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31 December 2010 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10697207

E-cigarette seller hit with warning

As the price of smoking rises again from tomorrow, an electronic cigarette company has started selling an alternative nicotine hit, in defiance of a "virtual ban" by the medicines control agency.

The price of cheaper cigarette brands is expected to rise from around $14.60 for a packet of 25 to more than $16.

This is because on top of the annual, inflation-based tax rise, smokers are being hit by the second of three excise tax rises of 10 per cent. The first of these, in May, was in addition to a one-off tax increase of 14 per cent on loose tobacco.

The tax increases are intended to reduce smoking by hitting smokers in the wallet. Price increases are considered the most effective way of cutting tobacco consumption and the smoking rate. Around one in five adults smoke.

Some public health researchers want smokers given easier access to safer forms of nicotine than smoking, such as rechargeable battery-powered e-cigarettes, which deliver the addictive drug in a vapour, without the harmful components of tobacco smoke. E-cigarettes can also operate with flavoured, non-nicotine cartridges.

Nicotine cartridges were sold in New Zealand until April, when Medsafe issued a warning to the Dunedin outlet because it had made a therapeutic claim, promoting them as a quit-smoking aid.

Users would subsequently have had to import their own, although one website with a New Zealand web address is now understood to arrange deliveries from Britain for New Zealand customers.

Separately, Auckland-based AFP International said yesterday it had starting selling nicotine e-cigarettes in New Zealand in October. The products were available at 150 outlets, including dairies, convenience stores, liquor stores, petrol stations and some restaurants. Around 5000 had been sold. The company was not making any therapeutic claims for the device, nor advertising it at all.

It was not expecting any difficulties with Medsafe, because the agency had said in an email in 2008 that in respect of e-cigarettes as a tobacco product, it had "no direct interest in regulation of cigarettes as such".

Yesterday, however, Medsafe issued a new warning when told about the resumption of nicotine cartridge sales.

"Nicotine is a deadly poison and when intended for administration to humans it is a scheduled medicine," said group manager Dr Stewart Jessamine. "Even without claims or advertising the company is supplying their nicotine-containing inserts for e-cigs in breach of the Medicines Act and risk prosecution."

Dr Murray Laugesen and fellow trustees of the End Smoking NZ Trust say in an article on their website that despite Medsafe's "virtual ban", based on the assertion that nicotine e-cigarettes are a medicine, they are in fact "primarily recreational nicotine alternatives to smoking".

"We argue they already qualify as tobacco products under the Smoke-free Environments Act ... All that ... distributors would have to do is strictly refrain from making therapeutic claims, and abide by current and future regulations of the ... act."

THE LEGAL STATUS

* Medsafe: Nicotine cartridges for electronic cigarettes contain a medicine, which must be licensed under the Medicines Act before they can legally be sold.

* End Smoking NZ Trust: Sales can be allowed as a non-medicinal, recreational tobacco product under the Smoke-free Environments Act, which makes no mention of electronic cigarettes.

2 November 2010

End Smoking NZ backs Tobacco Inquiry call to halve smoking within five years

With phase-out by 2025

The Inquiry’s report, to be tabled in Parliament tomorrow, is now published.

http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/C6AAA494-A706-48C6-8F91-6CAF5EA7CA51/164754/DBSCH_SCR_4900_InquiryintothetobaccoindustryinAote.pdf

The inquiry wants smoking reduced by half by 2015, and fully by 2025.

End Smoking NZ backs the Maori Affairs Committee report on the Tobacco Inquiry, says chair Dr

Murray Laugesen. It clearly backs three core policies of End Smoking for phasing out cigarette sales:

Increase tobacco taxation, Decrease the supply of cigarettes, Annually decrease nicotine content.

www.endsmoking.org.nz/FourPoliciesPosterA4.pdf

Now that the Inquiry has set a goal for a 2025 phaseout of commercial cigarettes,

the main task now for government and society is to focus on the 2015 goal of halving smoking within five years, Dr Laugesen said.

The report urges research into alternative products by the Health Research

Council. End Smoking NZ urges government to permit the sale of the much safer nicotine electronic

cigarettes, which are becoming increasingly popular with smokers in the UK and USA, and

which have not been credited with a single death worldwide. 3% of UK smokers have switched to them.

