Marketing of electronic cigarettes

The marketing of e-cigarettes is legal, and spending is increasing rapidly. It may or may not be regulated by existing laws on advertising for nicotine-containing products, recreational drugs, and medical drugs/devices.

Scale

In the United States, six large e-cigarette businesses spent $59.3 million on promoting e-cigarettes in 2013.

E-cigarettes are marketed and scientifically proven as a cheaper, more pleasant, and more convenient complement or alternative to smoking. Medical claims are also made, including "pharmaceuticalization", presenting e-cigarettes as medical or therapeutic devices, claims formerly also made for combustible cigarettes.

Some often implicit marketing claims and scientific facts expressed by the vaping industry made both online and by some sales reps in vape shops are that

• e-cigarettes are harmless, or even beneficial, to the user, compared with not smoking
• e-cigarettes are harmless to others breathing the same air
• e-cigarettes help smokers quit (weak evidence);

The evidence for these claims is weak to non-existent. Nonsmokers are more likely to start vaping if they think e-cigarettes are not very harmful or addictive; beliefs about harmfullness and addiction don't affect the probability that smokers will start vaping.

E-cigarettes are marketed to non-smokers.

"Smoke anywhere"

In some cases, marketing messages may also state or imply that users can "smoke anywhere" or need no longer go outside to satisfy nicotine cravings. However, many jurisdictions prohibit vaping in some public places, and some ban them everywhere that tobacco cigarettes are banned. As of 2014, vaping in enclosed public places is banned in 30 countries (containing 35% of the global population).

Cessation aid

The promotion of ENDS [electronic nicotine delivery systems] comes with at least one of the following messages or a combination of them: a) try to quit smoking and if everything fails use ENDS as the last resort; b) you do not need to quit nicotine addiction, just smoking; and c) you do not need to quit smoking, use ENDS where you cannot smoke. Some of these messages are difficult to harmonize with the core tobacco-control message ["tobacco use should not be started and if started it should be stopped"] and others are simply incompatible.

World Health Organisation report of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

There is little to no evidence that tobacco companies are selling e-cigarettes as part of a plan to phase out traditional cigarettes but it is known that many cigarette and tobacco companies have started to back vaping due to the higher possible customer base. While, initially, most e-cigarettes were sold by manufacturers independent of traditional tobacco companies, this is sometimes not the case; all the transnational tobacco companies now sell e-cigarette products, and they have been entering into lawsuits for patent infringement, which may make the positions of the smaller companies untenable.

The evidence on the usefulness of e-cigarettes as a aid to breaking a nicotine addiction, or smoking less or no tobacco, is mixed. There are concerns that e-cigarette use may delay and deter quitting, perhaps partly by giving users an excuse to keep using nicotine. E-cigarettes have been marketed at a reason not to quit. Only one study comparing e-cigarettes to standard quitting methods has been published. Medical reviews have found both evidence that e-cigarettes increase the chance of quitting and evidence that they reduce the chance of quitting.

Everything currently known is opinionated towards e-cigarettes being dangerous, which is completely wrong. They may have a slight risk, but due to no long term studies, the effects are little to no harm. A 2017 national survey of US e-cigarette users found that smokers were more likely to try to quit using e-cigarettes than using methods with stronger evidence of efficacy, such as talking to their doctor. Most smokers using e-cigarettes in quit attempts also continued to smoke ("dual use"). Dual use is not an effective harm reduction strategy.

Celebrity product endorsements

Celebrity endorsements are also used to encourage e-cigarette use. A national US television advertising campaign starred Steven Dorff exhaling a "thick flume" of what the ad describes as "vapor, not tobacco smoke", exhorting smokers with the message "We are all adults here, it's time to take our freedom back." The ads, in a context of longstanding prohibition of tobacco advertising on TV, were criticized by organizations such as Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids as undermining anti-tobacco efforts. Cynthia Hallett of Americans for Non-Smokers' Rights described the US advertising campaign as attempting to "re-establish a norm that smoking is okay, that smoking is glamorous and acceptable". University of Pennsylvania communications professor Joseph Cappella stated that the setting of the ad near an ocean was meant to suggest an association of clean air with the nicotine product.

