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Star Scientific plans to introduce a new product 

Star Scientific Inc. plans to introduce a nutraceutical in 2010 that would help adult smokers maintain a nicotine-free metabolism.

The Petersburg-based company announced today that CigRx, developed by its subsidiary Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals, will be marketed and sold in partnership with inVentiv Health, Inc. . . .

The product, a dietary supplement, does not contain nicotine. It would be taken orally like a throat lozenge, dissolved and swallowed, according to Sara Machir, Star's vice president of communications and investor relations. CigRX would be directed at people who are trying to quit or who already are abstaining from smoking, she said.

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Star Scientific Plans Worldwide Marketing and Sales of CigRx(TM) Nutraceutical 

Star Scientific, Inc. (Nasdaq: STSI) announced today that the company plans to introduce the CigRx(TM) nutraceutical product developed by its subsidiary, Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals, for worldwide marketing and sales in partnership with inVentiv Health, Inc. (Nasdaq: VTIV). inVentiv Health offers a complete range of commercialization solutions for every stage of the product lifecycle, in a range of healthcare categories that includes nutraceutical products. The company has marketing and sales capabilities in 40 countries around the globe. Jonnie R. Williams, Star's CEO, stated, "Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the world. However, the global cigarette business, which now exceeds $300 billion, continues to grow. Our goal is to make CigRx(TM) available to adult smokers worldwide who wish to maintain a nicotine-free metabolism." Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals will be responsible for the manufacturing of CigRx(TM), and the company anticipates that inVentiv Health will be involved in the product marketing and sales, with a focus on product education for physicians and health care professionals, as well as consumers.

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Wellstone Filter Sciences, Inc. Assigned New Trading Symbol  

Wellstone Filters Sciences, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: WFSN), the leading modified risk cigarette filter company, is pleased to announce that it has changed its trading symbol to WFSN.OB due to a name change from Wellstone Filters, Inc. to Wellstone Filter Sciences, Inc.

Wellstone changed its name to more accurately reflect the company's focus on Reduced Exposure Products (REPs). REPs are referred to in the recently enacted Family Tobacco Act of 2009 as Modified Risk Tobacco Products.

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The truth about electronic cigarettes  

The country that gave us killer dog food, corrosive drywall, lead-based toys, and poisonous toothpaste. Now has a new surprise for you. It's a mystery chemical...completely unregulated. You buy it, vaporize it, and suck it into your lungs.

And it's right here in Tucson where some fear your kids could get hold of it. Nine on your side investigator Dan Spindle takes a look.

Smokers, lighting up in the middle of the Foothills Mall, it raises more than a few eyebrows...... But what looks like smoke, is actually a vapor ... Like the kind you might see coming out of a fog machine.

This vapor is from the latest electronic cigarette to hit the market which has the green light to be sold at malls all over Arizona. These e-cigarettes save smokers the smell and high prices of traditional smokes.

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MOHEN: Renewing an old addiction 

Envision five years from now teachers telling students not to vaporize tobacco.

However unlikely this scenario may seem now, vaporized cigarettes will become a well-known and warned-against product in the near future. . . .

Hardly any tests or evidence have been conducted on the smokeless cigarettes, establishing a strong caution amongst health officials of the product, but no regulation from the FDA.

With its increasing popularity, the FDA holds a responsibility to the American people to conduct greater research into the E-Cigarette and the true effects it has on users.

Strict regulations must be imposed on the device to prevent its trendy appeal from influencing the young and old alike who do not need to become hooked on such an equally, if not more, addictive version of the common cigarette.

According to a representative from ECigarettesChoice.com, Electronic Cigarettes are unavailable to minors across the country as they contain nicotine.

However, this does not mean kids and teens are unable to get their hands on the tobacco gadget.

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• New Study Reveals Quitting Smoking is Good but Switching to Low-risk Nicotine Products is Usually Better 

Prof. Carl V. Phillips, just published in Harm Reduction Journal, shows that for most smokers, immediately switching to a low-risk alternative will lower their risk of dying from their habit more than quitting eventually, even if they use the smoke-free product for the rest of their lives. . . .

Professor Phillips is an epidemiologist and health policy researcher, journal editor, popular educator, and consultant. He and his work group are leading advocates of tobacco harm reduction, and he advises and works with many other organizations who are trying to promote it, some of which are companies that hope to profit from selling low-risk nicotine products. The www.TobaccoHarmReduction.org research group at the University of Alberta School of Public Health is partially supported by an unrestricted (completely hands-off) grant from U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company. No funder, company, or other organization played any role in initiating, designing, or conducting this research.