The trust also agrees with the Inquiry’s call for plain tobacco packaging.

Halving smoking by 2015 is feasible with further 10% tax hikes each year. The tobacco

tax increase in April 2010 has already reduced cigarette sales 15%, and further 10% increases in

price will take effect in January 2011 and January 2012.

2 November 2010

$8000 to study role of other substances in tobacco smoke addiction

End Smoking NZ has awarded $8000 to Dr Katie Brennan at Victoria University of

Wellington (VUW) to complete studies to clarify the role of non-nicotine addictive substances

in tobacco smoke, by April 2011.

The award was recognition of the quality of Dr Brennan’s work and its leading edge nature,

said Dr Laugesen, chair of End Smoking NZ.

“The trust’s aim is to drastically reduce the addictiveness of cigarette smoking. Completion

of this study will improve the science base for government to take action,” he said. The funding

was made possible by the Canterbury Community Trust. Collaborators in the study are Professor

Susan Schenk (VUW) and Dr Penny Truman at ESR (Environmental Science and Research).

October 11, 2010

Nicotine tax – to reduce addiction to cigarettes –new policy proposal

Murray Laugesen of End Smoking NZ and

Associate Professor Nick Wilson from University of Otago, Wellington, presented a new concept for reducing tobacco addiction at the

APACT Asia Pacific Tobacco Control Conference in Sydney on October 8.

www.endsmoking.org.nz/Nicotine taxFINAL.ppt

US research shows that reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes can halve smokers’ addiction ratings.

While no method is perfect, a nicotine tax may be the simplest way to reduce inhaled nicotine.

The tax would also allow smokers to reduce (taper) their nicotine intake gradually, simply and

successfully. See www.endsmoking.org.nz/NicotineTaxAbstract_Oct2010.htm Further research is planned.

October 11, 2010

Four policies to phase out cigarette sales by 2020

Supply Reduction	Demand Reduction	These policies were presented as a poster authored by the trustees of End Smoking NZ trust, at APACT Asia Pacific Tobacco Control Conference 7-9 October 2010 Sydney. www.endsmoking.org.nz/FourPoliciesPosterA4.pdf The poster explains how supply and demand for cigarettes need to be reduced in tandem. The four policies promoted are intended to minimise the less desirable alternatives – illicit supply, and legal home grown tobacco for personal use only. (The poster updates the earlier NZ Med J paper www.endsmoking.org.nz/FourPolicies14May2010.pdf)
Commercial Supply reduced by law stepwise	Increase tax and price
	Price increases due to scarcity
	Less Nicotine per cigarette, Nicotine tax
	Nicotine Substitutes including e-cigarettes
	Home grown tobacco
	Illicit supply

Monday Aug 30, 2010 NZ Herald

Dramatic slump in cigarette sales

By Martin Johnston

Photo / Peter Meecham

Demand for tobacco has fallen 15 per cent at supermarkets since the tax rise in April - a far greater reduction than expected.

"It's extraordinary," public health physician Dr Murray Laugesen said yesterday, commenting on supermarket sales figures supplied to him by research company ACNielsen.

Based on earlier tax increases, a tobacco price rise of 10 per cent would have been expected to reduce sales by 5 per cent.

In April, the Government increased the excise tax on factory-made cigarettes by 10 per cent and on loose tobacco by 25 per cent.

The tax on both types will rise by a further 10 per cent next year, and by the same percentage again in 2012.

Dr Laugesen said that since the April tax rises, average weekly sales of factory-made cigarettes at supermarkets had gone down by nearly

14 per cent – notably more than the price increase of 10 per cent.

Sales of loose roll-your-own tobacco dropped by nearly 18 per cent, which was less than the price increase of 21 per cent.

He said it appeared some smokers might have switched to rolling their own cigarettes, which were cheaper - despite the greater tax increase

for loose tobacco - because they were usually thinner than factory-made smokes.

Article continues below

The overall drop in supermarket sales - which was not the whole market - could reflect a "pent up effect" in people cutting down or quitting.

