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February 27th, 2017:

Tobacco Companies Taking Over the E-Cigarette Industry

For decades, cigarettes cornered the market on nicotine.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tobacco-companies-taking-over-the-e-cigarette-industry_us_58b48e02e4b0658fc20f98d0

People who decided to take up smoking chose the cigarette over any other nicotine delivery system available, including pipes and chewing tobacco.

This trend held true for generations of smokers, but in the past 10 years the cigarette industry has seen a small but significant sea change.

Electronic cigarettes are catching fire with an entirely new generation of smokers.

And tobacco companies have taken notice.

“It’s the most disruptive change in the tobacco market,” Jeff Drope, PhD, vice president of economic and health policy research for the American Cancer Society (ACS), told Healthline. “There is no parallel.”

A smoking hot market

Electronic nicotine delivery systems are not new.

The devices have been around in some form or another for nearly 30 years.

This current iteration of e-cigarettes made its way to the United States market by way of China.

However, the recent explosion of e-cigarette popularity caught the attention of tobacco companies a few years ago.

What was once a market populated by small independent manufacturers has given way to Big Tobacco.

And this move has anti-smoking organizations concerned.

“This is part of an ongoing strategy in the Big Tobacco playbook,” Erika Sward, assistant vice president of national advocacy for the American Lung Association (ALA), told Healthline.

The popular brand VUSE, is owned by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company, a subsidiary of the tobacco giant Reynolds America.

British American Tobacco (BAT), the largest tobacco company in the Europe, launched Vype around four years ago.

Altria (formerly Phillip Morris) owns MarkTen.

Lorillard paid $135 million for Blu, but when R.J. Reynolds bought that tobacco company in 2015, its e-cigarette brand was sold to Imperial Tobacco, a company in the United Kingdom.

Today, global e-cigarette sales amount to around $5 billion a year.

That compares to the $92 million cigarette market, but the e-cigarette industry is expected to grow 24 percent per year through 2018.

“Big Tobacco is now dominating in dollars in sales,” Drope said.

Firms funding e-cigarette research

The tobacco industry appears so confident in the technology that they are now funding research that looks at the health effects of e-cigarettes vs. regular cigarettes.

A recent study, funded by British American Tobacco used 3-D modeling to compare the inflammation in the lungs from e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes.

The study, published in Applied In Vitro Toxicology, showed a dramatic drop in lung inflammation with e-cigarettes.

“Researchers reported changes in the expression levels of 123 genes when reconstituted lung tissue was exposed to cigarette smoke, compared to only two genes that could be confirmed following exposure to e-cigarette aerosols,” according to a press release.

These finding are similar to what initial research has uncovered about e-cigarettes. A small batch of studies do suggest that they pose less of a health threat than regular cigarettes.

“From a cancer perspective, the levels of carcinogens are lower,” Drope said.

BAT did not provide comment for this story. R.J. Reynolds also declined to be interviewed, but did provide a statement:

“We believe that vapor products and other noncombustible tobacco products may present less risk to adult tobacco consumers than smoking cigarettes. Although these products have not been used by consumers for a sufficient period of time to develop definitive scientific conclusions about their level of risk reduction, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that these products may present less risk than smoking. While some studies report that there may be health risks associated with these products, those risks appear to be lower than the risks of smoking cigarettes.”

Health concerns abound

There are many unknowns about the health hazards of e-cigarettes, and that’s what has groups such as the ALA and ACS concerned.

“Being less deadly than regular cigarettes does not make your product less safe to use,” Sward said.

First up is the use of aerosol in e-cigarettes and the impact on the body’s pulmonary and cardiovascular systems.

“We don’t know the long-term effects,” Drope said.

Aside from the health issues, the biggest concern about e-cigarettes are the users themselves.

The U.S. Surgeon General said in a report that, “among young adults 18-24 years of age, e-cigarette use more than doubled from 2013 to 2014. As of 2014, more than one-third of young adults had tried e-cigarettes.”

Sward said the trend is troubling for a number of reasons.

“There is a strong association between e-cigs, cigarettes, and other burned tobacco products by young people,” she said “There is not a safe level of nicotine use for kids until the age of 24.”

In December 2016, the FDA did establish some rules governing the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes. They can’t be sold to anyone under 18. Buyers need to show proof of identification. E-cigarettes also can’t be sold in vending machines (unless in an adult-only facility), and they can’t be distributed for free.

