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- Category: February 2022
With sales of both cigarettes and rolling tobacco declining month on month since May 2021 [NielsenIQ 52 w/e 11 September 2021], Big Tobacco’s vision of a smoke-free future is coming ever closer. Here are some of the new formats and technologies companies are exploring this year
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- Category: February 2022
E-CIGARETTE and vaping-associated lung injury (EVALI), is a term that is coming up more often.
As a disease, EVALI is usually hard to diagnose because its symptoms can be similar to other respiratory diseases, including shortness of breath, fever and chills, cough, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, rapid heart rate and chest pain.
Typically, doctors will evaluate the patient's history of e-cigarette use or vaping, and take a scan to see if there are hazy spots on the lungs, which indicate tissue damage.
However, long-time medical practitioner Dr Kumar Subaramaniam finds the increased usage of the term EVALI worrisome, as it is often discussed in the wrong context.
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- Category: February 2022
A new study by researchers at The Ohio State University College of Medicine gives insight into what happens to the cardiovascular system of adolescents when they vape.
In the mouse study, researchers found that vaping had a significant and long-term cardiovascular effect on adolescent males but not females. The results were published today in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association.
Researchers said the findings heighten the concern about vaping, especially in youth. [...]
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- Category: February 2022
While the rate of adult cigarette smokers in the U.S. has dropped over the last several years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2019 that more than 34.1 million Americans were smokers.
Quitting can be tough, but a new cigarette is soon to hit the market with FDA approval to help people smoke less.
“This is really the first tobacco product that’s intentionally designed to address the problem of nicotine addiction,” Mike Zercher, 22nd Century Group president and COO, said.
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- Category: February 2022
SINCE the early 2000s, anti-smoking campaigns have been carried out in order to encourage Malaysians to quit smoking.
From displaying graphic images on cigarette packets to the Ministry of Health's 'Tak Nak' campaign, these efforts were meant to show the hazards of smoking.
According to medical practitioner Dr Nur Khaisiyah Othman, these anti-smoking methods emphasise one common message, 'Quit or die'.
While acknowledging the studies behind the dangers of smoking, she believes that these fear-mongering tactics do not work to help the public to stop smoking.
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- Category: February 2022
On February 15, the Senate narrowly confirmed Dr. Robert Califf as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In a bipartisan nail-biter, six Republicans supported him and four Democrats opposed him. Bernie Sanders, an independent, also voted against him, and another senator withheld his vote.
Califf—a cardiologist who has served as the deputy commissioner of the FDA’s Office of Medical Products and Tobacco, as President Barack Obama’s FDA commissioner, and as the head of medical strategy at Alphabet, Google’s parent company—takes over the position from Janet Woodcock, [...]
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- Category: February 2022
Cigarette smoking in the United States went up for the first time in two decades amid the persistent public health lobby against less harmful alternatives such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, according to an international consumer advocacy group.
“Nothing has been more egregious and harmful in our current age than the public health lobby’s persistent denialism of the harm reduction value of nicotine vaping products and other alternatives to cigarettes,” Consumer Choice Center (CCC) deputy director Yaël Ossowski said in a blog post on the organization’s website.
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- Category: February 2022
Some readers, including colleagues in the medical community, have been asking us to explain why we support the vape bill, which was recently approved by the congressional bicameral committee, and will soon be transmitted to the President for his final approval.
Our short answer is, “Because we would like to put our smokers back into the health equation.”
We confess that in our clinic, we used to have a condemning, somewhat discriminatory attitude toward our recalcitrant smokers. We gave them six months to quit smoking completely, either cold turkey or through other known interventions. [...]
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- Category: February 2022
Our community and country are seeing unprecedented health challenges right now.
We are in the midst of a pandemic that continues to evolve, change, make people sick and frustrate everyone. When there is an opportunity to directly impact our community’s health and safety, it is essential that we act to do so.
This is why I am urging the Brunswick Town Council to vote in favor of a recently proposed ordinance to end the sale of flavored tobacco in our town.
I am a pediatrician at Martin’s Point Healthcare, [...] I see firsthand the devastating effects of flavored nicotine in my practice every day.
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- Category: February 2022
Harm Reduction is a strategy that is neither new nor unknown – on the contrary, it is a widespread and routine phenomenon that we see everywhere but often fail to recognize as Harm Reduction. Using a Helmet or a Seatbelt is Harm Reduction. Using low calorie sweeteners is Harm Reduction. Using an N-95 mask is Harm Reduction. The examples are endless. Harm Reduction is a pragmatic recognition that everything under the sun (including the sun itself) are capable of causing harm and life involves a series of choices to mitigate these risks. [...]
