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- Category: December 2022
With about eight million persons dying annually due to smoking-related illness and outright quitting being difficult for most smokers, Africa and, indeed, the global community cannot afford to pay lip service to tobacco harm reduction, experts have warned.
The experts from different fields spoke at an exchange programme with the theme, Harm Reduction: Making a Difference in Africa.
Speaking on the need to prioritize harm reduction, a cross section of the discussants noted that there are plethora of researches which suggest that harm reduction is a veritable tool to lower death and diseases.
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- Category: December 2022
Brussels, BE, Nov. 30, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today the EU Commission announced in its “Global Health Strategy” that the new guiding principle will be to “prioritise tackling the root causes of ill health”. Unfortunately, the strategy fails to tackle one of the leading causes of ill health — smoking. Tobacco harm reduction must be included in such a strategy to combat smoking-induced illnesses. Michael Landl, Director of the World Vapers’ Alliance, commented:
“The EU Commission is ignoring science and consumer voices again. Tobacco harm reduction must become a key element of all health policies for the EU. [...]
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- Category: December 2022
On the third anniversary of the world's worst tobacco policy, India's prohibition of the manufacture, import and sale of vaping and other products that are much safer than smoking, I give a short (3 min) summary of what's wrong with this policy under five headings.
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- Category: December 2022
Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler announced a “patchwork quilt” of tobacco-related laws, regulations, instruments and court decisions would be streamlined into a single Act of Parliament. [...]
AMA President Professor Steve Robson said the announcement couldn’t come soon enough as tobacco smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death and disease in Australia.
“The failure to address lax laws curbing the tobacco and vaping industry over the last decade was a lost opportunity in public health policy, which has created the next generation of young people addicted to nicotine,” Professor Robson said.
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- Category: December 2022
On November 29, R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco and vapor companies filed an emergency application for writ of injunction with the United States Supreme Court, requesting that enforcement of California’s nicotine flavor ban be halted.
The move will be framed as Big Tobacco’s attempt to thwart the will of California voters, who on November 8 overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure—Proposition 31—to ban the sale of almost all flavored nicotine products (hookah and some premium cigars are exempt). The legislation on the ballot, SB 793, had been delayed by constant pushback from tobacco harm reduction (THR) advocates and the industry. [...]
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- Category: December 2022
On February 6, 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of many flavored e-cigarettes, with some important exceptions. The researchers point to policy loopholes as the main reasons the policy failed to push people to quit. Survey results, published in Tobacco Control, show that less than 5% of the 3,500 adult e-cig users who responded to the survey quit using e-cigs in response to the flavored e-cig ban. The rest of the respondents switched to other forms or flavors of e-cigs not covered by the ban or other types of tobacco products.
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- Category: December 2022
Dentists are increasingly seeing the side effects of vaping in their patients' mouths including stained teeth, gum disease, bad breath, tooth decay, and in extreme cases wounds from exploding e-cigarettes.
Dental clinicians said the impacts of e-cigarette use was especially increasing among young people and teenagers as their use soared amid a thriving black market.
Pitt Street Dental Centre principal surgeon Michael Cai said the impact of vaping on teeth was just as horrible as smoking and said he’d seen two patients after their vapes exploded, leaving chemical burns on their mouths and gums.
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- Category: December 2022
The Netherlands will ban all e-cigarette flavors except tobacco on October 1 next year, according to an amendment the government published in the Staatscourant. From then, there will be no more banana, biscuit, or fruit loops flavored vape liquids or e-cigarettes, only a limited number of tobacco flavors. The ban also covers pre-filled e-cigarettes and disposable vapes. The government announced in 2020 that it planned to ban flavored e-cigarettes and vapes because they see it as a stepping stone for teenagers toward actual cigarettes. Now it’s clear that stores will have until 30 September 2023 to sell their existing stocks.
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- Category: December 2022
In a fact sheet titled “Flavored E-cigarettes Hook Kids,” the U.S.-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids asserts that “Flavored e-cigarettes are undermining the nation’s overall efforts to reduce youth tobacco use and putting a new generation of kids at risk of nicotine addiction and the serious health harms that result from tobacco use.” Let us call this “the activist proposition.”
The challenge with simple but false activist propositions is that refuting them can require a lengthy embrace of more complex arguments. [...]