US: VCU Researchers Win $19.78 Million Grant To Study Impact Of Tobacco Product Regulations

Source from:  Richmond.com 09/18/2018

A 15-year-old high school student uses a vaping device near the school’s campus in Massachusetts. Health advocates worry that a new generation of young people will get addicted to nicotine through growing use of e-cigarettes.

E-cigarettes may be getting a new generation addicted to nicotine, but an outright ban on flavored e-cigarettes might not fix the problem — and could make things worse.

Teenagers might start mixing their own flavor concoctions using recipes off the internet, which could pose additional dangers, said Thomas Eissenberg, director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Eissenberg and collaborators at the VCU center have received a five-year, $19.8 million grant to study the impact of possible government regulations on e-cigarettes and other novel tobacco products. The grant was announced Monday.

The VCU team received a similar grant five years ago to study e-cigarettes and other new tobacco products. That work was funded through a tobacco research initiative of the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as is the recent grant.

The research focus this time around is to look at potential regulations, such as what would happen if the FDA followed the European Union’s move and limited e-cigarette liquids to 20 milligrams of nicotine per milliliter of e-liquid, Eissenberg said.

“On the surface, that makes sense,” he said.

The problem is that wattage or power on electronic cigarette devices can be manipulated to get a bigger dose of nicotine. Also, using higher-powered e-cigarette device creates more substances that are bad for the lungs, Eissenberg said.

“The liquid attains a higher temperature. At those higher temperatures, bad things can come out,” he said.

“This is a perfect example of how a particular regulation when not grounded in science can not only fail to achieve its intent ... but can have unintended consequences that are potentially harmful for users,” Eissenberg said.

Additional concepts the researchers will study include:differences in the impact of low concentrations of nicotine delivered by high-powered e-cigarettes versus high concentrations delivered in low-power devices; and　how much effort people will make to get flavored e-cigarettes or pay to get flavored e-cigarettes if flavors were banned.

E-cigarettes, health advocates say, threaten to undo years of work to reduce youth smoking.

Last week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced new actions to address what he called an “epidemic” of e-cigarette use by teens. Tobacco products are supposed to be off-limits to people under age 18.

E-cigarette devices are small and easy to conceal. One company makes an e-cigarette device that looks like a USB drive. Some research suggests young people do not view e-cigarettes as tobacco products.

“There is definitely a concern among health professionals and health advocates that these devices have the potential to hook a new generation on nicotine,” said Richard Foster, spokesman for the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth.

Foster said surveys of middle school and high school students in Virginia show e-cigarette usage is about twice that of traditional cigarette usage.

The VCU Center for the Study of Tobacco Products is part of the university’s Department of Psychology. Alison Breland is co-principal investigator on the grant.

VCU and eight other research teams across the country provide research to the National Institutes of Health and the FDA. The nine are part of the Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science, which this month awarded a total of $151 million in grants for 2018-22 to the centers.  Enditem