The Vaping Industry Needs Your Help

By Tom Anderson

As my mom withered away in 2012, ravaged by the cancer in her body caused by smoking tobacco nearly all of her adult life, I couldn’t help but reflect on what I might have done to prevent such a tragic demise.

We all know smoking is unhealthy. While high-calorie eating, alcohol, tanning and other societal pleasures have pros and cons, it’s unquestionable there is absolutely no benefit to ingesting carcinogens and tar from a combustible cigarette or through the likes of chewing tobacco.

In Alaska, through alliances and anti-advocacies, funded by fees, taxes, national lobbies and lawsuit damage awards, the cessation movement to stop smokers and rid the United States of tobacco products is a mega-billion dollar effort, with many organizations and businesses prospering. There are too many non-profits to count, when it comes to messaging all of us about smoking and its detriment. The overall budget for staff, offices, advertising, and lobbying at the local, state and federal level in concert is huge in cost.

If you watch local television or scroll online through various news mediums’ websites, anti-tobacco messaging is nearly taking over the content. Even at the airport, when you board your plane or await your luggage, the anti-smoking lobby has its video commercials and branding broadcasted on screens to deter you from lighting a cigarette and taking a puff.

But what if, with all of its momentum, money and messaging, the anti-tobacco fury went a bit too far? What if the stop-smoking sentiment pushed its formidable advocacy into the path of an actual means to quit smoking and blocked people from a much healthier alternative?

An end to smoking through a healthier, viable option

The electronic cigarette was developed by a Beijing pharmacist named Hon Lik in 2003 after his father succumbed to lung cancer because of smoking cigarettes. The device entered the Chinese market place in 2004, expanding sales to Europe in 2006 and the United States in 2007.

An electronic cigarette is uncomplicated in technology. The device is simply a battery-powered vaporizer that allows the user to inhale vapor. The vapor is released by a heating element. A liquid or “juice” is inserted into the device and through heat, atomization occurs, simulating a “smoking” feeling absent all of the nasty, toxic chemicals emitted by combustible cigarettes.

Rare is it when a lithium-ion battery malfunctions. You’ll certainly read about the moron who overcharges a battery system or meddles with the mechanics of a device, resulting in an unintended reaction. People can get hurt, but nine times out of ten it’s user error. Of course an injury makes for sensational headlines so you’ll likely recall a vaping accident before you remember the lives saved from this new, miraculous technology. Disappointingly, news coverage on the positive outcomes of vaping, as a remedy and alternative to smoking addiction, is few and far between.

So while the statistics are clear when it comes to the advantages of electronic cigarettes over tobacco use, and the health benefits are tangibly real, and the risks minimal, the same juggernaut anti-tobacco advocacy that is slowly making progress (with multi-billions of dollars expended to prevent smoking) is now taking aim at the e-cig industry.

From lobbying at a national and state level, to massive advertising intended to dissuade the use of an electronic cigarette as an alternative to smoking tobacco, the collective of “non-profit” anti-tobacco proponents are heightening a message of social engineering that will likely push addicts back into the arms of welcoming cigarettes.

This is not a good direction for a seemingly noble cause and technology.

Why taxes and regulations will harm, not help

It’s very clear Alaska is inching towards the fiscal cliff. Conservatives urge for spending reductions and a future bound to sustainability. Healthcare is a huge part of the equation. Cancer, specifically caused by smoking, has a high numeric value within budgetary considerations.

A barrage of tax options has been set on the table as we face an enormous deficit. Income tax, sales tax, alcohol tax, fuel tax, new fees, regulatory sanctions…a list that doesn’t seem to end is being entertained by the state’s Administration.

Adding to the mix is a proposal in the Alaska Legislature, in both the Senate and House sponsored by Governor Walker, to tax electronic cigarette products at 100%. Currently only tobacco is taxed. The e-cig tax could conceivably terminate the vaping industry in the state, imposing cost-prohibitive pricing onto products that Alaskans depend on to quit their tobacco habit.

Two legislators, in the Senate and House, have sponsored legislation that would add use of an electronic cigarette to the definition of “smoking.” If passed, the result is the new, revolutionary technology that helps millions annually stop smoking cigarettes, being tossed into the labyrinth of controls, suppression and mandates that ultimately stop people from vaping.

Last week the British Heart Foundation reported that 1 million smokers used electronic cigarettes to quit smoking in 2015. They stated:

“E-cigarettes have overtaken licensed nicotine replacement therapies such as NRT, gum or skin patches as the most popular form of support to stop smoking, and they continue to increase in popularity.

The study shows that by the end of 2015, 20% (1.6 million) of smokers were using an e-cigarette.

Previous studies have found that use of an e-cigarette in a quit attempt improves the chances of success by around 50%, compared with using no aid or a licensed nicotine product bought from a shop with no professional support.”

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine found that putting age restrictions on people legally purchasing electronic nicotine devices may very well elevate teen smoking. In other words, when you raise the age to prevent an 18, 19 or 21-year old from legally using an electronic cigarette device, you raise the likelihood that that teen will revert back to cigarettes.

Dr. Michael Siegel, M.D., a professor at the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, noted in January of this year that vaping will, in fact, help smokers stop. “One thing is now very clear. There is no basis for anti-vaping advocates to continue to claim that there is no evidence that e-cigarettes can be effective for smoking cessation. There is now strong evidence,” said Siegel.

Considering the size, demographic diversity, and failing health of our Alaskan populace, logic should dictate erring to support an alternative to disease-causing tobacco use. Policymakers should consider the positive effects of electronic cigarettes, instead of broadening their target, as anti-smoking health advocates have done. Anti-tobacco messaging should remain just that: against the use and abuse of only tobacco.

Numbers, effects and personal opinions…

I do not smoke tobacco or marijuana. I’ve tried both and neither strikes my fancy. I do not vape. I’ve tried an electronic cigarette and it’s actually preferable to tobacco, chew, cigars or marijuana, particularly with the unique eLiquid flavors available, but e-cigs don’t float my boat either.

That disclosed, I don’t want to limit someone’s personal choice when it doesn’t affect my family or me.

Like many of you, I know we have a budget crisis. I know people are getting sick from bad choices. Accountability is less the norm and more of a pleasant surprise when it comes to citizens and responsibility.

I also know when I see something that is working in society.

Electronic cigarettes are making a tangible difference in the prevention and cure of tobacco addiction. Vaping generates income and boosts commerce.

Alaskans are vaping, and that means they’re not smoking. They are saving money by not purchasing expensive cigarettes, and that savings is redirected to food, clothing, shelter and the necessities that motor our state.

The vaping industry in Alaska directly and indirectly employs over 500 Alaskans. These employees have families, and their incomes, and the economies tethered to sales and marketing of e-cigs, permeate into communities as an economic engine. This success should be protected, when in other industry sectors, business is declining.

The fact is, if you have a product and industry that saves lives, prevents harm to prospective lives by deterring the use of a bad habit (tobacco), generates income from customers, builds commerce, and does so responsibly, why stifle such momentum with taxes and regulations?

I encourage Alaskans to look at the overall picture of prosperity and what benefits our communities across the state.

The electronic cigarette is a godsend to those who want to quit smoking. It helps more than it hurts. Personally, I believe it could have saved my mother from a miserable and premature death.

Call your legislator today and respectfully reject new taxes, restrictions, and limitations on the use of electronic cigarettes in Alaska.

It’s time we give a helping hand to solutions like electronic cigarettes.

~ Tom Anderson

Current Vaping Legislation Click Here

List of LIOs from which you can testify on legislation