SPEAK YOUR MIND If you would like to respond to an article in this issue, please submit an article or letter to the editor.
Contributions may be sent to [email protected] or may be submitted online at www.glms.org. The GLMS Editorial Board reserves
the right to choose what will be published. Please note that the views expressed in Doctors’ Lounge or any other article in this
publication are not those of the Greater Louisville Medical Society or Louisville Medicine.
HYPOCRISY
Mary G. Barry, MD
Louisville Medicine Editor
[email protected]
I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this
world, and yet they lay hands on everything
they can get. - Napoleon, 1814
C
urrently Big Tobacco is licking its
chops over the prospect of controlling the electronic cigarette
market as totally as it controls all other tobacco product sales. As of this spring e-cig
and “vaping” mods sales in the US had already surpassed $1.5 billion, and that was
with smaller producers pushing their wares
onto the shelves. Special vaping parlors have
sprung up all over the country, where lovers
of nicotine can try, for instance, Chocolate Martini flavored liquid nicotine, and
commune with others of their ilk. As of
this month there are an estimated 35,000
of these independent nicotine retailers, and
their customers are devoted to them – if
they can survive the impending FDA regulation, and all of its attendant costs.
Fake cigarettes like the mass marketed Blu
as originally devised are battery powered.
Each cartridge is single use only, and flavor
choices are limited (experts say that the
traditional tobacco industry has planned
ahead for regulation, and if the 2009 provisions hold up, many kinds of flavorings
won’t be allowed). The vaping devices are
very different. They feature an “open system”
or cartridge that holds liquid capsules of
myriad flavors and strengths of inhalable
tobacco. The Chinese dominate the liquid
capsule market. A whole culture has sprung
up around them, with vaping houses, gear
and accessory sales, and thousands of online
merchants – there are pages of choices on
Amazon.com alone. My patients who have
switched to e –cigs from real cigarettes sneer
at certain devices and extol others, but tell
me that they like to try new ones too, just
in case. They like how portable they are, the
lack of odor, the sweet or spicy taste, and the
virtuous feeling they get from having given
up their Camels. At least half of the 40 million U.S. smokers have at least tried e-cigarettes once, according to industry estimates.
Many smokers of course use both real and
e-cigs, depending on their surroundings,
and when trying to quit the real ones.
Huge sums of money are potentially involved. The World Health Organization says
as of August there are 446 e-cig types on
the market and that global spending for
them reached $3 billion in 2013. A Wells
Fargo analyst has estimated a market of
$10 billion by 2017. Lorillard bought the
Blu e-cig brand for $135 million and now
has pushed it to over 80,000 retail outlets
(though CVS recently bowed out of that
market). R. J. Reynolds has launched the
Vuse “Digital Vapor Cigarette,” trumpeting
its “smart techn