Jump to full article: Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, 2009-06-06
Author: DAVID RESS AND JOHN REID BLACKWELL TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERS
Intro: Federal regulators are cracking down on a cigarette substitute that uses technology similar to devices that Philip Morris USA researchers have focused on in recent years.
Meanwhile, Virginia Commonwealth University is studying how much nicotine -- the addictive compound in tobacco -- the "electronic cigarettes" deliver, under a grant from the National Cancer Institute to look at nicotine products.
Since the start of the year, the Food and Drug Administration has issued "Import Alerts" advising staff working alongside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers that they can seize "electronic cigarettes" made by three Chinese companies, federal court records show.
The FDA has refused to let at least 17 shipments of electronic cigarettes into the country, saying they are unapproved drug-delivery devices, spokeswoman Karen Riley said. . . .
Jimi Jackson, owner of the No Smoke Virginia store on North Third Street in Richmond, thinks the agency is just trying to protect the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, since it already allows other nicotine products and doesn't control tobacco.
"Of course it's safer," he said. "They're trying to ban it when we know tobacco kills people every day . . .
"I was a smoker, smoked from when I was 15'til I was 52. I found this product and I have not touched a tobacco product since" last November, he said. "I tried everything, the gum, the patches, the pills, but nothing worked. This does because it gives you that hand-to-mouth thing -- 90 percent of smoking is mental addiction."
A sign in his store window promises: "Add 13 to 15 years to the life of a smoker. Safe for the smoker and those around them." . . .
"We're not a smoking-cessation device, we're not marketing it as a healthy alternative . . . this is an alternative for addicted smokers," said Matt Salmon, president of the Electronic Cigarette Association, a trade group.
Richard A. Daynard, a law professor and tobacco control expert at Northeastern University in Boston, said the devices "encourage people to keep smoking. . . . They reduce the incentive to quit."
Daynard is also concerned that electronic cigarettes, which often use sweet flavorings in their cartridges, will encourage nonsmokers, particularly young people, to experiment. . . .
At VCU's Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies, Thomas Eissenberg is leading a study that began in 2004 of "potential reduced exposure products" for tobacco users. The study includes the electronic cigarette, nicotine tablets and snus
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