A tobacco company would never publish anything that promotes a competitors product. Soooo, lorilard must be getting into the vaping business. This is a really bad thing, since big tobacco (future big vapor) will promote their products as safe, then demonize all liquids, atomizers, and businesses that do not fall under their profit umbrella.
When this happens, they will fund national legislation to destroy all form of competition, except the other tobacco companies products (since they are all in cahoots with eachother).
Lorillard owns blu ecigs already since 2012, though through the merger with RJ Reynolds announced in July 2014, blu is/was to be sold to Imperial Tobacco. Altria, the parent company of Phillip Morris, owns NuMark, which owns MarkTen ecigs. Big Tobacco has been in this ecig/vaping game for several years now already, getting their ducks in a row I would say.
I do totally agree with you, that their goal is to push to legislation that their products are superior, thus eliminating competition. I had also read somewhere that they are actively lobbying for ecigs to be tightly controlled and taxed just like analogs because they are already familiar with dealing with said regulations. Their goal here is to make it too hard for these little companies to survive, and also eliminating any vape shops in the process. Not sure if the regulations can be broad enough to eliminate manufacture or sale of devices though, I think it will just make it hard to get the nicotine. However, without the nicotine offering, it's going to be harder to get people to switch from analogs to vaping.
Furthermore, notice how these companies always refer to these things as ECIGS or ELECTRONIC CIGARETTES? Why do they not call them what they are, a vaporizer? This, in my opinion, is also done to help their lobbying/fight for legislature. I always refer to vaping as vaping and not electronic smoking or electronic cigarette or ecig. We need to make sure we as a community disassociate with the term cigarette, however, the B&M's fail at this, as they always have "ECIG" or "ELECTRONIC CIGARETTES" plastered on their signs/buildings/windows/advertisements. If future legislation comes down on it, I feel as though a lot of these B&M's are part of the cause because they constantly associate themselves with cigarettes...whether they really mean to or not. I've had this same discussion with one of my local B&M owners. She also has these cigarette terms in bright letters in her windows and signage on the road. She fears legislation that will hurt her business, but yet fails to see my point that we need to, as a community, disassociate from that "cigarette" term.