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- Category: November 2022
University of Michigan faculty members Ken Warner and Cliff Douglas have worked for decades to combat smoking. Warner, 75, an economist and former dean of Michigan’s public health school, wrote dozens of papers on tobacco control and edited a landmark Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health. Douglas, 64, a lawyer, led the campaign to ban smoking on commercial airline flights and connected tobacco-industry whistleblowers to Congress and the media.
The cause to which they have devoted themselves has saved millions of lives. As recently as 1980, more than one in three Americans smoked. Today, about one in eight currently smoke. That’s a monumental victory for public health.
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- Category: November 2022
Ahead of the European Commission’s revision of the European tobacco framework, the vaping industry has set itself new rules to better regulate advertising around the e-cigarette and reduce the attractiveness of these products to minors.
In Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, the Commission announced a revision of the 2014 Tobacco products directive which also includes provisions for restricting the advertising and promotion of electronic cigarettes and refill containers.
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- Category: November 2022
In the 1950’s/60’s concern about the dangers of smoking became more widespread. In response, the tobacco industry ingeniously managed to convince people they could create a ‘safer cigarette’ by simply adding a filter.
Tobacco scientists knew this wasn’t the case. Secret attempts to develop safer cigarettes ensued, and lasted for decades, but ultimately failed to interest consumers as the products were clunky, difficult to use and tasted terrible.
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- Category: November 2022
A new study from University of California San Francisco researchers found evidence that e-cigarettes and marijuana have harmful effects on the heart that are similar to negative effects from traditional tobacco cigarettes.
Nicotine vapes and cannabis products have become popular in recent years because the public perceives them as being less harmful than smoking, researchers explained. But the new findings shed light on health risks from these seemingly “safer” substances. “We found that cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and marijuana greatly interfere with the electrical activity, structure, and neural regulation of the heart,” lead author Dr. Huiliang Qiu, [...]
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- Category: November 2022
“Smoking is the leading cause of premature death and disability, and a powerful driver of health inequality. There are still more than 6 million people in the UK who smoke, and these findings strongly support making e-cigarettes available as one of the options to help them to quit. Smoking cessation services can continue to be confident supporting smokers to switch to e-cigarettes. “With more data available than ever before, the authors concluded that there is now high-certainty evidence that e-cigarettes are even more effective in helping people to quit than traditional nicotine replacement therapies, such as nicotine patches and gum.
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- Category: November 2022
Snusforumet is the first media outlet to gain access to a unique database of roughly 24,000 submissions to the European Commission’s call for evidence process ahead of revisions to EU tobacco laws. It’s the first time so many EU citizens have been so clear about their wishes for nicotine pouches.
On May 20th, the European Commission opened a “call for evidence” process as part of its ongoing evaluation of the current EU legislative framework for tobacco control.
Public authorities, businesses, civil society organisations, as well as individual citizens were invited to share their views on proposed changes in EU policies governing tobacco and nicotine products.
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- Category: November 2022
The latest Cochrane Review finds high certainty evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes are more effective than traditional nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) in helping people quit smoking. New evidence published today in the Cochrane Library finds high certainty evidence that people are more likely to stop smoking for at least six months using nicotine e-cigarettes, or ‘vapes’, than using nicotine replacement therapies, such as patches and gums. Evidence also suggested that nicotine e-cigarettes led to higher quit rates than e-cigarettes without nicotine, or no stop smoking intervention, but less data contributed to these analyses. [...]
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- Category: November 2022
On Election Day, California voters approved a law to ban all flavored tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. Yet Marlboros and Camels can be bought at any corner store or gas station.
This is, to be blunt, nuts. It makes no sense to ban safer nicotine products, like e-cigarettes, while permitting deadly combustible cigarettes to remain on sale.
Yet this misguided approach to tobacco regulation is more widespread than not.
Consider: California joins New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island in banning flavored vapes. The FDA has so far refused to approve any flavored vapes for sale. Globally, Australia has enacted a de facto ban on vapes, as has India.
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- Category: November 2022
Most people, especially in lower socioeconomic areas where smoking has historically been most prevalent, will know someone who has replaced their previous smoking habit by exclusively vaping. Yet, it is still the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) misguided view that vaping is not helping people quit smoking traditional cigarettes. The agency’s published guide to e-cigarettes still claims that “there is not yet enough evidence to support claims that e-cigarettes and other [electronic nicotine delivery devices] are effective tools for quitting smoking.”
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- Category: November 2022
On November 15, Knowledge-Action-Change (KAC), a public health group in the United Kingdom, published its latest Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction report. Titled “The Right Side of History,” it outlines both the origins of THR and the current obstacles to reducing smoking-related deaths across the globe.
“A failure to recognize and exploit the potential of tobacco harm reduction will mean millions more avoidable deaths each year, and contribute to an ever-growing burden of disease that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable countries and communities,” Gerry Stimson, the founder and director of KAC, said in a press statement.