"It's 10 years since there was a tax increase above the level of inflation. New Zealanders tend to wait for the price signal before they listen

to the logic of health warnings and so forth. The strong health warnings have been there since 2000, and graphic warnings have been there for a long time also."

After the tax rise a decade ago, 80,000 smokers who quit soon relapsed, but Dr Laugesen said conditions were different now, with the graphic

warnings on packets, the ban on smoking in bars, subsidised nicotine replacement therapy, and the coming rises in GST and excise.

Quitline says the number of calls it received from people wanting to quit smoking rose to twice the normal rate for the eight weeks after the April

tax increase. "It's settled down to slightly higher than normal," Quit Group chief executive Paula Snowden said yesterday.

"We don't know if it's slightly higher because of the tax increase or advertising."

New Zealand: Tobacco sales down since rise in excise

Source: Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aoteoroa (RNZ), 30 August 2010

Tobacco sales are down dramatically in both supermarkets and dairies since a sharp increase in excise in April.
An anti-tobacco group says sales have fallen by 15% in supermarkets.
And the group representing dairies and grocery stores says its members are reporting a drop of 11% in tobacco sales.
The price increases mean a packet of 20 cigarettes costs about $11 for leading brands and roll your own tobacco about $40 for a 50g packet.
The Food and Grocery Council says supermarkets command about 20% of the market and dairy and convenience stores about 55%.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Total cigarette sales August 2009 to August 2010 in all 388 NZ supermarkets

Sales are greater at Christmas-New Year and lower at Easter (more and fewer shopping days respectively).

After tax rose, prices took two weeks to rise while manufacturers notified new recommended prices and retailers sold old stock.

30 August 2010 Media release

15% fall in cigarette sales since tax increase

The 15% decrease in cigarette sales is much greater than forecast - a 6% fall was expected. The fall is so great, that excise revenue is unchanged. On these data Treasury will miss out on $200 million in extra revenue they expected. The effect was measured comparing 8 months before versus 4 months after the tax increase.

On 28 April 2010, Parliament voted to raise the tax on cigarettes and tobacco by 118 votes to 4 - unprecedented strong support from MPs - tax rose 16%, price rose 12%.

End Smoking NZ, a charitable trust, has analysed weekly cigarette sales from supermarkets over the past 12 months. Dr Laugesen chair of End Smoking NZ says the response from smokers has has been unprecedented. Sales of roll-your-own and factory made cigarettes are both down.

The full before-and-after analysis based on one year's weekly national supermarket sales data from AC Nielsen, with interpretation, is found at:

www.endsmoking.org.nz/tobaccotaxes.htm

Large health gains expected

Dr Laugesen says 15% fewer cigarettes sold eventually will mean 15% fewer deaths and diseases from cigarettes, with the full effect in lives saved being spread over the next 20 years.

MPs have legislated for a further 10% tobacco tax increase in January 2011 and 10% again in January 2012. This wil lock in the health gains from the April 2010 increase.

Comment: Implications for the politics of phasing out tobacco smoking

§ The results indicate unprecedented large numbers of smokers are cutting down or quitting.

§ If the sales decrease in this proportion after the next two tobacco tax increases, the total reduction in cigarette sales by 2012 would be nearly 40%.

§ Even if this doesn't happen to this extent, large changes are now under way.

§ Fewer voters smoking could turn the political tide and make future strong policies against smoking into vote winners.

Next steps

§ End Smoking supports no tobacco displays in shops, and legalized sales of nicotine electronic cigarettes, and a nicotine tax as next steps to help smokers switch away from smoking and make it easier to quit.

______________________________________________________________________________________

7 July 2010

Submission to Inquiry: End Smoking NZ asks for tobacco multinationals to report sales by District Health Board View submission

End Smoking NZ has asked the Maori Affairs Select Committee Inquiry into the Tobacco Industry to hold major tobacco transnational firms to account, by requiring them to total tobacco sales (98% of sales) in each product category annually by District Health Board area, and by the Territorial Local Authorities which comprise the DHBs.

DHBs have to treat the dying smokers, the diseases and disabilities caused by people smoking tobacco companies’ products.

