Category: News This Week

The boss of a U.K.-based e-cigarette company has been ordered to return a website domain name that previously had been used by an anti-tobacco charity, according to a BBC Online story.

Action on Smoking & Health (Ash) Wales forgot to renew the domain registration for ashwales.co.uk after it developed a new site in April 2011.

Vapouriz’s director, Brett Horth, meanwhile, said he bought the name in good faith to sell e-cigarettes as Alternative Solutions for Health Wales.

But the online dispute resolution body Nominet, which uses independent experts to resolve claims over domain names, called it an “abusive registration.”

Filtrona Filter Products has launched Groove Core, an innovative filter combining “the performance benefits of activated carbon with high-impact, visual brand differentiation.”

Groove Core, which is the latest addition to Filtrona’s Performance Range, is said to provide consumers with the smooth taste experience associated with a carbon filter and a distinctive end appearance created by incorporating an additional colored paper inner wrap and attractive grooved flutes at the mouth end.

In recent years demand for carbon products has spread beyond traditional carbon markets and is now increasing in a number of countries, such as Taiwan, Russia, Turkey, Romania and Ukraine.

“Groove Core is the most advanced activated carbon filter to enter the market,” said Innovations Director Patrick Meredith.

“It combines the benefits of activated carbon and SmoothCore technology (a reduction of vapor phase and semi-volatile components in mainstream smoke) with the higher tar retention associated with Combined Performance Advanced (CPA) technology to deliver enhanced filtration performance. In addition, the integration of a colored inner wrap in the filter end offers consumers visual indicators of performance, which provides cigarette manufacturers with additional brand reinforcement opportunities.”

The construction of the filter is such that the pocket of carbon is positioned toward the tobacco end of the filter while the fluted paper area is placed at the mouth end.

The Groove Core filter is said to be manufactured using a single-pass production process that enables more efficient use of materials, energy and machinery. It also offers cleaner machine running and a lower tip to tip variation in carbon additive weight, and, unlike other specialist filters, it uses standard tow.

Filtrona Filter Products, which next month will change its name to Essentra Filter Products, is a division of Essentra PLC.

Further information is available at www.filtronafilters.com.

Tobacco manufacturers are frequently upbraided simply for defending their interests, even though it would be odd if they didn’t speak up in this way.

And so many in the tobacco industry will welcome today’s intervention by Philip Morris International in which it is seeking to address recent attacks on the company’s efforts to express its views on the proposed EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). Speaking on behalf of the company, which employs 12,500 people in the EU, generates about €14.6 billion in tax revenue and has invested hundreds of millions in reduced-risk product innovation, EU Region President Drago Azinovic said that rather than instigating a serious evaluation of the content and likely impact of the TPD, the discussion tended to focus on PMI’s efforts to make known its views about the proposal.

“The argument that we should remain silent in the face of a proposal that directly concerns us—and on which we have facts and improvement ideas to share—is illogical,” he said. “In fact, it would be irresponsible for us not to inform EU decisionmakers of the impact of a proposal on our business, the hundreds of thousands of employees working in our industry, and the member state governments and taxpayers who will bear the consequences. We have and will continue to express our views proactively and transparently. As the EU itself says, this kind of interaction is ‘constant, legitimate and necessary for the quality of democracy.’”

PMI’s full press note is at http://www.pmi.com/eng/media_center/press_releases/pages/201309090402.aspx.

The European Commission believes that taste panels would be up to the job of fairly determining whether or not tobacco products imparted characterizing flavors, should they be necessary under the proposed new Tobacco Products Directive (TPD).

This was made clear in an answer by the commission to a number of questions by Danish MEP Morten Messerschmidt.

Messerschmidt was seeking to discover what plans there were for such taste panels.

“Does the Commission regard it as an adequate scientific basis to allow a test panel—with differing subjective assessments of taste sensations—[to] decide whether individual products are to be legal or illegal?” he asked.

“Does the Commission consider that a test panel will be able to reliably test the thousands of different tobacco products that are marketed in the EU?

“Finally, how does the Commission envisage that this test panel/these test panels will operate and be composed?”

In its reply, the commission said its proposal would require the adoption of uniform rules on the procedures for determining whether a tobacco product imparts a characterizing flavor. “Independent panels would be used to assist in such decisionmaking, and the precise functioning of such advisory panels would be determined by implementing act,” it said.

“Sensory analysis, involving panels of test subjects, is an established scientific method that applies principles of experimental design and statistical analysis to the use of human senses for the purposes of evaluating consumer products.

