(Newswire.net — September 30, 2014) — They are putting out among the strongest health warnings in the fledgling e-cigarette industry, going further even than the familiar ones on actual cigarettes, a leading cause of death around the world.
One warning, from Altria, maker of Marlboros, reads in part: “Nicotine is addictive and habit forming, and is very toxic by inhalation, in contact with the skin, or if swallowed.”
The R. J. Reynolds Vapor Company, which makes Vuse, had less to say about the origin of its e-cigarette warnings, which note, among other things, that nicotine is addictive and the product should not be used by people with heart conditions or high blood pressure.
A company spokesman said the warning reflected the fact that Vuse did not contain tobacco leaf and did not undergo “combustion,” like tobacco in cigarettes.
In a previous interview with The New York Times, the president of R. J. Reynolds Vapor Company, Stephanie Cordisco, said that her e-cigarette division aimed to make a break with the negative reputation of the cigarette industry.
“We’re here to make sure we can put this industry on the right side of history,” she said in the interview. Reynolds is one of the companies that has sued, successfully, to stop more graphic warnings on cigarette packages.
However, The fact these companies are voluntarily warning about e-cigarettes is “totally Orwellian,” said Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford history professor who studies the tobacco industry.
“They do everything for legal reasons, otherwise they’d stop making the world’s deadliest consumer products,” he added.
The warnings on the MarkTen e-cigarettes are far more elaborate than those on a pack of Marlboros, which note, for instance, that “smoking by pregnant women may result in fetal injury, premature birth and low birth weight.”
However, the warning does not include other risks, like the addictive nature of cigarettes, which are known to cause cancer and other deadly diseases.
Whatever the warnings say, they are typically disregarded by consumers, according to Allan M. Brandt, professor of the history of medicine and science at Harvard University and an expert in the tobacco industry.
Big tobacco companies “know that even these types of very serious warnings have generally not put significant dents in their sales,” he said. But, the warnings do appear to be part of an age-old practice by the industry: creating scientific gray areas. That tactic, he said, lets them forestall decisive action by consumers and regulators, as it did with cigarettes.
“It’s an incredibly effective and duplicitous practice in inventing additional new uncertainties and, at the same time, appearing to be cooperative,” Mr. Brandt said. “They’ve done this before,” he added. “It buys them time. It bought them 40 years with traditional tobacco products.”