April 11th, 2015
E cigarettes will be banned from sale to minors in NSW, including “e juice” vaporisers with fruit flavours, Health Minister Jillian Skinner will pledge on Sunday.
One in seven smokers had used e cigarettes in the past 12 months, with the biggest uptake among 18 to 24 year olds (27 per cent), the latest household survey by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found.
Despite liquid nicotine being banned for sale in Australia, the delivery devices are legal and “vaping” has boomed. E cigarettes in the shape of cigarettes, lipsticks and pens have become readily available in convenience stores and over the internet.
But Cancer Council Australia has argued even non nicotine vapours, including the fruit and chocolate flavours marketed to teenagers, pose a health risk because they are sucked straight into the lungs.
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There is concern at a rise in poisonings caused by young children ingesting liquid from brightly coloured cartridges that do not have child safety caps.
E cigarettes labelled as not containing nicotine had been tested in NSW and found to contain nicotine, said Mrs Skinner.
If the Baird Government was re elected, legislation would be introduced to parliament to ban the sale of e cigarettes and related products, including all e liquids, to anyone aged under 18, she said.
“The NSW Government is committed to protecting the health of our children and young people and addressing concerns that e cigarettes may act as a gateway to nicotine addiction and tobacco smoking,” she said.
“We want to guard against the re normalisation of smoking among the young, as it has the potential to undermine decades of successful anti smoking efforts in NSW.”
The NSW ban is based on the recommendation of a panel of toxicology, tobacco control and air pollution experts, and has the support of the Heart Foundation NSW, Cancer Council NSW and Australian Medical Association.
The law will impose penalties of $11,000 for selling an e cigarette product to a minor, or $55,000 for a corporation, with higher penalties for repeated breaches.
Testing by NSW Health in 2013 found 70 per cent of e liquids sampled contained nicotine. Last month the NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant wrote to retailers warning that some of the e liquids tested by her department had contained “high levels of nicotine that, if ingested are potentially lethal”.
“There have been reports of harm to children ingesting the liquid in Australia. The e liquid packages often do not accurately detail the ingredients of the liquids and do not have any child resistant closures,” the letter said.
The Cancer Council Australia director of public policy Paul Grogan has previously told the Sun Herald there should be a blanket ban on the devices and governments should be extremely suspicious of claims by tobacco companies that e cigarettes can help consumers quite smoking.
“They lobbyists are not seeing e cigarettes as a transitional market but a supporting market for smoking cigarettes,” he said.
In the United States, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a spike in calls to US poison centres involving e cigarettes, more than half involving children aged under six.
A one year old died in New York in December after ingesting liquid nicotine.
The tobacco industry has been lobbying for Australian legislation to catch up with the rise of electronic cigarettes among consumers, concerned at the rise of internet sales.
History of tobacco
History of Tobacco
Tobacco has a long history in the Americas. The Mayan Indians of Mexico carved drawings in stone showing tobacco use. These drawings date back to somewhere between 600 to 900 A.D. Tobacco was grown by American Indians before the Europeans came from England, Spain, France, and Italy to North America. Native Americans smoked tobacco through a pipe for special religious and medical purposes. They did not smoke every day.
Tobacco was the first crop grown for money in North America. In 1612 the settlers of the first American colony in Jamestown, Virginia grew tobacco as a cash crop. It was their main source of money. Other cash crops were corn, cotton, wheat, sugar, and soya beans. Tobacco helped pay for the American Revolution against England. Also, the first President of the U.S. grew tobacco.
By the 1800’s, many people had begun using small amounts of tobacco. Some chewed it. Others smoked it occasionally in a pipe, or they hand rolled a cigarette or cigar. On the average, people smoked about 40 cigarettes a year. The first commercial cigarettes were made in 1865 by Washington Duke on his 300 acre farm in Raleigh, North Carolina. His hand rolled cigarettes were sold to soldiers at the end of the Civil War.
It was not until James Bonsack invented the cigarette making machine in 1881 that cigarette smoking became widespread. Bonsack’s cigarette machine could make 120,000 cigarettes a day. He went into business with Washington Duke’s son, James “Buck” Duke. They built a factory and made 10 million cigarettes their first year and about one billion cigarettes five years later. The first brand of cigarettes were packaged in a box with baseball cards and were called Duke of Durham. Buck Duke and his father started the first tobacco company in the U.S. They named it the American Tobacco Company.
Credit An 1892 Duke of Durham box of machine rolled cigarettes Tobacco Biology & Politics
The American Tobacco Company was the largest and most powerful tobacco company until the early 1900’s. Several companies were making cigarettes by the early 1900’s. In 1902 Philip Morris company came out with its Marlboro brand.
They were selling their cigarettes mainly to men. Everything changed during World War I (1914 18) and World War II (1939 45). Soldiers overseas were given free cigarettes every day. At home production increased and cigarettes were being marketed to women too. More than any other war, World War II brought more independence for women. Many of them went to work and started smoking for the first time while their husbands were away.
By 1944 cigarette production was up to 300 billion a year. Service men received about 75% of all cigarettes produced. The wars were good for the tobacco industry. Since WW II, there have been six giant cigarette companies in the U.S. They are Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, American Brands, Lorillard, Brown & Williamson, and Liggett & Myers (now called the Brooke Group). They make millions of dollars selling cigarettes in the U.S. and all over the world.
In 1964 the Surgeon General of the U.S. (the chief doctor for the country) wrote a report about the dangers of cigarette smoking. He said that the nicotine and tar in cigarettes cause lung cancer. In 1965 the Congress of the U.S. passed the Cigarette Labelling and Advertising Act. It said that every cigarette pack must have a warning label on its side stating “Cigarettes may be hazardous to your health.”
By the 1980’s, the tobacco companies had come out with new brands of cigarettes with lower amounts of tar and nicotine and improved filters to keep their customers buying and to help reduce their fears. The early 1980’s were called the “tar wars” because tobacco companies competed aggressively to make over 100 low tar and “ultra” low tar cigarettes. Each company made and sold many different brands of cigarettes.
In 1984 Congress passed another law called the Comprehensive Smoking Education Act. It said that the cigarette companies every three months had to change the warning labels on cigarette packs. It created four different labels for the companies to rotate.
Public Law 98 474, “Comprehensive Smoking Education Act, 1984”
Credit Smoking Tobacco & Health, Centers for Disease Control
Since the 1980’s, federal, state, local governments, and private companies have begun taking actions to restrict cigarette smoking in public places. The warning labels were the first step. Tobacco companies cannot advertise cigarettes on television or radio. It is against a law that was passed by Congress in 1971. Many cities across the U.S. do not allow smoking in public buildings and restaurants. Since 1990, airlines have not allowed smoking on airplane flights in the U.S. that are six hours or less. State taxes on cigarettes have increased.
As it becomes more difficult for tobacco companies to sell their products in the U.S., they are looking outside. U.S. tobacco companies are now growing tobacco in Africa, South America (Brazil and Paraguay), India, Pakistan, the Phillipines, Greece, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic. Fifty percent (50%) of the sales of U.S. tobacco companies go to Asian countries, such as Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, the Phillipines, and Taiwan.
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