FDA regulation of Tobacco, what's it all mean?

Hot on the heels of my post about Camel Orbs leading me to the discovery and research into Swedish Snus, I received an email from RJ Reynolds yesterday.

"Stop FDA form making your tobacco products taste like 'lard'!" was the subject. The body of the email containing quite a bit of spin on proposed legislation to put tobacco products, which are currently mostly unregulated, under the oversight of the FDA. RJ Reynolds argues that this would allow the FDA to make any changes they wanted to products, potentially even making them taste terrible and jacking up the prices even more.

That's quite a bit of conjecture there. I didn't hear anything to the tune of "If this passes, it will have this effect on consumers." And the best reactionary headline they could come up with was to stop the FDA from making cigarettes taste like lard? That's it? Like that would ever happen.

I seriously doubt the FDA would care to control the flavor of tobacco products. What they would most likely do is require disclosure of the ingredients, tobacco levels, and amounts of carcinogens to be disclosed to consumers. Kinda like how if you look at a box of cereal you can see that it's made of high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and yellow #5 and contains 5% of your recommended daily dose of shits and giggles.

Pretty scary, isn't it? That they might actually be forced to tell us what they put in their products. And god only knows what might happen then.

But seriously, what is in our cigarettes? I'd certainly like to know. I mean, it's kinda late. For 15 years I've been burning and inhaling god knows what sort of substances into my lungs. Better late than never, but I cringe to think that besides the nicotine and tar, that there are a variety of other carcinogenic or simply toxic things I've been consuming on a daily basis.

For instance, I keep running across information stating that many cigarettes are somewhere around 15% sugar. I'm having a hard time digging up any really recent or reputable sources for these claims, but the info I do come up with is intriguing and frightening. Sugar and other sweeteners supposedly can be added to make a smoke smoother, but it is also reported that burning sugar creates a chemical reaction that makes nicotine even more addictive, as well as of course give you a pretty decent sucrose addiction as well, making it that much harder to ever quit the shit.

Ouch. That's not very nice! I've also seen statements to the effect that the sugar in cigarettes is really the most harmful part, that inhaling the burning sugar is basically pretty toxic and probably the main cause of lung cancer. True or not? I don't know. Is there really that much sugar in cigarettes? We don't know, because they don't have to tell us.

So. Ingredient, additive, and carcinogen disclosure. Doesn't really sound like a bad thing to me. Now, the FDA would also be given the power to potentially regulate additives, etc. This must be where RJ Reynolds gets their claim that the FDA could make cigarettes taste gross... Because cigarettes are sooo delicious? Really though, most likely the FDA would only regulate and restrict the levels of carcinogens, chemical additives with harmful health effects, etc. Which doesn't really sound like a bad thing.

In Sweden regulating tobacco like a food product brought about industry changes resulting in new recipes and manufacturing processes wherein tobacco for Swedish Snus is steam pasteurized, destroying most of the naturally occurring carcinogens in tobacco. In addition, you not only can easily find out what's in the product, but generally find it's a pretty short and simple list of ingredients.

Here's what we get for General Portion Snus:

Declaration of Contents: Water, Tobacco, Humectants (E 1520), Taste enhancer (common salt), Acidity regulator (E 500), Flavour substances incl. Smoke flavour.

Analytical Data: Water 50%, Nicotine 8 mg/portion, Salt 2,5%

Even the Humectants are standard and easy to find out what exactly they are. They are generally used to keep foodstuffs moist, so are pretty common. E 1520 for example is propylene Glycol, E 500 seems to be sodium bicarbonate. Yeah, baking soda. So, you've probably got more enigmatic and weird stuff in any sort of processed or prepared food and beverages you buy.

You can also get a hold of the level of TSNAs in their products, which are supposed to be the really nasty cancer causing thingies. And something which is most definitely not readily available to find out about american tobacco products. Wouldn't you like to know just what you're putting in your body?

All-in-all, this doesn't seem like a bad system. Personally I'm pretty fond of the idea of disclosure, transparency, etc. I feel like if I'm going to be paying for something to put into my body, I deserve the right to know what's in it. The same as I like the idea of government transparency. The government gets paid by us, right, so it makes sense that we should get to have some idea of what they are up to. Especially since the majority of legislation is passed in this country without our direct input. We get to vote for people to represent us, but are they really making choices and voting in a way that represents us? Hard to say sometimes.

And when it comes down to it, it is hard to say what the effects of legislation putting tobacco under the regulation of the FDA would, in reality have. There are plenty of good arguments for it. There's plenty of potential to make positive changes that would allow for consumer awareness, education, and potential health benefits to the public. But the FDA certainly is not the most straightforward government agency. Nor, if you start digging around, do they seem to be the most moral, ethically, or well intentioned agency. As is often the case these days, personal agendas tend to take precedence over public health and welfare, personal agendas generally being similar in a singular focus on personal profit.

