Kholer, 67, is a “vaper,” a true-believing practitioner of
electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes. He said he took up cigarette smoking at
age 8, burned through three packs a day for decades and developed emphysema. He
didn’t quit until he took his first hit of an e-cigarette three years ago.
“I still have the habit, but I’m not inhaling all the bad
stuff,” he said at his home in Mehlville. “I get all the nicotine I need.”
His nonsmoking wife, Donna, chimed in: “Had he not switched
to these, he’d be dead by now.”
That’s what they tell all their customers. Harry and Donna
Kholer sell e-cigarette kits with devices they import from China and liquids
they mix for the faux-smoke sensation. Their Move2Vapor is a mom-and-pop
business in a wide-open, burgeoning and unregulated market that is attracting
the big tobacco companies, which are launching advertising campaigns and pushing
slick display cases in convenience stores.
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| Electronic Cigarettes for Sale |
Anti-smoking organizations are pressing the federal
government to at least regulate the devices, if not restrict them pending
lengthy studies. Last week, 16 organizations, including the American Lung
Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians, urged President
Barack Obama to press the Food and Drug Administration to quickly approve
regulations.
“This delay is having very real public-health consequences,”
the letter said.
On Tuesday, 40 attorneys general, including Missouri’s Chris
Koster and Illinois’ Lisa Madigan, followed up with a similar pitch to the FDA.
The agency has said it will produce something by Oct. 31, but previous such
dates have come and gone.
Erika Sward, national spokeswoman for the Lung Association,
said there has been too little research into the claims of e-cigarette sellers
and too much marketing that looks disturbingly like the bad old days. Cigarette
ads were banned from TV in 1971.
“These are classic tobacco-industry tactics, using flavors
and glamorizing smoking,” Sward said. “There has been very little research on
the contents of these things, and we don’t want to take the industry’s word for
it.”
On Sept. 5, the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention said the number of youths who have tried e-cigarettes more than
doubled from 2011 to 2012. That report helped inspire the latest calls by
anti-smoking groups.
The FDA once banned the importation of e-cigarettes, but a
federal appeals court overruled the agency in 2010. The court said the agency
could regulate them, and anti-smoking groups are impatient for action.
It all has happened quickly. Invented in China, e-cigarettes
were oddities in the United States even only a few years ago. Users were likely
to draw stares and ridicule. Industry watchers say that at least 250 companies
sell them in this country, many over the Internet. Nobody’s sure.
Meanwhile, annual sales growth has been about 30 percent,
says Wells Fargo Securities analyst Bonnie Herzog in New York, who monitors the
tobacco business. She estimated that e-cigarettes could churn $1.8 billion in
sales this year and surpass cigarette use by 2023.
Lorillard Inc. of Greensboro, N.C., seller of Newport and
Kent cigarettes, is marketing an e-cigarette called Blu, with ads featuring
actor Stephen Dorff and actress-model Jenny McCarthy, who speak of guilt-free
puffing. They confidently exhale their drags, just like Humphrey Bogart and
Lauren Bacall did in the movies 60 years ago.
E-cigarettes come in different styles but in two parts — a
battery, often hidden in what looks like the tobacco part of a cigarette, and a
cartridge that holds the liquid. The cartridge often resembles a filter. The
liquid usually is propylene glycol — stage smoke — and is mixed with nicotine
and one or more of many flavors, including standard tobacco.
When a “vaper” sucks on the device, the battery powers a
coil that heats enough liquid to create the inhaled vapor. The user then
exhales as with a cigarette.
Kholer said inhaling and exhaling are psychologically
important to many former smokers, making e-cigarettes more attractive than
nicotine gum or patches. Sward, of the Lung Association, said it would be
better for smokers to use FDA-approved cessation methods.
E-cigarettes have some support in the medical world as a
workable lesser evil. Dr. Walt Sumner, associate professor of medicine at the
Washington University School of Medicine, has studied the issue and interviewed
vapers and believes e-cigarettes are a safer way for people addicted to
nicotine to get that drug, if they must have it.
Sumner said the vapors probably aren’t dangerous and
certainly are much better than tobacco smoke — for smokers or people around
them.
“I have been to vaper meetings and people have exhaled
toward me all day, and I’ve had no reaction at all,” Sumner said. “Anecdotally,
people who use them say they feel better and believe it a better way to manage
their nicotine problem.”
He opposes any use by young people. “Early exposure to
nicotine causes changes in the brain that makes addiction more likely,” he
said.
Banning sales to teens also seems to be popular among many
fledgling e-cigarette advocacy groups, such as the Tobacco Vapor Electronic
Cigarette Association and Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives. But
no single group has arisen as the authoritative voice.
In all but a few cities across the country, no-smoking
ordinances governing public places don’t apply to e-cigarettes. Craig LeFebvre,
spokesman for the St. Louis County Health Department, said vapers can puff away
at local restaurants. He said the department has received few complaints, and
not many more calls from people asking if they are legal.
In St. Charles County, where smoking is allowed, local
vapers hold periodic gatherings at Side Pockets, a sports bar and restaurant in
St. Louis. Chantel Davis, the manager there, is glad to have them.
“The vapers are 1,000 times better to be around than regular
smoke,” said Davis, a former smoker. “I can’t really smell it. It doesn’t stick
to my hair.”
The early vapers were brave people, she said, because of the
kidding they received. “But now a lot of people are doing it,” she said.
Martin Pion of Ferguson, a longtime anti-smoking activist in
the St. Louis area, said he generally concedes their value to addicted smokers,
but doesn’t like the trend toward glamorous advertisement. Pion said he wants
the FDA to regulate e-cigarettes — and wants local ordinances amended to keep
them out of public places.
Article Credit: http://www.stltoday.com
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