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- Category: February 2019
Do electronic cigarettes cause less harm than smoking, and will they help me quit?
These are the key questions that people who smoke but wish to quit raise with their healthcare professionals.
They are also hot topics in the ongoing debate about the potential benefits and harms of e-cigarettes and their regulation. The authors of the new review, who work at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in the United Kingdom, say that their aim is to inform this discussion.
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- Category: February 2019
Smoking e-cigarettes or “vaping” could be just as harmful as regular cigarettes, a new study has found. Led by the University of Tasmania’s Respiratory Translational Research Group’s Sukhwinder Sohal, the study found that all three methods of smoking resulted in damage to lung cells.
Dr Sohal said despite a limited knowledge of potential health implications, the popularity and growth of vaping had increased at an alarming rate – particularly among younger generations.
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- Category: February 2019
In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) released a report that examined the relationship between e-cigarette use and traditional, combustible cigarette use among young people. Essentially, the findings of the report supported the argument that e-cigarettes function as a gateway to combustible cigarette use. However, such a conclusion is contradicted by long-term population trends, which show that the rate of smoking is decreasing as the rate of vaping increases, an observation noted in the NASEM report.
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- Category: February 2019
The federal government will toughen legislation aimed at discouraging young people from what is an apparent growing propensity to puff and pull on e-cigarettes, a habit known to most of them asvaping.
Among other things, proposed new regulations will include more advertising restrictions on vaping, a new public education campaign aimed at young people, limits on where advertisements can be placed, limits on advertising content, limits on the display of vaping products in certain retail locations and health warning messages on ads.
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- Category: February 2019
Late last year, public health officials in Philadelphia—which ranks second among large cities hit hardest by the US overdose and drug poisoning death crisis—announced a ban on residents of publicly funded addiction treatment programs going outside to smoke cigarettes, effective January 1, 2019. People in Philadelphia who are living with a substance use disorder and seeking publicly funded inpatient treatment now face an ultimatum: Either commit to going without smoking or do not enter treatment.
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- Category: February 2019
Roughly 4.9 million American teens used e-cigarettes in 2018, an increase of 1.5 million teens in just 12 months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday. “These data are a sobering reminder of the rampant rise of youth e-cigarette use,” said the FDA commissioner, Dr Scott Gottlieb. “I fear this trend will continue in 2019, forcing us to make some tough decisions about the regulatory status of e-cigarettes.”
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- Category: February 2019
[...] a new study from Stanford University suggests Juul's 59 mg/mL (5.9% by volume) nicotine products may have lead other e-cigarette companies to increase their nicotine content, starting a "nicotine arms race."
"Following Juul's lead, many purveyors of nicotine salt-based e-liquids offer nicotine concentrations at the 5%, 6%, and even 7% [per volume] level," Dr. Robert Jackler, lead author of the study and a professor of head and neck surgery at Stanford University, wrote.
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- Category: February 2019
SINGAPORE: New restrictions on cigarette packaging will be introduced in Singapore, after amendments to the Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) Bill were passed in Parliament on Monday (Feb 11).
All tobacco products will be have to be sold in plain packaging - in a standardised colour and with all logos, brand images and promotional information removed. Brand names and product names will be allowed, but only in a standard colour and font style.
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- Category: February 2019
In his speech at a recent Health Promotion Board roadshow, Amrin Amin, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Home Affairs, made it very clear that the Singapore government needs to ensure that the public and the young know the reasons for the ban on electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes).
The Sembawang GRC Member of Parliament noted, however, that if there is good, sound evidence about using e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid, the government is willing to study it.
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- Category: February 2019
Based on the results of a cross-sectional study showing an association between using e-cigarettes and reporting that one has ever been told they have COPD (chronic obstructive lung disease), a number of researchers have essentially concluded that vaping causes COPD, and one researcher is telling the public that use of e-cigarettes increases one's risk of COPD just like cigarettes. There is absolutely no way one can conclude, or even speculate, based on the results of this cross-sectional study, that vaping is a cause of chronic obstructive lung disease. [...]
