A recent study at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota has found that e-cigarettes can help people significantly reduce the number of tobacco cigarettes that they smoke, even when they express a desire not to smoke less. This interesting and in many ways counter-intuitive finding will be published in the upcoming issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior.

The study was composed of 28 adult smokers who were not interested in quitting smoking, but were nonetheless given electronic cigarettes to use. Twenty-five of them, which accounts for nearly 90 per cent of the participant population, reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked during the first week of the experiment. About one-third of the participants reduced the number of cigarettes that they smoked by half. The overall average reduction in the amount of cigarettes smoked was 39 per cent.

It was also found that the rate of nicotine absorption was very similar to that of other nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) such as patches and gums, which have been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The research concluded that the e-cigarette “delivered enough nicotine to suppress craving”.

One of the researchers, Mitchell Nides, called the results “a very good signal to go forward” with more research into whether electronic cigarettes have the ability to help people quit smoking in the long term. Nides has been researching tobacco cessation for more than 25 years and stated that e-cigarettes “have tremendous potential as [a] smoking-cessation aid”. Furthermore, he added that “there’s a real potential for efficacy, with potentially few side effects”, but that “more research is needed”.

The study was funded by one of the biggest electronic cigarette retailers in the United States and comes at a time when sales are projected to reach $2 billion annually in the United States alone. The three biggest American tobacco manufacturers – Philip Morris (Altria), Reynolds American (RJR) and Lorillard – have entered the e-cigarette market, either buying existing companies or setting up their own. This is a clear sign that they believe that electronic cigarettes have a bright future. That said, e-cigarette sales are minuscule compared to tobacco cigarette sales, which were valued at around $80 billion last financial year for the United States. Global sales are much greater.

The University of Queensland and Australian National University are looking for people who currently use electronic cigarettes, or have used them in the past, to participate in a survey to gather information about their experiences. Health E-Cigarette Australia was recently contacted by Mr Doug Fraser, a research assistant at the University of Queensland, and asked if we could help to find recruits by posting some information about the research on our website as well as a link to where people who are interested in participating can sign up.

The email reads: “The University of Queensland and the Australian National University are currently planning to conduct research looking at the experiences and opinions of people who have used electronic cigarettes. At the moment we are gathering interest from people who would be willing to participate in an online survey later in the year. Researchers at the University of Queensland and Australian National University would like to conduct research with people who use electronic cigarettes or other novel nicotine delivery systems to better understand their experiences with these products. If you have used an electronic cigarette or similar product and are interested in participating in research on this topic, please follow the URL link to a confidential online form to register your interest by providing your contact details (e.g. email address). When a research study on this topic is ready to start, the researchers will then send you an invitation with more details about the study so that you can decide if you would like to participate in the study. Your contact details will not be shared with anyone else and will not be used for any purpose other than to send you invitations to participate in research on this topic.”

This is great news. This will be the first study in Australia about peoples’ experiences with electronic cigarettes. We hope that as many people as possible will sign up to participate in the study and improve the scientific information that we have on e-cigarettes as a quit smoking product.

Click here if you want to join the study.

If you have spent any period of time on the internet searching for an electronic cigarette, you have probably come across websites offering you a free trial electronic cigarette. Usually, all you need to pay for is the postage and handling, although sometimes this is included for free as well. Unfortunately, there are no such things as free e-cigarettes on the internet or anywhere else for that matter. These websites are actually scam websites that take your money and you may find it very difficult to get your money back down the track.

How the scam works

The scam works by tempting people with a free electric cigarette. This is admittedly a very tempting offer and it is not very surprising that people get taken in by this scam. Who doesn’t like free stuff? You are usually charged for postage, which seems fair enough considering that you are getting something for free. You proceed to provide your name, address, contact details and credit card number. The postage amount is then deducted from your card account and you are sent your electronic cigarette. So far, so good. After a short period – usually a month – another amount of money is deducted from your account by the same company. The amount is anywhere between $50 and $100. This is the ongoing cost for the re-fill cartridges required for your ‘free’ e-cigarette, which are posted to you on a regular basis and for which you are regularly charged. At this stage, you will probably try to contact the company that sent you the trial electric cigarette, but this will often be impossible as they will not have a contact number and emails will go unanswered. The next step will be to contact your bank or other financial institution and tell them to stop all debits by the electronic cigarette company. This, of course, is if you even notice that the money was debited from your account; most of these scam companies rely on people not noticing that the monthly amount is being withdrawn from their account.

How to avoid the scam

Our advice is to avoid these ‘free’ e-cigarette websites like the plague. There is very little in life that is truly free, and electric cigarettes most certainly do not fall into this category. Don’t let your desire to get something for free allow you to be tricked by this scam. If, however, you do decide to get a ‘free’ trial electronic cigarette, first ensure that the company has a telephone number on which it can be contacted. Then, do an online search of the company and try to find other people who have had dealings with the company in the past to see what their experiences were like. It is also a good idea to pay close attention to your monthly credit card statements to ensure that you know how much you are being charged and to whom the money is going. Make sure that the monthly re-fills are value for money and that you are not being over-charged.

