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- Category: June 2020
The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) has won an important victory. On June 2, the Hong Kong Legislative Council dropped a bill to ban vaping products. [...] This is great news for Hong Kong’s smokers, vapers and estimated 13,100 daily users of heat-not-burn products. If the ban had passed, they would have been criminalized and cut off from purchasing safer options. The draconian proposal would have banned the sales, manufacture, importation, distribution, or promotion of vapor and heat-not-burn products, [...]
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- Category: June 2020
African Americans who smoke are nearly 2.5 times more likely to have a stroke than those who never smoked, while former smokers show a similarly lower risk as never smokers, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The findings from the Jackson Heart Study suggests that even after years of smoking, African Americans — who as a group are twice as likely as whites to have a stroke and die from it — could significantly reduce their risk if they kicked the habit. [...]
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- Category: June 2020
Michael McGrady, the host of Vaping Weekly and the public policy columnist for the English edition of Vaping Post, is proud to announce that our flagship podcast cover vaping, tobacco harm reduction, the industry, and politics is back from the dead!
For this special return episode, we interview tobacco harm reduction activist and policy expert David Sweanor. [...] They chat about tobacco harm reduction and the importance of the field moving forward into the future of the post-pandemic world.
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- Category: June 2020
Join Snus Revolution hosts Bengt Wiberg and Michael McGrady for the very first episode of this exciting new podcast. We chat about the format of the show, the Swedish Experience, relative risks, quitting smoking, and the origins of snus and other oral tobacco products.
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- Category: June 2020
New Zealand is putting its faith in e-cigarettes as part of the arsenal of quitting tools available to help us reach our target of being smokefree by 2025. In New Zealand, where around 12.5 percent of us continue to smoke tobacco daily, we are putting our faith in e-cigarettes as part of the arsenal of quitting tools available to help us reach our target of being smokefree by 2025.
“Cessation rates need to increase a lot if we’ve got any chance of meeting the 2025 goal,” says Janet Hoek, a public health specialist from the University of Otago and co-director of ASPIRE 2025.
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- Category: June 2020
A history of smoking in Norway, from the law changes that banned smoking in public areas to the rise of snus.
Like many other countries around the world, Norway has changed its smoking laws in recent times. These changes have affected smokers and non-smokers alike.
Those that don’t smoke can sit in smoke free places, such as pubs, restaurants and other public areas some of which are even located outdoors. The changes have pushed smokers in different directions in order to get their nicotine or tobacco fix.
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- Category: June 2020
Rates of cigarette smoking have dropped substantially in the US over the past few decades. But lots of Americans still smoke, and the burden of tobacco-related illness does not fall evenly across our population. That is tragic under normal circumstances, with tobacco use leading to heart attacks, strokes, cancers, and emphysema, to name but a few relevant illnesses. In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s even more tragic, because tobacco smoking significantly increases the lethality of the virus.
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- Category: June 2020
British American Tobacco PLC said Tuesday that its business in the first half has been performing well amid the pandemic, but it has downgraded its adjusted revenue growth expectations for the full year.
The tobacco company--which houses a number of electronic and vaping products as well as traditional cigarettes--said adjusted revenue for 2020 is now expected to grow in the range of 1% and 3% on a constant currency basis, down from expected growth in the range of 3% and 5%. It anticipates a full-year headwind of around 3% in adjusted revenue from the coronavirus pandemic. BAT's second half begins on July 1.
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- Category: June 2020
The age-old, convivial practice of sharing the shisha, or the waterpipe, during an evening of conversation and laughter has long been an integral part of many cultures, including in the Middle East. But now it is facing its biggest test of survival in living memory.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says using shisha involves the sharing of mouth pieces and hoses, which could facilitate the transmission of the coronavirus in social settings. The Middle East, with its thousands of shisha cafes, is particularly vulnerable.
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- Category: June 2020
Turkish smokers have become more willing to quit smoking during the COVID-19 outbreak, as health has become their major concerns, experts said.