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- Category: February 2022
On February 15, an administrative law judge dismissed a complaint issued from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Juul and Altria, which alleged the companies had violated antitrust laws. As a result, Altria, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, can keep its 35 percent stake in the e-cigarette company. The decision is preliminary, however, and the FTC can appeal through a vote by its commissioners.
The news, perhaps overshadowed by the Senate’s confirmation of Dr. Robert Califf as the next head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the same day, has major implications for vaping in the United States, even if experts are divided over what those are.
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- Category: February 2022
The World Health Organization (WHO) Tuesday launched a ‘Quit Tobacco App’ to help people kick the cigarette butt and give up tobacco in all forms, including smokeless and other newer products.
“Tobacco is deadly in every form. Innovative approaches such as this app are much needed to support people who give up tobacco, which they may be aware is harmful but are unable to quit for various reasons,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region, while launching the app.
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- Category: February 2022
As a physician with the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, Dr. Laura E. Crotty Alexander has heard from more and more patients over recent years that they’re thinking of switching to vaping e-cigarettes as a safe alternative to traditional cigarettes. Not so fast, says the pulmonologist, who is also an associate professor at University of California San Diego. She calls it a “dangerous situation,” with so many people apparently unaware that e-cigarettes come with wide-ranging dangers of their own. While some tout e-cigarettes as a solution to quitting conventional smoking, the truth about relative risks is complicated, [...]
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- Category: February 2022
Tobacco giant Altria, which owns the maker of Marlboro cigarettes and a stake in vaping company Juul Labs, has for years quietly funded substance-use-prevention training for middle and high school students, despite ample research suggesting that industry-sponsored school programs do not discourage teenagers from smoking—and may in fact do the opposite. [...] a spokesperson for Altria wrote that the company does so “to help address a core business concern: underage tobacco use. In addition to the actions we’ve taken to market responsibly and limit underage access to tobacco products, we support a range of evidence-based positive youth development programs.”
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- Category: February 2022
VAPE can play a crucial role in helping Malaysia achieve its Tobacco Endgame 2040 goal and this is why it is crucial to get vaping regulations right, said an expert in smoking cessation.
According to Dr Colin Mendelsohn, [...] vaping is a far safer alternative to smoking and is the most popular and effective quitting aid available and must be an important part of the strategy to achieve the Tobacco Endgame 2040.
“It should be encouraged as a quitting aid for the many Malaysian adult smokers who are unable to quit with other methods, as is the case in the United Kingdom and New Zealand,” he told FocusM.
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- Category: February 2022
A flavour ban on e-cigarettes could damage tobacco harm reduction and consumer choice, the Oireachtas health committee was told today.
Declan Connolly of the Irish Vape Vendors Association (UVVA) said e-liquid flavours are of” vital importance to vapers.”
" IVVA is deeply concerned by the negative effects a flavour ban could have on tobacco harm reduction and consumer choice. A survey carried out by the Independent European Vape Alliance (IEVA) in 2020 found that to nearly 65pc of vapers vaped fruit or sweet e-liquids on a daily basis.
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- Category: February 2022
Tobacco use is the topmost preventable cause of death in Kenya according to the Ministry of Health. [...] the government continues to take a quit or die approach to tobacco control. Kenya urgently needs to shift its focus away from this and embrace a harm reduction mindset. However, we remain very far from this and it threatens hundreds if not thousands of lives. [...] Dr Kgosi Letlape, a doctor and AHRA President noted, most of the harm caused by cigarettes is from the burning of tobacco. If smokers switch to alternative products which don’t contain tobacco, you instantaneously reduce the harm and ultimately save lives.
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- Category: February 2022
New analysis of national data has found that the number of smokers living in poverty is over 100,000 in the East of England.
The data, published by charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), shows that in the East of England 26% of households containing smokers live in poverty once spending on smoking is accounted for. In England as a whole the figure is 31%.
According to the Stop Smoking team at OneLife Suffolk, on average most people who quit smoking save around £250 per month.
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- Category: February 2022
How does UK and US drug policy compare? This week’s episode features Ethan Nadelmann, founder of Drug Policy Alliance, the largest harm reduction organisation in the world, working to end the War on Drugs and implement sensible drug policies around the world.
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- Category: February 2022
Smoking is a dangerous lifestyle choice that raises the risk of premature death or substantial morbidities in smokers, such as cancer and coronary heart disease, as well as poor health outcomes for smokers’ unborn offspring. Passive smoking has serious health repercussions for both toddlers and adults. Quitting smoking is one of the most effective and efficient healthcare therapies available due to this condition. Within a year of quitting the smoking, a former smoker’s risk of heart disease drops to half that of a current smoker.