Montana health officials discourage use of e-cigarettes to avoid Clean Indoor Air Act

Some smokers have turned to electronic cigarettes to get their nicotine fix now that the Clean Indoor Air Act applies to bars and casinos.
State health officials warn against it, saying the products aren't regulated and emit carcinogens, but acknowledge they can't stop it under state law.
"We, at this point, don't feel that we can go into a place and say, 'You're using e-cigarettes. That's a violation of the Clean Indoor Air Act,'" said Linda Lee, supervisor with the Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program in the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.
Electronic cigarettes contain a solution in a cartridge that is drawn through a battery-operated vaporizer to simulate inhaling smoke. The Food and Drug Administration has tested some of the more popular brands and has found they emit carcinogens. The FDA is seeking to regulate the electronic cigarettes, as it does tobacco products under a bill signed by President Barack Obama in June.
Lee said e-cigarettes can contain varied amounts of nicotine.
"They're made in various places, a bunch of them are made in China," Lee said. "There's no regulation at all as far as nicotine content and whatever else is delivered. We're very concerned about it."
Robyn DeMasi, manager of the tobacco shop chain Smoker Friendly in Bozeman, said there has been an increase in sales of electronic cigarettes since the clean air act was expanded to bars and casinos on Oct. 1.
"People are looking for an alternative way to 'smoke' where they can't now," she said.
Jeremy Weiner, the Denver-based sales and marketing manager for Smoker Friendly, said the corporation began selling them a year ago and in most markets is doing very well.
Lee cautions that e-cigarettes, sometimes marketed as a safer alternative to cigarettes, are nothing of the sort.
"There is no real reason to use an unregulated product that could be dangerous," Lee said.
FDA-approved products such as patches, gum and lozenges are already available, she said.Lee said the state Clean Indoor Air Act doesn't address e-cigarettes because lawmakers didn't know about them in 2005, when the act passed.
"We'd never even heard about them at that point," she said.