city of Duluth and many other communities in Minnesota already have answered this question in the affirmative: Yes, e-cigarette aerosol and tobacco smoke have enough in common to warrant being regulated in the same way under the Minnesota Clean Air Act.

In short, keep them outside.

Terry Clark and Mary J. Boylan are doctors from Duluth. Joseph Bianco is a doctor from Ely.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/columns/3742094-e-cigarettes-doctors-view-e-cigarette-tobacco-smoke-enough-alike-warrant

Men's Journal: E-Cigarettes May Be Just as Bad as The Real Thing

Two new studies have turned out some scary findings about e-cigarettes. The first one, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, revealed that e-cigarette vapor can harbor hidden formaldehyde — a known carcinogen — at levels up to 15 times greater than regular cigarettes. “We discovered this form of formaldehyde hidden in the tiny liquid droplets of the vapor, where it hadn’t been detected before,” says lead researcher David Peyton, a chemistry professor at Portland State University in Oregon. “It has the potential to distribute deeply into the lungs and collect there.”
The second study showed that e-cigarette vapors directly harm human lung tissue. Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York found that when the aerosol produced by heated liquid nicotine hits lung cells, it churns up disease-causing free radicals and triggers marked inflammation; they also found the presence of up to six times the level of heavy metals, like copper. What’s more, they discovered that various flavor additives, which are often added to e-cigs, cause additional oxidative damage to lung tissue. This isn’t after years of e-cig use, either. The negative effects “occurred after a few days of vaping,” he says. “Chronic exposure may lead to even more damage.”
These findings add to the fast-amassing stack of research revealing the many potential hazards of e-cigarettes. Since these smokeless devices are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, they can contain any number of toxins, carcinogens, or other mystery chemicals. And because e-cigarettes are so new, the long-term health consequences of using them are unknown.
Even so, many people assume that, compared to regular tobacco cigarettes, e-cigs are the lesser of two evils. But that’s not necessarily the case, says Dr. Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Center and a spokesman for the American Association for Cancer Research. “In the oncology community, we feel they are both evil,” he says. “The big concern with e-cigarettes is lung tissue damage. Regular cigarette smoke contains 60 to 80 known carcinogens, which makes it very bad for the lungs too. However, hot e-cigarette vapor going straight to the lungs can cause actual burning and injury. It’s a different type of damage — but it’s still significant.”
And that’s just their immediate impact. “We still don’t know the long-term effects that e-cigarettes can have on the body,” Herbst says. “There is still so much to learn about them.”
Herbst also thinks e-cigs are an unproven and even detrimental smoking cessation tool — which is, of course, a huge reason why people puff on them. “I treat people with lung cancer, so certainly my goal is to stop people from smoking,” he says. “But these devices deliver such high concentrations of nicotine that they get people very addicted to the drug. If you need help with smoking cessation, there are other, FDA-approved forms of nicotine, such patches or lozenges, that would much better than e-cigarettes.”
And because e-cigs crank out so much nicotine, Herbst also fears that they can be a gateway to tobacco cigarettes. “E-cigarettes are very expensive, so we worry that people will start on them, get addicted to nicotine, and then move on to regular cigarettes, which are generally less expensive and easier to get,” he adds.

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Read more: http://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/nutrition/e-cigarettes-may-be-just-as-bad-as-the-real-thing-20150324#ixzz3Vo1Fhu6J