So would the FDA really make any significant changes for the better? Or would it just allow the FDA to take their cut of the gifts and bribes from Big Tobacco? Hard to say.

Personally, at this point I have more concern over whispers of legislation that would make it basically impossible to buy tobacco products over the internet. While I understand that it is mostly being considered for the sake of cigarettes, and because of concerns from many states and on the federal level about people dodging the incredible taxes on cigarettes by purchasing online. The end result of that sort of legislation could be to make it impossible to get products like Swedish Snus in most parts of the US. Leaving folks with only the products of domestic big tobacco companies.

I know that no tobacco products is healthy. I realize we'd all be better off quitting entirely, but if there's a product that's 98% safer than cigarettes that the millions of smokers could potentially quite smoking and switch to in a very short amount of time, does it make sense to make it a felony to have it shipped to your house?

But again, whether it's corporations or government, time and again the trend we see is profitability over the well being of the public.

So I won't be writing and phoning my legislators to tell them to oppose the bill for FDA regulation of tobacco. I'm not totally optimistic the FDA be at all altruistic in their regulation, but I don't think it can hurt too much. And I'm really really curious to see that list of ingredients for my Camel Filters. Especially after they changed the blend a year ago, since I'm sure the choice to change a classic and popular cigarette blend had to be driven by profitability.

However, I am trying to keep an eye on the various tobacco issues popping up these days, and will be writing, phoning, etc., if it seems that bills are coming forward that would restrict our access to better, safer alternatives to american tobacco products.

Carinogens On Your Lips

Well, RJ Reynolds may finally have done the unthinkable. After more than 15 years of smoking, and smoking Camel Filters for all but the initial six or eight month Marlboro "training wheels" Reds period, it may very well be a Camel product that leads me to put down the coffin nails and try out that whole "breathing air" thing.

Surely it's a culmination of a variety of things. Matters of finances, lifestyle, and health adding up to lay more and more pluses on the side of not smoking. And these days, what can really be considered a plus to being a smoker?

Taxes have come and the promise of more coming. There's a market down the street that's always been the cheapest place around and a pack o' crack went from $3.75 to $4.95 overnight. Cartons from $35 to $45. For a smoking household of two, that's an instantaneous increase of $60 to the monthly expenses. $60 added to the $210 already being spent on cigarettes, that is. $3240 a year. You could probably do something better with that chunk of change.

You can't comfortably smoke in public anymore, which was always a lot of fun. At least in Oregon, and probably a few other places. The rest of you, your time is probably coming too.

The only real plus to smoking I can come up with is that greedy addicted one.

I LIKE IT I LOVE IT I WANT IT, GIVE ME A FUCKING CIGARETTE!

I mean, smoking isn't really even cool anymore.

But I digress.

At the same time as Oregon's statewide smoking ban was coming into effect on January 1, 2009. I began receiving emails from Camel about "What do you think of the concept of oral, smokeless tobacco products you could have anywhere?" Ooooooh. Yeah whatever. No really, it made sense. I thought it was good timing on their part, if they could pull it off.

Apparently though, by that point, they already had this stuff developed and out in test markets. So hot on the heels of their hinting at the idea of the thing, it started to appear. Camel Orbs, Camel Sticks, Camel Strips, and CamelSNUS. Innnnnteresting.

Now, I was curious about these products, not as a replacement for smoking, more as an add-on to smoking. Something for those times when you can't smoke, or are totally inconvenienced to go find a place where you can smoke. So when the displays and such started popping up, we inquired about them. Mostly we found out they were going to be around $5, while real live cigarettes were still $3.75. Still they seemed like they might be worth a shot if they weren't a daily habit, an emergency backup of sorts.

Camel solved any hesitancy for me though, when they sent us coupons to try their new Orbs out for free. So yesterday Ariel went out to replenish our cancer stick supply, and cashed in a couple of the coupons. She returned with some "Mellow" flavor Camel Orbs, in a futuristic "child-proof" tic-tac dispenser. Complete with instruction manual.

I probably should have held off on trying these things out until I started craving a cigarette, for science's sake, to be able to gauge how effective they were. But I didn't. I shook the thing around, pried it apart with two hands, and dispensed the little brown pill thing.

Popped it into my mouth and was immediately assaulted by horrendously sweet foulness slowly melting to grainy glop on my tongue. I probably should have spit it out, but I wanted to do it right, absorb it all, see if the result could somehow be worth the experience. I tried sliding it away from my tongue, up between my lip and my gums. This just seemed to distribute the flavor rapidly through my saliva to take over my entire mouth and further enhance the foulness. Ever so slowly it melted away on my tongue. I really wasn't sure at times that vomiting wasn't a possible outcome of this experiment.

