Vaping Electronic Cigarettes Gets Green Light in Some Offices

Vaping Electronic Cigarettes Gets Green Light in Some Offices

By Ben Popken

Forget a foosball table. Vaping an e-cigarette at your desk is the new workplace benefit of choice.

Just eight years after their introduction in the U.S., e-cigarette devices have expanded to a nearly $2 billion industry. Last week, the FDA took the first steps to extend its authority from traditional tobacco products to the new devices. Meanwhile, employees are using e-cigarettes and, in the absence of firm federal guidelines, some managers are making their own determinations about whether to allow them in the office.

Cheryl Dooley, CEO of the Ebsco Spring Company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, bought her 28 smoking employees $100 vaping devices and allows them to be used in the company building. She did it after switching to a nicotine vaporizer helped her kick a 40-year, one- to two-pack a day habit that led to a blood clot forming in her lung.

"Every smoker wants to quit," she said, and if she could switch from traditional cigarettes to ones that use a battery-powered atomizer to steam liquid nicotine into an inhalable gas, she wanted her employees to benefit, too. "They're like family to me."

She's also seen an uptick in productivity.

"Nobody's sneaking out," she said. "The office people are always at their desk." The previously high-traffic "Smoke Hole," a covered picnic bench area set aside as a designated smoking area, is largely empty.

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Few rules apply to electronic cigarettes

BURR RIDGE – Craig Rzepka has gotten a few dirty looks while using his electronic cigarettes. That is, he said, until the complainant realizes the vapor he’s exhaling smells more like dessert than cigarette smoke.

Depending on the day, the vapor exuded by Rzepka’s smoking device might smell like cherry, chocolate mint, or even blueberry waffles.

Despite the pleasant aroma, the devices aren’t allowed everywhere, including at Eddie Merlot’s restaurant in Burr Ridge, where Rzepka is a manager.

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Ex-Lung Association Chief Leases His Lungs to E-Cigarette Industry

'Science should triumph over opinion,' says past president of the American Lung Association

Senators and state attorneys general are clamoring for the Food and Drug Administration to quickly restrict the sale of electronic cigarettes, but the past president of the American Lung Association, Charles Connor, says e-cigarettes may be "the breakthrough product" that stomps out carcinogen-packed conventional cigarettes.

Connor, president and CEO of the lung association from 2008 to 2012, joined the Electronic Cigarette Industry Group (ECIG) on Thursday as a paid consultant. He will serve as a conduit between public health experts, regulators and the booming industry, which will have an estimated $1.7 billion in U.S. sales this year.

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Ecigarettes Trigger Big Sales and Lots of Questions

What started out as an online, underground fad is now a billion dollar business. Electronic cigarettes- often called ecigarettes, really aren't cigarettes at all because there's no tobacco, no flame and no smoke. But there are still a lot of questions about where they can be used and whether they pose a health risk.

Esmokeronline store manager Dave Allen says ecigarettes are becoming so popular that his business, which began as an internet site being run out of a bedroom, now has two brick and mortar stores with plans to open a third. Ecigarettes are designed to look like cigarettes, but they’re electronic. When inhaled, they convert a nicotine laced liquid into a vapor that when exhaled looks like smoke. It’s called vaping.

The liquids come in dozens of flavors like watermelon, bubblegum and caramel.  The devices themselves come in all kinds of fashionable and customizable styles. You can choose from neon pinks and greens, goth designs, bling designs or even a wood-toned executive look.  Allen says all those choices bring customers in the door.

“Or you get a lot of people coming in to just ask about how to get started in this whole thing and how it can help them quit smoking,” he says. Cheryl, a customer who declined to give her last name,  says that’s what brought her in. A smoker of 40-years, she says nothing she’s tried has brought her even close to quitting. “Chantix, hypnotism, acupressure…. Let’s think, yeah, been there done that,” she says.

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Should I take up e-cigarettes in order to stop smoking?

The medical community is divided on the matter of e-cigarettes, but they can't be as bad for you as the real thing.

Cheryl Cole, Robert Pattinson and Kate Moss have all been seen "vaping". Puffing on e-cigarettes, which produce vapour instead of smoke has been tried by up to 35% of smokers, according to the public health charity Ash (Action on Smoking and Health).

The number of UK users rose from 700,000 last year to 1.3 million this year. Smokers seem to use them on top off their normal cigarette intake, or to help them quit.