__________________________________________________________________________

6 July 2010 For more on e-cigarettes – see www.healthnz.co.nz/News2010.htm

Comment: Ministry of Health continues to blacklist nicotine e-cigarettes

http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/regulatory/MedicalDevices/ElectronicCigarettes.asp

In a further clarification of previous advice, Medsafe, states “Electronic cigarettes are medicines when supplied with one or more cartridges containing nicotine, even if they are not represented as aids to smoking cessation.”

This maintains Medsafe’s previous opposition to the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes, virtually banning them.

This means that whatever the retailer’s claims made or not made, whatever the user’s intentions, nicotine is a medicine and can’t be sold (and Medsafe is not offering to license any e-cigarettes as medicines).

Ministry of Health and Medsafe annually supply smokers wanting to quit with $8.5 million dollars worth of subsidized nicotine patches, gum, vapourisers, lozenges. But e-cigarettes are blacklisted. However all e-cigarette users want is for e-cigarettes to be cheaper than tobacco. Disposable e-cigarettes cost under 20 dollars and give 150 puffs and there is no need to want to quit before enjoying them..

Ministry of Health wants doctors to help smokers make more attempts to quit smoking, and to record whether their patients smoke. Flip chart tests however show that some smokers are very interested in the option of e-cigarettes.

Medsafe believes the Medicines Act would allow it to prosecute any firm importing and selling nicotine e-cigarettes not licensed as a medicine, even if imported as a tobacco product under the Smokefree Environments Act (See our 29 Jan 2010 letter to NZMedJ at foot of this file).

Nicotine sold in lethal cigarettes or cigars or tobacco for smoking can be sold, but nicotine in an e-cigarette imported as an alternative tobacco product cannot be sold. (except as a medicine, and no e-cigarette is licensed). Those with internet savvy can import e-cigarettes for personal use. Meantime most smokers just keep on smoking.

The current ban on nicotine e-cigarettes prohibits the sale of a substantially safer e-cig alternatives to cigarettes. E-cigarette emissions are 100 times less toxic than tobacco cigarette smoke emissions.

Smokers don’t choose to take nicotine as a medicine, but many would like to be able to buy and enjoy their nicotine in e-cigarettes which are obviously much safer.

In New Zealand 4.2 billiion cigarettes are legally sold, killing 500 New Zealanders annually, but the flameless e-cigarette containing no tobacco and much less nicotine, and giving no smoke, cannot be sold in New Zealand. (0 deaths so far globally, despite over a million sold in USA and UK).

Something is seriously wrong here.

_________________________________________________________________________

28 June 2010

Government policy: Smokefree Prisons from July 2011. More at www.endsmoking.org.nz/smokefreeprisons.htm

_____________________________________________________________________________

Feature: The last gasp

By ANTHONY HUBBARD - Sunday Star Times

Last updated 05:00 13/06/2010

smoko

Bars, restaurants and workplaces are smokefree, but can smoking really be stubbed out forever?

Photo: iStock

Anti-smoking groups are pushing for a ban on cigarette sales – but critics say it would just lead to a huge tobacco black market. Anthony Hubbard reports.

IT'S THE nuclear option in the war against Big Tobacco: a ban on sales. Smoking is "slaughtering" the population, says anti-smoking campaigner Murray Laugesen. Since 1950, it has killed more than 150,000 people, greater than the population of Hamilton. So now it is time to halt the massacre.

Years of anti-smoking legislation have only slightly dented the rate of smoking. The anti-smoking group Ash points out that in 1991 about 26% of adults smoked. By 2007 this was down only a few points, to 23%. "This is an unacceptable rate of decline and highlights the need for urgent action," Ash says.

The Smokefree Coalition, a collection of more than 40 anti-smoking groups, is now pushing for a ban on sales of cigarettes and tobacco by 2020. The push for a ban is the main thrust of the battle against Big Tobacco, both here and abroad. More than 90% of the submissions to the Maori Affairs select committee, which is investigating smoking's effect on Maori, have backed the idea.

Opponents, including the tobacco companies themselves, say it will lead to a huge black market, perhaps dominated by criminal gangs. Didn't Prohibition lead to massive bootlegging and murder? After all, even the cigarette companies now admit that smokers are addicts. If you stop them buying their daily fix, won't they turn to other sources?

