Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Electronic cigarettes challenge anti-smoking

E-cigarette in Germany (file pic)

A new TV advert for a brand of electronic cigarettes marks the first time in decades cigarettes of any sort have been promoted on US television. Anti-smoking campaigners fear the rapid growth of tobacco-free cigarettes could undermine years of successful anti-smoking efforts.

A handsome actor poses and struts on a beach in a stylishly shot black-and-white television spot. He puts the cigarette to his lips, takes a puff, and exhales a rich flume.
"Blu lets me enjoy smoking without it affecting the people around me, because it's vapour not tobacco smoke," says Stephen Dorff, the scruffy heartthrob star of The Immortals.

"We're all adults here, it's time we take our freedom back."
The launch this autumn of the advert for blu eCigs marks a turning point in the fast-growing US market for electronic cigarettes, which use an electronic mechanism to warm a liquid nicotine solution and release mist into the lungs.Most living Americans had never before seen a cigarette advertised on television - they were banned in 1971.But the electronic cigarettes fall outside that law, since they contain no tobacco. That is just one way they fall into what one anti-smoking campaigner calls a regulatory "no man's land".
Electronic cigarettes have exploded in popularity in the US since they first appeared on the market in 2007. Blu is just one brand, with NJOY, SmokeAnywhere, JoyeTech, and many more also available



Jonas Cuenin
New York photographer and e-smoker
The taste is better than real cigarettes and you don't disturb people because it doesn't smell.

You can smoke inside in public places. I smoke in restaurants, I smoke in bars. I even ended up smoking in the subway.

I think it's healthier - it doesn't give you cancer. I smoked some [tobacco] cigarettes on one night three weeks ago, and I was disgusted by it, actually

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Quit Smoking 101


If you’re looking to quit smoking, then you’ve found the right place. Chances are you’ve tried products like a nicotine patch, lozenges among many others and have failed. If you really want to quit smoking and eager to learn, keep reading, please? (If begging you is what it takes for you to quit smoking, consider it done!)

The Addiction

When I used to smoke, I only knew that I was addicted to tobacco cigarettes and that’s it. Little did I know, I was addicted to much more. If you’re a tobacco cigarette smoker, then here’s a list of what you’re addicted to.

4,000+ Chemicals
Nicotine
The act of blowing smoke from your mouth
The act of inhaling smoke
The act of holding a cigarette
The act of placing a cigarette to your mouth
The taste
The reason it’s so hard for smokers to quit smoking is because they’re addicted to a cigarette is so many ways. Not only do you have to remove yourself from the many chemicals that make up a tobacco cigarette, but you also have to deal with not doing something you’ve made a part of your life for so long.

Trial & Error

If you’re serious about quitting smoking, then I’m sure you’ve tried other ways of tobacco harm reduction. There are many products like lozenges and patches, including other means by undergoing acupuncture and even hypnosis. Though it is great that you’re persistent  this trial and error tends to result in failure. There isn’t anything wrong with the trial and error to quit smoking, but the best advice anyone can give you is research thoroughly before taking action.

Becoming Aware

To get an edge on the process to quit smoking is becoming aware of your surroundings. And, not to make you feel bad or anything, but look at those around you that have to deal with your habit on a daily basis or even on occasion. Once you’ve completely removed yourself from tobacco cigarettes you’ll become a bit more aware and find yourself saying “I can’t believe I used to smoke!”. Remember, this is your habit and none of your family, friends, co-workers and other bystanders asked to deal with it. To someone who isn’t a smoker, you smell like burnt chemicals and the smoke coming from your cigarette smells horrible and is very offensive (in my opinion). A bit blunt, but this is something you need to be aware of.

The Want

In order to quit smoking, you must have the want to quit smoking. Saying you’re going to quit is easy, but really and truly wanting to quit is what will push you through the journey. To quit smoking it takes a lot of dedication, will power and most of all… the want.

Discover Electronic Cigarettes

After you’ve tried many other tobacco harm reduction products, you’ll soon discover electronic cigarettes, especially now more than ever. Electronic Cigarettes have become very popular even with big tobacco companies, one being Lorillard (makers of Newport), who has recently purchased blu Ecigs. First off, Electronic Cigarettes is what finally did it for me. I’m satisfying all my addictions excluding the 4000+ harmful chemicals that are in tobacco cigarettes. I’ve now been using electronic cigarettes for almost 2 years now and not once have I picked up a tobacco cigarette nor needed anything else to crave my nicotine addiction. E-Cigs have no foul oder and contains no harmful toxins or carcinogens. I could go on and on about electronic cigarettes, but the best thing to do is to discover them yourself.