But are e–cigarettes much less damaging than the real thing? These battery-operated devices contain a cartridge filled with a liquid solution of nicotine, propylene glycol (used in special effects to create fog) and flavourings that range from traditional tobacco to candy floss. Puffing activates a heating element that vapourises the liquid in the cartridge, producing a mist that is inhaled.

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E-Cigarettes May Be as Effective as Patch to Help Smokers Quit

Taking a drag from an e-cigarette may be just as safe and effective as slapping on a nicotine patch for smokers struggling to quit, according to the first physician-run trial to compare the two products.

About one in 20 people who used either patches or e-cigarettes managed to quit completely six months after the test started, according to research published today in The Lancet. Meanwhile, users of electronic cigarettes -- battery-powered devices that deliver vaporized nicotine -- were more likely to have cut their use of the real thing in half even if they didn’t quit entirely.

Enlarge image

E-cigarettes have taken Europe and the U.S. by storm. In France, there are more than 1 million regular users, according to a government commissioned report published in May. Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The 657-person trial wasn’t big enough to draw definite conclusions about whether e-cigarettes are better than nicotine patches, researchers said. Still, the results should be a signal to the regulators in the U.S. and Europe now weighing restrictions on e-cigarettes, Peter Hajek, a professor of clinical psychology at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, said in a comment published alongside the results.

“Health professionals will now hopefully feel easier about recommending e-cigarettes to smokers, or at least condoning their use,” Hajek wrote.

Sales Growth

If European and U.S. regulators treat e-cigarettes as medical devices, yet leave cigarettes on general sale, tobacco makers “will retain their market monopoly, and we will never learn whether e-cigarettes would replace traditional cigarettes if allowed to continue evolving and competing with smoked tobacco on even terms,” he wrote.

The results will also be presented today at the European Respiratory Society’s annual meeting in Barcelona.

E-cigarettes have taken Europe and the U.S. by storm. In France, there are more than 1 million regular users, according to a government-commissioned report published in May. Sales worldwide will probably approach $2 billion by the end of this year and top $10 billion by 2017, according to a forecast by Wells Fargo & Co.

That success has brought scrutiny. The French government said it planned to ban e-cigarettes from public places. The U.K. has moved to treat them as medicines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may announce potential restrictions as soon as next month.

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Kids use of e-cigarettes increasing?

Health officials worry it will lead to regular smoking

From The Republic By Mike Stobbe:

ATLANTA — Children — like adults — are increasingly trying electronic cigarettes, according to the first large national study to gauge use by middle and high school students.

About 2 percent of the students said they'd used an e-cigarette in the previous month, according to a survey done last year. That was up from 1 percent in 2011.

More kids still smoke traditional cigarettes than the new electronic ones, and it's not clear how dangerous e-cigarettes are. It's also not clear from the report how many are using them on a daily or weekly basis.

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Some employers penalizing workers for e-cigarette use

By Steven Ross Johnson 

A growing number of employers, including UPS and Wal-Mart Stores, have decided that electronic cigarettes are an unhealthy habit rather than a stop-smoking tool and are imposing tobacco-use penalties on employees who use them.

Ivette Lopez, a spokeswoman for UPS, confirmed the company's health plan would begin charging a monthly fee of $150 in 2014 to employees who used tobacco products, including e-cigarettes that carry liquid nicotine.

“FDA testing has determined that various samples (of e-cigarettes) have carcinogens and other toxic chemicals,” Lopez said. “They're just not proven to be safe.”

Wal-Mart spokesman Randy Hargrove said the company considers e-cigarettes a form of tobacco use, and as such, charges employees who use them higher premiums than their nontobacco workers. “We have nontobacco and tobacco rights,” Hargrove said. He used the term “rights” for describing the two separate plans the company offers to tobacco and nontobacco users.

Hargrove declined to comment on how much more Wal-Mart employees who are tobacco users have to pay in premiums compared with nontobacco users. But some tobacco users around the country may pay as much as $2,000 a year extra because of the surcharge. 

Employers that have such policies on e-cigarettes, including Wal-Mart, generally offer exemptions from the surcharge if workers participate in smoking cessation programs, but switching to e-cigarettes is not considered by these firms as participation in such programs.

The percentage of employers that have tacked a monthly surcharge on premium contributions for employees identified as tobacco users has increased from 35% in 2012 to 42% in 2013, according to an analysis conducted by the benefits consultant firm Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health. That analysis projected the rate to rise to 62% by 2014.