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• Wellstone in Conference Call With FDA | Business Wire 

Wellstone Filters Sciences, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: WFSN), the leading modified risk cigarette filter company, is pleased to announce that it participated in the FDA's conference call regarding the guidance document entitled "Registration and Product Listing for Owners and Operators of Domestic Tobacco Product Establishments."

During the conference call, Wellstone's CEO L.J. Hand focused on the need for clarification of registration by companies such as Wellstone who participate in only part of the manufacturing process. Wellstone is a filter technology company dedicated to research, discovery and development of methods and compounds that remove a wide range of toxins and carcinogens without impairing consumer acceptance.

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Anti-Smoking Groups Attack the Electronic Cigarette 

What started as a noble cause with lobbying groups like the American Cancer Society, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights and Mother's Against Drunk Driving, is now morphing into a multi headed monster as they became a victim of their own success. Both have campaigned and succeeded in getting stricter laws on drunk drivers and smoking which most all of us applaud. They don't seem to be satisfied with just protecting the victims any more. They are now taking aim at personal freedom as they move to control your behavior even when your behavior in public or private is not harmful to anyone else. . . .

Several anti-smoking groups are going after this product to be included in bans instead of embracing it as a better product than tobacco cigarettes. These groups may be following the misguided propaganda being put out by special interest organizations that have an allegiance to the big business of pharmaceuticals and tobacco. The electronic cigarette produces no second-hand combustion smoke because there is no combustion. The tobacco companies don't make e cigarettes and probably don't care much for their existence.

This unconscionable behavior from "people who are supposed to care" makes Kyle Newton, owner of eCigarettesChoice.com, take a step back in disbelief. "I lost my mom, her sister and my grandmother to cigarette related deaths within the last six years. I just wished e cigarettes could have been available a long time ago. If I didn't believe in this product, I wouldn't be so adamant about promoting it."

One organization that shows no particular allegiance to special interest money is Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). In their October 2009 briefing, ASH in the United Kingdom released a favorable position on electronic cigarettes which is the exact opposite position taken by a few the control groups in the United States.

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• Vaporized Propylene Glycol, a Key Ingredient in Electronic Cigarettes, May Prevent Pneumonia, Influenza, and Other Respiratory Diseases 

The ingredients in most electronic cigarette cartridges manufactured today include propylene glycol, nicotine, and a flavoring. The 1942 study by Dr. Oswald Hope Robertson of the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital showed that Propylene glycol, the most prevalent ingredient in electronic cigarette cartridges, was found to possibly prevent pneumonia, influenza, and other respiratory diseases when vaporized and inhaled.

Additional studies in monkeys and other animals were undertaken to determine long-term effects, especially the potential for accumulation in the lungs. After a few months of treatment, no ill effects were discovered.

Smokers can enjoy all the engrained habits of smoking; hand-to-mouth, throat hit, visual smoke, nicotine delivery, with none of the negative effects of inhaling the dangerous smoke

Now the electronic cigarette may not only help individuals to reduce and quit smoking regular cigarettes, but it also may help to prevent some of the respiratory diseases caused by the harmful "cancer sticks". Additionally with the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus expected to cause a record number of deaths this season there is no better time for smokers to cut back or quit with the aid of the electronic cigarette.

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Where There's Smokeless Cigarettes, There's Fire  

USA Today reports that Electronic cigarettes are opening a new front in the tobacco wars as state and local lawmakers try to restrict the product, which may allow users to circumvent smoking bans.

The battery-powered devices are made up of cartridges containing nicotine, flavoring and chemicals. They turn nicotine, which is addictive, into a vapor that is inhaled. Users say they're "vaping," not smoking.

E-cigarettes are used by at least a half-million Americans, Matt Salmon, head of the Electronic Cigarette Association, Washington, told the newspaper.

"People who smoke ought to have better alternatives, because some can't quit," he said. His father, a longtime smoker, died last month of cancer and emphysema.

Public health officials question the safety of e-cigarettes.

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EDITORIAL: Smokeless cigarettes in need of more tests 

BACKGROUND: E-cigarettes, which convert nicotine directly into vapor, are becoming quite popular these days.

CONCLUSION: But the jury is still out on whether these smokeless cigarettes are any safer than the more traditional version. . . .

The e-cigarette industry's effort to block FDA intervention suggests it has something to hide, even if that's not the case. If the products really are a safe alternative to cigarettes, the industry should welcome the FDA's interest.

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• Cancer institute studies smokeless tobacco 

Is using smokeless tobacco just as harmful as smoking, or is it potentially a safer option?

