TAKE A QUIZ

This quiz was produced by ecigarettedirect - as you may be able to tell by the branding.

Why not see how you get on?

OK, so it is a bit shameless in what it is trying to do, but it's a bit of fun and it does educate and raise some serious points.

Electronic cigarettes do represent a threat to the billion dollar tobacco, pharmaceutical and smoking cessation industries, of course they do. I can't imagine right now that the sale of ecigs is making a large dent in their profits but there are those that would say that it's not in their interests to see the market and acceptance for e-cigs grow. The more cynical amongst us may say that this is at least until they work out how to 'get in on the action'. I'm one of the cynical ones personally, but I don't mind if and when they join the party - the more the merrier I say.

It is also worth considering the impact upon the government, the money that they make from the sale of cigarettes is enough to pay for the running of the NHS many times over.

It is a complicated big money big business issue but fortunately nowadays it is hard to control the flow of information. It doesn't mean they can't try though. Significant advertising restrictions are in place and this includes on Google, who when questioned about this stated that they do not allow any tobacco related advertising. This is a good policy but as e-cigs do not actually contain any tobacco I think they need to come up with a better reason. Suppliers are also still not allowed to advertise the product as a nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and we have heard of a few cases of websites being told to take down certain customer testimonials or face prosecution.

It does put into perspective some of the negative comments that come out occasionally. EcigaretteDirect interviewed Carl Phillips of the TobaccoHarmReduction.org Institute at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Q: Professor Michael Siegel suggested that if we banned electronic cigarettes based on the carcinogens found in the FDA study we would have to ban peanut butter. Is that something you would agree with?

Carl Phillips: At least! We'd have to ban half the foods that are available. I mean, the FDA study really didn't find any cancer risk. That study was basically pure propaganda.

Q: Following on from those concerns about the quality of production, let's talk about the FDA. The FDA carried out tests on electronic cigarettes in which they found diethylene glycol in one "Smoking Everywhere" e-cigarette and traces of tobacco specific nitrosamines in both Smoking Everywhere and NJOY electronic cigarettes. So what are the significance of those findings?

Carl Phillips: There's no significance of those findings whatsoever from a scientific or health standpoint. From a political standpoint the fact that they did that was quite significant.

So on the first point the fact that there are any detectable levels of any small molecules that that can be found in the tobacco plant in the e-cigarettes is not surprising at all. The nicotine comes from tobacco and our ability to detect a few stray molecules of contamination means that basically any molecule that is small enough to be a contaminant that is found in the tobacco plant will also be found in e-cigarettes. It'll also be found in nicoderm, nicorette, any product that contains nicotine that has been extracted from a tobacco plant. So that's completely meaningless - the quantities of the nitrosamines in the electronic cigarette were so many orders of magnitude smaller than those, say, in smokeless tobacco, which has been shown to not cause a measurable risk of cancer, so we know that that doesn't matter.

Now, there is some more significance in finding contamination in the carrier chemicals, not that there was enough in this particular case that it was going to be harmful but because there is not supposed to be anything other than the propylene glycol and the water there, it does mean that there is a manufacturing problem - a manufacturing problem under some circumstances could be quite a bad thing. Now what really is the biggest problem is the politics that this reflects. This shows up in all sorts of harm reduction type situations and the basic rule of thumb is, if you ban something or if you're trying to ban something, declare war on it, then you can't regulate it, you can't make it safer. So if you have a war on injection drug use and you simply want to forbid it and don't want to admit it is happening in any way, you will prevent needle exchanges from happening which would save a lot of lives.

If you want to have a war on prostitution and just absolutely forbid it and pretend it doesn't exist then it is impossible to impose rules that force prostitutes to get health exams and so forth.

Similarly if the FDA is intent on declaring war on electronic cigarettes and simply forcing them from the market then they are going to be abdicating their responsibility to make sure that the electronic cigarettes are what they are supposed to be and keep them safe and that goes back to this quality control problem. The FDA would really be the perfect entity to help impose some quality control on ecig manufacture even though they are manufactured in a different country but it looks pretty bad in terms of the possibility of them doing that.

If like me you like to put a face to a name then here is a video of Carl (http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/daily-planet/may-2009/daily-planet-may-05-2009/#clip168932) from back in 2009.

Another expert interviewed was Professor Michael Siegel and he had the following to say:

Q: Can you tell us why legislators are listening to those who are shouting loudest, the health groups, and not those at the cutting edge research of tobacco harm reduction such as yourself, Dr Joel Nitzkin, Dr Laudersson and others?

Michael: You have to remember that there is also a financial connection between federal and state legislators and conventional cigarette sales. These legislators have tied the fiscal solvency of critical government programs to the continued consumption of cigarettes. Our national system of providing health insurance for children from lower-income families is now dependent upon cigarette smoking. Many states are looking towards cigarette revenues to balance their budgets during these difficult economic times.

It is not, therefore, in the legislators' "best interests" to support a policy that is potentially going to seriously threaten cigarette sales. Between the influence of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, it's going to be very difficult for electronic cigarette manufacturers to get the ear of public policy makers.

Yet another interview that Ecigarettedirect did was with Paul Bergen of the Tobacco Harm Reduction project. In the interview you can read his responses to the following:

How harmful is the E-cigarette, and how true are reports such as Put Down that E-Cigarette which claim that e-cigarettes could be poisonous?

    • Can it stop people smoking?

    • What, in your opinion, is the reason behind the suppression of information and testimonials by the Government?

    • Can you give us any further examples of the sale of/information about e-cigarettes being suppressed?

    • What misinformation has been spread about e-cigarettes?

    • What damage is being caused by the suppression of e-cigarettes?