Tower Watson Senior Consultant Michael Wood said he has advised clients who have asked what stand they should take on e-cigarettes to include them among products considered to be tobacco use.

“E-cigarettes have not been tested for safety,” Wood said. “Nobody knows what the ingredients really are and they have not been approved as a recognized and safe method for cessation like nicotine replacement therapy patches have or nicotine gum.”

Wood said no data have been collected yet on the number of companies deciding to include e-cigarette users among those hit with the premium surcharge. But he found among his clients that the initial reaction was in favor of penalizing them.

“They're just too many question marks about (e-cigarettes),” Wood said. “And if they're being manufactured by tobacco companies, they don't exactly have a stalwart track record of being forthcoming about what's exactly in their products.”

Employers application of surcharges to e-cigarette users is challenged by those who say standard cigarette smokers have been able to quit smoking through the use of e-cigarettes, which they claim are free of the harmful health effects of standard cigarettes.

“This is basically what I would call a harm reduction strategy,” said Michael Siegel, a public health professor at Boston University. He compared the use of e-cigarettes to help smokers quit tobacco with using methadone to wean addicts off heroin. “The whole idea of harm reduction is when you have a product that is not safe, but is a lot safer than the drug that's being used.”

Despite such claims, Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, said using e-cigarettes is still tobacco use and should be treated as such by employers. “Somebody could say if they smoked six cigarettes a day instead of 25 or 30, because they're smoking less and they're using it to taper down, they should not be penalized for using tobacco,” Darling said. “It's the same principle.”

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to come out with a proposed set of regulations on e-cigarettes in October. If the agency labels use of e-cigarettes as “tobacco use,” it could open the door for health insurers under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to charge users up to premiums as much as 50% higher than non-smokers.

Originaly published by Modern Healthcare

International Vapor Group CEO, Nick Molina, Interviewed About E-Cigarette Industry

International Vapor Group CEO, Nick Molina, Interviewed About E-Cigarette Industry on Bloomberg TV

Carina Ost

MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - August 28, 2013) - International Vapor Group (IVG), a leader in the electronic cigarette industry, announced today that CEO, Nick Molina, appeared on Bloomberg TV's "Money Moves" with Deirdre Bolton. The show focuses on innovative companies and IVG leads through manufacturing, distributing and marketing some of the biggest names of e-cigarettes, including South Beach Smoke, EverSmoke, NutriCigs, and new retail concept VaporZone.

Bolton began the interview by highlighting the explosive growth of the e-cigarette industry thanks to celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and companies like International Vapor Group.

The first question was focused on how Molina is preparing for FDA regulations. Molina noted that all International Vapor Group's brands, including South Beach Smoke, were well prepared and actually embraced FDA regulations. "We are diversifying our distribution through distributors, authorized retailers and our own brick and mortar stores in the confines that may be set by the regulators," said Molina. Molina reminded Bolton that the main issue was in age verification to prevent selling to minors and that is something IVG takes very seriously.

The company CEO was careful to note that e-cigarettes were a more convenient alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes and can tout things like no smoke and no ash.

When Bolton pressed on competition in the industry and how Molina is protecting his brands' position, he responded that innovation is key. The CEO added, "When you look at e-liquid, we are one of the few companies that manufacture it in the U.S. Most of my competitors manufacture their e-juice in China." This 100% USA made liquid nicotine juice is a huge differentiator across all International Vapor Group brands including: South Beach Smoke, NutriCigs, EverSmoke and a new retail concept called VaporZone.

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French e-cigarette study - media misrepresent facts

From Casaa:

An article published Monday in The Daily Mail announced "E-cigarettes are as harmful as cigarettes and could cause cancer, claimsstudy." The article stated that a French consumer magazine, 60 Millions Consommateurs (60 Million Consumers), had branded the devices as 'far from the harmless gadgets they're sold as by manufacturers'. Soon, news outlets from all over the world were reporting that "E-cigarettes may be carcinogenic" and "E-cigarettes as harmful as cigarettes."

According to the 60 Millions Consommateurs, which is published by the National Consumers' Institute (a government-funded organization somewhat similar to Consumer Reports in the U.S.), their researchers tested 10 e-cigarettes. This "report" comes after the French government announced in May this year its intent to ban electronic cigarette use in public places, which has outraged French e-cigarette consumers and sellers.

