From: RegBlog (University of Pennsylvania/Penn Program on Regulation)
Lauren-Kelly Devine
Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, provide a water vapor-powered alternative to traditional smoking that may help users drop the unhealthy habit. But, in light of the recent finding that use among middle and high school students is rapidly increasing, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has indicated that a new regulatory regime to manage these novel products more effectively is on the horizon.
From: The Spectator
Rod Liddle
What strategy should we adopt to cope with the British Medical Association? Its members kill more people each year than President Assad — 72,000 is the latest estimate, from the House of Commons health select committee. Perhaps it is at last time to sit down and negotiate with them, much though this will stick in the craw, like a misplaced scalpel. We say that organisations like the IRA and the BMA will ‘never win’ and that we will ‘never negotiate’ – but this is empty rhetoric, because we always end up doing so. If we could just reduce by 10 per cent the number of people killed every year through medical errors it would at least bring the figure below the combined annual deaths attributed to smoking and drinking and obesity. That’s something to aim for, isn’t it? Attempt to find some common ground with the more moderate elements and then persuade them to put down their weapons. It could work, it could work.
From: The Hill
By Julian Hattem
A group of House Democrats is calling on the Obama administration to issue new rules for cigars and electronic cigarettes.
In a letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday, the lawmakers asked regulators “to act quickly” with new rules for the products, over which the federal government currently has little oversight.
“Manufacturers of e-cigarettes are taking advantage of this regulatory loophole to target children,” wrote Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.). “As a result, some e-cigarette makers are producing products with kid-friendly flavors such as ‘Cherry Crush’ and ‘Cookies & Cream Milkshake.’ ”
Dan Morgan
CNBC News
Stop—a ban on menthol cigarettes—in the name of the law!
A number of current and former top-ranking law enforcement officials from the tobacco-producing South have blasted a potential menthol cigarette ban as the Food and Drug Administration weighs restrictions on those products, contending that prohibition will spur smuggling, counterfeit cigs and other organized crime.
Their comments to the FDA mirror arguments being made by Big Tobacco companies that have cited the specter of a menthol black market.
From: The Washington Post/Post Editorial
IS THE rising popularity of electronic cigarettes a public health problem or a way for smokers to get their nicotine in a safer form? Right now, e-cigarettes appear to be both.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week announced that the number of youth who have tried e-cigarettes doubled between 2011 and 2012. One-tenth of high school students inhaled the devices’ vapor last year. About three-quarters of those who admitted using e-cigarettes currently also smoked traditional cigarettes. But roughly 160,000 students in the National Youth Tobacco Survey last year said they had tried only e-cigarettes.
Editor’s Note: The comments of NACS The Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing in response to the FDA’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on menthol in cigarettes are attached here. The Conclusion of NACS comments to FDA are reprinted below.
NACS encourages the FDA to undertake a thorough analysis of the potential for an illicit market, its potential size and the degree to which it would impact public health and jobs. We hope that the FDA will not be satisfied with simply receiving responses as part of the ANPRM process. Instead, we urge the FDA to assemble the responses of NACS and others to develop a robust research agenda into the existence today of illicit markets, the impact on youth smoking, the ingredients in counterfeit cigarettes and other issues.
The CRE website was attacked with the result that had we not pulled down the website we would have risked loosing content.
We appreciate your many emails and we are working to continue to install state of the art early warning systems. We must , however, add that we have only had two major outages in more than a decade of operation.
We are particularly concerned that some of you could not use the website for the preparation of regulatory filings.
The comments attached here were submitted to the FDA’s Menthol ANPRM docket by Multinational Business Services, Inc. MBS explained in their comments, based on the peer reviewed literature, that
In addition to harming younger people, the contraband cigarette trade also disproportionately impacts lower income and non-white citizens.
MBS concluded, in part, that the likely impacts of a menthol ban would include:
• More criminals selling cigarettes to children – contraband dealers don’t adhere to age restrictions;
• More contraband cigarettes with extreme levels of lead, cadmium and other toxics as well as potentially higher levels of nicotine; and
From: Los Angeles Times
By Adolfo Flores and Marisa Gerber
Saturday was supposed to be a big day for Billy DePalma.
He envisioned a ribbon cutting and then a steady stream of new customers perusing colorful, pen-shaped electronic cigarettes behind glass cases. They’d gawk at his impressive selection of liquid nicotine — flavors like Hubba Bubba Grape, Gummy Bear and Orange Cream Soda — as he fielded questions about the fast-growing trend of “vaping,” so-called because users inhale the vapor produced when the liquid is heated.