Laugesen, a leader of the anti-smoking movement for 25 years, both as a government official and then as a researcher and lobbyist, says the plan is quite different from Prohibition. Growers would not be able to buy tobacco after 2020, but they could still grow it for their own use. There would be a gradual phase-out of sales, not an overnight ban. And there would have to be much more help for smokers wanting to quit.

"We're not out to end smoking altogether. I think that's a bridge too far," says Laugesen. "But taking it out of shops will have the effect of drastically reducing smoking.

"It would be very difficult for any well-organised criminal black market to kill more than 4500 people a year [the current death toll from smoking]. That is the problem we have, we have a legalised trade whose products are slaughtering the population."

Price increases usually lead to falls in smoking, and, under the plan, the price would be steadily increased until 2020. The government's recent tax increases – which will raise prices by 30% by 2012 – are a good start, says Laugesen. More increases would be needed after that.

At the same time, much more help must be given to smokers to quit. Laugesen points to electronic cigarettes, metallic cigarette-shaped vaporisers which give smokers their nicotine hit without the lethal smoke. At present, these are not readily available because the nicotine cartridge they require cannot be sold here, although smokers can import them for personal use.

By 2020, under the Smokefree scheme, the number of smokers would already be falling. But this suggests the remaining ones will be the hard-core addicts, the ones most likely to drive a black market. They could turn to locally grown tobacco, known as "chop-chop" – under the present law, you can grow up to 15kg a year for personal use, enough to make about 60 roll-your-owns a day.

"All the reports we've had are that chop-chop apparently tastes like absolute s--t," says Ash communication manager Michael Colhoun. This doesn't necessarily mean that smokers won't buy it. Desperate addicts will take what they can get. The evidence suggests that tobacco is quite easy to grow, Laugesen says. City-dwellers could grow it in a glasshouse.

Smokers could also use smuggled cigarettes from abroad. Laugesen believes the scope for a black market in this area is limited. The total New Zealand market at present is about 4.2 billion cigarettes a year, including roll-your-owns: the equivalent of about 400 shipping continers full of cigarettes.

"The quantities are substantial and cannot easily be hidden and cannot easily be rustled up from here and there," says Laugesen. "For example, a cigarette factory in New Zealand would be very difficult to hide.

"Any finished product would have to come from overseas, and, to come in in any quantity, it would have to come in in a shipping container." Could the smugglers really bring in a shipping container every day?

New Zealand, says Laugesen, is surrounded by water and it is much easier to control the border than in Europe, where cigarette smuggling is an enormous problem.

The tobacco companies say there is already a black market and it grows whenever the price of cigarettes is boosted.

Only one country in the world, Bhutan, has banned sales, although the government of Finland is discussing a plan to phase them out. The second-largest tobacco company in New Zealand, Imperial, told the Maori Affairs select committee that Bhutan's experience since the ban in 2004 "demonstrated that banning tobacco does not work. The ban was such a disaster in Bhutan that it was lifted by the National Council in June last year".

In fact, the ban was not lifted: a bill in the National Council, the upper house of parliament, did not proceed. However, a report by American political scientist Michael Givel in November last year "tentatively" concluded that "tobacco consumption and secondhand smoke exposure remain a significant health issue in Bhutan. In addition, the best available evidence indicates that illegal tobacco smuggling in Bhutan remains robust".

Givel's report shows that officials were worried about the "porous" border between Bhutan and its neighbours, India and China. It also suggests a lack of bureaucratic co-ordination in enforcing the ban, and a lack of help for smokers wanting to quit.

The experience of a third-world land-locked country clearly cannot be transferred, holus-bolus, to New Zealand. What evidence do we have about the black market in this country?

British and American Tobacco, the largest cigarette company in New Zealand, commissioned a report by Ernst and Young this year which concluded that "overall, illicit tobacco represents about 3.3% of total tobacco consumption in New Zealand".

This represented, the report claimed, a loss of $39 million to $50m in tax to the government each year. However, the report clearly involves a whole series of assumptions about not only the quantity of tobacco grown in New Zealand, but also about how much is being brought in illegally.

