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With all three of the largest U.S. based tobacco companies (Lorillard, Philip Morris, and R.J. Reynolds) now directly involved in the world of electronic cigarettes, it’s easy for people just learning about the product to think it’s strictly a tobacco industry toy. As is often the case with lazy reporting, many local news channels and online articles tend to view the e-cig world and big tobacco as the same thing. Political decisions regarding the products were often viewed as heavily influenced by Big Tobacco even they stepped into the ring.

So it seems like a good time to do a rundown of the role and place Big Tobacco has in the world of electronic cigarettes. Certainly, there are plenty of conspiracy theories, but for now, we’re focusing on what is otherwise supportable.

Electronic cigarettes first trickled into the U.S. market around 2008. The market was primarily small new businesses, quit smoking scam outfits, and some do-it-yourself forums online. Although it seems likely that the major tobacco companies started watching the new product the moment they appeared, the first public movement in the area wouldn’t happen until April 2012 when Lorillard (makers of the Kent and Newport brands) purchased Blu Cigs for $135 million.

This was a pretty substantial move. Blu was easily in the top 2 slots for biggest electronic cigarette company along side NJOY (which is believed to have been bigger at the time). The purchase caught many by surprise, but was widely believed by analysts to be a good move. Rather than absorbing the Blu brand, Lorillard has largely allowed it to grow into its own.

The following August Philip Morris announced it would be expanding its portfolio with a effort to grow its own electronic cigarette brand. In the announcement, PM said that the high taxes many governments placed on smoking was forcing it to find other lower cost alternatives to serve its customers. It looked to do this through electronic cigarettes, snuff, and chewing tobacco.

It wasn’t, however, until June of this year that PM unveiled its electronic cigarette the MarkTen — which will be in distribution around August.

In May of this year, R.J. Reynolds announced that it would be ramping up production and distribution of its own electronic cigarette called the VUSE. As of July this year, it became available in Colorado as a test market.

Despite belief among anti-smoking advocates that electronic cigarettes were devised by Big Tobacco to circumvent cigarette taxes and smoking bans, publicly, the big three have only been involved in the industry for less than a year and a half. That leaves 4 years that these companies — were they involved — could have been taking advantage of rather explosive market growth roughly doubling each year.

Granted, the future of the electronic cigarette industry may be heavily influenced by Big Tobacco, but it appears to have gotten here largely on its own.