Authorities question smokeless cigarettes

World Health Organization argues the e-cigs are not a safe, healthy alternative to traditional smokes.

BEIJING (AP) — With it’s slim white body and glowing amber tip, it can easily pass as a regular cigarette. It even emits what look like curlicues of white smoke.

The Ruyan V8, which produces a nicotine-infused mist absorbed directly into the lungs, is just one of a rapidly growing array of electronic cigarettes attracting attention in China, the U.S. and elsewhere — and the scrutiny of world health officials.

Marketed as a healthier alternative to smoking and a potential way to kick the habit, the smokeless smokes have been distributed in swag bags at the British film awards and hawked at an international trade show.

Because no burning is involved, makers say there’s no hazardous cocktail of cancer-causing chemicals and gases like those produced by a regular cigarette. There’s no secondhand smoke, so they can be used in places where cigarettes are banned, the makers say.

Health authorities are questioning those claims.

The World Health Organization issued a statement in September warning there was no evidence to back up contentions that e-cigarettes are a safe substitute for smoking or a way to help smokers quit.

It also said companies should stop marketing them that way, especially since the product may undermine smoking prevention efforts because they look like the real thing and may lure nonsmokers, including children.

“There is not sufficient evidence that (they) are safe products for human consumption,” Timothy O’Leary, a communications officer at the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative in Geneva, said this week.

The laundry list of WHO’s concerns includes the lack of conclusive studies and information about e-cigarette contents and their long-term health effects, he said.

Unlike other nicotine-replacement therapies such as patches for slow delivery through the skin, gum or candy for absorption in the mouth, or inhalers and nasal sprays, e-cigarettes have not gone through rigorous testing, O’Leary said.

Nicotine is highly addictive and causes the release of the “feel good” chemical dopamine when it goes to the brain. It also increases heart rate and blood pressure and restricts blood to the heart muscle.

Ruyan — which means “like smoking” — introduced the world’s first electronic cigarette in 2004. It has patented its ultrasonic atomizing technology, in which nicotine is dissolved in a cartridge containing propylene glycol, the liquid that is vaporized in smoke machines in nightclubs or theaters and is commonly used as a solvent in food.

Hong Kong-based Ruyan contends the technology has been illegally copied by Chinese and foreign companies.