Getting a definitive answer to that question has proved elusive despite centuries of medical research.

Resolving the issue, and providing clarity amid the heated rhetoric, has prompted a new series of medical studies sponsored by the National Cancer Institute.

One set focuses on whether such smokeless products as snus and the dissolvable products from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., provide "a truly less-harmful alternative to conventional tobacco products, both at the individual and population level," according to the institute's grant application.

Another set, including one that was started Sept. 1 at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, is aimed at developing strategy to encourage reduced use or even quitting smokeless-tobacco products. Wake Forest is receiving a $2.9 million grant for its study.

Maura Payne, a spokeswoman for Reynolds, said that the company supports "well-designed studies" that could help develop science-based, tobacco-harm-reduction strategies." Payne said that Reynolds does not promote its new smokeless products as a way to quit smoking.

The institute said that the studies are necessary because "previous tobacco-use reduction efforts pursued by the public-health community were disadvantaged by incomplete knowledge and methods for evaluating the health impact of modified tobacco products."

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• Designing A Safer Cigarette 

What if we had a less dangerous cigarette for people who can't kick the habit, letting them keep on smoking but stay alive longer while they're doing it? It's available in Canada, France, Russia and a few places in Asia. The 350 million smokers in China may also get their hands on it. The U.S.? Forget it.

It's another perverse result of the 1998 settlement that had tobacco companies--and, ultimately, their customers--chipping in to balance state budgets and pay for lawyers' yachts. The deal turned the big tobacco companies into a cartel and locked in their market shares. The state attorneys general who put together the $206 billion agreement ward off potential competitors so the money keeps flowing to their states. One way to fend off rivals: pounce on any company making health claims. How convenient for Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds.

In this case the target is an eight-year-old Hong Kong biotech company, Filligent. Its MicroBlue filter blocks many of the toxins that make a cigarette dangerous but doesn't disturb the ingredients that give it flavor and produce that seductive though addictive nicotine buzz. "For years the public health community has just assumed that the smoke from cigarettes is all bad," says Scott Ballin, director for the Alliance for Health, Economic & Agriculture Development in Washington, D.C., which is funded by economic development groups in tobacco-growing states and has been critical of the settlement. "Now advances in basic science have given us a much more nuanced understanding of what's in that stuff--what's harmful and what's mainly benign."

Fewer than 5% of the people who try to stop smoking succeed for as long as five years, says Filligent Chief Executive Melissa Mowbray-d'Arbela. So given the futility of getting smokers to end their addiction, tobacco experts such as Dr. Judith Mackay of the World Lung Foundation in New York say Filligent's product could be the next best thing to quitting.

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EDITORIAL: Smoking out e-cigarettes  

E-cigarettes might help smokers quit by providing the long inhale -- and nicotine fix -- of smoking. Because the devices are smokeless, people could potentially light up at a restaurant or on an airplane without breaking any laws. But with their candy flavors and their image as relatively harmless, e-cigarettes provide a new way to hook customers -- including teenagers -- on nicotine. That could conversely lead to more smoking. Meanwhile, the long-term effects of breathing nicotine and propylene glycol haven't been determined -- not to mention diethylene glycol, an ingredient in antifreeze that the FDA has found in many e-cigarettes.

The agency wants sales of the devices halted until, as with other drug products, animal studies and clinical trials determine whether they are indeed safe. We agree. A check of Internet chat sites shows that the devices are regularly used by smokers trying to quit tobacco. Should the courts rule against the FDA, Congress will have to step in. With the ever-expanding peddling of nicotine in the United States, the public needs federal oversight of attempts to advance an addictive drug.

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• Firestorm over smokeless cigarette  

Electronic cigarettes are opening a new front in the tobacco wars as state and local lawmakers try to restrict the product, which may allow users to circumvent smoking bans.

The battery-powered device is made up of a cartridge containing nicotine, flavoring and chemicals. It turns nicotine, which is addictive, into a vapor that is inhaled. Users say they're "vaping," not smoking.

E-cigarettes are used by at least a half-million Americans, says Matt Salmon, head of the Electronic Cigarette Association.

"People who smoke ought to have better alternatives, because some can't quit," he says. His father, a longtime smoker, died last week of cancer and emphysema.

Public health officials question the safety of e-cigarettes. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates tobacco and nicotine replacement devices, says the e-cigarettes it tested had carcinogens. E-cigarette distributors have filed a lawsuit challenging the FDA's authority.

"It's a new frontier. We don't know what the dangers are," says John Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health, an anti-smoking group.

"We're actively investigating these companies and their products," says Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Other actions:

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