If you have been the victim of this scam

Contact your bank immediately and tell them to stop the company from taking any more money out of your card account. Keep contacting the company as your persistence might eventually pay off and you will get your money back. Finally, it is also a good idea to report these scam companies to your state or territory consumer protection body.

Nowadays, most people are conscious of the importance of the environment and of the need to protect it for future generations. One of the greatest environmental concerns is the depletion of resources as a result of the overconsumption of consumer goods that characterises life in many wealthy developed countries like Australia. Our obsession with buying consumer goods – a condition that has aptly been named affluenza – creates enormous quantities of waste that end up being thrown away. A lot of this waste ends up as landfill, but far too much of it ends up in other parts of the environment.

The global cigarette industry is both a great user of resources as well as a great producer of waste and toxins. Worldwide, about 5.5 trillion cigarettes are manufactured annually, which equates to about 785 cigarettes for every inhabitant of the planet. Great swathes of prime agricultural land need to be devoted to the cultivation of tobacco; in 2000, the figure was 4.2 million hectares, a number that has undoubtedly risen since then. Large sections of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil – often referred to as the lungs of the Earth – are cut down so that the wood can be used in the manufacture of tobacco. Another problem with the growing of tobacco is that the plant is susceptible to a number of insect pests and is sprayed at least 16 times during the growing season. Large amounts of pesticide escape into waterways, polluting them and the animal and plant life that live in them.

At the other end of the cigarette lifecycle, billions of cigarette butts are not disposed of properly and find their way into the environment. The American environmental organisation Keep America Beautiful (KAB) recently announced that its biggest study into the littering habits of Americans found that some 51.2 billion pieces of litter clutter the roadways of the United States. Cigarette butts comprise some 38 per cent of all litter, making them the single most littered item in the United States. However, these are figures for the United States only; global numbers are undoubtedly much greater. Cigarette butts can take up to ten years to decompose, during which time they leak toxic chemicals into the environment. Some of these toxic chemicals remain poisonous for centuries. Another problem is that birds, fish and mammals often mistake cigarette butts for food and eat them. In sufficiently large quantities, this will kill the unlucky animal, either by poisoning it or by filling its stomach and causing it to starve to death. Yet another negative side effect of the tobacco cigarette is the wildfires that are started each year by people who carelessly dispose of their cigarettes. If fewer people smoked, there would be less impact on the environment as a result of tobacco cultivation and the waste products of tobacco cigarettes. Thus, every effort to reduce the number of smokers helps the environment.

Electronic cigarettes, by helping people to quit smoking, can play an important role in reducing the damage done to the environment by the tobacco cigarettes.

Legislation passed by the parliament of the United Kingdom will see e-cigarettes classed as medical products from 2016 onwards. Essentially, this means that the hitherto unregulated product will face stringent checks by the government regulator, and that physicians will be able to prescribe them to people who want to quit smoking. The decision by the government has been applauded by medical experts and others in the health sector. Electric cigarettes will remain legal and will continue to be sold until the new legislation takes effect, but, until then, they will only be regulated by general consumer safety laws rather than the stricter regulation that applies to medical products.

The electronic cigarette has become immensely popular since its appearance some time in the middle of the previous decade. There are millions of users worldwide and it is already a multi-billion dollar industry.

There are, however, some issues surrounding the safety of e-cigarettes that have yet to be comprehensively addressed. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that some liquids contain the carcinogenic chemical formaldehyde, but the amount was about one-thousand times less than the amount found in tobacco cigarettes. On the positive side, the main ingredient – propylene glycol – is generally considered a safe chemical and long-term repeated exposure to it does not have any negative health consequences on laboratory animals. This led the public health organisation Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) to declare in a public statement in January 2013 that “there is little evidence of harmful effects from repeated exposure to propylene glycol, the chemical in which nicotine is suspended.” What can be said with certainty is that compared with tobacco cigarettes, electric cigarettes are certainly the lesser of two evils.

Another concern is that electronic cigarettes might normalise the smoking habit, since they can be used in bars, restaurants and other public places. Furthermore, there are concerns that they might serve as a gateway to smoking for children and young people because of their pleasant flavours.

The legislation passed in the United Kingdom is part of a global movement to regulate e-cigarettes. A number of jurisdictions in Europe and the United States have passed laws to prevent their sale to minors, which seems like a reasonable and responsible move. At least three countries – Lebanon, Panama and Singapore – have gone so far as to ban them entirely, with the health minister of Singapore Kwah Boon Wan declaring in July 2010 that they are nothing more than a tool to big tobacco to attract new users.