California public health officials Monday launched an information campaign that they hope will erode the growing popularity of e-cigarettes.
Since 1990, California has been a world leader in tobacco-use prevention and cessation, said Dr. Karen Smith, director of the California Department of Public Health, in a statement.
“The aggressive marketing and escalating use of e-cigarettes threatens to erode that progress” for both teens and adults, Smith said.
In January, public health officials published an advisory on the risks associated with electronic cigarettes, which emit a nicotine-containing aerosol.
A request to the California Department of Public Health seeking the cost of the campaign, funded through the state Tobacco Tax and Health Protection Act of 1988, was not responded to by deadline.
The act initiated a tax on each pack of cigarettes, some of which goes to California’s tobacco control efforts.
The campaign will continue through June on social media, in television spots, advertising in some movie theaters and on billboards.
E-cigarettes are frequently referred to as e-cigs, e-hookahs, vapes, vape pens or mods, among other names.
“While several studies found lower levels of carcinogens in the e-cigarette aerosol compared to smoke emitted by traditional cigarettes,” both have been found to contain at least 10 chemicals “known to cause cancer, birth defects and other reproductive harm” according to the warning issued in January.
“This campaign is nothing more than propaganda, with state bureaucrats more concerned with tax revenues than helping 3.6 million Californians quit smoking,” said Gregory Conley, president of the New Jersey-based American Vaping Association, which advocates for small- and medium-sized vaping and e-cigarette businesses.
Although the state campaign alleges that the tobacco industry is pulling the strings in the e-cigarette industry, Conley said that “this industry was neither created nor dominated by the tobacco industry.”
There are 2,000 vape businesses in California, he said, adding that they have helped countless California smokers quit.
“It is disgraceful to tie small businesses to Big Tobacco,” Conley said.
In April 2012, Charlotte-based blu eCigs Electronic Cigarettes was purchased by Lorillard Inc., the third largest cigarette manufacturer in the United States and owner of Newport and other brands.
Blue eCigs holds approximately 50 percent of the market share and can be found in more than 127,000 retail locations, the company said in a recent news release.
“This is a big sham,” said Fernando Miramontes, 38, who co-owns Kustom Vapes in Fontana.
Miramontes credits his own ability to stop smoking with having switched to e-cigarettes.
Dr. Michael Ong, a UCLA internal medicine faculty member and chairman of the state Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, said that e-cigarettes are a relatively new phenomena and much — lengthy — research is needed to both understand its harmful effects and evaluate the numerous anecdotal claims that their use can be an effective tool for smoking cessation.
