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- Category: December 2018
Harm reduction shouldn’t just seek to reduce the harm caused by drugs, but also the harm caused by drug policies,” tweeted Alex Wodak, a leading drug harm reduction advocate in Australia, last month. Harm reductionists worldwide have long shared this view.
Shouldn’t this be equally true when it comes to tobacco? That not only should we seek to reduce harm caused by smoking or chewing tobacco, we should also seek to reduce harm caused by tobacco control policies? Because believe me, those harms are real and severe.
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- Category: December 2018
A clampdown on South Australia's vaping industry has drawn fire from advocates who consider it a "perverse" reaction to ideological attitudes that will cost jobs and leave addicts little choice but to revert to smoking.
The state is the frontline of a debate that will continue for some time, as policy makers weigh any benefits for vapers who switch from smoking and the potential to reduce smoking rates, against inadequate knowledge about the risks of e-cigarettes themselves.
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- Category: December 2018
Infants and toddlers in low-income communities may be even more at risk from second- and third-hand smoke exposure than has been believed, according to new federally supported research. In testing that included more than 1,200 children, researchers found that up to 15 percent of them had levels of cotinine, a byproduct of the body's breakdown of nicotine, comparable with what would be found in an adult smoker.
Overall, about 63 percent of the babies and young children in the study had discernible levels of cotinine, [...]
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- Category: December 2018
The rise of a vibrant market for e-cigarettes has been a blessing for
many smokers. After many failed attempts to quit, e-cigarettes provide
an exciting new means for smokers to reduce their exposure to the
harmful aspects of combustible cigarettes or even break their life-threatening smoking habit entirely.
Although research on e-cigarettes has yet to definitively calculate the
precise long-term risk associated with vaping, reputable scientific
institutions are increasingly coming to the same conclusion—e-cigarettes
are vastly safer than smoking, [...]
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- Category: December 2018
Imagine a world in which you were not allowed to tell the truth, make art, or use descriptive words for a legal product that can save lives. By law.
Couldn’t happen here—not in Oregon, right?
But it has.
That’s effectively what the state of Oregon is doing to small business owners like me. I am the owner of a 21-and-over vape shop in Portland, and most of my customers are people just like me: people who have used e-cigarettes to kick a cigarette habit. E-cigarettes are currently the most popular and effective method of quitting smoking.
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- Category: December 2018
At a conference on e-cigarettes use among teens recently in Louisville, officials from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and Kentucky Youth Advocates recommended four main policy changes that could be addressed by legislation in the 2019 General Assembly.
- Including e-cigarettes in all local smoke-free ordinances and tobacco-free school policies. Only 52 Kentucky school districts—less than half—include e-cigarettes in their tobacco-free policies.
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- Category: December 2018
Twice as many high school students used nicotine-tinged electronic cigarettes this year compared with last year, an unprecedented jump in a large annual survey of teen smoking, drinking and drug use. It was the largest single-year increase in the survey's 44-year history, far surpassing a mid-1970s surge in marijuana smoking. [...] That survey also found a dramatic rise in vaping among children and prompted federal regulators to press for measures that make it harder for kids to get them.
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- Category: December 2018
The likelihood of New Zealand becoming smokefree by 2025 appears to be lessening as the deadline creeps closer.
As part of an ongoing study, a team of University of Otago researchers have found that to achieve the Government's Smokefree 2025 goal – to see fewer than 5 per cent of the population smoke in 2025 – there would need to be five times as many Māori quitting per year and twice as many non-Māori.
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- Category: December 2018
The additional revenue to be generated by two House-approved bills that seek to increase tobacco and alcohol excise taxes may not be enough to bridge the P40-billion funding gap for the government’s universal health care (UHC) program, the Department of Finance (DOF) said.
In an interview, Finance assistant secretary Antonio Lambino said House Bill (HB) 8677 on tobacco excise taxes is estimated to generate P1.8 billion in additional revenue next year, [...]
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- Category: December 2018
The owner of two Portland vaping stores is asking a judge to throw out a state list of banned words and pictures on vaping liquid packages, saying the state’s “ridiculous” rules defy logic.
