VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Substituting smokeless tobacco products can save smokers’ lives, and there is a scientific foundation that proves it.

That is the message Brad Rodu, D.D.S., professor of medicine at the University of Louisville (UofL) School of Medicine and the Endowed Chair in Tobacco Harm Reduction at UofL’s James Graham Brown Cancer Center, delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Feb. 18. Rodu spoke at the session, “Harm Reduction: Policy Change to Reduce the Global Toll of Smoking-Related Disease.”

“Quit or die: That’s been the brutal message delivered to 45 million American smokers, and it has helped contribute to 443,000 deaths per year, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Rodu said. “The truth, however, is that total nicotine and tobacco abstinence is unattainable and unnecessary for many smokers.”

Rodu’s presentation, “Transforming Tobacco Use: The Potential of Tobacco Harm Reduction,” was based on his almost 20 years of research. His work shows that smokers can greatly reduce their risk of disease and death by replacing smoking products with e-cigarettes or modern, spit-free smokeless tobacco. These products provide a much safer alternative for those smokers who are unable or unwilling to quit smoking because they continue to deliver nicotine without the harmful effect of smoking.

“Nicotine is addictive, but it is not the cause of any smoking-related disease. Like caffeine, nicotine can be used safely by consumers,” Rodu said.

Decades of epidemiologic research bear out Rodu’s findings. While no tobacco product is completely safe, smokeless products have been shown to be 98 percent safer than cigarettes. In the United Kingdom, the Royal College of Physicians reported in 2002 that smokeless tobacco is up to 1,000 times less hazardous than smoking, and in 2007, further urged world governments to seriously consider instituting tobacco harm reduction strategies as a means to save lives.

To see the proof of what tobacco harm reduction can do, look to Sweden, Rodu said. “Over the past 50 years, Swedish men have had Europe’s highest per capita consumption of smokeless tobacco as well as Europe’s lowest cigarette use. During the same time, they also have the lowest rate of lung cancer than men in any other European country.”

In the United States., steps have been made to document the value of tobacco harm reduction. In 2006, a National Cancer Institute-funded study estimated that if tobacco harm reduction was “responsibly communicated” to smokers, 4 million would switch to smokeless tobacco. The American Council on Science and Health – which organized Rodu’s session at the AAAS Annual Meeting – concluded in the same year that tobacco harm reduction “shows great potential as a public health strategy to help millions of smokers.”

Rodu is well aware of the controversy his research findings generate. Opponents of any use of nicotine delivery products maintain that smokeless tobacco puts the user at great risk for oral cancer, a position not supported by research.

“The risk of mouth cancer among smokeless tobacco users is extremely low – certainly lower than the risk of smoking-related diseases among smokers,” he said. “The annual mortality rate among long-term dry snuff users is 12 deaths per 100,000 and the rate among users of more popular snus, moist snuff and chewing tobacco is much lower. For perspective, the death rate among automobile users is 11 per 100,000 according to a 2009 report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Compare those to the rate among smokers: more than 600 deaths per 100,000 every year”

“The data clearly show that smokeless tobacco users have, at most, about the same risk of dying from mouth cancer as automobile users have of dying in a car wreck.”

About Brad Rodu

Rodu earned his dental degree from The Ohio State University. After an oral pathology residency program at Emory University, he completed fellowships at the University of Alabama at Birmingham sponsored by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute. He was on the UAB faculty from 1981 to 2005 with appointments in several departments in the schools of Medicine, Public Health and Dentistry. He joined the UofL faculty in 2005. His research is supported by unrestricted grants from tobacco manufacturers to the University of Louisville and by the Kentucky Research Challenge Trust Fund.

V2 CIGS

Read full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/science/e-cigarettes-help-smokers-quit-but-they-have-some-unlikely-critics.html?_r=2&ref=science

Q: How many vapers does it take
to get the attention of the White House?

A: 5,000!

On September 27th, Eric Swick, of
Cohoes, NY, started an online petition through a website called, “We the
People.” You can read the petition in its entirety by clicking the link below,
but its message is simple:

“We petition the Obama
Administration to recognize electronic cigarettes as an effective alternative to
smoking and support job creation in this new industry.”

Q: Will you sign?

A: . . .

The organizations that want
e-cigarettes regulated out of existence hope your answer is no. They hope you
aren’t paying attention. They hope you don’t care enough to get involved.