Both the ALA and ACS would like the FDA to impose even stricter rules, such as warning labels and an advertising ban in magazines and billboards.

“Kids are very much reacting to the advertising,” Drope said.

Sward said the flavors are another big draw to kids and the FDA hasn’t done anything to regulate those.

Both say it’s hard to tell what will happen around e-cigarettes, now that there is a new administration in the White House. Drope believes a lot depends on where the e-cigarette market industry expects to be in the next few years.

“I can imagine them being a niche market. I can see them being just another product,” he said. “If tobacco industry decides to throw their might behind it, I could really see them taking off.”

By Carolyn Abate

Tobacco control: saving lives and driving development

Tobacco use poses an unparalleled health and economic burden worldwide. A new study found that the diseases caused by smoking account for US$ 422 billion in health care expenditures annually, representing almost 6% of global spending on health. Smoking causes close to 6 million deaths per year – more than the deaths from HIV/AIDs, TB and Malaria combined. And the total economic cost of smoking after including productivity losses from death and disability amounts to more than US$ 1.4 trillion per year- equivalent in magnitude to 1.8% of the world’s annual GDP.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/health/tobacco-control-saving-lives-and-driving-development

Globally, the public health and economic burden of tobacco is increasingly carried by low and middle income countries rather than high income ones. Within low and middle countries, the burden falls hardest onto the poor and vulnerable populations who can least afford the care. While tobacco use has been declining in most high income countries, it has been stable or rising in many low and middle income countries. Currently, over 80% of global deaths from cancer, diabetes, heart and lung disease occur in low and middle income countries, and this disparity is likely to grow based on current tobacco use patterns. Additionally, coping with tobacco related disease takes attention and resources away from other urgent health priorities, limiting capacity to respond to epidemic diseases, build sustainable health systems, and provide people with basic health services. A community that reduces its tobacco use is a healthier and more prosperous one.

These themes are the focus of a new monograph by the National Cancer Institute of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, in collaboration with the World Health Organization: The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control. The monograph finds that tobacco control measures are highly cost-effective and do not harm economies. Though progress is being made in controlling the global tobacco epidemic, existing measures have not yet been used to their full potential. ‎Applying evidence-based interventions, such as significant tobacco tax and price increases, comprehensive smoke-free policies, and bans on all tobacco product advertising, promotion, and sponsorship would reduce the demand for tobacco products and significantly reduce the prevalence of tobacco use and the resulting death, disease, and economic costs.

Frank Chaloupka, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead scientific editor for the monograph concludes, “the evidence is clear – effective tobacco control interventions make sense from an economic as well as a public health standpoint.”

The monograph also highlights the economic opportunities to be found in controlling tobacco. In addition to paying significant dividends for health, tobacco taxes have the potential for domestic resource mobilization. A recent study has shown that if all countries were to raise their cigarette excise taxes by the equivalent of US$ 0.80 per pack, an additional US$ 141 billion in excise revenue from cigarettes would be generated globally. In developing countries, this increase in revenue could help create the fiscal space needed to help achieve their development priorities. Examples from countries such as Egypt, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam demonstrate how these revenues can be channeled into health initiatives, thereby alleviating some of the funding needs for the health sector. The so-called ‘sin tax’ reforms of the Philippines, for example, provided additional tobacco tax revenues to help finance a significant scale-up of subsidized health insurance for poor families.

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development recognizes that “price and tax measures on tobacco can be an effective and important means to reduce tobacco consumption and healthcare costs, and represent a revenue stream for financing for development in many countries”. The implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is one of the targets under Sustainable Development Goal Three: to promote healthy lives and wellbeing for all people at all ages. These processes under the 2030 Agenda, along with the commitments made at the UN High Level Meetings on Noncommunicable Diseases in 2011 and 2014, provide a governance framework for action on tobacco control in relation to development.

In order for the targets of the 2030 Agenda to be met, consideration of tobacco economics needs to be integrated into broader policy, and tackled with a whole of government approach that recognizes the cross-sectoral impact of tobacco. The economics of tobacco control affects our daily lives, our communities and our economies.

Tobacco control makes good sense not only from economic and public health viewpoints but from a sustainable development perspective as well.

The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control provides the first comprehensive review of the economics of global tobacco control efforts since the 2003 adoption and 2005 entry into the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control