Quit Smoking

Now that you’ve read what you’re addicted to, how people around you feel about it, some things you may go through to quit, having the want and discovering electronic cigarettes, the next step for you is to… quit smoking. Good luck on your journey.


Sunday, December 16, 2012

Find The Best Electronic Cigarette


Some people are not sure how to find the best electronic cigarette for their intents and purposes. If you want to find the best one, then you have to take your time. Think about what you need in life. Do you want to quit smoking with less withdrawals? Then take your time and figure out what you can do to make this into a good situation.

Think of Your Family With the Electronic Cigarette


Best Electronic CigaretteYou want to think about what is best for you based on what you are doing for them. You want to think about how you can get the best cigarette substitute such as the electronic one. This can be a great way to feel motivated. Do you want them to see you suffering with smoking? This is a good thing to avoid and you want to try and get healthy as soon as you can.

Finding the Strength Within

There are a lot of ways that you can find the strength that you need. You want to find the ways that you can figure out this type of situation for the future and so that you can figure out how to smoke less or not at all. Having the electronic cigarette gives you the choice of being able to have nicotine while not being too dependent on it and also having a good situation for yourself and you can feel great about it.

Making The Right Choice

Think about the various brands of electronic cigarette. You can find that there are a lot of different ones and you want to find the one that is right for you. This means that you should figure out what is right based on the things that you can read online. Can you find reviews about various ones so that you can end up with the best type of thing? This is a great way to make a good choice.

You should always think about the things that matter most. This is a good way to make a good thing happen for your future when it comes to quitting smoking. You want to quit without too much hardship if possible.


If you want to avoid the bad moods and other issues that can come with not smoking, then try to find the best electronic cigarette for you. This is a good way to make a good thing happen for you so that you can avoid the problems and just get the benefits of quitting smoking!

Data: http://www.tcoburn.com/2012/12/16/ways-and-reasons-to-find-the-best-electronic-cigarette

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Some smokers turning to e-cigarettes for fix


Andy StockertBy Rodger Mullen
Staff writer

Andy Stockert loves his cigars. But he can't smoke them in the Harnett County barn where he keeps his horses.

So a couple of years ago, Stockert switched to electronic cigarettes. He puffs them when he can't light up the cigars he prefers.

Beyond the practical benefit of being able to smoke in places where it's normally outlawed, Stockert says e-cigarettes have other advantages over traditional smoking.

"They don't leave that nasty breath," Stockert said. "They don't leave an odor when you use them."

Since North Carolina banned most indoor smoking in January 2010, e-cigarettes have emerged as an alternative. Smokers have been lighting them up in bars and restaurants, where tobacco is not permitted.

Andy Stockert"I see people walking around smoking them all the time," said Ben Anstead, manager of Anstead's Tobacco Co. in Cross Creek Mall. "I've had a number of people who say, 'If you're going to smoke, smoke an e-cigarette.' "

Electronic cigarettes are electrical or battery-powered inhalers that vaporize a liquid solution into an aerosol mist, which the user inhales. They contain no tobacco, but most do use nicotine.

The amount of nicotine in an e-cigarette varies depending on the type of liquid used. Some solutions contain no nicotine, while others have as much or even more than regular cigarettes.

The cigarettes come with chargers that can be plugged into home or car adapters. Many companies offer a variety of flavors, including tobacco, menthol or even grape and strawberry.

Anstead said he started selling e-cigarettes a few years ago. He said there was an initial flurry of interest in the product, but it gradually subsided over time.

"We used to have a waiting list," he said. "We couldn't get them in fast enough."

Anstead said he attributes the drop-off in sales to the fact that more places, including many convenience stores, are now selling e-cigarettes. Today, Anstead said he probably sells four or five kits a month of Encore brand e-cigarettes.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Blinded by Ideology

Anti-Smoking Advocates are Widely Misleading the Public into Thinking that Electronic Cigarette Use is a Form of Smoking


In BBC News article about electronic cigarettes, anti-smoking advocates from three leading national tobacco control organizations are misleading the public into thinking that vaping is a form of smoking and that electronic cigarette use is essentially the acceptance of, and adoption of smoking.

According to the article, here are the reactions of three of the leading national tobacco control organizations to the emergence and skyrocketing growth of the electronic cigarette market:

Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights

"'It feels like what they're trying to do is re-establish a norm that smoking is okay, that smoking is glamorous and acceptable,' says Cynthia Hallett, executive director of Americans for Non-Smokers' Rights."

