Sri Lanka's CTC eyes e-cigarettes as fears over kids rise

Mar 13, 2014 (LBO) - Sri Lanka's Ceylon Tobacco Company, a unit of British American Tobacco said it was eyeing e-cigarettes as fears are rising in many countries of children being drawn into smoking through the product.

Chief executive Felicio Ferraz told shareholders in the annual report that BAT had bought CN Creative Limited, an e-cigarette technology firm and set up a company called Nicoventures Limited to "commercialise licensed inhaled nicotine products."
"These products are already in markets like the United Kingdom and from 2014 the Group will start to cascade its seeding strategy over key markets," he said.

"We will bid to be one of those markets given the context of pricing and the constraints that we face here."

E-cigarettes are battery powered devices the deliver a vapour containing nicotine - the addictive drug in tobacco - without most of the deadly cancer causing chemicals found in cigarette smoke that kill users with cancer and heart attacks or cause other diseases.

E-cigarettes were originally marketed as an aid to quit smoking but with tobacco firms buying up e-cigarette makers fears are growing.

One concern is that fruit and candy flavoured e-cigarettes which are targeted at children.

Several countries including, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia and Lithuania have banned e-cigarettes wherever tobacco smoking is banned.

Last week Los Angeles passed a law to ban the product where smoking is banned.

"I am most concerned about kids," city lawmaker Paul Koretz, co-sponsor of the ban was quoted as saying by AFP, a news agency.

"We all know this is being marketed to kids, getting some kids who don't smoke tobacco to start."

Some states, including Italy and France, have already outlawed sales to minors.

A recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics, a journal of the American Medical Association said e-cigarette use is growing among young people.

Just over three percent of US adolescents had ever tried an e-cigarette in 2011, and that more than doubled to 6.5 percent in 2012

Youths who had tried e-cigarettes were more likely to experiment with conventional cigarettes, and were more likely to be current cigarette smokers than kids who had not tried them, said the study.

The US Food and Drug Administration is studying the product to determine whether it should be regulated.

But it may take years for effects to be seen, experts say.

"Safer does not mean safe," said the LA County's public health director Dr. Jonathan Fielding had said.

"Although they are less harmful than traditional cigarettes, some e-cigarettes contains some health risks."

He added that e-cigarettes have grown into a "$1.5 billion industry that has caught the attention of big tobacco which historically has had scant regard for public health."

FDA rules of graphic labels and advertising in the US have also been delayed for several years after five tobacco firms went to court.

In Sri Lanka, CTC has also gone to court over proposed labels.

Cigarette smoking has been in long-term decline in Sri Lanka due to regulation, an active anti-tobacco lobby as well as high taxes.

Last year volumes at CTC dropped 6 percent, chairman Susantha Ratnayake told shareholders.

Ferraz said consumption of 'beedi' a low end cigarette made by cottage industries which do have the same taxes and are much cheaper has gone up in 2013 reversing a decline seen over a decade.

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