Evidence suggests that smokers might be more vulnerable to COVID-19 as their fingers frequently touch their lips, increasing the likelihood of being infected with the virus through their hands.
Smokers may also have lung problems and reduced breathing capacity, which could affect their abilities to battle coronavirus.
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- Category: June 2020
It’s well known smoking cigarettes during pregnancy can increase the risk of harm to the baby and is best avoided.
But in our research, published [...] in the Medical Journal of Australia, we show using cannabis during pregnancy is also associated with poorer outcomes for babies. While we don’t have data on how common cannabis use is during pregnancy, results from the 2016 Australian National Drug Strategy Household Survey showed 10-20% of women of reproductive age had used cannabis during the preceding 12 months.
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- Category: June 2020
Far from helping them avoid cigarettes, longtime ex-smokers who try vaping are taking a big risk that they'll relapse, a new study finds.
People who've spent a year off smokes are nearly four times more likely to start lighting up again if they experiment with vaping, compared with those who don't, according to findings [...]
"Even sampling nicotine can prime the brain for wanting more," said lead researcher Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md. "Once you're off of nicotine completely, the safest approach is to stay off of it 100%."
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- Category: June 2020
The government of Alberta finally proposed legislation regulating vaping last week. But its Bill 19 mainly protects industry, and not children and youth.
As the last Canadian province to regulate vaping, Alberta now makes minimal proposals: restricting advertising and vaping locations and requiring vendors to demand identification from customers who look younger than 25 years. This bill bans sales to minors, something already done by the federal government.
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- Category: June 2020
Cigarette smoking has been shown to be one of the leading causes of preventable deaths worldwide. Smoking may also give rise to different types of cancers, the most common of which is lung cancer. However, it can lead to more than 15 types of cancer in other parts of the body, such as the colon, rectum, oesophagus, stomach, pancreas and others. So, how does smoking increase the incidence of cancer?
It comes as no surprise that the number of years one spends smoking affects the risk of cancer accordingly. [...]
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- Category: June 2020
The Government has launched an investigation into a global tobacco giant’s range of menthol replacement cigarettes following a ban of the flavoured products last month.
Following enquiries by i, the health minister Jo Churchill has ordered Public Health England (PHE) to look into a series of cigarettes from Japan Tobacco International (JTI), which trades as Gallaher in the UK.
The PHE investigation follows the ban of all menthol cigarettes last month, and the introduction of JTI’s “New Dual” range across its Benson & Hedges, Mayfair and Silk Cut products. [...]
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- Category: June 2020
The latest Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study focusing on adolescent health and well-being has revealed that levels of cigarette-smoking are worryingly high, particularly among 15-year-olds. In this age group, 15% of adolescents report having smoked a cigarette at least once in the past 30 days and nearly 1 in 3 mentioned having tried smoking (27% of girls and 29% of boys).
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- Category: June 2020
The Fair-trade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita) has said government was ‘obsessed’ with alcohol and cigarettes.
“What we find here is an obsession with alcohol and cigarettes. We know that alcohol has now been permitted and we submit, on the evidence, that it is far more harmful to health services,” advocate Arnold Subel SC – for Fita – told the High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday morning.
This as the association’s highly anticipated challenge to the ban on cigarette and tobacco sales finally got underway.
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- Category: June 2020
There are two critical problems with Juul products: the high levels of nicotine, and the health hazards posed by the flavoring.
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- Category: June 2020
Efforts by tobacco giant Philip Morris to introduce a smoke-free cigarette alternative to Australia have been blocked by an interim decision from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). [...] the TGA rejected a request by the company to reschedule nicotine under a law that would have helped get its heated tobacco products (HTPs) onto Australian shelves. Only combustible nicotine products like cigarettes and cigars are allowed to be sold in Australia.
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- Category: June 2020
Hungary won its fight at the European Union’s top court to topple part of an EU decision to stall the government’s progressive taxes on retailers and tobacco companies.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg on Thursday backed Hungary’s appeal and annulled the European Commission’s 2015 decision to order the suspension of the system.