We think they’re wrong (as
usual). We believe you will not only take a few minutes to sign the petition,
but that you’ll ask your family and friends to sign it, too.  (They’ve witnessed
the positive change e-cigarettes have brought into your life, after all, and you
don’t have to vape to sign!)

There are a number of things that
make this petition unique:

1) The website is sponsored by
the White House;

2) 5,000 signatures requires the
White House to issue an official response; and

3) The petition started only
three days before the required number of signatures for an official response was
raised from 5,000 to 25,000–so this is our only chance to be recognized with at
least 5,000 signatures.

Time is of the essence, though.
We have only until October 27th to get the needed signatures.

Click this link to sign the
petition now: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/recognize-electronic-cigarettes-effective-alternative-smoking-and-support-job-creation-new-industry/57vtB0QK

You have to register an account
using a valid email address, and only one signature per email address is
allowed. Some people have experienced minor difficulties with registration
(e.g., the “captcha”), but please don’t give up. In all, registration and
signing won’t take more than a few minutes.

Once you’re registered, you can
sign the e-cigarette petition and do searches for other petitions on any number
of issues you care about. Incidentally, the privacy policy (which you can read
on the website) states explicitly that individuals will not be identified or
tracked by signing.

Even if this petition doesn’t get
our ideal response, our sheer numbers will send a message loud and clear to
Washington that we fully expect our representatives to address our concerns;
i.e., we want to keep our liquids, our nicotine strengths, our online sales, and
our flavors.

Imagine the impact tens of
thousands of signatures would have!

So, please, if you haven’t signed
the petition, do so now. If you have signed, ask others to do the same. CASAA
members have already achieved so much. Together, we can achieve so much
more.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Ron Ward

CASAA Director

Bullen, et al conducted a randomized cross-over trial with 40 subjects and found that the product “alleviated desire to smoke after overnight abstinence, was well tolerated and had a pharmacokinetic profile more like the Nicorette inhalator than a tobacco cigarette.” The findings by Darredeau, et al reported at the 12^th SRNT Europe conference, suggest that regardless of nicotine content, electronic cigarettes may provide an effective means of relieving acute tobacco craving in at least some smokers.

Population surveys indicate that electronic cigarettes are much more effective than currently available smoking cessation treatments.  Heaver, et al, surveyed over 300 e-cigarette consumers and found that 79% were using the e-cigarette as a complete replacement for smoking, 17% had significantly reduced
the number smoked, and only 4% still smoked as much as before. The most recent published survey by Etter and Bullen surveyed 3,587 subjects, median age 41, of which 2,850 used e-cigarettes with nicotine, and 112 used e-cigarettes without nicotine.  Among 2,896 daily users, 2,234 (77%) no longer smoked at all, and the median duration of smoking abstinence was 152 days.

Full Article at www.CASSA.org

THE STUDY

The study “Effect of an Electronic Nicotine Delivery Device (e-Cigarette) on Smoking Reduction and
Cessation: A Prospective 6-Month Pilot Study” monitored modifications in smoking habits of 40 regular smokers unwilling to quit, with a focus on smoking reduction and abstinence. The study used the CATEGORIA® E-Cigarette. Study participants were invited to attend a total of five study visits in a period of 24 weeks. Product use, number of cigarettes smoked, and exhaled carbon monoxide (eCO) levels were measured at each visit.

THE RESULTS

Thirteen of 40 (32.5%) of the participants sustained a 50% reduction in the number of cigarettes per day (CPD) at week-24, with their median of 25 CPD decreasing to 6 CPD.  A sustained 80% reduction was shown in five (12.5%) participants, with their median of 30 CPD decreasing to 3 CPD. Sustained smoking abstinence at week-24 was observed in nine (22.5%) participants, with six of them still using the e-cigarette by the end of the study. Combined sustained 50% reduction and smoking abstinence was shown in 22 (55%) participants, with an overall 88% fall in CPD.

Read full article at CASAA:  http://www.casaa.org/news/article.asp?articleID=197&l=a&p

When e-cigarette enthusiasts held a Vapefest in Philadelphia in March, Jonathan Foulds, a tobacco researcher at the Penn State University College of Medicine in Hershey, collected information from 104 attendees, using a 55-question survey.  Dr. Foulds is the lead author on the resulting manuscript, published by the International Journal of Clinical Practice (abstract here).

About three quarters of the users were men, with an average age of 34 years; almost 80% had not used a traditional tobacco product in the past 30 days. The average duration of smoking was 16 years, and they had smoked an average of 25 cigarettes per day. The average number of quit attempts was nine.  Nearly two thirds of e-cigarette users had unsuccessfully tried FDA-approved smoking cessation medications, and three quarters had tried to quit “cold turkey.” Over half had used e-cigarettes for over one year. Most participants
planned to continue using e-cigarettes for at least another year; they reported that the average weekly cost was about $13.