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- Category: February 2019
While this study contributes to literature on the potential value of e-cigarettes as smoking-cessation devices, it does not address the public health threat of flavored e-cigarettes marketed toward youths.
In New York City, 17 percent of public high school students reported using e-cigarettes versus only 2 percent of adults. E-cigarettes, more often than not, contain nicotine, which is extremely addictive, and adolescents may be more susceptible to developing nicotine dependence than adults.
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- Category: February 2019
Sarah Gayford is one of hundreds of vapers in the Northern Territory who say they quit smoking tobacco with the help of vapes or e-cigarettes. When the Territory Parliament sits this week it is expected to debate for the first time how it will regulate the sale and use of e-cigarettes. Ms Gayford, now in her early 40s, was just 39 when she suffered a stroke and her neurologist advised the life-time smoker to quit immediately or risk suffering another stroke.
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- Category: February 2019
The CDC is one of the finest public health institutions on the planet. Because they fearlessly march into "hot zones" to battle deadly infectious diseases, we microbiologists think of the good folks at the CDC as real-life superheroes. [...] The CDC has also gone on a bizarre crusade against e-cigarettes. True, vaping is not completely safe, and it should only be used by smokers as a quitting device. Recreational use should be discouraged, and policies should be in place to prevent them from falling into the hands of teenagers. [...]
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- Category: February 2019
As marijuana legalization sweeps North America, use of the substance has been on the rise, and the public's attitude is shifting. An increasing number of people believe that "weed" is the safest recreational drug, one that carries health benefits that outweigh its risks. Those assumptions are challenged in an article and editorial published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology that examine the story of a patient who developed crushing chest pain and myocardial ischemia after consuming most of a marijuana lollipop.
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- Category: February 2019
A bill to amend the Smoking Ordinance targeting alternative cigarettes, which the government hopes will nip the habit in the bud before it becomes entrenched in the city, was submitted to the Legislative Council on Wednesday [...]
The near-total ban makes good on a pledge by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor in her second policy address. Her remarks back then sparked debate over whether such measures would be effective in reducing smoking, and raised questions about the administration’s drastic change in policy from regulation to a ban.
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- Category: February 2019
Vapers are more prone to suspicion than the average member of the public. As former smokers, they were the victims of subterfuge and duplicity at the hands of big tobacco. But could wild-eyed theories of government collusion with academia, public health interest groups and the media in an effort to kill vaping, be true?
The answer appears to be yes and the details are not pretty. [...]
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- Category: February 2019
E-cigarettes get teenagers hooked on nicotine. Or they aid cigarette smokers seeking to quit. Or they may be harmful in other ways. Those competing messages make the devices a tricky subject for health communicators, says Cabral Bigman, a professor of communication at Illinois whose research focuses on health communication issues around vaping.
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- Category: February 2019
Vermont Lawmakers are hoping to generate revenue from electronic cigarettes and vaping devices through a proposal in the General Assembly that would apply the state’s “92% wholesale price tax on other tobacco products to electronic cigarettes and their paraphernalia.”
The tax would apply to all electronic cigarette products, including devices and e-liquids that do not contain nicotine. According to the bill’s fiscal analysis, the legislation would generate $1.1 million in revenue in fiscal year 2022. [...]
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- Category: February 2019
Many smokers successfully quit by switching to e-cigarettes (vaping), but doctors can’t recommend this treatment without good evidence from clinical trials. They now have this evidence. Our latest study confirms that e-cigarettes are indeed an effective way to help smokers quit.
In the trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, almost 900 smokers seeking to quit were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group was given nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) [...]
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- Category: February 2019
RICHMOND, Va. — Legislation making its way through the General Assembly would raise the legal age for purchasing and possessing tobacco and vaping products from 18 to 21, drawing mixed reactions from young adults who would be affected by the new law.
The House and Senate have passed similar bills to increase the age to buy or possess products containing tobacco or nicotine. Each chamber is now working on the other’s measure.