Electronic Cigarettes: General Information

In 2003 a Asian inventor, Hon Lik, developed the debut electronic cigarette as a healthier choice to filtered tobacco smoking. Electronic cigarettes emit a vapor that is meant to imitate the personalty and sensations of smoking, and is marketed as a smoking cessation instrument.

These devices, including electronic cigars provide a cleaner alternative to filtered cigarettes by eliminating the carcinogens, tar, and chemicals that are taken in by smokers.

Is green packaging enough to stop people smoking?

The grass is always greener, as they say, and so are cigarette packets. In Australia, at least. The country's MPs are set to back plans to render cigarette packets olive-green, supposedly because it's a dull, unappealing colour that will put off potential smokers. But will it work? Perhaps. Green-branded firms – BP, Starbucks and Carlsberg, to name three – may be successful, but are hardly adored. Everyone hates BP, everyone loves to hate Starbucks, and Carlsberg is forced to beef up its brand with the hopeful slogan: "Probably the best beer in the world." Coincidence? Possibly not. Some magazine editors even swear green covers don't sell well at the newsstand.

In the cigarette industry, green has long been considered drab. Raymond Loewy's re-branding of the Lucky Strike packet from bland green to the white-black-red version we know today was "one of the great transformations", says design critic Stephen Bayley. "Sales picked up enormously." But, he warns, green may be ugly, but not always off-putting. "Thing is," expands Bayley, "ugliness is an unreliable deterrent. It's actually very difficult to design something ugly. Usually it only happens by accident."

And what does the Green party think? It may have won its first seat last year, but could it have done better with, say, a vermilion logo? Ochre, maybe? Au contraire, says a spokesman. "Green is associated with regeneration, good luck, generosity, harmony and well-paced energy. Have you ever noticed that time moves faster in a green room? In contrast, TS Eliot used yellow to represent the decay of the modern world, blue is linked to sadness, and red with anger." Green with envy? Not the Greens.

Lexington group launches campaign against cigarette-butt litter

The dangers of cigarette smoke are no secret.Even if they are of Chesterfield cigarettes or Virginia cigarettes.

But cigarettes also are a problem after they've been smoked, Lexington Environmental Quality Commissioner Cheryl Taylor said Tuesday.
Taylor and the Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission have joined with Keep America Beautiful to launch a campaign against cigarette-butt litter.
"We found that cigarette litter is pervasive. It's everywhere," Taylor said. "We think it's because people just don't think about it."
According to Keep America Beautiful's Web site, cigarette butts are the most littered item in the United States.
That statistic, coupled with the unsightliness of cigarette butts, led the Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission to the idea of an anti-litter campaign, which began to take shape about two years ago, Taylor said.
The Lexington commission started by taking surveys of specific areas in Lexington, where members picked up cigarette butts and counted them.
They'll do the same once the campaign is over in the hopes of finding fewer cigarette butts than before. Environmental Quality spokesman Mark York said the campaign will start on July 1 and run until mid-August.
The Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission was accepted into Keep America Beautiful and received a $5,000 grant, which will be used to buy trash receptacles for targeted areas. As part of the campaign, Keep America Beautiful donated 1,000 pocket ashtrays and hundreds of automobile ashtrays to the local commission to give out at public appearances.
"Litter has been an issue and something that's been discussed by a lot of people for a long time," she said. "But there was never an agency that addressed it. Everybody hated litter, but nobody knew what to do about it."
Taylor said other cities have had positive results from similar campaigns.
She said part of a successful push in Oklahoma City, Okla., was having an image that reminded people about the dangers of litter.
Lexington will have its own image in the form of a "cigarette fairy," played by local theater actress Carly Crawford, 24. She'll appear in television advertisements.
"We're hoping that when they're about to throw their cigarette on the ground, an image of Carly will pop in their head and remind them not to," Taylor said.
Taylor said the campaign isn't limited to focusing on cigarette butts. It addresses litter in general.
She said the goal is to educate people and help them to break the habit of throwing butts on the ground.
"Most people are reasonable," she said. "Once they stop to think about it, they want to do the right thing."

'No smoking' signs actually drive smokers to light up a cigarette

A new psychological study has found that 'no smoking' signs evoke desire in smokers and encourage them to take a puff. According to scientists, this is called the 'ironic effect' on smokers.

"You get ironic effects when you couple information that people perceive with negation," the Daily Mail quoted Brian Earp, researcher from Oxford University as saying.

"No smoking signs in particular are everywhere. If you're a smoker walking down a street you're likely to pass five or six of these signs in windows or on doors. If you have a chronically positive attitude to smoking this could boost your craving," he added.

To fortify the theory, Earp's team conducted a test on a group of smoking volunteers by showing them a number of photographs related to 'no smoking' signs.

