TobaccoToday

Altria Chairman, CEO Szymanczyk Announces Retirement

Lou Maiellano — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:03:19 +0000

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120127005327/en/Altria-Reports-2011-Fourth-Quarter-Full-Year-Results-Delivers

Except from article:

Altria also announced today that Michael E. Szymanczyk, 63, has decided to retire after 23 years of distinguished service to the company, including four years as Chairman and CEO of Altria and 12 years as President and CEO of Philip Morris USA (PM USA). The Board has elected Martin J. Barrington, 58, to serve as Altria’s Chairman and CEO, effective upon Mr. Szymanczyk’s retirement following the Annual Meeting of Shareholders on May 17, 2012. The Board also has elected Mr. Barrington to Altria’s Board, effective immediately.

News worthy of posting! Thoughts? Stories? Reflections?

Altria Partners with Fertin Pharma

Lou Maiellano — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:48:11 +0000

http://www.fertin.com/News/Pages/news.aspx

New Partnership January 27, 2012

Okono A/S, an affiliate of Fertin Pharma A/S, has entered into an agreement with a subsidiary of Altria Group Inc., to develop innovative, non-combustible nicotine-containing products for adult tobacco consumers. This new product initiative combines the product development and manufacturing capabilities of Okono and its affiliates with the expertise of the Altria of companies. Altria Group, Inc. is the parent company of Philip Morris USA (PM USA), U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company (UST) and John Middleton.

Very interesting development worthy of posting! What are your thoughts? Another move that furthers my belief that the world of tobacco has and is and will change to meet the needs of those who enjoy nicotine satisfaction.

TPE 2012 (Las Vegas) is Where Business Gets Done – Feb 1-2, 2012

Lou Maiellano — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:06:38 +0000

The 2012 Show Schedule Offers More Opportunities for Tobacco Industry Professionals than Ever Before.

• Conference Sessions will deliver the latest news and trends that are driving the tobacco industry. Business insights will be delivered by professionals from within the tobacco community. Business Owners and Managers can expect to take away information and ideas that will help them work smarter and increase their revenues.

• Show Attendees will view thousands of tobacco and tobacco products in the exhibit hall – many of which will be New Product Launches.

• Buyers can take advantage of the hundreds of Show Specials offered by most exhibitors.

• The Spin & Win Prize Giveaway offers exhibitors an opportunity to donate their product as prizes that Buyers can take home with them!

• Don’t miss the Opening Night Reception on Wednesday evening 5:30 – 7:30 in Ballroom E at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. Door Prizes, Music, Open Bar and Great Food!

• The centerpiece of the show is The Cigar Lounge. Open during show hours, it offers comfortable seating and complimentary adult beverages. This is a wonderful area to meet with industry friends to catch up on business or just sit back and rest from the day’s activities.

• The International Outreach Program continues as we expand marketing and promotion efforts to attract more buyers and suppliers from outside of the U.S. to participate.

Who’s going? Why are you going? What are the important takeaways from the show? What did you learn? What did you like? What would you change? See you there if you’re going!

Could a nicotine patch slow dementia?

Lou Maiellano — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:56:58 +0000

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/09/could-a-nicotine-patch-slow-dementia/

Fascinating article found @ thechart.blogs.cnn.com. Welcome all comments!

Could a nicotine patch slow dementia?

It’s hard to escape the warnings of the dangers of smoking, but one component of cigarettes – nicotine – might actually have a therapeutic use, preliminary research suggests.

A small study, published Monday in the journal Neurology, finds that using a nicotine patch may help symptoms of mild cognitive impairment, a condition characterized by a noticeable memory problem. Many, but not all, patients with mild cognitive impairment will go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease; scientists are still working on predicting who is most at risk.

A nicotine patch releases nicotine slowly over a number of hours. It gets into the blood stream, travels to the brain and interacts with receptors on nerve cells. In particular, it seems to activate receptors on nerve cells important for a circuit involved in attention, learning and memory.

Dr. Paul Newhouse of the University of Vermont Medical School and colleagues studied 74 people and saw improvement in measures of attention, memory and mental processing among those who received the nicotine patch treatment over six months. But it’s hard to say whether these patients recovered fully because they were not tested before developing memory problems.