After the news broke, Clive Bates, former head of ASH-UK and a tobacco harm reduction advocate, announced on his blog that he had issued a complaint about the Daily Mail article to the Press Complaints Commission

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Editorial: Rational policy for e-cigarettes

From Granite Falls Advocate Tribune By MetroWest Daily News:

GHNS  —

 The growing popularityof e-cigarettes raises two issues for policymakers — one of them simple, the other more complicated.

E-cigarettes serve up nicotine extract in a vaporized form, cooking it without burning it. They deliver the same nicotine fix that comes from cigarettes, with the same smoking-like activity longtime smokers find so pleasurable, but there is no tobacco, no burning – and no smoke. A light vapor may be visible coming from users’ mouths, but it is odorless and, while there hasn’t been sufficient research to declare it harmless, its chemical composition bears no resemblance to secondhand smoke.

The first issue they pose involves the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, which is currently legal under state law.

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E-cigarettes: What’s Not to Like?

Aug 21, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

Many anti-smoking advocates have argued that electronic cigarettes don’t help smokers quit but merely prolong their addiction to nicotine. In other words, the hundreds of thousands of electronic cigarette users in the United States are smokers who, if only they stopped using e-cigarettes, would successfully quit smoking.

This is a ridiculous argument and those advancing it are not living in reality. The truth is that only 3 percent of smokers who want to quit will do so successfully in any given year. Thus, the vast majority of smokers who try to quit using electronic cigarettes are people who would not have otherwise quit.

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Arguments just a smokescreen for opponents of electronic cigarettes

Aug 16, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

Picture by Des Barry

The junior minister has written to Health Minister James Reilly and State’s chief medical officer, Dr Tony Holohan, asking them to “clarify the legal status” of the products “for which the health effects are uncertain.”

He claims to have been approached by people “worried” by what he calls “glamorous advertising”, and he cites a World Health Organisation conclusion that until these devices are deemed safe consumers should be strongly advised not to use any of these products. Kehoe wants “strong regulation of these devices”.

Kehoe is the first prominent Irish politician to fall in line with a pattern emerging throughout Europe, and other parts of the world, where electronic cigarettes seem to be upsetting people almost as much as the real things.

Denmark, Belgium and Norway have banned them, as have Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Singapore. Despite the absence of smoke — which means there can be no impact on non- smokers as caused by second hand smoke from real cigarettes — France is looking at banning their use in pubs and restaurants and other public places.

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Restaurants, bar owners allow diners to smoke electronic cigarettes

Aug 15, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

Once again diners are smoking cigarettes in restaurant dining rooms and around bars.

In a day and age of anti-smoking campaigns, the whole idea of smokers lighting up in public places seems completely out of place.

A few months ago when a diner lit up a cigarette at Arooga's Grille House & Sports Bar, a bartender immediately told them to snuff it out, said co-owner Gary Huether, Jr.

Only it turned out the person wasn't smoking a conventional cigarette, it was an electronic cigarette. While at first the idea of the devices created some confusion, patrons at the chain's restaurants are now permitted to smoke the cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes.

"It's not like it's bothersome to people. It doesn't smell. It doesn't bother anyone," Huether said.

In fact, he is considering selling the cigarettes in vending machines in the sports bars as test-run to see how well the devices sell.

Increasingly, smokers are putting out their Marlboros and Camels in favor of battery-fueled, rechargeable electronic cigarettes with names such as Smoke Stick and V2 Cigs.

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Harm of E-cigarettes?

Aug 14, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

Three Piece E-cigarette

There is no doubt that smoking is harmful. Tobacco is thought to kill nearly 6 million people every year, but do electronic cigarettes provide the answer to this assault on the nation’s health? As with conventional cigarettes, there is often an information deficit on the chemicals that electronic cigarettes contain and although some just use flavoured water vapour, others can contain a cocktail of chemicals including nicotine of varying concentrations and quality.

E-cigarettes have emerged onto the UK market relatively unregulated. In countries such as Brazil, Norway and Singapore they have been banned entirely or are only available as a regulated medicinal product. From 2016 the UK will follow New Zealand’s example and license e-cigarettes as a medicine so all e-cigarettes on the UK market will have to prove their quality, safety and effectiveness to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Is this really an appropriate response to a product which already appears to be used reasonably safely by 1.3 million people in the UK?

