Electronic Cigarettes: Learn about E-Cigs before you buy!
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The great V2 taste is now available in a refill liquid. Choose from Red, Menthol, and Peppermint flavors. For more info, click below:
According to an article in the NY Times, E-Cigs study in Italy has great results.
Read full article:
According to an article in New York Magazine, E-Cigs are growing by leaps and bounds in popularity. From 2008 to 2011 E-Cig users have grown from 30,000 to 4.2 million. Read full article: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/topic/e-cigarettes-2011-10/
A letter from Ron Ward, CASAA Director
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
All clinical research to date has found that electronic cigarettes show promise in helping smokers become
abstinent from smoking. Camponneto, et al learned about e-cigarettes from two patients who stopped smoking and remained abstinent for more than 6 months after taking up an electronic cigarette. The authors comment, “This is outstanding in consideration of the fact that this result was accomplished by highly addicted smokers who repeatedly failed professional smoking cessation assistance without
the support of recommended nicotine dependence treatments and smoking cessation counseling.”
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 12th 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
A clinical study in Italy says Electronic Cigarettes reduce smoking and may assist smokers to reduce or quit cigarettes.
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
From an article at Tobacco Truth:
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
With E-Cigs gaining popularity, they are threatening: billions of dollars in tobacco revenue, billions of dollars in pharmaceutical industry revenue, millions of dollars in government tax money, and millions of dollars in public health group funding to promote nicotine cessation aids. So maybe a lot of groups want Electronic Cigarettes stopped.
Read this reprint from: Tobacco Harm Reduction Org
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.
From an article published by CASAA
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 12th 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
Statement by
William T. Godshall, MPH
Executive Director
Smokefree Pennsylvania
Since >99% of all tobacco attributable deaths and healthcare costs in the US are caused by the repeated inhalation of tobacco smoke, and that <1% are caused by smokeless tobacco products, it is vitally important for the FDA to publicly acknowledge the exponential differences of risk between cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, and to take this into account when considering criteria for evaluating MRTP
applications.
It was wrong for cigarette companies to mislead the public about the health risks of cigarettes for decades. But it is far worse for the FDA, health agencies, organizations and/or professionals to mislead the public about the comparable health risks of cigarettes and noncombustible tobacco products.
As long as the FDA and heath agencies continue to misrepresent the health risks of smokefree tobacco
products, the public will justifiably continue to distrust the FDA on other critically important public health issues.
Read full statement at: http://www.casaa.org/news/article.asp?articleID=195&l=a&p=