“I think nicotine could be one of the answers we end up with” for memory decline, Newhouse said. Multiple strategies will be needed to combat Alzheimer’s disease; nicotine “may not be the only answer, but could be one of the answers,” he said.

But Bill Thies, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the Alzheimer’s Association, urges caution. Certain drugs that are approved for Alzheimer’s disease, called anticholinesterase drugs (such as Aricept), slow the breakdown of the brain chemical acetylcholine. Acetylecholine in memory circuits works on nicotinic receptors. So it’s not surprising to Thies that nicotine would show similar benefits.

“The course of the disease eventually overwhelms the effect of the medications, so they work for a few months and then they start to drop off,” he said. It’s possible that the same decline in effectiveness would also occur with nicotine after a matter of months.

The study did not address what impact nicotine would have in combination with these anticholinesterase drugs, he said.

And nicotine is not entirely innocuous. Studies have shown that smoking is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s. Researchers do not recommend smoking to get the benefits of nicotine described in this study, nor do they advocate using nicotine patches for the purposes of cognitive benefits.

Also, if a person uses a nicotine patch for years at a time, there may be side effects including in cardiovascular disease, although this is not proven, Thies said.

All 74 participants in this study were nonsmokers. The only consistent side effect observed was a small amount of weight loss, which isn’t surprising since nicotine is an appetite suppressant.

Nicotine patches retail about $2.30 to $2.85 per patch on Amazon.com, depending on which company and quantity per box you choose. For the purpose of smoking cessation, nicotine patch regimens usually involve using one patch per day for eight to 10 weeks (although they may help more with withdrawal then staying away from cigarettes, a new study shows).

Memory loss isn’t the only area where nicotine is being considered, such as Tourette syndrome. Newhouse presented a pilot study on Parkinson’s diseaseback in 2000. There has been pharmaceutical interest in using nicotine-like drugs for pain control and bowl disease

Delivering nicotine by way of a patch is more efficient than through a pill, since the patch doesn’t affect the liver or stomach, which would suffer side effects, Newhouse said.

Newhouse’s group is going to propose a larger trial for a longer period of time. The scientists want to get at the issue of whether this improvement effect would last – specifically, how much longer than the six months reported in this initial study.

Nicotine patches are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for this purpose of treating patients with mild cognitive impairment. For that matter, there is no FDA-sanctioned treatment for mild cognitive impairment at all.

There is the potential for nicotine to protect against further deterioration, but so far nothing has been found to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. Experts agree that whatever intervention works will probably have to be given as early as possible in the course of the disease.

If people or their families are noticing memory problems, they should seek an evaluation from a doctor, Newhouse said.

Nicotine Therapy doesn’t help smokers quit:study

Lou Maiellano — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:41:13 +0000

http://news.yahoo.com/nicotine-therapy-doesnt-help-smokers-quit-study-173046252.html

Nicotine therapy doesn’t help smokers quit: study

By Kerry Sheridan | AFP – Mon, Jan 9, 2012

Gums, patches and nasal sprays that supply smokers with nicotine do not help people quit cigarettes over the long term any better than going it alone, a US study said on Monday.

The research by the Harvard University School of Public Healthfollowed 787 adults in the state of Massachusetts who had recently quit smoking, and found that over time just as many relapsed afternicotine replacement therapy (NRT) as without — about a third.

“This study shows that using NRT is no more effective in helping people stop smoking cigarettes in the long term than trying to quit on one’s own,” said lead author Hillel Alpert, a research scientist atHarvard.

Study participants were surveyed over three time periods: 2001-2002, 2003-2004, and 2005-2006.

Not only were relapse rates about the same among those who used NRT and those who did not, the study found that heavily dependent smokers who took NRT without professional therapy were twice as likely to relapse as those who did not use NRT.

“This may indicate that some heavily dependent smokers perceive NRT as a sort of ‘magic’ pill, and upon realizing it is not, they find themselves without support in their quitting efforts, doomed to failure,” said the study in the journal Tobacco Control.

Although previous randomized controlled studies have shown NRT to be effective in helping smokers quit, the latest research shows the weakness of those trials among the general population in a real-life setting, the authors argued.

The study also showed that very few people follow the recommendations of using NRT for eight weeks, with many opting for shorter periods of use.

