E-cigarette business breaks records

Photo: SCANPIX

Monthly, thousands are added to ranks of e-cigarette smokers. Despite product’s great popularity among consumers, State Agency of Medicines and social ministry officials toe the familiar «let’s ban!» line.

At times, numbers tell the story best. The last year but one, a company posted a turnover of under €90,000, in 2012 it had risen to €300,000. By October this year, we are talking about €2.5m.

The firm’s name is Elgery. They are the ones responsible for e-cigarette boom hitting Estonia – every month, the company harvests thousands of fresh clients. While, as a rule, business meetings centre on niches and segments, the laptops carried by Elgery guys and gals reveal nothing but arrows pointing ever upwards.

The boom has hit like a bolt from the blue; market players have been thrown into confusion: State Agency of Medicines is restricting and trying to gain control over e-cigarette business; Ministry of Social Affairs knows not (yet) what to do; police fulfils orders; politicians cannot take a stand; Consumer Protection Board cautions («see that you don’t use words «healthier that ordinary tobacco» in ads»); Tax Boards opts to wait and see. And, to complete the list: tobacco companies are watching the show and pretending not to be concerned. All told, quite a mess.

E-cigarette, as such, is quite a simple electronic contraption: made up of a battery, a little reservoir to pour «smoking» liquid into; and a heater to vaporise it. Looks greatly vary: some imitate ordinary cigarettes in colour and size; some try their very best to appear different. Example: the little LED lamp lighting up as smoker sucks the e-device, will be blue – and not red, as that would remind onlookers of ordinary cigarettes. And, inevitably, e-cigarettes resembling pipes and pens have hit the stores. 

Tastes and smells of liquids used also come in various sorts: melon, cherry, coffee. Whatever! The real difference: some contain no nicotine, some do. In the first case, all you inhale is tasty-smelly vapour. In the latter instance – in comes nicotine. Often, users mix nicotine-free and nicotine-containing liquids – for the sake of the taste, but also to regulate the nicotine dose. 

Mostly, the devices are made in China, some in USA. Liquids are also produced elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the world is filled with developers and sellers of all sizes. The aforementioned Elgery, for instance – developing the trade-mark SKYsmoke, also developing a device of their own (an electronic one), and working on liquids i.e. testing various technical and chemical options. 

The liquid debate

For instance: main components of e-cigarette liquids are propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine. Wise books say propylene glycol is mainly used to protect aircraft bodies from ice, and as humectants, in foodstuff. In e-cigarette liquids, propylene glycol mainly plays the role of taste-provider. Vegetable glycerine, however, helps make smoke.

Oliver Lehtsaar, an Elgery owner, says Estonians favour mixtures making for ample smoke, and finer and longer-lasting flavours. In practice that would mean that, on our country, the liquids come with more glycerine and less propylene glycol. By the way: as, in this case, the taste comes slowly, it will not kill the «nicotine kick», which could be the case should the taste be too strong.

Also: the smoke caused by puffing at e-cigarettes is not smoke in the ordinary sense; rather, it water vapour. Basically, it’s what happens as you set a tea-kettle on a stove, to boil water. Here, cartridge would be kettle, heating element acting like stove.

The legal battle, currently, rages over nicotine liquids. (Formally it cannot be claimed that the so-called nicotine-free liquids would be totally free from nicotine. As the liquids are mixed in the same containers, nicotine residues may find their way into the so-called nicotine-free liquids. Meanwhile, considering that low levels of nicotine are to be found, naturally, in other plants like potato, tomato, and paprika, then, figuratively speaking, nicotine levels in «nicotine-free» liquid exceed not that of a bowl of potato porridge.)

At the moment, the legal stand is this: with nicotine levels exceeding 1.5 milligrams (nicotine concentration in product 4 mg/ml), sales are only allowed in pharmacies – the product considered a medicine. This is the State Agency of Medicines’ standpoint, as supported by Tartu Administrative Court in its end-of-December decision.

True: the court procedure is not over yet, the final result not known. And also, while it was earlier desired by Medicines Agency to ban all nicotine liquids no matter the concentration, this was rejected by court in spring i.e. earlier.

Not sold to minors

In practice, the later decision banning stronger liquids has angered consumers, as no-one sells the leaner ones and consumers (with smoker background) do not like these either. E-cigarette stores have reacted to the court decision, removing all nicotine liquids from counters. They still keep selling them, using differing schemes. 

