Ashtray Blog: An Electronic Cigarette Blog

“What’s Kicking Your Throat?”

It’s that smooth feeling down your throat that refreshes you all over. That is what a throat kick is all about.

It’s a kick, a hit, a high, a momentary sensation that leaves you longing for more. It’s that shortness of pleasure really that gets you hooked. And you can only get it from vaping an e-ciggy

Let me say that again, vaping an e-ciggy gets you a throat kick. The electronic cigarette is a new thing, and the people who use it have created their own vocabulary to talk about their e-smoking experiences because conventional words won’t fit.

Would you:

• quit nicotine?
• go back to cigarettes?
• buy e-cigarettes on the black market?

That’s what we are trying to find out in our latest survey.

If you would like to take the survey, you can enter your email address here: E Cigarette Survey. We will then send you the survey to complete.

We don’t give out direct links to the survey because these can be passed on and be spammed, as has happened in the past. This method is completely secure as the survey can only be completed once.

Your email will only ever be used to send you surveys on the electronic cigarette, and you could win an NJOY duo kit worth £45.00.

Click here to complete the survey and help electronic cigarette research.

In our latest article on The Smoker’s Angel, John looks at Propylene Glycol – and pops some myths.

Propylene Glycol Anti-freeze

One charge often levelled at e-cigarettes is that they contain anti-freeze. This is quite true, as John explains:

It is also employed … as a non-toxic antifreeze in drinking water systems

Hmm – in drinking water. They left that bit out!

Inhaling

Anti-smoking groups often argue that we don’t know what the ingredient does to us when we inhale it. But John finds data that states:

“There are no adverse health effects via inhalation”.

(Material Safety Data sheet – Mallinckrodt Baker Inc.).

Is it toxic?

John argues that the ingredient is not normally toxic, stating:

In one study, rats were given feed containing up to 5% PG over a period of 104 weeks (2 years) and they showed no apparent ill effects.

Cigarettes are one doctor’s main weapon in the treatment of cancer in Indonesia.

The news was reported in today’s Jakarta post – usually a fairly decent newspaper (I used to read it regularly when I lived in Indonesia) although given to the odd strange article.

Apparently, the good doctor has developed a special cigarette which captures and extracts poisonous metals from the body.

Here’s the clip from the newspaper:

Seventy-one-year-old Greta Zahar, who holds a PhD in nanochemistry from the Bandung-based University of Padjadjaran, has been researching and developing specially treated cigarettes and cigarette filters, which she dubs the Divine Cigarette and Divine Filter, for more than a decade. She developed a detoxification process called balur (smear) treatment, which uses smoke from Divine Cigarettes as a conduit to capture and extract poisonous metal such as mercury from the body – a process she believes can be beneficial in treating cancer and several other diseases.

Source: Jakarta Post

A quick internet search reveals a website called Divine Cigarette: The Mechanism of the Process.

In addition to extolling the benefits of Divine Cigarettes, it also questions whether cigarettes are really toxic, before going on to attack the pharmaceutical companies and anti-smoking movement for launching an anti-nicotine war against tobacco.

After all, as she she points out, the evidence against has not been corraborated by a respectable scientist:

…there has never been an Indonesian researcher who scientifically reported that impotency and cancer is definitely caused by smoking. It is very puzzling however, that Indonesian cigarette companies are willing to print government health warnings on their cigarette packets.

God, who would trust a non-Indonesian scientist! I mean what medical advances has the rest of the world made?

So does smoking cause cancer:

The answer is: no one has ever proven it. No one really knows what causes cancer.

Hmm. Personally, and while I am sceptical about passive smoking, I am convinced by the British doctor’s study, which followed tens of thousands of smoking and non-smoking British doctors for decades to provide pretty convincing proof that cigarettes are bad for you.

Sounds to me like the lady is either a nutter,  or is being financed by the Indonesian tobacco lobby, which still retains immense power.

Regardless of her motivation, I can’t wait to see the reaction of ASH America’s John Banzhaf III. In fact, I think I’ll send the story on to him personally.

TobaccoHarmReduction.org’s new book, Tobacco Harm Reduction 2010: a yearbook of recent research and analysis, is now available for public download.

The book includes sections on the electronic cigarette, including the survey which we carried out last year and which was analysed with the help of scientists from the TobaccoHarmReduction.org institute and the University of Alberta.

For details or to download the book head over to the TobaccoHarmReduction.org website.

If you want to comment on the book the best place to do so is on the Smokles blog here.

New on The Smoker’s Angel – Should you eat cigarettes?

I’ve seen a couple of articles on the net recommend eating cigarettes when you are trying to quit.