The NRT industry has boomed since nicotine gum was first introduced in 1984, according to background information in the article. Back then, NRT products were a $45 million industry in the United States.

Since over-the-counter sales of NRT were approved in 1996, the industry has soared to $800 million per year. On top of that, sales of prescription drugs to stop smoking reached $841 million dollars in 2007.

More public funds are also helping to subsidize stop-smoking therapies to low-income Americans, with 39 state Medicaid programs covering one or more kinds of NRT in 2011, compared to 17 states in 1996.

Meanwhile, rates of smoking in the United States have leveled off at about 20 percent of the population in the past five years after a steady period of decline.

“What this study shows is the need for the Food and Drug Administration… to approve only medications that have been proven to be effective in helping smokers quit in the long-term and to lower nicotine in order to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes,” said co-author Gregory Connolly, director of Harvard’s Center for Global Tobacco Control.

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, whose US products include the NicoDerm CQ patch and Nicorette gum, responded to the study by saying “there remains strong support for NRT’s efficacy and its positive impact on public health.”

In a statement, it cited the World Health Organization, leading experts and world governments which “agree that NRT products have a crucial role to play in helping to reduce the devastating toll of disease caused by tobacco dependence.”

It also referenced “numerous studies (that) show smokers who use NRT products per the dosing recommendations, combined with support, can double their chances of successfully quitting over ‘cold turkey.’”

Extremely interesting article. Comments and thoughts?

Altria launches smoking rights website….

Chris Crawley — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:09:23 +0000

Altria has launched a smoking advocay website which can be found by clicking on the link below or pasting it into your browser.

http://www.tobaccorights.com/ctr/advocacy/default.aspx

Interested individuals can sign up and post views and get involved in defending smoker’s rights.

Study: Cigarettes with ‘Very Low’ Nicotine Better than Patches, Heavy Smokers Quit in Six Weeks

Lou Maiellano — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:18:31 +0000

By Arlene Paredes | December 20, 2011 8:06 PM EST – www.ibtimes.com

Virtually nicotine-free cigarettes could help heavy smokers to quit the habit, according to an Auckland research.

An Auckland University study has found it is possible to smoke your way to quitting by using virtually nicotine-free cigarettes, the New Zealand Herald reported.

While almost one in five (18 per cent) current smokers say they decided to quit smoking in response to advertising campaigns, 33 per cent say they actually light up in response to anti-smoking advertising and 29 per cent of smokers look the other way.

Heavily addicted smokers offered nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and the cigarettes with hardly any nicotine have a higher success rate at quitting, than those given just NRT patches, gum or lozenges, the study noted.

“It’s an exciting finding,” lead researcher Dr Natalie Walker, of the university’s clinical trials research unit, told the Herald Monday night.

Participants who were undergoing intervention in the study smoked the low-nicotine Quest brand of tobacco cigarettes. They were free to smoke anytime with their six-week supply.

Dr. Walker said the smokers wound up weaning themselves off the cigarettes because Quest simply did not give the same satisfaction that regular tobacco gave the smokers. While it gave the same sensation in the sense that they were still smoking, the missing kick from regular tobacco eventually made the participants lose interest in smoking.

“Part of smoking is the behavioural component of putting something in their mouth and feeling the smoke in their mouth and feeling it come down into their chest – all that ritual around smoking. These cigarettes help deal with that component… The good thing about it is that people naturally stop using them … after six weeks, or even earlier for some people,” she said.

Dr Walker said the study was “a bit controversial, because people think, ‘How can you give people cigarettes to quit smoking, it doesn’t make sense’, but … these have such a very low level of nicotine.”

“They are equally as harmful as any other cigarette, except they are less addictive … but they are very clearly addressing that behavioural aspect,” Dr. Walker explained.

Low-nicotine cigarettes such as Quest are not commercially available to New Zealand smokers. With the results of Dr. Walker’s study out, there could be some changes in the existing policies.

The Herald reported it is part of the Government’s goal for New Zealand to be “smokefree” by 2025. To achieve this, the Health Research Council has awarded $5 million to research work which will investigate policies such as introducing low-nicotine, lower-tax cigarettes, and limiting and progressively cutting the amount of tobacco which can be sold, and any other strategies that could drive the heavy smokers away from their unhealthy habit.

