Carto vs Analogues

[Tetsab]

As far as the excellent ECCA article goes (link works fine for me, no freezing or anything else untoward) I have been wondering whether those chaps over at Intellicig have in fact done us a favour for once.

It IS known that Intellicig did some research (done with a view to getting their Marketing Authorisation?) which involved blood work on test subjects to investigate how much nicotine was reaching the blood for e-cig users - and how quickly this happened. They unhelpfully (but understandably) redacted the actual levels when they announced that their research did prove conclusively that using an e-cig DOES result in blood plasma levels of nicotine increasing (as we all knew) in a similar fashion to smoking a cigarette, and nothing like as slowly as it arrives from a patch. Finally found the link: www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/media-general-news/105733-intellicig-will-reveal-results-major-research-project-tomorrow.html#post1597052 - this was almost 2 years ago!

Quite recently, they announced changes to the nicotine strengths in Intellicig cartridges and started labelling them by 'mg per cartridge' rather than mg per ml. www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/intellicig/276924-changes-our-refill-stengths.html . Their stated reason for doing this seems to be in order to stop users puffing away constantly on their Intellicigs and makes reference to 'recent published research', but didn't actually say WHERE this was supposed to have been published - AND totally ignored a polite request to provide this information in the announcement thread.

Despite their apparent coyness about admitting this, this does mean that they are indeed now selling cartridges (in UK) and also ECOpure liquid in 45mg/ml strength - that is exactly what 4.5% means. It also implies that the capacity of each 'capsule' as they call them (cartridges to everyone else) must be 1/3 of a ml, not the 0.4ml David Newns told Hifi they were in his interview.

John Chamley aka Shining Wit on ECF (formerly of Intellicig but now running FlavourArt UK) is rather more upfront about this on his FAUK website, where he also sells Intellicig products. His description of the 'new' strengths and the reason for this is here: www.flavourart.co.uk/refill-capsules-70-p.asp where he also mentions 'research has indicated...' but says nothing about this having been published research. (The Intellicig website still claims 'Recent published research' www.intellicig.com/2012/03/new-ecopure-strengths-to-be-introduced-from-the-14th-march-2012/ , by the way)

Personally, I don't think that it's beyond the realms of possibility that the two things (ie blood plasma nicotine level research and change to ECOpure strengths) are related. They are still claiming cigarette equivalence of 6 cigarettes for each 1/3ml Intellicig cartridge. Do they have reasons for claiming this which they aren't being entirely forthcoming about?

Possibly, come the day when Advertising Standards finally appear and stamp all over the claims being made about 0.7ml cartomisers being equivalent to 40 cigarettes each (and why the heck haven't they done this already??) Intellicig will simply brandish their own research (likely still unpublished, due to 'commercial sensitivity') and then carry right on saying their cartridges are equivalent to 6 cigarettes each...

...I am left wondering about Intellicig's disposable model, though - this still claims to be 35 cigs-worth (at 350 puffs) but doesn't appear to have either a liquid capacity or nicotine strength quoted. Wonder if they've overlooked that? They do seem to have reduced it's price...