Tobacco News

Thad Mamey fondly remembers the early days of electronic cigarettes: The puzzled stares. Lighting up indoors. The utter lack of smoke. The difference between his puff of vapor and other smokers plumes.

He’s smoked tobacco cigarettes for 15 years but the mechanical nicotine stick is a far less harmful alternative, making it his favorite choice.

As it turns out, Pierce County might not see the same distinction between cigarettes that smoke and those that fog. Ream more »

During the past 12 months, your Better Business Bureau has received hundreds of complaints from people across the country who thought they were getting free e-cigarette trials. In the end, they lost hundreds of dollars in recurring credit or debit card charges.
E-cigarettes resemble tobacco cigarettes, but don’t contain tobacco or other chemicals. Some e-cigarette companies are promoting free or low-cost trial kits to attract new customers. Unfortunately, what customers thought was free ended up costing them. Ream more »

If you ask a smoker what they think of current regulations, they will likely tell you that it is not like the old days. With smoking banned in many bars, restaurants, and now college campuses, more and more of smoker’s traditional hangouts are being eliminated everyday. Soon, it might be hard to find an outdoor ashtray, or “smoker’s pole,” anywhere. But, hope is not lost. New electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, are offering smokers alternative methods to get around smoking bans and, more interestingly, ways to find each other. Ream more »

For $14.95, a smoker can buy 500 puffs in a single electronic cigarette. A USB cable makes it electronic — just like an iPod, users can charge its lithium battery in the middle of paper writing, Amazon surfing, Facebooking. “Smoking” includes no matches, tobacco or secondhand breath, only a nicotine mist waiting to be inhaled and a tar-free, odorless vapor. Ream more »

Aficionados of electronic cigarettes – which look like the real thing but create a vapor for users to inhale – plan to tell Health Department officials Monday they don’t want their faux smokes virtually banned in Pierce County.

The Tacoma Pierce-County Health Department proposes new regulations that would treat the e-cigarettes like their tobacco-burning cousins. That means no firing up the battery-powered substitutes in restaurants, bars, workplaces or other spots where the public gather.
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Vapor Corp., a South Florida based electronic cigarette (e-cig) supplier and marketer, was founded by a team of veteran entrepreneurs with extensive experience, ranging from product and brand development to manufacturing and sales of various consumer products. Now as a leading and publicly traded (OTCBB: VPCO) electronic cigarette distributor, the company sells its e-cig vaporizers internationally and domestically to wholesalers, directly to online consumers, as well as to convenient stores, tobacco shops, kiosks and many super markets and chain stores. Ream more »

Electronic cigarette manufacturer Blu has created a “socially aware” e-cigarette, the New York Times reports. The reusable smokes can let users know when other e-cigarette smokers are within 50 feet via a built-in wireless network connection.

When the two users are near each other, the e-cigs light up and vibrate. Contact information can be exchanged through social networking sites to download the data. The packs even vibrate when the user goes by a retail outlet that sells Blu products. Ream more »

E-cigarettes have been on the market for a couple of years without any regulation. A U.S. Federal court issued a highly anticipated ruling last month. Would e-cigs be considered tobacco products, even though they don’t contain tobacco?

The ruling would not put them in the same category as nicotine patches or nicotine chewing gum.

“It’s a step in the right direction for us, we didn’t not want to see it classified as a medical device,” says William Ragan, owner of Vapor Kings a e-cigarette store in Sand Springs.
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The Food and Drug Administration recently announced it will regulate electronic cigarettes as tobacco products, in other words, just like regular cigarettes. The agency had previously been pushing to regulate the smokeless cigarettes as drug delivery devices, but lost a court battle in early 2011. The FDA decided not to appeal the court’s decision, which puts to rest a legal battle that had been ongoing since 2009.
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April 26 Associated Press story, “E-cigs to be regulated as tobacco; FDA decision seen as victory for makers of smokeless devices”
Electronic, or e-cigarettes, are aggressively marketed in Kentucky. Their manufacturers’ trade group, E-Cig Association, and the closely affiliated Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association heavily promote e-cigs to addicted smokers who are desperate to quit, as well as those who need nicotine when they cannot light up. Ream more »