Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/622093
34 tobaccoasia / Issue 5, 2015December/January) bacco product and regulating them thusly instead of banning them completely, the debate on whether e-cigarettes are safer than conventional cigarettes remains highly divisive. A recent example is the report released by Public Health England (PHE) in August 2015, announcing that e-cigarettes were 95% less harmful than conventional cigarettes and suggesting they could one day be offered alongside nicotine patches as a smoking cessation aid. Less than a week later, PHE and the team of researchers in this study were under fire with critics accusing the research as being methodologically weak and having conflicts of interest surrounding its funding and members of the research team with links to the tobacco industry, thus concluding that the research findings were questionable. However, it seems that this could very likely be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. "Well, you have to understand, whenever we get these reports from WHO and from the FDA and from the CDC, those people are 100% paid by the min- istry of health and Big Pharma. 100%. There is nobody from the tobacco category or an impartial person on that particular panel when they write these reports," said Story. "So, certainly, if there are people out there who are going to be writ- ing about e-cigarettes, it is going to be pro e-ciga- rettes. But to sit there and say that this particular story was skewed because it only had people from the category or only some people from the cat- egory is not a fair assessment because those who oppose this are only from Big Pharma and they have their opinion, so they don't even allow any- body – even [one who] is probably not biased but could potentially be impartial – they don't allow anybody. It's only from Big Pharma and from the ministry of health in each and every country and they're extremely biased towards Big Pharma and their cessation devices. "You have to understand, e-cigarettes, until I changed the law in the US and in Europe, were considered a medicinal device. We took that away from them. But, it was a medicinal product; it was a drug delivery device. How this product got to be a drug delivery device, where somebody signed it into law, nobody can tell me, but it ended up there. Big Tobacco has an image problem but at the end of the day they have to fight for every inch, whereas Big Pharma intertwined with the minis- try of health of each government can do basically whatever they want and they do". "If you look, for instance, at Chantix [a smok- ing cessation prescription medicine], over 3,000 vio- lent acts have been committed while people were on Chantix. I think there's 500+ people who have committed suicide on Chantix. Do you hear any- thing about it? FDA put a special page on its website warning you against that drug. Yet, one little battery, after millions and millions have been sold, blows up because the user uses it incorrectly, and it is head- line news around the world. That's the problem. They do not want this product because ultimately if we provide a product to the consumer that would lower the mortality rate, it goes directly against the business model of Big Pharma who makes their money off of sick people. So, they certainly don't want to cut their cash cow and fighting cancer from long-term tobacco use is their number one money- maker". Describing his efforts working with govern- ments to categorize e-cigarettes as tobacco prod- ucts and regulate them correctly, Story said, "It's not trying to beat them, it's trying to show them that they have misinterpreted and miscategorized the product and that doing so goes against every- thing that would support public health. Conven- tional tobacco cannot be outlawed, so they need to put a product up against it that has the ability to compete against that product and potentially de- feat and eliminate it over time. And if you have a product that's manufactured with 6,000 chemicals and over 65 different carcinogens and you then take that product and create the exact same eupho- ria with 5 ingredients without the history of harm and without all the carcinogens you would find in a conventional tobacco product, that is doing some- thing for public health, which is of course in the interest of the public, and that's the message we have to bring."