“A number of international ISO standards have been developed in this field.

“Sensory analysis has already been used in EU legislation.

“Moreover, there is a wealth of documentation on sensory studies conducted by the tobacco industry to test the influence of flavors on the attractiveness of a product.

“In this respect, the Commission believes that the proposed method is adequate and reliable for the purpose in question.”

Swedish Match said today it was reorganizing its operating structure by integrating its Scandinavia Division and Smoke-free Products Division into a new, streamlined Scandinavia Division.

It gave details, too, of the new group management team (GMT) resulting from this reorganization.

The new division will have full responsibility for the Scandinavian snus business and the global responsibility for the production of smoke-free products at factories in Gothenburg and Kungälv, Sweden, and in Owensboro, Kentucky, USA.

The GMT team will comprise Lars Dahlgren (president and CEO), Marlene Forsell (senior vice president, SVP, and CFO), Joakim Tilly (president Scandinavia Division), Lars Olof Löfman (SVP product supply and marketing, Scandinavia Division), Fredrik Lagercrantz (SVP business control), Richard Flaherty (president, U.S. Division), Fredrik Peyron (SVP legal affairs and general counsel) and Emmett Harrison (SVP corporate communications and sustainability).

“We are creating a more efficient organization—both in terms of number of resources and the way we work,” said Dahlgren. “With a new, fully integrated Scandinavia Division under one management, we are confident that we will reinforce a clear and common agenda and act with more power and speed.”

Restructuring costs, which are currently estimated not to exceed SEK30 million, will be included in third-quarter 2013 figures.

Group leaders in the European Parliament agreed yesterday to delay until Oct. 8 a vote on a new Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) that had been scheduled for Sept. 10 in Strasbourg, according to a story by Dave Keating for the European Voice.

Center-right German and British MEPs pushed for the delay, saying there had not been enough time to digest the position of the environment and health committee, adopted in July. They were supported by the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) group.

MEPs were concerned also about how the vote could affect or be affected by the federal election in Germany scheduled for Sept. 22. Some German MEPs will be absent from next week’s plenary session of parliament because of campaigning duties.

Linda McAvan, a British MEP who is leading the parliament’s work on the issue, opposed the delay, as did German MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz, shadow rapporteur for the European People’s Party (EPP).

The call for a delay followed a barrage of lobbying from both sides of the issue this week as MEPs returned from their summer breaks. Health campaigners are concerned that it is a delaying tactic by the tobacco industry intent on ensuring that the revision of the TPD will not be agreed on by the end of the current parliament and European Commission mandate in 2014.

However, a spokesperson for the EPP said that a delay of a couple of weeks would not create an obstacle to reaching an agreement before the end of the Lithuanian presidency.

Meanwhile, a number of amendments to the proposed TPD had been filed by the deadline of noon on Sept. 4. These amendments are aimed at, among other aspects of the TPD, its impact on menthol and slim cigarettes, tobacco packaging, snus and e-cigarettes.

The e-cigarette company Gamucci is concerned about the way in which the European Commission’s draft Tobacco Products Directive is being handled and was quick to react to news yesterday that the European Parliament had agreed to delay the vote on the directive from Sept. 10 to Oct. 8.

Many MEPs, Gamucci said, had expressed concerns that Linda McAvan, the British MEP in charge of piloting the draft directive through parliament, seemed to be attempting to rush through her own amendments without acknowledging the serious impacts they could have on the fast-growing e-cigarette sector.

McAvan wanted to force all e-cigarette products to be regulated as medicines.

“Her draconian and unjustified proposals would impose significant and—for some—potentially insurmountable barriers on a sector that is increasingly successful in encouraging adult smokers to switch away from traditional combustible tobacco products,” Gamucci said in a press note.

“There are already an estimated 12 million electronic cigarette consumers across Europe who fear that such regulation could drive them back to smoking traditional tobacco products.”

Meanwhile, Gamucci’s Jacqueline Burrows made the point that very many health professionals believed the evidence was clear (1).

“Electronic cigarettes provide smokers with the positive benefits and pleasures of nicotine without the risks associated with traditional burning tobacco and its smoke,” she said. (2) (3) (4) (5) (6).

“Many MEPs who have taken the time to study the facts and listen to those who have already made the switch recognize that it is the pharmaceutical companies and existing tobacco companies which would be the main beneficiaries of medicinal regulation of electronic cigarettes.” (7) (8).

