WASHINGTON | The first peek at a major study of how Americans smoke suggests many use combinations of products, and often e-cigarettes are part of the mix.
It’s a preliminary finding, but it highlights some key questions as health officials assess electronic cigarettes.
“Are e-cigarettes a step toward a cigarette smoker getting off of cigarettes? Or are e-cigarettes a crutch so they can get nicotine in places and times when they wouldn’t normally be allowed to smoke cigarettes?” asked Dr. Andrew Hyland of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the primary investigator for a huge government study of trends in smoking and tobacco use.
Hyland’s study is one of a number of projects that scientists are watching as they explore the public health implications of e-cigarettes. Here are some things to know:
MULTIPLE SOURCES OF NICOTINE
At a meeting of nicotine researchers late Thursday, Hyland presented preliminary findings from the first 20,000 people to enroll in the study, a baseline as the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health track how use of tobacco products, or alternatives like tobacco-free e-cigarettes, is evolving.
A fraction — 28 percent of adults and nearly 9 percent of youths — reported they currently use any type of tobacco product, Hyland said.
About 40 percent of those current tobacco users report using two or more products. And half say battery-powered e-cigarettes are one of the multiple products they use, Hyland found. In fact, the most common combination was cigarettes and e-cigarettes.
Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said the early findings showing use of more than one type of tobacco product are compelling and underscore “how popular e-cigarettes have become.”
Ultimately, the PATH study — it stands for Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health — will follow 46,000 people ages 12 and older over five years, a source of information as FDA decides how to regulate tobacco-related products.
WHY THE EXTRA INTEREST IN E-CIGARETTES?
Policymakers are debating the health effects of “vaping” as it grows in popularity. Many anti-smoking advocates consider e-cigarettes a safer alternative for smokers who can’t or don’t want to quit altogether.
E-cigarettes work by heating liquid nicotine into an inhalable vapor. They contain fewer toxic substances than burning traditional cigarettes. But health officials warn that they shouldn’t be considered harmless and say much more needs to be known about long-term effects.
Critics ask if they keep smokers addicted or even act as a gateway to hook new users who eventually try tobacco.
ADULTS VS. KIDS
Concern about e-cigarettes grew after a different government study in December found some teens who’d never smoked a real cigarette were trying out the electronic kind.
“Is it a passing fancy or something that sticks with them?” Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in an interview with The Associated Press. He hopes that over the next few years, the new PATH study will help tell.
The FDA has proposed regulating e-cigarettes, including banning sales to minors, a step that many states already have taken.
HOW MUCH NICOTINE?
No one knows if experimenting with e-cigarettes poses as much risk of hooking someone as experimenting with regular cigarettes, Compton said.
Nicotine levels vary widely by type of e-cigarette, from small amounts to nearly as much as a traditional cigarette, he said. Users learn to puff a bit differently as they draw in vapor, and even the voltage in the device’s wires may affect nicotine delivery, he explained. NIDA plans to fund development of what Compton calls a “standard e-cigarette” that will be a yardstick for comparison with the different e-cigarettes on the market.
Associated Press writer Michael Felberbaum contributed to this report from Richmond, Virginia.
Quote: [The FDA has proposed regulating e-cigarettes, including banning sales to minors, a step that many states already have taken.]
If the regulations that the FDA were recommending were a simple age requirement for sales and sensible quality regulations (such as those placed on food products), it might actually be a good thing. However, what they proposed last April in their deeming regulations is to treat vapor products as tobacco products, even though they contain absolutely no tobacco. This regulation, if enacted as proposed, would basically hand the entire vapor product industry to the big tobacco companies, as they would be the only companies that could afford the pre-market requirements.
Currently, the vast majority of the vapor product industry is made up of hundreds of small to medium companies that have no association with big tobacco whatsoever. The problem the federal and state governments are facing is that the rate of people quitting traditional tobacco cigarettes at a faster rate than was predicted years ago because they’re switching to vapor products for various reasons. The decline of sales of traditional cigarettes means less tax revenue for state and federal governments, a decrease in the tobacco MSA payments to many states, and the potential cut of a whole host of government sponsored NGOs that were setup years ago to help people quit smoking (but failed miserably).
When reading the results of studies like this one, people should always keep in mind of the motives behind these studies and the origin of the funding sources. Always consider what people are capable of when faced with the requirement of getting more government funding for other studies, or when their livelihood is threatened by a disruptive technology. Once you understand the motives, you begin to see that the data provided by these studies usually don’t support the conclusions in the press release, and a more objective perspective of the subject matter is achieved.
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Well Said Glen, It’s all about money at the end of the day, both tobacco and pharmaceutical companies lose millions of dollars every month and it sure hears them!