«Hello, I’m still 13 but I’ll be 14 soon and I would like to by myself an e-cigarette. Could you help me and advise me some e-cigarette. Then I could start collecting the money.» This is an e-mail received, two weeks ago, by the e-cigarette shop at Tõnismäe, Tallinn – one-of-a-kind, in Estonia. Of course, the boy was answered that they do not sell to under-18-year-olds. Such letters from kids have begun to abound. Another example: five youths came to the store, last week, to whom e-cigarettes were not sold (they being 16 years of age). The boys left the store angry, lit real cigarettes and, in one accord, spit at the store window.

As explained by the E-cigarette store assistant, the guys were impacted by an article over Delfi [web news portal – edit] claiming that, in Estonia, minors may buy e-cigarettes. The issue not being limited to youth: e-cigarettes sellers say that the news of late, during these past weeks – about the imminent ban and restrictions to sell nicotine liquids – have triggered great interest amongst clients. Negative advertisement also doing a good job.

«I think this is so wrong,» Gaidur, a smoker of e-cigarettes for a year, told Postimees regarding bans on nicotine liquids. He used to smoke for 25 years, no he’s had a year off. Well... he has a pack in the car, just in case, should the e-cigarette battery suddenly go dead, or the liquid run out. «I feel better, I do more sports,» says the man. Basically the same is claimed by Mark: «I smoked for ten years. With e-cigarette, I quit in a day. I, for one, recommend it. You’ll feel better and it comes cheaper, by half, money wise.»

Mikko, from Finland, whom I met at that selfsame store at Tõnismäe, adds that he has not decided in favour of e-cigarettes yet. «I smoke a little and now I am looking around, to maybe switch over to e-cigarettes,» says Mikko. «In Finland, we have these same discussions going on. I do think they could be sold freely – we are grown up people, we can decide for ourselves.»

Such spontaneous outburst of people’s democracy, with people all of a sudden speaking up on e-cigarettes, have occurred in many e-cigarette stores these past weeks. And, it must be admitted, consumers overwhelmingly agree – being angry and upset and unable to understand why their rights, being grown-ups, are thus being restricted.

Rules toughening up

To end with, a word on health benefits of e-cigarettes. E-cigarette sellers claim that these are more healthy than ordinary tobacco; some heat up and go as far as to say: it is good for health. The view is not shared by Agency of Medicines (nor by Ministry of Social Affairs, probably): e-cigarette damages health and is no better than an ordinary one.

Digging a bit into PubMed, the world’s largest medical scientific articles database, we find a couple of dozen studies on various levels, over these couple of years, on e-cigarettes. These all are, naturally, quite cautious in their final conclusions, saying the matter has to be researched, long-term impact is hard to predict, this is but the beginning.

Still, attempting to generalise some: e-cigarettes seem to be less hazardous (can it be said healthier?) than ordinary cigarettes. This, the correct reply would be: we do not know yet, we must do more research; even so, initial information seems to be in favour of e-cigarettes.

«We are not comparing e-cigarettes with pure air, we compare them with ordinary tobacco. They, in State Agency of Medicines, compare us with pure air,» e-cigarettes’ Oliver Lehtsaar summarises the opposition.

However, all this is pure theory, at the moment. In practice, social minister Taavi Rõivas says bills are in the making and it looks like we are headed towards tougher rules. Nicotine over 1.5 mg is medicine, the sales thereof requiring medicine sales licence; also, stricter regulation is in pipeline for under 1.5 mg content liquids as well. Should that be the case, the Estonian e-cigarettes boom is over. Or, maybe, the boom will continue and it is the pharmacies that will be boasting skyrocketing turnovers.

Comment

Madis Milling, TV host and actor

I started to use e-cigarettes this March. Before that, I had been smoking since university. At the beginning, I was very sceptical; even so, the switch was very easy. Having smoked e-cigarette for a month, while at exercises in the woods (he belongs to Defence League – M. S.) the battery went dead. I asked a fellow for a [ordinary] cigarette, but after a few puffs I cast it aside – felt so disgusting. 

Physically I feel a lot better, endurance is up. The future goal is quitting altogether, of course. To keep switching to leaner liquids until I quit altogether.

Concerning a ban on e-cigarettes – I say that’s total stupidity. Must I now go seeking some underground liquids? I wouldn’t want to speculate, but maybe it’s pharmacies’ interests? Or tobacco companies’ lobby?

I can’t understand, one might ask, the, why aren’t alcohol or ordinary tobacco sold in pharmacies? I can’t get that. I feel better, I live a life more healthy, and now I’m supposed to feel guilty over that?