Read full article at: http://rodutobaccotruth.blogspot.com/2011/09/insights-from-e-cigarette-users.html

Read this reprint from:  Tobacco Harm Reduction Org

If these are so good, why aren’t governments and anti-smoking groups supporting  them?

We do not know for sure.  There does not seem to be a concerted effort to block these products in most countries,  though that remains a possibility.  Regulatory agencies have a legitimate responsibility to help make sure the  products are pure and contain what they say.  This creates a challenge in the current environment.  Groups that  are truly anti-smoking should embrace any alternative, but those that are more interested in making life  difficult for smokers or nicotine users do not like these products because they could make nicotine users more comfortable.

Whenever government regulatory agencies are confronted with a new product, they need to find the  proper category to put it into, and then make sure it complies with the standards associated with that category.   In this case, even though nicotine is widely available in many forms, it is still important to make sure  the products do not contain any hidden toxins, that they function properly (e.g., cannot accidentally deliver  an overdose), and so forth.   In this case, the waters have been muddied by the claims that it helps people quit smoking.  Whether or not it does is not the  concern of the agency, but when such a claim is made, the claim needs to be proven (and that means more than anecdotes).

In some sense, the situation is absurd because someone could much more easily introduce another harmful product that was part of  an already established category than introduce a new and obviously safer alternative.   Governments typically worry more about hypothetical new risks than clear old risks.

Some commentators have suggested that governments are so used to tax revenues that if electronic cigarettes became more popular  they could threaten this income. This is not an absurd concern, given the current economic conditions and given that governments have  been raising tobacco taxes to make up shortfalls in other areas.  We can only hope that if that is the plan, that they  keep the taxes lower than on tobacco products because the last thing you want to do is make people choose traditional cigarettes because they are cheaper.

However you do hear official spokespersons from both government, NGOs and anti-tobacco agencies making statements that either betray ignorance of where the harm in smoking comes from, or statements that are ideological rather than  concerned with health.

You might hear that e-cigarettes are dangerous because they deliver nicotine which they say is a poison. See our Nicotine  FAQ for why this has little basis.   You also hear people say that these just keep people smoking.  That may sound like a health statement but it is simply expressing an opinion that no one should smoke,  not even if it is entirely safe.  This statement ignores the public health harm reduction principle that we should do all we can to  protect the health of those who choose to smoke, and part of that protection involves educating people about the comparative risks of these products and in promoting the safer options. Or you might hear that this will lead people to smoking.  This makes little sense since it is  much easier to obtain traditional cigarettes, and what you hear most from people who enjoy these, is that apart from being able to smoke inside again, they feel they are making a healthier choice.

We like to think that those against will realize that e-cigarettes (and smokeless tobacco) remove all that second hand smoke they are so worried about, and also remove the health risks associated with nicotine use.  How can you argue with that?

At the very least, we hope that anyone who has doubts about these products will realize that the elimination of  second hand smoke and a likely reduction in health risk will mean that governments will eventually come to approve them.   Anti-nicotine extremists, on the other hand, might stay with their goal of trying to punish smokers rather than offer them good alternatives.

Bullen, et al conducted a randomized cross-over trial with 40 subjects and found that the product “alleviated desire to smoke after overnight abstinence, was well tolerated and had a
pharmacokinetic profile more like the Nicorette inhalator than a tobacco cigarette.” The findings by Darredeau, et al reported at the 12^th SRNT Europe conference, suggest that regardless of nicotine content, electronic cigarettes may provide an effective means of relieving acute tobacco craving in at least some smokers.

Population surveys indicate that electronic cigarettes are much more effective than currently available smoking cessation treatments.  Heaver, et al, surveyed over 300 e-cigarette consumers and found that 79% were using the e-cigarette as a complete replacement for smoking, 17% had significantly reduced
the number smoked, and only 4% still smoked as much as before. The most recent published survey by Etter and Bullen surveyed 3,587 subjects, median age 41, of which 2,850 used e-cigarettes with nicotine, and 112 used e-cigarettes without nicotine.  Among 2,896 daily users, 2,234 (77%) no longer smoked at all, and the median duration of smoking abstinence was 152 days.

Read full article: http://www.casaa.org/news/article.asp?articleID=193&l=a&p