American Legacy Foundation

"The blu advert stokes the spirit of rebellion that appealed to smokers when they first started as adolescents, says David Abrams, executive director of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at Legacy, an anti-tobacco organisation. This time around, instead of defying parents and teachers, the ad encourages smokers to rebel against more recent anti-smoking social norms. 'They're capitalising on that with adult smokers by basically saying 'don't let society tell you what to do',' Abrams says. 'You have the freedom to smoke. Thumb your nose at the anti-smoking policies and the FDA.'"

The Rest of the Story


What all three of these national tobacco control organizations apparently fail to understand is that using electronic cigarettes is not smoking. On the contrary, it is avoiding the use of cigarettes. The overwhelming reason why smokers are turning to electronic cigarettes is because they want to reduce or eliminate the number of cigarettes that they smoke. Every time a vaper uses an electronic cigarette, he or she is passing up an opportunity to smoke. By definition, using electronic cigarette use reduces cigarette use. Far from promoting smoking, advertisements that promote electronic cigarette use are urging smokers not to smoke -- but to switch to electronic cigarettes instead.

In fact, the emergence and growth of electronic cigarettes is not a boon to cigarette smoking, it is a serious threat. To successfully market electronic cigarettes, companies need to get smokers to switch away from smoking and towards vaping. Electronic cigarettes are primarily designed for smoking cessation or cigarette use reduction. In the first clinical trial of these products, 54% of smokers who were unmotivated to quit were successful in either quitting smoking completely or cutting down on their smoking by more than half.

In exactly what way does the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, and American Legacy Foundation consider this tremendous reduction in smoking to be a rebellion against the idea of not smoking and an encouragement of smokers to continue to smoke.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It's exactly the opposite of what each of these three organizations is saying.

How could these organizations be lying to the public in such a blatant manner?

The answer appears to be ideology.

Each of these three anti-smoking organizations appears to be blinded by an ideology that defines smoking as going through the hand motions associated with holding and smoking a cigarette, regardless of whether the person is actually smoking. Apparently, even if the person has quit smoking completely, she is still smoking if she goes through the hand motions.

Are these organizations really committed to saving lives, or are they just trying to prevent hand motions? Sadly, it appears that it is the hand motions that are bothering them. We can't have those hand motions going on that look like smoking. Even if those hand motions are saving hundreds of lives by getting smokers off of a product that may well kill them.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Electronic cigarettes are safer than tobacco


I can't help but feel that the letter published Dec. 4 about electronic cigarettes and the writer's belief that they should be banned indoors is a bit unfair, uninformed and downright incorrect. I feel it my duty, as an avid user of electronic cigarettes, to not let the community fall into the trend of allowing misunderstanding to become fear. There have been multiple studies done on the subject of electronic cigarette vapor safety and the safety of its second-hand vapor. All of the studies done so far have supported the idea that not only are electronic cigarettes safer than conventional tobacco products but, in fact, may pose no health risk at all to the user as well as others in the room.

Electronic cigarettes do not utilize combustion to produce vapor. They heat a liquid comprised of vegetable glycerin (I guarantee you are within 50 feet of a product containing vegetable glycerin as you read this), propylene glycol (used in the medical field for non-water soluble medications and in respiratory treatments for decades upon decades) and flavoring that have been used in foods as well as electronic cigarettes.

If you read through these articles and the studies they are talking about (links are in the articles), you'll find that not only are the amounts of nicotine and other chemicals not harmful to bystanders, but that they were, in fact, immeasurable by the instruments used to conduct the studies.

http://www.blog.modernvapor.com/vaping-news-and-insights/electronic-cigarette-air-quality-study.htm

http://casaa.org/uploads/Ecigarettes_and_Smokefree_policies.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0668.2012.00792.x/abstract

I also feel that it is simply incorrect, let alone unfairly biased toward unfair views of electronic cigarettes, to refer to the second-hand vapor as "smoke." It is not smoke. There is no burning. There is no fire. What you put into an electronic cigarette is exactly what you get out.

Nicotine in and of itself is not harmful. It is actually a fairly mild cousin of caffeine. The only real negative affect of nicotine is its addiction potential. which, in tobacco products such as cigarettes, is increased due to MAOIs produced through the combustion of some of the thousands of chemicals in tobacco smoke. Electronic cigarettes are, as far as the studies show us so far, about as dangerous as drinking a cup of coffee in a humid room.

