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Monday, April 3, 2017

Big Tobacco and Your Child's iPhone

Here's a nice article from Bloomberg.com.  It reenforces the idea that you child's iPhone (or Android phone for that matter) is a "tobacco product" (see my original post on this here - and yes, Virginia, if you cellphone software controls your e-cig then its software is a "tobacco product").

Philip Morris International’s IQOS device that heats tobacco is popular in Japan and other foreign countries.  While not exactly vaping it eliminates "smoking" and "combustion."

R J Reynolds, not to be outdone, has "...integrated Bluetooth wireless technology into two of its e-cigarette products. From a free smartphone app, users can track battery life or how many puffs they’ve taken that day. “VUSE is the most advanced e-cigarette and the first e-cigarette designed with Smart Technology,” the brand explains on its website. “The Vuse digital Vapor Cigarette contains a vapor delivery processor that uses algorithms in the same way a computer does, therefore it is ‘digital.’ ”

Indeed, the Vuse "app" is available here:


Now the Primus, linked above, uses an electronic controller that is not specific to e-cigarettes, i.e., its not an e-cigarette product.

Vuse, on the other hand, is a "tobacco product" (from my iPhone screen):



Interestingly it (the app) does not ask my age.

Now Apple says here that:

"1.4.3 Apps should not encourage illegal or excessive consumption of drugs or alcohol; or encourage minors to consume drugs, alcohol, or tobacco; and facilitating the sale of marijuana isn’t allowed."

So it seems as if those who are "big" - like "big tobacco" - get a pass.

Little Suzy or Johnny can easily puff away on a Vuse using this app.

No doubt too the FDA will not find your iPhone or Android phone a "tobacco product" if "big tobacco" publishes the app.

And BAT is happy to involve your twenty something's children's future:

"Promoting a job with Big Tobacco as a job at the tech frontier has been effective, at least according to David O’Reilly, the head of science and R&D at BAT, who says youngsters are now lining up to join the revolution. The company’s 2017 “graduate entry program” in England (positions usually held by twentysomethings just out of university), he says, saw applications double from last year. “It used to be very difficult to recruit for this sector, but now the quality of the talent we can get is world-class,” he says. “For a scientist who starts working with us today, they’re told, ‘The world is your oyster. History is yours to write.’ It’s about inventing the future.”

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