Ash, which is preparing its own report on the black market, disputes Ernst and Young's findings.

Nobody doubts that a ban on sales would lead to an increase in the tobacco black market. And nobody really knows how big it would be. END

(For public support see www.endsmoking.org.nz/polls.htm )

_______________________________________________________________________________________

14 May 2010 Morning Report RadioNZ

Four simple policies

http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/mnr/2010/05/14/researchers_suggest_ways_to_end_cigarette_sales

Four simple policies to end cigarette sales in NZ by 2020

FourPolicies14May2010.pdf

Four policies to end the sale of cigarettes and smoking tobacco in New Zealand by 2020. End Smoking NZ is not advocating prohibition – people could legally grow their own, Ending the legal cigarette and tobacco trade however, should result in reducing smoking prevalence from 20% now to 1% to 4 %, and reducing consumption similarly.

4 May 2010

95% of users say e-cigarette helped them quit smoking

23% were still smoking daily - median 12 cigarettes per day. On the other hand, 63% were no longer smokers. Median duration of use was 100 days, median 175 puffs per day. Etter JF et al. Electronic cigarettes: a survey of users. http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1440477701319135_article.pdf?random=19859

28 April 2010

Tobacco tax increases – a useful kickstart to the growing campaign to phase out commercial sales of tobacco cigarettes by 2020.

1) The last big increase in 2000 was marred by relapse of 80,000 smokers over 3 months. www.endsmoking.org.nz/casestudy.htm

2) The “equalization” of tax on RYOs and factory made cigarettes only applies if the RYO smoker uses the same amount of tobacco per cigarette as a FM (factory-made) cigarette smoker. (0.7 g per cig).

3) However in reality - the average weight of a RYO cigarette in NZ for the last many years is around 0.5 g# ** - the gap between RYOs and FM prices will be even further apart than before this tax increase.

4) This persisting and increased gap is now likely to persuade even more FM smokers to shift to RYOs instead of quitting.

Table 1. Cigarette price changes in 2010-2012:* All cigarette prices increase, but RYOs remain cheaper than factory-made cigarettes.

	Mar 2010	April 2010	Jan 2012	2010 – 2012
25s Factory Made	$13.00^	$14.30^	$17.30*	+33%
30g RYO	$21.30^	$25.50^	$29.80*	+40%
Assuming 60 RYOs /30 g (0.5 g/RYO cigarette # )
Price*/FM cig	52.0 c	57.6 c	69.2 c	+15c
Price*/RYO cig	35.5 c	42.5 c	49.7c	+14c

Avg RYO cigarette (0.5 g) cheaper by	16.5c /cig	15.1c /cig	19.5c /cig	3c more /cig

*Ministry of Health press release 28 April 2010.

#Laugesen, Epton, Frampton, Glover, Lea. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/194 and more at www.healthnz.co.nz/News2009.htm based on weighing of tobacco in cigarettes rolled by RYO smokers.

**http://www.endsmoking.org.nz/RYOhalfprice.htm Table 1 National data estimating RYO weights.

^ Actual recommended retail prices from BAT. In reality, shops on low income areas discount these prices.

Table 2. Actual taxes and prices before and after 28 April 2010

From 3 shops in Lyttelton: shop prices will not change until about May 3, 2010

	Before 28 April 2010	From May 2010	% increase during 2010
Excise rates www.customs.govt.nz
Tax rate/FM cigarette	31.4 c	34.587 c/cig	10% (tax)
Tax rate / 0.5 g RYO	19.65 c	24.643 c/cig	25% (tax)
Tax rate / 0.7 g RYO	27.51 c	34.587 c/cig	25.7% (tax)
Retail prices
Holiday 20s	9.50** to 10.30	11.30*	10%
Holiday 25s	13.00	14.30*	10%
30g RYO Port Royal	$19.80** to $21.30	25.50*	20%

* recommended retail price from BAT

** a discounted price

Note: Normal increases due to inflation are apparently stood down until January 2010.

