Center for Tobacco Products News

From: The Wall Street Journal

By Gabriele Steinhauser

BRUSSELS—The growing popularity of electronic cigarettes has divided regulators and antismoking activists just as Europe gets ready to tighten its tobacco laws.

European Union health ministers, meeting Friday, are expected to wave through proposals that would classify most e-cigarettes—battery-powered devices that turn nicotine-laced liquids into vapor—as medicinal products.

That would subject the popular alternatives to regular cigarettes to extensive health testing and, in some countries, require that they be sold only in pharmacies.

But the European Parliament, which has equal say on the new rules, is leaning toward much looser regulation following months of aggressive lobbying by e-cigarette producers, vendors and users.

Indeed, the split comes just as big money is moving into the e-cigarette industry, which is taking off on both sides of the Atlantic.

Earlier this month, a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs pumped $75 million into Arizona-based NJOY Inc., while big tobacco companies, including Malboro-maker Altria Group Inc., have launched their own electronic devices.

At the moment, e-cigarettes aren’t regulated at the European level. Some countries have no curbs at all, others have caps on nicotine content or age restrictions. But even those rules are often ignored as most e-cigarettes and the liquids they vaporize, known as e-liquids, are sold online.

The situation is similar in the U.S., where the Food and Drug Administration is expected to announce new regulation for e-cigarettes soon.

The divisions between regulators in Europe are mirrored among antismoking activists and researchers.

Although few doubt that e-cigarettes are less harmful than regular cigarettes, many public-health researchers, including the World Health Organization, warn that little is known about the consequences of their long-term use. There are fears that their growing popularity will roll back restrictions on puffing in public, while sweet flavorings such as strawberries-and-cream or cinnamon-latte could attract teenagers and children.

“I see the same rhetoric as with light cigarettes,” which were marketed in the 1970s as healthier than regular-strength cigarettes but turned out to be just as harmful, said Charlotta Pisinger, an associate professor at the Research Center for Prevention and Health in Copenhagen, who has been studying tobacco control for the past 15 years.

Opponents of stricter regulation point out that cigarettes remain freely available, and, according to EU estimates, some 700,000 Europeans die from smoking-related illnesses every year.

“Those thousands of people who are addicted to nicotine, you leave them in the hands of the tobacco industry,” Jean-François Etter, a professor researching tobacco dependency at the University of Geneva, told members of the European Parliament at a hearing last month.

According to draft documents seen by The Wall Street Journal, EU health ministers on Friday will seek to regulate sales of e-liquids that contain more than 2 milligram of nicotine per milliliter, down from the 4 mg in the original proposal. That would put them in line with other nicotine-replacement products like gum and patches.

Officials involved in the talks say that those curbs have seen much less pushback among member states than the bans on menthol and “slim” cigarettes and bigger warning labels that are also part of the tobacco proposals—and opposed by the big tobacco companies.

The e-cigarette industry may have gotten off to a later start, but it is having an impact nevertheless at the European Parliament.

Even relatively small producers like U.K.-based Totally Wicked have hired firms to help get their message across, including sending an e-cigarette to every lawmaker and targeting tweets at Brussels-based journalists.

Other producers and vendors have used their messaging boards to whip up support from users, instructing them to send emails as well as Twitter and Facebook messages to their representatives.

“There’s a very aggressive attitude,” says Linda McAvan, the Parliament’s lead negotiator on the new tobacco laws and a member of the U.K. Labour Party, who says that along with hundreds of emails she has also received threatening phone calls.

Ms. McAvan, who’s in charge of drafting the Parliament’s report on the law, says she believes regulating e-cigarettes as medicinal devices would go too far, but she is in favor of stricter quality control and banning flavorings that don’t mimic the taste of regular cigarettes. Other lawmakers favor an even softer touch.

On the marketing front, e-cigarette makers have also started emulating tactics once used by tobacco companies. They sponsor medical studies and testimonials from doctors, and run television spots advertising the use of e-cigarettes indoors or in the presence of children, since they do not result in second-hand smoke.

“This is really undermining all the progress we have made in de-normalizing smoking,” says Dr. Pisinger.