Smoking-gum makers Glaxo, J&J lobby against e-cig comptetitors

GlaxoSmithKline Plc wants an advertising ban and strict European regulation of electronic cigarettes, which don't contain tobacco, but which do "compete with its Nicorette gum and other smoking cessation products," Bloomberg reports here, citing internal company emails.

Glaxo, which sells Nicorette in the U.S., is lobbying Europe to class e-cigarettes as "medicines," which claim European sales of $7 billion a year. The European parliament is supposed to vote on the proposal next week.

J&J, which "markets the Nicorette line of products in all markets outside the U.S., is also 'strongly in favor of' regulating all non-tobacco nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, as medicines, Caroline Almeida, a spokeswoman for the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company," told Bloomberg.

Separately, reader J. Jonik says we ought to reference Philadelphia-based FMC Corp.'s role in the tobacco business more when we write about the chemical maker and its planned 47-story headquarters. "FMC is part of Big Cig, as is Bayer (a "health products" company?), Dow-Rohm-Haas, DuPont and others with which local officials may have economic links," Jonik writes me in a note.

In my recent FMC update, Jonik adds, "you did mention "farm pesticides", but what's wrong with adding '...including tobacco pesticides... FMC Corp. and the others evaded paying" the industrywide "Tobacco Settlements" that Pennsylvania and other states collected from the big cigarette makers, he added. Jonik notes a 2003 General Accountabilty Office report stressing the pesticide industry's deep profits from tobacco has been followed by general U.S. Government silence on the industry's continuing role in smoking.