For instance, Paul Bates says in his lawsuit, the packages can’t use the words “apple” or “strawberry” even to describe the apple- or strawberry-infused products he sells for e-cigarettes. The same goes for pictures of apples or strawberries. [...]
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- Category: December 2018
E-cigarette users’ pee contains more heavy metals as well as signs of exposure to carcinogens and other irritating chemicals than the pee of non-vapers, hinting that the habit might come with serious health risks. At the same time, vapers who switched completely from cigarettes still had lower levels of these substances in their urine than their smoking peers [...] researchers led by Maciej Goniewicz [...] analyzed questionnaires and urine samples submitted by more than 5,100 people between 2013 and 2014 to try to spot patterns of chemical exposures in their pee.
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- Category: December 2018
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is urging men who use e-cigarettes to avoid vaping liquids containing prescription drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction.
The watchdog agency in October sent a warning letter to China-based e-cigarette company HelloCig to stop selling the illegal products, saying there would be stiff consequences if the company did not comply, including “seizure or injunction.”
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- Category: December 2018
Twenty years after reaching a landmark legal settlement with the tobacco companies, the states continue to spend only a small fraction of their billions in tobacco revenue on programs to prevent kids from using tobacco and help smokers quit, according to a report released today by a coalition of public health organizations. The report challenges states to do more to fight tobacco use – the nation's No. 1 cause of preventable disease and death [...]
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- Category: December 2018
Recently in The Korea Times, there was an article titled "Smoking e-cigarettes as harmful as conventional ones" which was very misleading on many fronts. I would like to clear the "air" on this topic as many people are still in a fog when it comes to this new disruptive technology.
First a little background. I am in my third year of vaping (using e-cigarettes) after quitting smoking for more than 30 years. It has been amazing how effective and seamless it has been for me to adopt this new technology to break a nasty habit. [...]
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- Category: December 2018
On Sep. 25, 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products entered into force. According to the WHO, illicit trade refers to “any practice or conduct prohibited by law and which relates to production, shipment, receipt, possession, distribution, sale or purchase, including any practice or conduct intended to facilitate such activity.”
Most research on the illicit tobacco trade so far has focused on the role of transnational tobacco companies. [...]
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- Category: December 2018
The Federal Drug Administration is cracking down on flavored e-cigarettes products in an effort to head off a new teen tobacco use epidemic but the department may hinder some adults trying to quit smoking. Eric Pinnell, the owner of Oregon Vape Society in Springfield doesn’t object to the idea of restricting sales of flavored e-liquids, but he does have some concerns that the federal government will take it one step further and ban flavored e-liquids all together.
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- Category: December 2018
Employees at Juul Labs Inc. were accustomed to puffing away on the sleek e-cigarettes that made the startup an overnight success. So their boss had to acknowledge some awkwardness on Tuesday when he delivered the message: No vaping in the office.
Juul’s chief told employees across the U.S. that, starting immediately, they could no longer use its products inside at work and that future vaping at San Francisco headquarters must happen outside under a tent to be erected specifically for the purpose.
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- Category: December 2018
The government has committed to reviewing how its regulations on e-cigarettes could be changed after the UK leaves the EU as scheduled for March 2019.
In its response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report on e-cigarettes, the government agreed with recommendations for a review of e-cigarette regulation “to identify scope for change post-Brexit”.
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- Category: December 2018
Another 17,200 New Zealanders need to quit smoking each year until 2025 if we are to reach the goal of less than 5 per cent of the population smoking daily by then, a new study has found. The research, headed up by Professor Nick Wilson of the department of public health at Otago University's Wellington campus, found the country was set to fall far short of the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 goal if the current trend continues.
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- Category: December 2018
There has been a flurry of business activity this year by several multibillion-dollar companies in the alcohol and tobacco space looking to capitalize on opportunities in legal marijuana. The cannabis industry has seen an influx of liquor companies such as Constellation Brands, Molson Coors Brewing, Heineken’s Lagunitas Brewing as well as tobacco firms Pyxus International (formerly Alliance One International), Altria Group (which owns Marlboro maker Philip Morris USA and is an investor in alcohol giant Anheuser-Busch InBev) and Imperial Brands.