US: Electronic Cigarettes Gaining Popularity due to Minnesota''s Impending Tax Hike

Source from:  Sctimes  06/25/2013

An increase in Minnesota's cigarette tax is giving a boost to electronic cigarettes as an alternative to traditional smoking.

The number of Twin Cities shops selling the "e-cigs" has been rising, and shop owners credit the $1.60-a-pack tax increase that goes into effect　July 1 for expanding interest.

The tax increase won't hit e-cigarettes as hard as it will traditional tobacco. In addition, many advocates tout health advantages e-cigarettes have over traditional cigarettes.

Some skeptics dispute those health claims and are calling for the Federal Drug Administration to play a stronger role regulating e-cigarettes.

Electronic cigarettes became widely available in the United States in 2007, and today they come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Some look like conventional cigarettes. Some are much larger and don't resemble cigarettes. In all of them, as a user puffs, a battery heats an element that vaporizes a liquid often containing nicotine. The user then inhales the mist, not tobacco smoke.

"Instead of smoking we say 'vaping' because it's vapor," said Sina War, a 27-year-old former Web designer who opened the Uptown Vapor Shoppe in late April in south Minneapolis.

War uses the products she sells, and when she inhaled, the machine vaporized an impressive cloud from a concoction of nicotine, lemonade and apple flavoring.

Although War's first store hasn't even been open two months, she opened a second location in Maplewood last weekend. Several other e-cigarette stores have popped up around the Twin Cities during the past few years, including a local chain called "Smokeless Smoking."

Lainne Knutson, a 22-year-old customer at that chain's Bloomington store, said she came from Fergus Falls where she can't find the products Smokeless Smoking sells.

Angie Griffith, the shop's co-owner, helped start the operation in 2009 at a mall kiosk in Burnsville. She opened the Bloomington location in January.

"We've experienced extreme growth just since opening this last store."

And Griffith credits the looming cigarette tax increase with boosting e-cigarette sales. There is a lot less tax on a dose of liquid nicotine than there is on a dose of nicotine in a cigarette.

"A lot of customers have come in and noted that that has been their motivation because they can no longer afford cigarettes and unfortunately a lot of times cost is a bigger motivator than health," Griffith said.

Skeptics say the problem with e-cigarettes is that no one really knows whether they're healthy. The Food and Drug Administration says more research is needed to assess risks and benefits and it is in the process of proposing a regulation that would extend its oversight authority to include e-cigarettes. It's not clear how soon that will be ready.

The American Lung Association says the FDA should be regulating e-cigarettes right now.

"The questions about e-cigarettes go on and on and on, but in the meantime the tobacco industry has jumped in with both feet," said Erika Sward, vice president for national advocacy at the association.

"There's absolutely no oversight or regulation of these products right now and we're really seeing a resurgence of the glamorization of tobacco products."

The company that owns Phillip Morris is the latest tobacco conglomerate to get into the e-cigarette market. The makers of Camel, Newport and Kent cigarettes also are selling or developing e-cigarettes.

Bill Phelps, spokesman for the Phillip Morris subsidiary called Nu Mark, said the company's research shows about half of adult cigarette smokers are looking for alternative tobacco products.

"And the e-cigarette category is one of those groups that folks have shown some interest in."

Some industry analysts say e-cigarette sales could end up outpacing sales of regular cigarettes over the next 10 years. But analyst Jack Russo of Edward Jones & Company said it's too early to predict how that market will play out.

For one thing, regulation is a certainty, Russo said. And even if e-cigarettes are less harmful than traditional tobacco, health care experts worry about anything that entices young people to smoke. Enditem