I am hard put to think of anything I would less like to do, but apparently the taste is it is so disgusting that it will put you off smoking for ever.

Read more: “Eating Cigarettes.”

Murray Laugesen wrote to me yesterday about the continuing movement to ban cigarettes in New Zealand.

“Went to a hearing today in Christchurch New Zealand, held by the Maori Affairs committee  parliamentary inquiry into the tobacco industry. (Imperial Tobacco today). They got roasted. Virtually every NGO and the district health board asked for an end to all tobacco sales (let them grow their own if they must) but with 5000 deaths a year from legal sales, a small blackmarket looks quite appealing.”

(Laugeson: published with permission)

In contrast to the US, and in large part due to Murray’s efforts, the anti-smoking lobby in New Zealand see the electronic cigarette as an aid to an eventual ban on cigarettes rather than a threat to one. Murray even reports that the chair of the Maori Affairs committee waved his own electronic cigarette around during the hearing and spoke of the need to sell the devices with nicotine. (Currently, E cigarettes may only be sold without nicotine in New Zealand.)

He also pointed out an article in the New Zealand medical journal which outlined four strategies to end the sale of cigarette smoking by 2020.

Although Dr Laugesen is a great supporter of the electronic cigarette (and probably the world’s leading expert on them after his research into the devices), from a libertarian viewpoint I have to respectfully disagree with him on any move to ban commercial tobacco.

I see any attempt to restrict the choice of people to do what they want as an attack on liberty – and when we ban one free choice simply because it is harmful, where do we stop? Fast food? Coffee? Alcohol? Ski-ing?

I’m no expert, but I wonder also if conventional cigarettes would not be safer than homegrown tobacco. After all, cigarette manufacturers have had decades and a lot of money to research ways in which to minimise the harm of their products.

I’ve answered a lot of questions about the electronic cigarette recently (partly because I am holding the fort while the rest of the team are away at shows!) which has lead me to updating our FAQ’s.

I’m putting links to all our answers here in case any has been wondering about them, but if you have any more questions please ask us!

Q. Does it really not smell?

Q. How much money can I save?

Q. Why choose the NJOY?

Q. Where can I use this?

Q. What does it taste of?

Q. What strength shall I start on?

Q. How long does a cartridge last?

Q. Is the electronic cigarette safe?

Q. Can the e-cig help smokers quit?

Q. Where does the smoke come from?

Q. What ingredients are used in the electronic cigarette?

Q. How long is the electronic cigarette?

Q. How much does the electronic cigarette weigh?

We may not sell smokeless tobacco, but there is no doubt that it is a fantastic product that has saved the lives of thousands of ex-Swedish smokers.

The country has the lowest rates of lung cancer in Europe – simply because many of its smokers have switched to safer forms of tobacco use.

How safe is it?

According to Joel Nitzkin, Chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force for the American Association of Public Health Physicians:

the literature on snus [one of the safest forms of smokeless tobacco], which is evaluated on our website, basically shows that in the best of the epidemiological studies available today snus do not increase any cause of death. In other words, if there is a health hazard from snus it is smaller than can be measured with these studies.

Nitzkin Interview

But Glaxosmithkline states:

“A lot of people believe that taking smokeless tobacco is safer than smoking cigarettes.  This is not true.”

From Nicorette

Bullshit!

So why do GSK oppose smokeless tobacco?

Here’s one possibility:

The harm in smoking is caused by combustion, rather than by the ingredients in which we smoke – which is why there is no point in switching to herbal cigarettes.

When taking up products like Snus, the risk to people’s health decreases so much that the incentive to quitting is hugely decreased.

That threatens companies selling NRT products. NRT products have a long term success rate (measured at one year) of around 5%. That guarantees a nice recurring market for pharmaceutical companies like GSK, especially as they pay money to the  anti-smoking groups which recommend NRT products over cold turkey (which some studies show is a more effective way of quitting).

So if people do not switch to smokeless tobacco, they will continue trying to quit and they will continue to do so by using pharmaceutical products.

And they will also continue to die of avoidable smoking diseases.

Electronic Cigarettes face bans around the years because … well, I can’t think of any reason other than the threat they pose to numerous revenue streams!

However, they do not have the same legal protection that tobacco cigarettes do.

The scientist, who asked not to be directly quoted, suggested adding 5% of tobacco to the devices, which he claimed would leave them still healthier than 100% tobacco cigarettes – and, as tobacco products, entirely legal!

(Although we might have to face the same taxes that cigarettes now do. As electronic cigarettes can save a (20 a day) smoker upwards of £1500 a year, that might make them a bit more difficult to sell!)