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- Category: December 2019
Marijuana use in electronic cigarettes increased among U.S. middle and high school students from 2017 to 2018. This observational study analyzed responses from 38,000 students in the sixth to 12th grades on the National Youth Tobacco Survey. Researchers report that among all students, the proportion who reported ever using marijuana in an e-cigarette increased from 11.1% in 2017 to 14.7% in 2018, with the increases seen among some demographic groups, including male and female students, adolescents 13 to 17, high-schoolers, and non-Hispanic white and Hispanic students. [...]
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- Category: December 2019
In early December the CBC, which is Canada’s publicly funded national broadcaster, unleashed a barrage of news articles, and radio and television stories and interviews under a series titled “Vape Fail.”
Based on CBC’s obvious and grossly one-sided reporting, it’s clear the Vape Fail series is intended to poison public perception of traditional nicotine vaping and to undermine public confidence in the public policy enacted by the Federal Liberal government and implemented by Health Canada when vaping became legal in 2018. [...] Dr. Mark Tyndall [...] joins RegWatch to discuss CBC’s Vape Fail campaign and much more.
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- Category: December 2019
Imagine a new miracle drug with the potential to prevent one third of fatal cancers, to avoid one in four deaths from cardiovascular disease and to provide relief for six million Americans suffering from serious lung disease. The side effects of this hypothetical treatment appear to be minimal and people can carry on with normal life while under treatment. [...] It turns out that such a product exists, but it just isn’t a medicine. The product is the e-cigarette and millions of adults have already benefited by switching from smoking to vaping or are on their way to doing so. [...]
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- Category: December 2019
Congress appears poised to permanently prohibit the sale of tobacco to anyone under the age of 21.
The provision is expected to be included in a final year-end spending deal, according to a senior Democratic aide.
The provision, which is supported by many major public health groups, was included as part of a bipartisan and bicameral legislative package to fix surprise medical bills. But turf wars and partisanship have derailed that legislation and lawmakers wanted to ensure the tobacco provision survived intact.
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- Category: December 2019
Four vaping companies, including British American Tobacco (BAT), have had Instagram posts promoting e-cigarettes banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The posts showed models and celebrities such as Lily Allen holding electronic cigarettes.
The advertising of these products is banned on social media.
One of the groups that had complained said the ruling was "a huge step forward".
"While the ASA ruling is great news, urgent policy change is needed from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter [...]
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- Category: December 2019
The discussion over tobacco harm reduction in the United States is an emotional demonstration of dogmatic assumptions. It is true that smoking kills, nicotine does not come without risks to the human body, and that youth should do their best to refrain from the use of tobacco and smokefree products like e-cigarettes. However, there are lines of unethical public health practice. At least in the U.S., smokers don’t risk the pains of potentially being killed just for gunning a stick on their lunch break.
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- Category: December 2019
The latest episode of the Vaping Weekly podcast is an experiment in format and a critical interview with one of the most impactful voices in the modern tobacco harm reduction space. Michael McGrady holds a frank and open conversation with David Goerlitz, the Winston Man turned whistleblower. This episode is special too. Being “Unfiltered #1,” we put away the scripts and we have a real conversation about loss, drug use, vaping, tobacco harm reduction, RJ Reynolds, and Winston cigarettes.
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- Category: December 2019
More teens who vape are using addictive or mind-altering substances than previously believed, according to a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier. [...] "Our study provided a more nuanced view of youth e-cigarette use behaviors than earlier studies. We found that youth were more likely to report vaping nicotine and marijuana than 'just flavoring' only, and that cigarette smoking intensity was associated with an increasing proportion of students reporting vaping nicotine only," explained co-investigator Hongying Dai, [...]
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- Category: December 2019
Congress is moving to pass the biggest new sales restrictions on tobacco products in more than a decade, with support from two unlikely backers: the Marlboro cigarette maker, Altria, and the vaping giant Juul.
The legislation would raise the minimum age to purchase all tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, from 18 to 21 nationwide [...] “Altria and Juul clearly support this in order to argue that no other action is necessary,” said Matthew Myers [...] “If you don’t eliminate the flavors that the industry has used to fuel the epidemic, you won’t solve the youth e-cigarette crisis.”
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- Category: December 2019
New Zealand now has the world’s only free nicotine vaping products recycling programme. A new world-first partnership between leading vape company Vapo and Alt New Zealand, and innovative recycling giant TerraCycle, means that Vapo and Alt brands of e-cigarette waste can be dropped off at any Vapo store for recycling. [...] TerraCycle will then disassemble and separate Alt and Vapo Haiz vaping devices into their different metal/electrical components, batteries and plastics. [...] This process will potentially save millions of pods, e-waste and batteries from ending up in New Zealand’s environment.