Very interesting report! I find the response to advertising as something that is very interesting. I have seen other reports that have similar findings. The old adage “tell them not to do it and they will want to do it anyway”. Thoughts? Again very interesting study!

WHERE DO YOUTH SMOKERS GET THEIR CIGARETTES?

kannhelen — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:25:41 +0000

More than half of all youth smokers usually buy the cigarettes they smoke, either directly from retailers or
vending machines, from other kids, or by giving money to others to buy for them. Roughly a third typically
get their cigarettes from others (usually other kids) for free, and a small but significant percentage of kids
obtain their cigarettes by shoplifting or other stealing. But where and how youth smokers get their cigarettes
can vary considerably from state to state or city to city depending on such factors as whether the jurisdiction
strictly enforces the laws prohibiting tobacco sales to minors, requires retailers to keep cigarettes behind the
counter, or has banned cigarette vending machines or restricted them to adult-only locations.
Nationwide, older youth smokers are more likely to buy their cigarettes directly than younger smokers, who
are more likely to get their cigarettes from others or by stealing. Some of this difference is explained by older
kids typically finding it easier to buy cigarettes than younger kids. But another powerful factor is that older
youth smokers are more likely to be daily or regular users and regular or heavy smokers in all youth age
groups are much more likely to purchase their own cigarettes than kids who smoke less frequently or are
only “experimenting.” Not surprisingly, the older or more regular youth smokers who buy their own cigarettes
are also major suppliers of kids who do not purchase their own cigarettes but get them from others.
Because of these purchasing and consumption patterns, the roughly half of all youth smokers who regularly
buy their own cigarettes personally consume considerably more than half of all youth-smoked cigarettes.
They also supply a substantial portion of the cigarettes smoked by those youth smokers who typically buy or
borrow their cigarettes from others. As a result, it is likely that roughly three quarters or more of all cigarettes
consumed by kids are purchased by kids – which is why strictly enforcing laws forbidding retailer sales to
kids and raising cigarette prices through tax increases can quickly and significantly reduce youth smoking.
Research On How Kids Obtain Cigarettes
The 2006 Monitoring the Future survey found that 58 percent of 8th graders and 80 percent of 10th graders
said cigarettes were easy for them to get.
The 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) found that among 12 to 17 year olds who had
smoked in the last month, more than three out of five (77%) had purchased their own cigarettes. More than
half (53.3%) had directly purchased their own cigarettes, six out of ten (63.3%) had given money to others to
buy cigarettes for them, three out of ten (30.5%) had purchased cigarettes from a friend, family member, or
someone at school, and a small portion purchased cigarettes over the Internet or through the mail (2.6% and
2.9%, respectively). In addition, six out of ten (62%) had “bummed” cigarettes from others and more than
one of ten (13.1%) had taken cigarettes from others without asking, with just under one percent (0.8%) had
stolen cigarettes from a store. Older underage smokers were more likely to buy directly in stores than
younger smokers. While there have been more recent NSDUH surveys, no questions on youth access have
been asked since 2003.
The 2009 national Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBS) survey of 9th to 12th graders by the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 14.1 percent directly purchased their
cigarettes from stores or gas stations, with nearly a quarter of all 12th graders making such direct purchases.3
While the 2009 YRBS did not provide any additional detail, an earlier YRBS showed that 54.5 percent of
those who had smoked in the past 30 days usually purchased their cigarettes directly from a store (23.5%),
from vending machines (1.1%), or by giving money to others to make their purchases (29.9%). 30.4 percent
usually borrowed their cigarettes from others and 4.4 percent usually stole their cigarettes. In addition, older
kids and kids of any age who were daily smokers were much more likely to buy their cigarettes directly from
stores than younger or infrequent smokers. No data was provided on the percentage buying their cigarettes
from other kids.
The 2000 national Youth Tobacco Survey (YTS) found that among high school smokers, 32.2 percent
usually obtained their cigarettes by purchasing them from a store and 25.1 percent usually gave someone
else money to buy cigarettes for them – with 20.9 percent borrowing the cigarettes from others and 2.9
percent taking them from a store or family members.5 The 2000 YTS also found that 57.1 percent of high
school smokers who have purchased cigarettes purchased their last pack of cigarettes by purchasing it from
a gas station, 26.3 percent from a convenience store, and 7.7 percent from a grocery store. No data was
provided on the percentage buying their cigarettes from other kids. No additional YTS data on the specific
sources of cigarettes for youth as been released since the 2000 YTS. But the 2004 YTS showed that 70.6
percent of middle school smokers said that they were not asked to show proof of age when trying to buy
cigarettes from a store. 66.4 percent said they were not refused purchase of cigarettes due to their age.
A 2006 study conducted in the Memphis city school system found that even among 11 and 12 year-old
seventh-graders, 11 percent were able to purchase their cigarettes from stores. In addition, 30 percent got
their cigarettes from friends, six percent from vending machines, and 17 percent stole them.
Making it More Costly or Difficult For Kids to Buy Cigarettes Reduces Youth Smoking
Numerous research studies have found that making obtaining cigarettes as inconvenient, difficult, and
expensive as possible for kids not only reduces the number of kids who try or regularly smoke cigarettes, but
also reduces the number of cigarettes consumed by kids who continue to smoke. Because youth purchases
are the major source of cigarettes smoked by kids, increasing cigarette prices and minimizing the number of
retailers willing to illegally sell cigarettes to kids have each been shown to reduce youth smoking. While
these measures directly affect youths who buy their own cigarettes, they also reduce the number of kids who
buy cigarettes and supply them to other kids for free. Price hikes may also make it less likely that parents
and other adults will give cigarettes to kids, be as careless about leaving their cigarettes where children can
easily take them, or not notice when some of their cigarettes are missing.
In contrast to retail-enforcement efforts, voluntary tobacco industry programs to reduce illegal retailer sales to
kids have not been found to reduce youth sales effectively. Similarly, while total bans of vending machine
cigarette sales will eliminate that source, kids still readily obtain cigarettes from vending machines in those
jurisdictions that restrict vending machine sales to adult-only locations or otherwise regulate vending
machine sales without eliminating them.

