WSJ has a front-page article on E-CIGS today

[Waiting For Everyman]

E-Cigarettes Spark New Smoking War
By DAVID KESMODEL And DANNY YADRON

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704557704575437710870116450.html

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E-cigarettes are battery-powered tubes that turn nicotine-laced liquid into a vapor mist. Sellers say they are potentially less harmful than cigarettes because they don't have the toxins of burning tobacco. A growing number of people who use them say they are an effective way to quit smoking.

The future of the fledgling industry—estimated at $100 million in annual sales and rising—may hinge on the outcome of a case scheduled for oral arguments before a federal appellate court in Washington, D.C., next month. The FDA is fighting to regulate the products as drug-delivery devices, similar to nicotine gums, patches or other nicotine-replacement products. Such a classification would subject e-cigarettes to lengthy and expensive trials to prove they are safe and effective.

But many e-cigarette companies argue that their products are designed to be recreational alternatives to cigarettes, not devices to wean people off nicotine. They say they couldn't afford the high cost of clinical trials, and that any such mandate would drive many of them out of business or force the industry to go underground.

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But a number of public-health advocates, including the American Association of Public Health Physicians, argue that conventional policies for getting people off cigarettes have fallen short. These groups argue that encouraging smokers to switch to e-cigarettes and other smokeless tobacco products could sharply reduce tobacco-related disease in the U.S.

Dr. Joel Nitzkin, chairman of a tobacco control task force of the public physicians group, says e-cigarettes may prove to be the most promising smoking cessation product currently on the market. He thinks they should be regulated to ensure manufacturing standards are met. But he thinks the FDA's tobacco regulations, rather than the more demanding drug device rules, provide the best framework.

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