Big tobacco embracing e-cigarettes
By Kyle Stock, Bloomberg Businessweek
Apparently, the nicotine business never changes—with smoke or without. Big Tobacco fought government overseers for decades, but eventually traditional cigarettes became heavily regulated products. Now the Food and Drug Administration is working on a package of regulations for e-cigarettes devices, which vaporize liquid nicotine with heat, rather than burning it via tobacco leaves. Among other things, the FDA is considering a ban on online sales of e-cigarettes to cut down on sales to minors, and discussing whether to curtail advertising. A roster of proposed rules is expected in October.
The regulatory chatter comes as the e-cigarette market is finally expected to top $1 billion this year. Tobacco giant Altria Group is just this month rolling out its e-cigarette, dubbed “MarkTen.” Reynolds American is also rushing to ship its VUSE product. Meanwhile, Lorillard booked $57 million in e-cigarette revenue in the first three months of the year.
Bloomberg Industries estimates that at their current pace, e-cigarette sales will top that of traditional smokes by 2047. The estimate comes with a big caveat: the assumption that politicians won’t heap a bunch of new taxes on e-cigarettes—levies that have served as a sort of emphysema to the body of the cigarette business.
This is so disturbing on so many levels. E-cigarettes are dangerous; it’s that simple. Nicotine in chew and smoke tobacco is derived from liquid nicotine which is what is contained in this new mode of delivery which results in high cost health care, disease, and death. You can die from liquid nicotine being absorbed in your skin. Do your homework people. And to the folks who see it as their “right” to do with their body what they want? I am just one of millions who pay high health care costs due to the preventable illnesses tobacco/nicotine users incur.
Lisa, do you not also pay those same ‘high health care costs’ for people who are reckless drivers, participate in dangerous sports (!) and reckless sexual practices?
Maybe we should ALL be paying for our OWN medical care, so we can all choose our own level of acceptable risk? A ‘lifestyle choice’ that may be acceptable to you may not be acceptable to me. Why not just accept responsibility for your choices, and let others accept responsibility for theirs??
I shudder to think how much of our lives will be legislated by the federal government under the guise of looking out for our health, since the IRS will now be controlling our medical care and insurance. Wait and see how this plays out. It isn’t 2000 pages of regulation for nothing. Say good bye to your freedom of choice in more than just medical care.
Sara Palin was right, you would think that the “slave minded” folks would wonder about that.
The leftists and their media cohorts demonized her and still do… yet she was right about Obama Care.
…and so many other things for that matter.
In a few short years Obama and the leftists have driven America into a hateful, divided, ignorant “mob mentality” of a country.
From here it will get worse.
Sarah Palin right about anything? And calling Obama leftist? CJ you must be living in a parallel reality. Sarah Palin is nothing but a self centered opportunist, and President Obama is one of the most centrist presidents in 50 years.
Centrist? Obama? Have you read his books?
Dog, our health care system has been a complete failure under private control.
We pay more, we get less.
Truth.
Truth according to you, Fish. I disagree. And both my husband and I have had very serious medical issues. In any other country, he would not have survived his birth defect. Your claim that our medical care system has been a ‘complete failure’ is way off base. I’d take our pre-obamacare system any day of the week over any other system in the world.
‘Once only something done by the incredibly wealthy, medical tourism is “really turning into something people understand,” said Josef Woodman, CEO of Patients Beyond Borders, which produces guidebooks on medical travel. The organization estimates that in 2012, 600,000 people will travel abroad for treatment — a number anticipated to grow 15 to 20 percent annually as boomers age.’
From an article in HuffPost on 6-6-2012
And, Bigs, medical tourism will CERTAINLY grow as medical care becomes more tightly rationed, especially to the elderly, by obamacare.
Is that the point you were trying to make?
My point was that many are traveling overseas (or south of the border) to have procedures and treatments that are A) cost prohibitive here in the US, or B) unavailable here in the US, thereby showing that our health care system could use some help. And I believe that Obamacare is the start of heading in the right direction. Have you experienced any negative impact from it yet? If so, how? Which should be a good trick if you can explain how because it technically has yet to be actually implemented, right?
It is being phased in a bit at a time. Excessive increases in costs are coming from md.s and insurance companies trying to come into compliance with new rules, computers. Programs, protocols, etc. And they need to pay lawyers to try to figure it all out. WE are paying for that now.
cj mccoy, then LEAVE and we will all be better off
the rhetoric from the likes of dogzilla and cj and their ilk is really quite astounding. They actually believe it and that Palin is some kind of hero, delusional at best, they do need medical help and fast…
@ nature bats last – leave these posts and everyone else will be better off