Royal College of Physicians promotes E-cigarettes while FDA rules effectively ban them

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Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association

May 06, 2016, 12:05 ET

DES MOINES, Iowa, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA) is condemning the FDA's deeming regulations that will effectively ban 99.9% of the vapor products currently on the market.

CASAA is especially troubled by the FDA's move in light of the Royal College of Physicians' recent endorsement of e-cigarettes as a valuable tool in helping reduce harms associated with smoking. In its 206-page report issued last month, "Nicotine Without Smoke: Tobacco Harm Reduction," the Royal College of Physicians states:

The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (casaa.org). (PRNewsFoto/Consumer Advocates for Smoke...)

Smoking is the biggest avoidable cause of death and disability, and social inequality in health.
Provision of the nicotine that smokers are addicted to without the harmful components of tobacco smoke can prevent most of the harm from smoking.
E-cigarettes are marketed as consumer products and are proving much more popular than NRT as a substitute for and competitor for tobacco cigarettes.
E-cigarettes appear to be effective when used by smokers as an aid to quitting smoking.
The hazard to health arising from long-term vapor inhalation from e-cigarettes available today is unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm smoking tobacco causes.

"Today's action by the FDA is a choice of politics over genuine public health, imposing an almost insurmountable burden on the diverse vapor industry, essentially handing the entire marketplace to the large tobacco companies," said Julie Woessner, Executive Director for CASAA. "These regulations are nothing short of a boon to the tobacco companies, demonstrating a clear preference for the status-quo, which keeps dangerous combustible products in place while stifling their low-risk competitors.

"These regulations will eliminate choice and diversity in the marketplace, the very things that have made vapor products such an incredibly successful low-risk alternative to smoking," Woessner explained. "This is an appalling breach of public trust by the FDA."

The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA) is a non-profit 501(c)4 organization with an all-volunteer board and a grassroots membership of more than 140,000 active members from all walks of life. CASAA is dedicated to ensuring the availability of reduced harm alternatives to smoking and to providing smokers and the public with honest information about those products. CASAA will continue its efforts in advocating for more reasonable, ethical, and sensible regulations.

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SOURCE Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association