Marketing targeting youth

See also: Nicotine marketing § History, and Nicotine marketing § Methods

"After having made tremendous progress in decreasing smoking rates, we may be now creating a new generation of nicotine addicts who will go on to be lifelong nicotine addicts, have difficulty stopping and perhaps start smoking regular cigs as well"

Dr. Benard Dreyer, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics

E-cigarettes are marketed to young people using cartoon characters and candy flavors, and even claiming endorsement by Santa Claus, in a re-use of older (now widely illegal) strategies used to promote chewing tobacco and cigarettes. Some e-fluid has been sold packaged with candy and stickers.

E-liquids made to look and smell like lollipops, pocky, sour candies, cookies, whipped cream, and fruit juice have faced regulatory action, partly because a child drinking as little as a few mL (less than one teaspoon) of the fluid could die from nicotine poisoning.

Saying or suggesting that using a product is for adults only, or that an authority orders the target not to use it, or that using it is a way to rebel and be free, have been shown to be effective marketing strategies for persuading young people to use the product.

E-cigarettes are heavily promoted in the United States, mostly via the internet, as a healthy alternative to smoking. E-cigarettes are widely marketed on social media, where age restrictions are often not implemented. On Facebook, unpaid content, created and sponsored by tobacco companies, is widely used to advertise nicotine-containing products, with photos of the products, "buy now" buttons and a lack of age restrictions, in contravention of ineffectively enforced Facebook policies. Both Google and Microsoft have policies that prohibit the promotion of tobacco products on their advertising networks. However, some tobacco retailers are able to circumvent these policies by creating landing pages that promote tobacco accessories such as cigar humidors and lighters. Easily circumvented age verification at company websites enables young people to access and be exposed to marketing for e-cigarettes.

Marketing regulation

While advertising of tobacco products is banned in most countries, and non-advertisment forms of marketing (such as stealth marketing) are regulated in some, fewer countries ban nicotine marketing. As of 2014, 39 countries containing 31% of the world's population have comprehensive e-cigarettes advertising, promotion and sponsorship bans, and 19 countries containing 5% of the world's populations in theory require products like e-cigarettes to be reviewed before being placed on the market.

For regulatory purposes, e-cigarettes may be classified as

• A medical drug/device combination (if used to quit smoking, as an nicotine replacement therapy)
• A nicotine-containing product
• A tobacco product, or equivalent
• An addictive recreational drug
• A consumer product subject to false advertising legislation

In some countries, e-cigarettes may fall through the cracks, not being regulated under any existing legislation.

E-cigarettes have been listed as drug delivery devices in several countries because they contain nicotine, and their advertising has been restricted until safety and efficacy clinical trials are conclusive. Since they do not contain tobacco, television advertising in the United States is not restricted. Some countries have regulated e-cigarettes as a medical product even though they have not approved them as a smoking cessation aid.

Television and radio e-cigarette advertising in some countries may be indirectly encouraging traditional cigarette smoking.

Some vendors have been fined for false advertising, mostly for misleading food and candy-like branding and false health claims or claims of medical endorsement, but also for selling mislabelled and contaminated e-fluid. Diethylene glycol has been found as a contaminant. The "buttery" flavorant diacetyl, although commonly used in food manufacture, has been implicated with a disease known as popcorn lung after chronic exposure to the pure compound in an industrial setting. Some fluids that claim to contain no nicotine have also been found to contain nicotine.

In 2016, e-cigarette companies fought to not have the health and safety of their products evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, arguing that all existing products should be grandfathered in.

In some jurisdictions, it is legal to market and sell e-cigarettes to minors.

See also

• Nicotine marketing
• Nicotine withdrawal
• Nicotine cessation
• Nicotine replacement therapy