As soon as it was finally over and done with, I started searching the net, thinking surely there would be people out there decrying the grand foulness of this product. I searched "Camel Orbs Taste", my google shorthand that I was sure would lead me to various instances of Camel Orbs tasting like crap, shit, poo, goat ass, etc.

The second google result was "CamelSNUS vs. Swedish Snus", followed by a snippet of commentary that included both "Camel ORBS" as well as words like "throw-away" and "disgusting". So I felt I was on the right track to the vindication of my new found hatred through the shared views of others.

As it turns out, these products are still pretty damn new, and possibly not available in all areas yet. So most of the commentary regarding them is still just speculative opinion. I found one livejournal post of a guy who tried the "Frost" flavor and seemed to be saying they were gross while concluding that he liked them. I dunno.

Where I ended up was snuscentral.org, and not directly to the page containing the throw-away and disgusting statements, as the forums are only open to members. So I pretty quickly got entirely distracted from my original mission and started reading about Snus.

WTF is Snus?

I'd seen displays for the CamelSNUS, and knew it had it's own weird little refrigerated display. But I had figured SNUS for a made up name of their own invention. Instead it turns out to be a tobacco product they've been making in Sweden for a couple hundred years. It's tobacco you hold in your mouth, but that you don't have to spit. It comes both loose, like chewing tobacco, or in "portions" little sacks made of tea bag like material that you can neatly tuck between your lip and gums and absorb the nicotine.

So it's smokeless, discreet, and not messy and gross like chewing tobacco. But here's the really big thing. Swedish Snus is treated as a food product in Sweden. Meaning it falls under the mandate of their version of the FDA and has it's production, ingredients, and health effects being looked at and having to fall under certain guidelines.

As a result of this, Swedish Snus is steam pasteurized, and in the process destroys most of the carcinogens found in tobacco. This results in a tobacco product that is 98% safer than cigarettes. Nicotine is still not a healthy thing to put in your body, it's bad for your heart, and possibly for your pancreas. But 98% healthier than cigarettes is a pretty big thing. The potentially cancer causing carcinogens in tobacco products are called TSNA's. The more there are, the more risk for cancer. Chewing tobaccos such as Skoal and Copenhagen range from around a 40 TSNA level up to around 130. Swedish Snus ranges from about 0.4 to 2.8.

Now as for the CamelSNUS, we don't know what the TSNA level is, nor what's in it, or how it is made. Tobacco products aren't regulated by the FDA in such a way that they have to disclose that sort of information to the consumers.

What we do know though, is that CamelSNUS will probably cost about $5 or so, and comes with 15 small "portions" to a tin. Swedish Snus comes in a few different sized portions, and contain as little as 4mg or currently up to 17mg or so, with most normal portions seeming to be right about 8mg. The standard seems to be 24 portions per tin, with tins being between $2 and $4.

Digging around it turns out a great many people have quit smoking by switching to Snus. Especially in Sweden and Norway, but also in the US. From their stories, it seems quite a few have simply picked up Snus and put down cigarettes. That easy.

Sure, they are still addicted to nicotine, but they've gotten rid of all the other negatives to smoking cigarettes. Like... smoking them. Smoke here, smoke there, smoke everywhere. Sucking burning shit into your lungs; something that should probably be reserved for recreational activity only. Not to mention smelling like smoke, not being able to smell to know you smell like smoke, and even if you could smell after years of smoking you can't really breathe deeply enough to get a good whiff of anything anyhow. Oh, and all the coughing, throaty, lung cancery shit.

As with smoking, people who've switched to Snus seem to vary in the amount of their daily usage, but the majority seem to be in the 8-10 portions a day realm. Of course, with various strengths of portion to choose from, that can amount to a variety of levels of nicotine intake. But, financially speaking, 8-10 portions from a tin of 24 means a tin lasts a couple to a few days, and at less than the cost of a pack of smokes, that promises pretty decent savings.

So I'm going to get me some. There's a fairly staggering variety to choose from. We searched local tobacco shops today to see if we might be able to find even a single kind to sample, but alas, no one even knew what I was asking for. So I'm ordering up a variety to try out. It's an exciting prospect. So exciting I've hit that rare point of being more hopeful than cynical.

Mostly, I guess, I'm really very curious to see what it's like to not smoke. I started smoking when I was 14, and I've never tried to quit. Ever. I'll be thirty at the end of this next summer, so having spent the majority of my adolescence and entirety of adulthood to date with a daily habit. With a cloud of smoke trailing me through my daily existence, I really wonder what life would be like without that.

So we'll see. The experiment could be a complete failure, but for a pretty meager investment it is certainly worth a shot. If nothing else, I cannot imagine it could in any way compare to the absolutely foul taste of failure that Camel Orbs left in my mouth.