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- Category: December 2019
A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine purports to show that the use of e-cigarettes causes long-term lung damage. [...] This is critical because it shows that in order to control for smoking history properly in a study such as this one, you cannot merely control for whether or not someone was a current or ever smoker at baseline. You have to actually control for the person's overall smoking history including whether they were a heavy smoker and how many years they smoked.
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- Category: December 2019
Adolescents and young adults who use electronic cigarettes are far more likely to also use marijuana, according to research released this week. The study, published online this week in JAMA Paediatrics, said the odds of marijuana use among young people who used e-cigarettes was 3.5 times greater than among those who said they had not used e-cigarettes. The research examined marijuana use among 10- to 24-year-olds through a compilation of 21 studies from the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
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- Category: December 2019
Given the recent announcement in Nova Scotia that flavoured vaping products will be banned as of next April, as well as the spate of vaping-related illnesses (largely in the United States), there’s no shortage of concern and confusion around vaporizers.
Is vaping a safe way for lifelong smokers to get off cigarettes or does the technology represent a new health crisis? Will certain types of vaping be banned here in Ontario, too?
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- Category: December 2019
According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, covering 22 countries, 248 million people use smokeless tobacco in the form of gutka, iqmik or snus. A whopping 82% of them are in South-East Asian countries, majorly in India and Bangladesh. In India, 21.4% of all adults consume tobacco in smokeless form, which is a leading cause of gum disease, tooth decay, and cancer, as these products contain more than 30 carcinogens. Since smokeless tobacco products are consumed in a variety of formulations, including those with flavouring agents and alkaloids, it is challenging to regulate the use of these products.
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- Category: December 2019
Fab 5 Freddy, also known as Fred Brathwaite, is a man of prodigious talents. [...] Fab 5 Freddy is also one of the many American adults who have managed to quit smoking by switching to flavored nicotine vapes. In the recent drug panic generated around vaping, leading to a series of bans on e-cigarettes and vape flavors, he sees eerie parallels with “Reefer Madness” depictions of marijuana. [...] “The overall message,” he noted, “is like, ‘All vaping is killing people and we need to ban it all immediately,’ which feels a lot like the kind of hysteria around cannabis.”
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- Category: December 2019
E-cigarette use significantly increases a person's risk of developing chronic lung diseases like asthma, bronchitis, emphysema or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to new UC San Francisco research, [...] "What we found is that for e-cigarette users, the odds of developing lung disease increased by about a third, even after controlling for their tobacco use and their clinical and demographic information," said senior author Stanton Glantz, Ph.D., a UCSF professor of medicine and director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.
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- Category: December 2019
Now, a study [...] finds a significant link between vaping and depression.
First author of the study, Dr. Olufunmilayo Obisesan of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, told Medical News Today that "Combustible cigarette smoking has been linked with an increased risk of developing major depressive disorder and has also been shown to be highly predictive of future suicidal behavior among individuals with a history of depression."
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- Category: December 2019
This is a moment for legitimate alarm at the intersection of two distressing but distinct epidemiological patterns involving e-cigarettes (“vaping”): an increase in vaping among youth and a sudden outbreak of acute lung injuries and deaths in the United States, associated most strongly with vaping tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive compound in cannabis. Discussions of vaping, however, often neglect distinctions between nicotine and THC; between adults and youth; and between products obtained through the retail and black markets. [...]
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- Category: December 2019
In 2010, e-cigarettes looked like they could be a promising technology for tobacco companies and health advocates alike.
NJOY and Blu were the best known brands in the $144.7 million market, selling products that looked like cigarettes but produced a vapor. The e-cigarettes were received with cautious optimism by some in the public health field, who believed that they could give adult smokers a way to consume nicotine in a less harmful way.
“My view was that we were a technology company,” said Craig Weiss, who joined NJOY as president in 2010 and left as executive chairman in 2014. [...]
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- Category: December 2019
Illinois is the latest state to file a lawsuit against e-cigarette maker Juul, alleging the company undid "years of progress made to reduce youth smoking rates."
The lawsuit, filed by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul on Thursday, alleges Juul used a "sleek, easy-to-conceal e-cigarette" combined with fruity flavors that masked a less harsh nicotine solution that it marketed to minors. Juul's e-cigarette device resembles a USB flash drive, can be charged via a USB port, and can be used discreetly, all features that make Juul's device more appealing to youth, according to the lawsuit. [...]