The results showed that participants, who had earlier been shown the signs, were more drawn to smoking-related images such as ashtrays and cigarettes.

"What's interesting is the ironic effect of the negative image. No smoking signs are meant to discourage an activity but what happens is you get a kick back so that the very item that's supposed to be prohibited becomes more desirable," Earp said.

The study will be presented at the British Psychological Society's annual meeting in Glasgow. (ANI)

What are e-cigarettes?

In this THV Extra, we are taking a closer look into E-Cigs. Are they really healthier than an average cigarette?

Some are calling it the everyday smoker's savior: e- cigarettes. The smokeless, odorless and tobacco free alternative to your average square.

But how do they even work? Can someone actually kick the habit and how healthy, if at all are they?

The e-cigarette, it looks almost like a real cigarette. Maybe a little larger, but the LED lighted tip, the vapor and the filter serving milligrams of nicotine into the user may have some looking or puffing twice.

Setting it even farther apart from the real thing is the absence of nearly 4000 carcinogens.

"These are an electronic device that you put a cartridge inside that contains nicotine and heaven knows what else," says Dr. Carolyn Dresler.

Dresler with the Arkansas Department of Health says a lack of data and studies from e-cig companies themselves has raised red flags with many health officials.

"These products have been out too new to really know the science. The tobacco industry that makes them they're not doing any science on it, so who knows what's really in it," says Dresler.


In 2009 an FDA preliminary study revealed traces of diethylene glycol, an ingredient commonly used in antifreeze.

Late last month, the FDA agreed to take action in attempts to regulate the product.


Harmful or not-- full time college student Kari Ellis has used the device for six months and claims the effects have been monumental in her everyday life.

"It's almost like put a piece of spearmint candy in your mouth and inhale," says Ellis.

Having smoked on and off for years, Ellis says stress just keeps bringing her back. "Right now is just not the time in my life where I can quit."

Liam Hill, who isn't looking to quit smoking anytime soon tried it out.


A little tough at first, but a second drag had him asking questions. "I don't know how much these things cost."

Each changeable filter on the cigarette is the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes.

A one time purchase price of $140 for an e-cig, plus a weeks worth of filters for no more than $30, would bring it's yearly cost to around $1,400.

A pack a day smoker buying cigarettes at six dollars could expect to spend around 2,200.

"In the six weeks I've been using. I've saved about $230."

But still the electronic choice may not be for everyone. Take Joseph Burgess for instance, who tried it for his first time alongside his friend Justin Kroger.

"You have to really pull on it to feel it," says Burgess, who says he would not pay $140 for one.

Still many smokers prefer smoking cigarettes like : Chesterfield cigarettes or Armada cigarettes.

Kroger, though goes back to it being a mind thing. "It's kind of like the oral fixation thing. It's kind of like having something there, and if it's better for you, you might as well do it."

Smokers may sue cigarette makers despite prior ailments, state high court rules

The California Supreme Court decided unanimously Thursday that smokers may sue cigarette makers once they develop a disease such as lung cancer, even if they suffered different smoking-related ailments years earlier.

The decision is likely to keep alive lawsuits that might have otherwise been thrown out because of expired legal deadlines, and to permit new suits to be filed.

In the case before the court, a former smoker was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 1989 and a couple of years later with periodontal disease, both attributable to smoking. But she did not sue the tobacco industry until she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2003.

Cigarette makers argued that her suit should be dismissed because the timetable for suing began when she first discovered that smoking had injured her in 1989.

Many smokers are using different brands as it is Camel FUll Flavor cigarettes or Winston White cigarettes.

The state high court, in a ruling written by Justice Joyce L. Kennard, concluded that an earlier disease does not trigger the legal deadline for filing suit if the injury was "separate and distinct" from the later ailment.

"We hold that two physical injuries -- both caused by the same tobacco use over the same period of time -- can, in some circumstances, be considered 'qualitatively different'" for determining when the clock begins ticking on legal deadlines, Kennard wrote.

"Although we are disappointed with the decision, the California Supreme Court made it clear that it was not addressing the merits of this case or any case," the statement said. "Rather, the decision addresses a narrow technical point of law relating to the statute of limitations. The decision would be relevant only in a very small fraction of cases filed."]

Lloyd LeRoy, an attorney for the former smoker, called the ruling “extremely significant, particularly for tobacco litigation in California.”

Until Thursday’s ruling, smokers could not sue after getting lung cancer if their medical records showed that they were diagnosed with smoker’s cough or another smoking-related ailment years earlier, LeeRoy said. State legal deadlines give people two years to sue after discovering an injury.

“What this says is the courtroom door is open again,” LeeRoy said.

The smoker's lawsuit is before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which asked the state high court to clarify how legal deadlines should apply under California law.