E-cig business surveys customers on why they vape

By JOHN REID BLACKWELL Richmond Times-Dispatch

While the public health community continues to debate the pros and cons of electronic cigarettes, one Richmond-area e-cig company has surveyed its customers to shed light on why they use the devices.

Avail Vapor LLC, a fast-growing Chesterfield County-based retailer of e-cigs, said it conducted a two-week survey that drew 8,500 responses, about half of them its own customers.

James Xu, the co-founder and co-owner of Avail, said the survey results shed light on some of the key questions about e-cigs in the ongoing public health debate, such as whether the devices are a “gateway” to using conventional tobacco products, and whether e-cig users — known as “vapers” — typically use them exclusively or in combination with conventional tobacco products.

Avail said 94 percent of the survey respondents already used tobacco products before starting e-cigs, with the length of time they used conventional products varying widely from less than one year to more than 30 years.

Only 5.8 percent of survey respondents said they started using e-cigs without using traditional tobacco products first.

Almost 80 percent of the survey respondents said they started using e-cigs as a way to quit using conventional tobacco products, and 85 percent said they did quit using conventional tobacco products, with 69 percent quitting within a month.

About 13 percent said they had reduced their consumption of conventional products.

The company’s survey indicates that e-cigs are “not a gateway to traditional smoking,” Xu said. “The data shows it is a one-way street.”

“We don’t see much dual use,” of both e-cigs and conventional products, he said.

Avail plans to submit the survey results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is considering how it should regulate e-cigs and may issue rules in June. The agency is planning a public meeting on June 1 and June 2 to collect more information and “stimulate discussion among scientists about electronic cigarettes.”

The FDA has published a list of about 50 questions that it wants to have answered about e-cig use. Avail said it adapted its survey questions from the FDA’s list.

“We decided we would like our customers to voice their opinions,” said Maggie M. Gowen, director of communications for Avail, which has 43 e-cig shops in the Southeast and is planning to open more stores. Avail has seven stores in the Richmond area.

“We felt like it was important that we take some sample data and present it to the FDA,” Xu said. “How they use it, or not, we have no control over.”

The Avail survey was divided about evenly between respondents from the company’s database of store customers, and other respondents from social media sites where a link to the survey was posted.

Because the survey was limited to people over the age of 18, it did not address questions about youth e-cig use — a major concern for the FDA. Instead, the survey focused on why adults use the products.

In regulating e-cigs, the FDA has to consider not only how the products might affect individual users, but what impact they might have on the whole population, such as encouraging more nicotine use, for example.

E-cigs have been controversial in part because the nicotine solutions that are used in the devices are sold with variety of added, artificial flavorings, including sweet and fruity flavors. Critics of the industry say that makes vaping more attractive to children and that flavors should be restricted or banned.

The Avail survey indicates that flavors are important to adult vapers. More than 70 percent said they consider it “very important” to have a variety of flavors to choose from.

Xu said the survey also indicates that most e-cig users gradually reduce nicotine consumption. Almost 76 percent said they started vaping with higher levels of nicotine in their e-cig devices but cut back over time. Only 2 percent said they increased nicotine intake.

Avail said the largest age group of people who responded to the survey were ages 30 to 39 (28.8 percent), followed by ages 21 to 29 (27.9 percent). Less than 10 percent of those surveyed were 18 to 20.

E-cigs are still relatively new products, and the long-term health effects and quit rates associated with them is unknown. More research such as the Avail survey is needed, said Scott Ballin, an independent health policy consultant who works on tobacco regulation issues.

“Things are changing so rapidly these days,” he said. “No one anticipated this explosion of e-cigarettes. It was a fad for a while and now all of sudden the market is being flooded with them.”

“There needs to be more information and more data,” he said.

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