Burrows added that this was the time to work together and agree on a sensible, proportionate, regulatory framework. It defied common sense that electronic cigarettes should be subjected to a more draconian regulation than that applying to existing tobacco products.

1. Gerry Stimson, Clive Bates, Konstantinos Farsalinos, M.D. and Jacques Le Houezec, September 2013: “The impact of e-cigarettes on public health will vastly overshadow all other measures in the TPD” http://www.clivebates.com/?p=1499
2. Drexel University, August 2013: “Chemicals in e-cigarettes pose no health concern for users or bystanders”
3. Hajek, Lancet, July 2013: “The chemicals that make cigarettes dangerous are either absent or present only in trace concentrations”
4. Inhalation Toxicology, October 2012: “The study indicates no apparent risk to human health from e-cigarette emissions”
5. Robert West, University College London: “The risk is negligible, and compared with smoking there is no contest”
6. John Britton, Royal College of Physicians: “If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes, we would save 5 million deaths”
7. Wells Fargo, January 2013: “Within 10 years there could be more e-cigarette users than cigarette smokers”
8. Polosa, June 2013: “E-cigarettes help users stop smoking tobacco”: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0066317#s4

The U.S. National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO) has said that the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) study about youth use of electronic cigarettes raises too many unanswered questions for the data to be used as a basis for proposing significant restrictions on electronic cigarettes.

“It appears the CDC and the FDA are extrapolating data from the 2011 and 2012 National Youth Tobacco Surveys (NYTS) to support the FDA’s announced plan to expand its authority over other tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, by issuing proposed regulations this October,” said NATO Executive Director Thomas Briant.

“Studies have found e-cigarettes to be effective in reducing cigarette smoking or aiding smokers in quitting. Given that e-cigarettes appear to have a positive effect in the reduction of smoking tobacco-burning cigarettes, the National Association of Tobacco Outlets can only conclude that the FDA is setting the stage for the roll out of the agency’s proposed e-cigarette regulations in two months.

“NATO and its retailers that operate more than 28,000 tobacco stores, convenience stores, service stations, grocery stores and liquor stores nationwide, firmly agree that underage youth should not use e-cigarettes. Currently, 26 states have enacted laws that prohibit the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors, and retailers are abiding by those laws and their own business practices to prevent the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors.

“The CDC’s claim that electronic cigarette use has more than doubled among middle and high school students from 2011 to 2012 is a generalization and may not be supported by the NYTS data. The NYTS statistics relied on by the CDC to estimate how many youth use electronic cigarettes include middle and high school students who currently use e-cigarettes and those who have used an e-cigarette just once. This means that the CDC’s claim that electronic cigarette use has doubled among underage youth is likely overstated since students who used the product one time may no longer be using e-cigarettes.

“For example, in the 2011 National Youth Tobacco Survey, only 3 percent, or 558 out of 18,262 students, responded that they have ‘ever tried’ an electronic cigarette. The question is how many of these 558 students tried an e-cigarette just once and no longer use the product? Without acknowledging that a portion of the students surveyed used an e-cigarette just one time and no longer use e-cigarettes, the CDC should not make the claim that youth use of e-cigarettes doubled from 2011 to 2012.

“Moreover, NATO has not seen the actual 2012 NYTS study itself—only the summary that has been provided by the CDC and referenced in its press release. The summary leaves some questions unanswered, such as how many students actually completed the survey in order to extrapolate the CDC’s estimate that 1.78 million students have tried e-cigarettes. According to U.S. Census numbers from 2011, there are approximately 40.8 million youth between the ages of 10 and 19 in the U.S., so the sample size of any study like the NYTS should be quite large.

“NATO does not support the sale of e-cigs to underage consumers. However, NATO members firmly stand behind the right of adults to purchase e-cigarettes, particularly when they are looking for assistance in ‘stepping down’ from smoking traditional cigarettes. We hope any future regulations proposed by the FDA will not interfere with the right of adults to choose what, at least at this time, appears to be a less harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes.”

Two organizations are calling for tobacco industry tax increases to be included in Ireland’s budget for next year, according to a story in The Irish Examiner.

In their pre-budget submission, the Irish Cancer Society and the Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) are calling, too, for a cap on tobacco profits.

“The taxpayer is subsidising the tobacco industry to the tune of €500m,” said the IHF’s head of advocacy, Chris Macey.

“An industry that’s creating virtually no employment and is making profits that we are estimating at €104m per year, which it takes out of the country.

“It’s a drain on our health system, it’s killing people and it’s just bizarre.”