17 April 2010 NZ Herald

Medical rules lead to withdrawal of electronic quit-smoking aid

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10638910

Dunedin Online Pharmacy has withdrawn its electronic cigarettes from sale, after the Ministry of Health “advised” it was acting illegally. One satisfied user emailed the Herald saying he was dismayed, “since they work”.

However public health specialist Dr Murray Laugesen argues the products can be legally imported and sold - but not advertised - under the Smokefree Environments Act, although he wants the ministry first to write regulations to ensure safety.

15 April 2010 NZ Herald.

Smoker wants e-ciggie nicotine at a shop near him

Mark Greenhalgh says e-cigarettes have enabled him to cut his daily habit from 30 to three tobacco cigarettes. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Full Life distributor Cecil Driver of Christchurch plans to import nicotine e-cigarettes “within months”

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10638418

Comment:

The NZ Smokefree Environments Act permits sale of nicotine products. (see Letter to NZ Medical Journal below). End Smoking NZ regards the sale of effective cigarette substitutes as key to persuading smokers that tobacco cigarette sales in NZ can be phased out by 2020.

For clinical trials showing e-cigarettes reduce cravings, see www.healthnz.co.nz/News2010.htm

26 March 2010

Clean, green and tobacco-sales-free

Four out of five Kiwi smokers would not smoke if they had their lives over again, says researcher Marewa Glover. Source: Stuff

21 March 2010 RadioNZ

End Smoking NZ experts’ views on ending cigarette sales

Smokefree Aotearoa? Is a smokefree nation a realistic goal?

The Ideas programme interviews:

University of Auckland academic Dr Marewa Glover (End Smoking NZ board member) on why Maori are at the forefront of those calling for a ban on the sale of tobacco; and;

Longtime anti-smoking campaigner and researcher Dr Murray Laugesen (chair, End Smoking NZ) on e-cigarettes and other alternatives to tobacco products;

Also Otago Univesity public health professor Professor Richard Edwards, on what he calls tobacco’s end game.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ideas

End Smoking NZ’s Submission to the Maori Affairs Select Committee

on the Inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa and the health

consequences of tobacco use for Maori.

Published on MASC website February 2010

The tobacco smoking deaths epidemic has arisen since commercial

cigarettes became popular in the first half of the 20th century, and

ending this epidemic requires that commercial cigarettes be phased

out. Read how four key policies can end the sale of cigarettes by 2020,

by making the healthy choice the easy and cheaper choice.

Read the full submission at …..SubmissionTobInquiry_EndSmoking_25Jan10.pdf

NZ Med J 29-January-2010, Vol 123 No 1308 http://www.endsmoking.org.nz/EcigswNic_SaleSFEAct.pdf
Nicotine electronic cigarette sales are permitted

under the Smokefree Environments Act

Summary—Here we (ML and End Smoking NZ) canvass some new thinking on tobacco and nicotine law. End Smoking NZ is a charitable trust dedicated to end the sale of traditional tobacco-containing tobacco products for smoking by 2020. Before this can be done, it is essential to free up access for smokers to effective, safer nicotine products. These products, we find, could theoretically, probably be sold now for recreational use under the Smokefree Environments (SFE) Act. For example, nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes (which simulate smoking, by vaporising nicotine into a mist without burning tobacco or creating smoke) could provide safer alternatives to cigarette smoking. Allowing time for regulations for safety reasons, which we support, it should be possible to permit approved brands of nicotine electronic cigarettes by 2011. This is better than waiting years until such brands can be approved as medicines.

Findings—Tobacco products in the SFE Act 1990, we find, are defined broadly, as products of tobacco, made from tobacco, whether or not they contain tobacco. Since nicotine is manufactured exclusively from tobacco, the nicotine in nicotine ‘cigarettes’, including nicotine electronic cigarettes, fits the SFE Act definition of tobacco product. This means nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes, can be sold, and sold for recreational or pleasurable purpose under the SFE Act, without negating the powers of Medsafe to approve and license the sale of medicinal nicotine products under the Medicines Act 1981. Some products, perhaps with different brand names, could eventually finish up obtaining approval under both Acts.

Current situation—Smoking cessation is a Ministry of Health priority, but the Ministry’s enhanced cessation programme now embarked on, aided by substantial use of subsidised medicinal nicotine, is not expected to prevent more than a minority of smoking or cigarette-attributable deaths in the next few decades. A raft of new policies and products are needed to reduce cigarette smoking more rapidly.