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- Category: November 2022
The campaign for Proposition 31, a ballot initiative that Californians approved by a wide margin last week, urged voters to "protect kids from candy-flavored tobacco." That slogan packed an impressive amount of dishonesty into five words.
The initiative's main target was nicotine vaping products, which do not contain tobacco and were already legally restricted to adults. Proposition 31 decrees that adults may not buy such products in flavors other than tobacco, thereby undermining the most promising harm-reducing alternative to cigarettes.
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- Category: November 2022
As India debates a nationwide ban on popular harm-reduction products such as e-cigarettes since 2019 versus continued protection for tobacco-cigarette makers, Upendra N Sharma, Partner, JSA Advocates & Solicitors, holds that the government must embrace a progressive approach, including Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy introduced in 2014, which has been utilized for legislations like information technology and data protection laws. He explains why the nation’s tobacco harm-control mission needs multi-stakeholder participation; a sharper focus on consumer protection laws; and openness to embrace the best practices from the EU, UK, USA, Japan, and the Philippines.
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- Category: November 2022
[...] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters to five firms for the unauthorized marketing of 15 different e-cigarette products. Each e-cigarette product is packaged to look like toys, food, or cartoon characters and is likely to promote use by youth. None of the manufacturers submitted a premarket application for any of the unauthorized products. "The designs of these products are an utterly flagrant attempt to target kids,” said Brian King, [...] “It’s a hard sell to suggest that adults using e-cigarettes with the goal of quitting smoking need a cartoon character emblazoned across the front of the product in order to do so successfully.”
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- Category: November 2022
Errant vapers at the World Cup have been dealt a lifeline after a UK-based company offered to pay their fines and stop them going back on the fags.
E-cigarettes have illegal Qatar state since 2014 and fans could face draw-dropping fines of up to 10,000 Riyals - around £2,200 - or a maximum of three months in prison if they’re caught.
Despite intensive media coverage in the lead up to the World Cup of a 1,000 football fans polled by Riot Labs half of them admitted to not knowing a single law in Qatar. And that's bad news as at least 30% of the 20,000 England and Wales fans expected to travel to Qatar use e-cigarettes regularly or are ex-tobacco smokers.
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- Category: November 2022
"We want to reduce nicotine consumption, and limit young people's access to it in particular," Minister of Health and Labor Peep Peterson (SDE) said according to a press release. "We know from the war on liquor that addictive substance policy may not be effective when working alone; coordinating with our neighbors will certainly lead to better results."
The Estonian minister acknowledged that the proliferation of e-cigarettes as well as nicotine pouches is a common Baltic concern, and added that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have to increase active cooperation on this issue in order to truly implement current regulations as well as support them with other measures.
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- Category: November 2022
The most famous anti-smoking campaign in history was branded, simply, as @truth. [...] The industry hated the campaign, and for good reason. One in five teenagers then smoked. Over time, the work of the Legacy Foundation, which has been renamed Truth Initiative, helped to drive teen smoking to historic lows, according to researchers who studied the @truth campaign.
Last year, a mere 1.5 percent of middle school and high school students reported smoking in the past 30 days, according to the latest government survey.
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- Category: November 2022
About seven in 10 Americans say that marijuana should be legalized—including majorities of all political parties and age demographics—according to the latest Gallup poll released on Tuesday.
A week after midterm elections that saw two more states legalize cannabis for adult use, Gallup’s survey shows that public support has held strong, with 68 percent of Americans agreeing that “the use of marijuana should be legal,” compared to 31 percent who said it should remain prohibited.
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- Category: November 2022
THE HEAD OF THE THERAPEUTIC GOODS ADMINISTRATION (TGA) has finally admitted the disastrous and predictable failure of Australia’s vaping regulations.
It was embarrassing to watch Associate Professor John Skerrit being questioned at Senate Estimates last week in Canberra. He acknowledged
There has been a dramatic increase in youth vaping,
Huge numbers of low-quality products are entering the country and are being sold on the black market and we can’t stop them,
Only 1,353 doctors have applied to be authorised prescribers out of 130,000 registered doctors (1%),
Less than 10% of adult vapers have a prescription for nicotine,
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- Category: November 2022
Anyone or business that sells cigarettes to a minor can be fined or sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
This includes companies that distribute any confectionery, toy or any items that resemble or likely promote the related reduced-risk products.
This is according to the new Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill, which is currently before Parliament.
South Africa is forging ahead with proposed legislation that introduces strict new antismoking rules and regulates e-cigarettes.
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- Category: November 2022
When Congress passed the the Tobacco Control Act in 2009, it amended the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution and marketing of tobacco products for the first time. This was seen as an important step to protect public health from the serious detrimental consequences of smoking combustible tobacco products.
But unfortunately, there are several fundamental flaws in both the statute and the FDA’s subsequent implementation of it. These have directly contributed to today’s chaotic marketplace and have had a detrimental impact on public health—particularly on the lives of adults who are unable or unwilling to quit smoking.