A Public Participation Forum for the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and its Federal Advisory Committee (TPSAC)

From: Forbes

Yanzhong Huang, Contributor

Amidst the growing global regulation on tobacco use and rising public awareness about the hazards of smoking, e-cigarettes are becoming a new, emerging industry. Invented by a Chinese medical researcher about one decade ago, electronic cigarettes are battery powered devices that allow users simulate smoking by vaporizing liquid nicotine (among other additives), but in fact have no tobacco. Since being first released on the consumer market in 2005, the global e-cigarette market has been growing rapidly. In the United States, e-cigarette sales have grown at an annual rate of 115 percent in the 2009-12 period. It is estimated that global e-cigarette market could increase to $10 billion by 2017. Some analysts even predict that e-cigarette use will eclipse that of combustible cigarettes in ten years. Over 95 percent of the e-cigarettes worldwide are produced in one place: Shenzhen, China.

From: Business Insider

Sarah Boseley, The Guardian

E-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine patches and gum in helping people to quit smoking, according to a study that challenges the negative views of some public health experts.

The issue of e-cigarettes has become a public health battleground, alarming those who think that their marketing and use in public places where smoking is banned risks re-normalizing tobacco.

Supporters say the vast majority of smokers are using e-cigarettes to kick their tobacco habit and that the health consequences of nicotine use without the tar from cigarettes appear, as yet, to be far less of a problem.

From: The New York Times

To the Editor:

The emerging technology of electronic cigarettes poses important questions for public health officials. Much remains to be learned about the risks of e-cigarettes to health, as well as their possible benefits, particularly for those smokers who have not been able to quit using deadly conventional cigarettes. All of us in public health are concerned about any use of e-cigarettes by children and adolescents.

From: US News & World Report/Opinion

It makes no sense to tax e-cigarettes like their cancer-causing alternative.

By Alex Brill and Alan D. Viard

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration issued a proposal to regulate electronic cigarettes as a tobacco product. While public health and industry experts debate this much-anticipated regulation, a handful of Senate Democrats are quietly promoting the pernicious idea of extending tobacco taxes to e-cigarettes. Taxing e-cigarettes would threaten public health by penalizing a product that holds the promise of luring people away from the traditional cigarettes that have caused so much death and disease.

From: Forbes

Jacob Sullum

The first time the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) moved to regulate electronic cigarettes, it tried to ban them. Last week it took a different approach that may ultimately have a similar effect. Much will depend on whether the FDA irrationally decides to treat e-cigarettes as a menace to public health or recognizes them as a lifesaving alternative to conventional cigarettes.