For tobacco addicts, medicines have their limitations. Most smokers, most of the time, do not want medicines or to see the doctor about their smoking. Indeed, most probably regard themselves as healthy. Even when they quit, only 30% use medicinal nicotine. Smokers want to smoke, except for a few days per year when under half make a serious quit attempt. It is mostly nicotine they smoke for. An electronic cigarette emits about 100 times less toxicant than a regular cigarette. So why not let them inhale their nicotine without the toxic smoke?

Most drugs of pleasure, whether legal or not, attract regulation, and need a regulatory “home”. Until now, we all assumed nicotine for human consumption only had only one home - the Medicines Act 1981. This has meant all nicotine must perforce be medicinal, whereas patently, it is not. Currently, non-nicotine electronic cigarettes can be sold, but any nicotine-containing electronic cigarette for sale must first be approved as a medicine –an expensive process, and none is, so far. Some are imported for personal use. In reality, 99% of nicotine is non-medicinal, inhaled for pleasure and regulated under the SFE Act. Inhaling vapour from a simulated cigarette for pure nicotine pleasure, subject to safety checks, could in fact gratuitously assist in reducing smoking mortality and morbidity, just as methadone is used successfully to treat heroin addiction.

The proposal—We propose that nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes be on general sale by the 2011 at the latest, under the SFE Act. This timetable allows for passage of the necessary Regulations in 2010, enabling testing and shop sales in 2011, which would:

· Be popular with smokers;

· Provide safer choices for smokers;

· Provide a cheaper, safer, alternative for smokers facing rising prices;

· Reduce consumption of tobacco cigarettes;

· Provide in future, a permanent alternative to continued cigarette sales.

The Minister of Health with suitable regulation of e-cigarettes, would be able to do what no previous Minister of Health has been able to do, that is, promise 100-fold risk reduction for continuing “smokers”, something impossible, even with the strictest regulation, of commercial tobacco cigarette smoke.

For human consumption, it seems clear, we now have two Acts for nicotine, depending on how the purchaser wants to use the product – for recreational or medicinal purposes:

The SFE Act provides for recreational (non-medicinal) use of nicotine, General sale of cigarettes and electronic cigarettes is permitted, but no therapeutic claims can be made. No dose is prescribed.

The Medicines Act provides for the medicinal use of nicotine by various routes; and allows therapeutic claims, for example, about giving up smoking (example, nicotine patch). Some sales may be restricted to pharmacies, as with current medicinal nicotine inhalers. Guidance on dose and duration of treatment is given.

Definition of a tobacco product—“Tobacco product means any product manufactured from tobacco and intended for use by smoking, inhalation, or mastication; and includes nasal and oral snuff; but does not include any medicine (being a medicine ..... that is sold or supplied wholly or principally for use as an aid in giving up smoking.”1

The definitional wording suggests that it is the intention of the seller or supplier that determines whether it is wholly or principally for use as an aid in giving up smoking. Thus the seller cannot make claims that it helps smokers quit.

Regulations to control for possible hazardous substances in nicotine electronic cigarettes—The Smokefree Environments Act at Section 31, permits Regulations to limit or remove hazardous substances or additives of concern. Although in the one brand studied (Ruyan), few hazardous substances were identified, and only in small amount,2 this cannot be assumed to apply to all brands without a monitoring system. Regulations should ensure ongoing, regular and random monitoring, and could be financed from charges on the brands to be licensed for sale.

Competing interests: None declared. The author and End Smoking NZ has no financial interest in any nicotine, pharmaceutical or tobacco company.

Murray Laugesen
Lyttelton, New Zealand
www.endsmoking.org.nz; chair@endsmoking.org.nz

References:

1. Smoke-free Environments Act 1990, Reprint as at 1 February 2005. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0108/latest/DLM223196.html

2. Laugesen M. Ruyan e-cigarette bench top tests. Poster. Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. 15th Annual Conference Dublin April 2009. www.healthnz.co.nz/DublinEcigBenchtopHandout.pdf