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AdultSmokingThe latest survey data from the CDC, collected over last year, reveal an ongoing salutary trend in our nation s adult smoking rate: it is now down to 17.8 percent, as compared to 2012 s 18.1 percent. Unfortunately, the number of adult smokers remains in the low 40 millions, and the number who smoke daily was about 32 million in 2013, not much different from the 2012 results: 33 million.

The barely-perceptible decline in adult smoking rates over...

CompToxE-cigs IJERPHA new report in the International Journal of Research and Public Health assessed e-cigarette vapor for the presence of toxins and mutagens. Researchers used various well-characterized assays, including one for genotoxicity and mutagenicity (adverse impacts on genes and mutations) known as the Ames test, invented by long-time ACSH friend, Dr. Bruce Ames.

The study authors, led by Dr. Manoj Misra (whose 4 co-authors and himself all worked for the research labs of Lorillard Tobacco Co. in Greensboro, NC), also assayed...

ECigSurveyAs discussed in a TIME magazine article, a newly-released survey (by Kantar Media, called their annual MARS Consumer Health Study) shows that smokers have taken to quitting by using e-cigarettes with a devotion that has outstripped their use of standard, FDA-approved methods (NRTs, nicotine-replacement therapies).

This consumer survey of numerous trends and behaviors is done annually by Kantar Media, under the auspices of the...

ByeBye-cigs-Hello-e-cigs-225x130Last week, European lawmakers decided on their regulatory program for tobacco, increasing government oversight of e-cigarettes. As discussed in Dispatch last week, these regulations include banning advertising of electronic cigarettes, limiting the size of personal vaporizers, mandating large graphic warnings and setting levels on the amount of nicotine permitted in the devices.

Although we do agree with specific legislation regulating...

Despite receiving even an A-list celebrity testimonial on their efficacy, e-cigarettes have gotten a lot of flack from public health opponents who argue that the clean nicotine delivery device is harmful and contains “toxic” chemicals. Well, thanks to a study co-authored by ACSH advisor Michael Siegel, M.D., M.P.H., and published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, it was found that out of 222 first-time e-cigarette users who “vaped” more than 20 times daily for six months, 70 percent quit smoking. Additionally, 66.8 percent reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked, while 31 percent of the total sample quit smoking after six...


The New York State Assembly health committee is about to vote on a bill to outlaw e-cigarettes. Yet both the proposed legislation and the hearings on it appear to be founded on a series of fallacies, reports ACSH advisor Dr. Michael Siegel.

He writes:


The bill's justification claims that electronic cigarettes contain diethylene glycol - an ingredient in anti-freeze - and carcinogens and therefore must be removed from the market because there is no evidence that they are any safer than regular cigarettes. However...although diethylene glycol was detected more than 18 months ago in one cartridge of one brand of electronic...

Smoking is a pediatric disease, people who get hooked as kids are going to end up as chronic smokers, and that is why the American Council on Science and Health was the first to note it is a pediatric disease and target efforts at putting a halt to it there. We were also the earliest supporters of smoking cessation and harm reduction techniques, including e-cigarettes.

Yet children who are "nicotine naive", who have not been smokers, should not be exploited for profit by vaping corporations any more than it is ethical for cigarette or coffee or energy drink companies to do so. The recent U.S. FDA has been far more supportive of smoking cessation and harm reduction than in the past but it is right to crack down on retailers who they found illegally sold e-cigarette products to...

Britain's Department of Health announced electronic cigarettes are around 95 percent less harmful than tobacco and should be promoted smoking cessation device, according to the results of a new study released Wednesday.

Authors of the Public Health England study say that most of the cancer causing chemicals found in combustible cigarettes are absent in electronic ones.

E-cigarettes are a method to inhale nicotine-laced vapor, with the idea being that, much as with nicotine gums or...

Ecigs-VTMsThe latest supermarket reports out of Great Britain show that e-cigs and vapor products are the fastest growing segment on the market there. This is while the 2015 sales prediction for e-cigs from Wells-Fargo s respected tobacco analyst, Bonnie Herzog, is for over $3billion, as compared to last year s (2014) $1.7B.

It seems highly likely that vaping is slowly but surely replacing smoAt the same time, the UK s...

While nicotine is the addictive substance in cigarettes, it is the long term exposure to inhaled smoke - and its toxic constituents - that adversely impact the lungs. 

One such harmful mechanism is inflammation of the airways, which progressively damages and ultimately impairs lung function.  Nowadays, there are several ways one can give up the harmful toxicants of cigarette smoke while minimizing nicotine cravings.  Nicotine replacement is available in gums, patches, sprays, and electronically vaporized liquids. Proponents say that the latter, which they call electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), may be particularly more appealing, and therefore more beneficial in reducing cigarettes, because of their ability to simulate the mechanics of cigarettes.

But what...