E-cigarettes hooking more high school kids

Written by Quentin Fottrel via Market Watch

The number of middle and high-school students who have tried so-called “e-cigarettes” has tripled in the past three years, and is doubling the number of youth who say they will begin smoking regular cigarettes too, according to a new survey.

The study from the 2011-2013 National Youth Tobacco Survey, released Monday in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, showed that the number of middle and high-schoolers who’ve tried e-cigarettes, but never conventional cigarettes, shot up to 263,000 in 2013, up from 79,000 in 2011. Even more significant, almost half of those kids surveyed said they planned to smoke regular cigarettes within a year.

The study is likely to add pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to begin regulating those tobacco-like products.

Anti-smoking advocates like the American Lung Association said that study shows “e-cigarette use among youth will be kids on a lifelong addition to nicotine and tobacco products,” according to Harold Wimmer, national president of the ALA. He called on the Obama administration and the FDA to finalize new regulation to control use of e-cigarettes by the end of 2014 “so that we do not lose another generation of kids to tobacco-caused death and disease.”

Federal laws prohibit traditional cigarettes from being marketed to people under 18 years old, but there are no federal limits for e-cigarette makers. Unlike tobacco products, e-cigarettes carry no child-warning labels.

Moreover, major tobacco companies Altria Group MO, +0.21%  , Reynolds American RAI, +0.21%   and Lorillard LO, +0.30%   have all started producing e-cigarettes and recent e-cigarette commercials feature TV personality Jenny McCarthy and actor Stephen Dorff.

Lorillard Hedge Fund #2 Buys Sky e-cigs

Stop Smoking Greenbsboro - Lorillard Tobacco has closed on a deal to buy Skycig, a British e-cigarette

maker, for $49 million according to the Los Angeles Times.  The North Carolina-based tobacco giant has expanded more aggressively into the newest nicotine delivery trend than its larger rivals. Last year Lorillard paid $135 million to buy Blu eCigs.

“It has been Lorillard's mission to be first and best in the electronic cigarette category,” Chief Executive Murray Kessler said in a news release. “Our mission is now a global one.”

While from a pure business perspective, this makes total since.  Tower Records wasn't creative enough to solve their mp3 problem.  Big Tobacco has a viable hedge fund in the e-cigarette market.  Unfortunately, when you consider who is now in charge of manufacturing, advertising and marketing and stack that on the fact that Big Tobacco has functioned without any real ethics since the beginning, all that's really happened here is the music changed, but we're still dancing with the Devil.  

Beware of Dorffs Baring Gifts

Claudette Colbert circa 1942, dressed as a nurse passes out Chesterfields to GI's during WWII.

Implications are smoking is safe because a nurse is handing them out like candy and it's American because the guys bringing down Hitler and Japan all smoke.

Fast forward to 2013, Lorillard owner of Newport and Kent amungst other cigarette brands also owns Blu e-cigarettes and has recently returned to advertising.

Celebrity endorsements and television commercials rise from the ashes to promote, justify and encourage those addicted to nicotine switch their delivery device to electronic cigarettes verses the traditional tobacco cigarette.

Stephen Dorff and Jenny McCarthy have whored themselves out to Lorillard and joined in this new deception and virtual hedge against the declining cigarette industry.  E-cigarettes, while supposedly "vapor" do contain carcinogens such as formaldehyde and acrolein.  And while admittedly safer than a traditional cigarette, what will the long term effects be?  No one really knows.

I find it HIGHLY irresponsible of any celebrity to hop into bed with any company or industry who has spent the last 90 plus years lying to it's customer base, manipulating the addictive properties of it's product and packaging it's product to minimize the perceived risk.  If you smoke a "light" cigarette, keep in mind, there's no such think as "light" cancer.  You don't get "light" emphysema and there is no "light" trachea.

Dorff, you're too cool for your own good.  You and McCarthy over there are both being used by a company in desperation with years of experience in manipulation.  Selling your soul didn't end well for Robert Johnson or Jerry Garcia.  Both of those cats were way cooler than you so what chance you think you got?  Get out now and step up.

Teens are picking these up because of you and the e-cigarette is becoming a gate way for traditional cigarettes.  Is this the legacy you want to leave?  30 years from now will you be going into radiation therapy saying (assuming you're still with us and not another early departure caused by big tobacco) "we all thought it was just vapor..."