Source: http://www.cigarettespub.com/cigarettes-news

“Snus on the Loose?”

Lou Maiellano — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:40:30 +0000

Dagens Nyheter, Wednesday 7 December:
“Brussels. The EU commission now promises the Swedish Government that it will re-evaluate the export ban for snus after DN’s revealing that EU’s own investigation show that there is strong support for snus sales in Europe.
The Commission should apologize to 80,000 of its citizens for not listening to their views, says [Swedish] trade minister Ewa Björling.
The EU commission announced this summer that the public survey used to support its tobacco legislation, showed that a majority of the member countries want a continued ban for exporting snus from Sweden.
DN however went through all the replies [in the survey], which were made public during the autumn, and they show that a large majority of the respondents, in all different groups, want to remove the snus ban.
Trademinister Björling brought a translation of last weeks DN articles to a meeting with John Dalli, the responsible EU commissioner, this Monday.
- He promised to look at the findings from the survey, and the trend in Sweden, says Ewa Björling.
The level of smokers in Sweden is much lower than in other EU countries and so the level of lung cancer. Sweden also has tougher regulation for cigarette sales, than many other countries. – If health commissioner Dalli wants to accomplish something to improve the health within EU during his tenure as commissioner, its probably wise to draw from the experience in Sweden on how to handle the issue, rather than arriving at a full EU ban against cigarettes, which won’t be very successful.
The EU commission is expected to present its proposal on new tobacco legislation early next year.”