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e-Cigarettes: Electronic cigarette business is smoking

Aug 13, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

Cigarettes still satisfy a lot of smokers, but after years of doctors’ warnings and countless dollars spent on packs or cartons, some are ready for a change. What they’ve found is a cheaper alternative that’s giving the cigarette something to smolder about.

Patrick Gleason, owner of Three Days Smoke Shop in Gates andThree Days Vapor Lounge in Greece, said electronic cigarettes are becoming more popular among smokers trying to kick the habit. E-cigarettes use a battery-powered heating element and flavored “e-juice” laced with nicotine to create an inhalable water vapor that looks and feels like smoke.

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Bloomberg Is Trying To Snuff Out Your E-Cigs

Aug 9, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

E-cigs

The Bloomberg administration is quietly working to explicitly categorize electronic cigarettes as tobacco products and enact a sweeping ban on flavored e-cigs.

The details of the plan come from a newly leaked draft of three tobacco-related bills currently making their way through the City Council; one would raise the tobacco age to 21, while another would prohibit the display of cigarette advertising in stores. A third bill would prohibit the use of tobacco coupons, create a $10.50 price floor for cigarette packs, and increase the fines against those selling illegal cigarettes.

Initially the bills, drafted by the Health Department and introduced into the Council at the request of Mayor Bloomberg, were silent concerning the City's position on electronic cigarettes.

"The bills were written with no intention of addressing electronic cigarettes at all," Health Department Commissioner Thomas Farley told e-cigarette proponents [PDF] at a hearing in May.

The draft language reveals that this is no longer the case. While menthol and tobacco flavored e-cigarettes would ostensibly remain available at convenience stores, the burgeoning flavored e-cig market would ironically be relegated to "tobacco bars," of which there are very few in New York City—mostly because they must have been in existence before December 31, 2001.

"This is a de facto ban on electronic cigarettes,"

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Starbucks, other businesses ban e-cigarettes

Aug 3, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

E-cigarettes Banned

A wispy, white cloud swirls in the air…but is it smoke?

“We’re exhaling water vapor, not carcinogenic smoke,” said Alan Rogers.

Some people, like Alan, have traded in their traditional smokes for electronic cigarettes.

Rogers added, “It tastes a lot better than tobacco. It feels a lot better than tobacco.”

They claim it’s not the same as a cigarette, but Starbucks disagrees. In June the coffee company implemented a new policy that does not allow smoking within 25 feet of their stores.

Rogers added, “The stigma with smoking comes from the fact that it’s unhealthy, not just for you, but for the people around you. With the vaporizers, we’re not using carcinogens. We’re not exhaling anything that’s dangerous to anyone. They’re attaching a stigma to it that doesn’t need to be attached to it.”

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E-cigs ad blitz goes unregulated

Aug 3, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

From News.com.au:

COMPANIES vying for a stake in the fast-growing e-cigs business are reviving the decades-old marketing tactics the tobacco industry used to hook generations of people on regular cigarettes.

They're using cab-top and bus stop displays, sponsoring race cars and events, and encouraging smokers to "rise from the ashes'' and take back their freedom in slick TV commercials featuring celebrities like TV personality Jenny McCarthy.

The Food and Drug Administration plans to set marketing and product regulations for electronic cigarettes in the near future. But for now, almost anything goes.

"Right now it's the wild, wild west,'' Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered devices made of plastic or metal that heat a liquid nicotine solution, creating vapor that users inhale. Users get their nicotine without the thousands of chemicals, tar or odor of regular cigarettes. And they get to hold something shaped like a cigarette, while puffing and exhaling something that looks like smoke.

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Hard to find e-cigarette downsides

Aug 2, 2013 by Kelly Kaderabek

Last week, a courteous man turned to me in a crowd and said, “I hope this doesn’t offend you,” and “puffed” on an e-cigarette, exhaling a plume of vapor that dissolved into the air. Although the end glowed like a regular cigarette, there was no secondhand smoke.

As a non-smoker — amid a growing debate — e-cigarettes inspire my interest. Are they the answer to cigarette addiction and secondhand smoke?

There was no tar and no smell, and they seem safer than regular cigarettes. They are free of the hundreds of additives, chemicals, smoke and carbon monoxide plaguing regular cigarettes. As a delivery system for nicotine (the addictive part of regular cigarettes), they mimic smoking and help smokers ease off their addiction to cigarettes, physically and behaviorally.

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