Tobacco Companies Shift More Advertising to E-cigarettes

Source from:  ConsumerAffairs 02/25/2014

With fewer new smokers and more people kicking the habit – along with restrictions on advertising and marketing – cigarette sales are in decline. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported a 10% decline in U.S. cigarette sales in 2009, following a 62-cent increase in the federal cigarette tax.

In 2012 Lorillard, the nation's third-largest tobacco company, acquired Blu, a brand of e-cigarettes that has experienced rapid growth from former smokers, who say e-cigarettes give them many of the pleasures of smoking, including a nicotine kick. The move was followed last year by Altria Group's release of its own e-cigarette brand, Mark Ten.

A new study in the journal Tobacco Control looks at tobacco company advertising on the Internet and finds that their campaigns now focus for the most part on e-cigarettes, snus and cigars.

$2 billion in sales

According to the public health foundation Legacy, which conducted the study, annual sales of smokeless tobacco products now exceed $2.93 billion globally and sales of e-cigarettes continue to grow, reaching $2 billion globally in 2011. For now, e-cigarettes are unregulated in the U.S., though the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is said to be preparing regulations.

Public health and anti-tobacco groups have expressed alarm at the growing popularity of e-cigarettes and have pushed for tight controls. But are e-cigarettes as harmful as tobacco cigarettes have been shown to be? One medical researcher, at least, thinks the jury is still out.

In an editorial in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine entitled "The Promise and Problems of E-cigarettes, Jerome S. Brody, of the Department of Medicine and Pulmonary Center at Boston University, calls for more study.

Though research is in its infancy, he notes the known problems with e-cigarettes, which deliver the nicotine without many of the other harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke. He notes that nicotine itself is problematic; it's addictive and has been implicated in a number of cancers.

Ingredients list needed

"There is sufficient evidence about the toxicity of nicotine and other components that have been found in e-cigarettes, including tobacco itself, for regulatory agencies to require a list, with concentrations, of all e-cigarette ingredients," Brody writes.

On the other hand, he doesn't rule out that e-cigarettes might be a preferable alternative to smoking cigarettes. He notes there have been a few studies that have suggested that very thing. It's time, he says, to find out.

"There clearly is a need for a multicenter clinical trial of the value of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation programs," he writes.

Legacy says its study shows that not only is e-cigarette advertising widespread on the Internet the ads were placed on websites with the highest average percentage of a youth audience, with some websites having a youth audience as high as 35%.

Pushing the product, not smoking cessation

The study also found that e-cigarette ads were most likely to feature themes of harm reduction; use as an aide to quit smoking; being more environmentally-friendly alternative to cigarettes; or as an alternative to cigarettes when someone cannot smoke. However, Legacy says, when you click on the ad, you typically go to a site that tells you about the product but nothing about how to quit smoking.

Legacy's concern, says CEO Robin Kovel, is e-cigarettes are not being used solely by people who want to quit smoking. Rather, she says they're hooking a whole new generation of consumers on nicotine.

"Any encouragement to use their first tobacco products and initiate a nicotine addiction could potentially lead to them becoming lifelong tobacco users and undermine our efforts to achieve a 'Generation Free' of tobacco use," Koval said. Enditem