UPDATE 1-EU promises Sweden it will review snus ban
By Veronica Ek
434 words
7 December 2011
10:09
Reuters News
LBA
English
(c) 2011 Reuters Limited
(Adds trade minister comments)
STOCKHOLM, Dec 7 (Reuters) – The European Commission has promised Sweden it will take another look at its ban of the tobacco product snus, which is allowed in Sweden but banned elsewhere in the European Union, the Swedish trade minister said on Wednesday.
Swedish Match is Europe’s biggest producer of snus, or wet snuff, which is put under the upper lip and is mostly sold as small pouches of tobacco.
Trade minister Ewa Bjorling said she had met EU Health Commissioner John Dalli and discussed the results of a survey of EU states about current tobacco laws.
“What I believe is most important is that you base your reasoning on scientific facts. That is what I try to tell Dalli, and I ask the question: Why do you still want to have a ban on Swedish wet snuff when there are other snuff products on the market in the EU, for example Pakistani snuff?,” Bjorling told Reuters.
This was the second time she raised the snus issue with Dalli.
“I think he was listening in a different way this time. The first time he dismissed it simply saying their goal is to get everything away for health reasons,” Bjorling said.
Sweden says it has a lower proportion of deaths from lung cancer than in other EU states and a lower level of smokers.
Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter has reported that its own examination of the answers to the Commission’s survey showed that a majority of people in member states wanted to end the snus ban, even if most members states supported keeping it.
The Commission is expected to propose a new tobacco products law during the spring next year and released the results of a survey in July of attitudes to the current law, including the ban on snus.
The survey, which is on the Commission’s website, was carried out by asking questions to EU citizens, industry representatives, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and government representatives.
Most answers came from Italy and Poland, and the Commission noted that Italian tobacconists had organised a campaign to encourage submissions to the survey.
The survey showed that EU citizens and industry representatives were in favour of lifting the snus ban, while most EU states and NGOs wanted it maintained.
The main markets for Swedish Match’s snus products are Sweden, Norway and the United States.
Swedish Match shares rose 1.6 percent to 224 Swedish crowns on Wednesday.

MORE PROGRESS! WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS MATTER?

Test Markets Reveal Women Choose Dissolvable Tobacco

Lou Maiellano — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:26:29 +0000

WINSTOM-SALEM, N.C. — Since starting a second round of testing, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.’s dissolvable tobacco products are proving popular among women.

The product line — Camel Sticks, Camel Strips and Camel Orbs –do not require spitting, which could be a deciding factor among female tobacco users. According to a report in the Winston-Salem Journal, females represented 45 percent of all adult smokers who bought Camel Sticks, Camel Strips and Camel Orbs during September and October. Of all adult tobacco users, 31 percent were women.

By comparison, the news outlet reported that adult males make up 85 percent of moist snuff and Camel Snus users.

R.J. Reynolds’ dissolvable line is currently being sold in Denver and Charlotte, N.C. The first round of testing took place in Columbus, Ohio Indianapolis and Portland, Ore.

“We have seen a noticeable appeal and interest of the dissolvable products with adult female tobacco consumers,” Reynolds spokesman David Howard told the newspaper.

Stephen Pope, an industry analyst and managing partner of Spotlight Ideas in England, said Reynolds may have discovered a niche with adult female tobacco users. “Clearly the figures for the dissolvable products make for fascinating reading and actually show that here could be a product that, if handled correctly, could well offer an opportunity for a special female-targeted product that could be as significant as Virginia Slims was for Philip Morris,” he said.

The dissolvable products “could prove to be the first viable smokeless tobacco products for females,” stated Bonnie Herzog, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities LLC.

Reynolds has not said when a national rollout of the products will occur.

As the popularity of dissolvable tobacco grows, tobacco companies are sure to draw the attention of advocacy groups. Jeff Middleswart, portfolio manager for the Vice Fund of USA Mutuals, said having the Camel and Marlboro brands in dissolvable products is likely to intensify the debate among advocacy groups. One set says that smokeless tobacco products serve as gateways for teenagers to cigarettes; the other set sees the products as a way to reduce the risk of tobacco use compared with cigarettes.

“Anything tobacco will create criticism — it’s just the way of the world,” Middleswart said. “A new product that has the potential to gain market share is going to be a target.”

John Spangler, a professor of family and community medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said he found it “disturbing that any smokeless tobacco product is now becoming popular among women.” His concern is that the dissolvable products may encourage women to use smokeless tobacco for the first time.

Dissolvable tobacco products have caught the eye of the Food and Drug Administration. The agency gained the authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of tobacco products under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) took up the issue at its July meeting, the first step toward issuing regulations.

Colorado state officials have also put dissolvable tobacco products under the microscope. Just a few weeks after the TPSAC members began to take a closer look, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment held a hearing to begin their investigation into the products and their possible dangers, as CSNews Online previously reported.

Interesting information! What are your thoughts on this type of offering?