Cigarette Pack Warnings: Relevant for Ecigs?
Recently, there has been news swarming over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requiring tobacco companies to include gruesome, disturbing images of smokers on cigarette packs. Along with those images, the FDA is also requiring that companies ad the warning, “Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers.” And this all needs to begin by September 2012.
So what is this all going to mean for electronic cigarettes? As the FDA works toward regulating electronic cigarettes as tobacco-related products, there is the possibility that packaging for e-cigarettes could undergo similar treatment.
The new labeling initiated by the FDA is supposed to help sway smokers from purchasing cigarettes that emit secondhand smoke to people. Although a valid concern for nonsmokers, if electronic cigarettes need to follow suit, it may not be very relevant because e-cigarettes only emit water vapor, not smoke like cigarettes.
The Seattle Times posted a couple of valid and informative opinion letters regarding this new tobacco regulation. Putting a warning about tobacco secondhand smoke and its effects can be helpful in supporting smokers to quit cigarettes. However, “electronic cigarettes are the most effective alternative to traditional tobacco,” wrote Rebecca Halse, a reader of The Seattle Times. This reader goes on to say that e-cigarettes “[administer] nicotine through a harmless vapor.”
As the FDA gets closer to officially regulating electronic cigarettes as tobacco-related products, e-cigarette users and nonusers alike, will be paying close attention to how labeling is resolved.
Finiti e-cigarette users – what do you think? Does it make sense for the FDA to require the same labeling as regular cigarettes?
3 comments
Good catch on the article. I think people who aren’t in the loop with eCigs don’t quite grasp the concept that what our devices emanate is nothing like smoke. There is no combustion, so no smoke, and no gross lung trauma like you would see with a combustable product like cigarettes.
Nobody really knows what the FDA is going to do with us, but we all are a little afraid I think. Unfortunately until there is some sort of study done by a completely neutral third party about what actually is in our vapor (both what we inhale and 2nd hand), there will be nothing but fear about the product.
Steve – thanks for the comment. It is interesting how some people and organizations are not seeing the differences between smoke and water vapor. We’re keeping our eyes on the daily developments – we’re sure there’s more to come.
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