I hope you take the time to read this and really look into the studies and articles I've provided you. The amount of negative coverage about electronic cigarettes lately makes me absolutely infuriated. It is unfair for these factually incorrect, ignorant claims to be circulated while the media does its best to ignore all of the positive aspects of electronic cigarettes which are, as you may have guessed, actually true. We can't say for sure, at this point, that electronic cigarettes are 100 percent safe, but they can never be as bad as tobacco. Leading people to believe that tobacco is the preferable option to electronic cigarettes will cost millions of lives, and it's up to people like me and other electronic cigarette users to stand up to all of this negativity.

Brad Ganley  •  Belleville

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Ecig Useful as Smoking Cessation Aid


Ban CigaretteAug. 28, 2012 (Munich, Germany) -- Electronic cigarettes do not appear to be bad for your heart, according to the first study to look at the effects of smoking e-cigarettes on heart function.

The devices -- battery-powered metal cartridges that simulate the effect of smoking by heating nicotine-containing liquid into vapor -- can be helpful to smokers trying to kick the habit, says researcher Konstantinos Farsalinos, MD, of the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens, Greece.

"Considering the hazards associated with cigarette smoking, currently available data suggest that electronic cigarettes are far less harmful, and substituting tobacco with electronic cigarettes may be beneficial to health," he says.

Speaking here at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, Farsalinos acknowledges that the study was short and small -- only 22 people were studied immediately before and after using the devices.

Another small study shows that e-cigarettes may have short-term harmful effects on lung function, he says.

Many more people have to be studied for much longer before any firm conclusions can be made about the safety of electronic cigarettes, Farsalinos says.

Still, e-cigarettes are the only smoking cessation aids that satisfy both sides of addiction: the chemical craving for nicotine and "the psychological addiction that comes from having something in your hand, lighting it, and inhaling and exhaling it," he says. "Preliminary studies show this [two-pronged attack] helps people to quit."

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Polish survey

Polish survey of e-cigarette users finds 66% no longer smoke


Polish surveyA Polish study, "Patterns of electronic cigarette use and user beliefs about their safety and benefits: An Internet survey," was published online in the Drug and Alcohol Review. According to the abstract, the "objective of this study was to investigate patterns and effects of e-cigarette use and user beliefs about e-cigarette safety and benefits."

"The survey was completed by 179 e-cigarette users. Almost all participants used e-cigarettes daily. E-cigarettes were primarily used to quit smoking or to reduce the harm associated with smoking (both 41%), and were successful in helping the surveyed users to achieve these goals with 66% not smoking conventional cigarettes at all and 25% smoking under five cigarettes a day. Most participants (82%) did not think that e-cigarettes were completely safe, but thought that they were less dangerous than conventional cigarettes. Sixty percent believed that e-cigarettes were addictive, but less so than conventional cigarettes."

The same researcher, Maciej Lukasz Goniewicz, also recently published a survey study on Polish youth and young adult use, "Electronic Cigarette Use Among Teenagers and Young Adults in Poland," in the PEDIATRICS journal. Researchers report that about "one-fifth of Polish youth have tried e-cigarettes; most of them had previously smoked cigarettes. It is unclear whether e-cigarettes are just a novelty that young people try only once or whether they have potential to compete in the marketplace with conventional cigarettes." Only 3.2% of those who had never smoked reported trying e-cigarettes.

WHO reported the 2010 Global Adult Tobacco Survey found that the smoking rate for adults 15 years and older in Poland is 28%.

Source Data: http://blog.casaa.org/2012/11/polish-survey-of-e-cigarette-users.html

Saturday, December 1, 2012

E-Cigarettes as Christmas Gifts


E-Cigarettes as Christmas Gifts

From a marketing standpoint every product or service available today makes a good Christmas gift. But in reality, some products are just better than others. The e-cigarette is a great example. It is a gift that not only has the potential of changing someone's life forever; it's also one that clearly demonstrates the giver is truly concerned about the receiver.

That dynamic between giver and receiver may be one of the reasons why "electronic cigarettes" are so welcomed as gifts. And for the smoker who has everything in life he wants, the e-cigarette gives him the chance to potentially enjoy those things longer through the elimination of tobacco smoke from his life. Not to encourage a person to smoke but knowing your love one is unable to quit smoking, offering a better alternative might be a good idea. E-cigarettes are truly an amazing gift idea unparalleled by anything else.