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- Category: January 2023
Canberra's confidential pill-testing service, which allows people to check what substances are in the illicit drugs they buy, has been extended. The free service — the only one of its type in Australia — began as a six-month trial in July last year, analysing pills and providing health advice to anyone who dropped in.
The ACT government will now allow it to continue operating until at least August.
Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said Canberrans had shown strong support for the service, which is named CanTEST.
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- Category: January 2023
Last month, the New Zealand parliament passed a law that will prohibit anyone born after 2008 from ever buying cigarettes. Nothing spreads so quickly in politics as an illiberal ‘public health’ policy, and so it was no surprise to hear Wes Streeting, UK shadow health secretary, announcing over the weekend that he is keen to copy the Kiwis. If elected, Labour will launch a public consultation on incremental prohibition.
In an interview with The Times last week, Streeting said that he ‘hated the smell of cigarette smoke growing up’. He also wants to clamp down on e-cigarettes, because he is ‘sick and tired of seeing young people congregating outside vaping shops’. [...]
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- Category: January 2023
Earlier this week, fans of Tim Pool and his live YouTube show Timcast IRL may have been shocked when a conversation about obesity and the food pyramid veered into a discussion about vaping that amplified almost every anti-vaping myth and stereotype pushed by public health. It was an astonishing amount of misinformation.
Joining us today to unpack the Timcast vaping debacle is Dimitris Agrafiotis a.k.a. the VapinGreek. He’s a global advocate for vaping and the former executive director of the Tennessee Smoke Free Association.
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- Category: January 2023
A HEALTHCARE expert says Malaysia is lagging behind other countries in progressive tobacco control strategies.
Professor Dr Mohamad Hussain believes the proposed Generational Endgame (GEG) law would not be effective in helping smokers "kick the habit".
Tobacco harm reduction (THR) components should be considered instead.
"I stress that there should be no GEG if there's no harm reduction component in it, because a hard ban on all tobacco products will not work.
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- Category: January 2023
A vision for a journal covering all aspects of nicotine in society based on open science, curiosity and organised scepticism
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- Category: January 2023
I’m a member of that statistically significant cohort of vapers, most of them much younger than me, who never habitually smoked cigarettes. Recent data from Victoria health shows that vaping levels doubled between 2018-19 and 2022, and a quarter of people vaping have never smoked.
Todd Harper, the chief executive of the Cancer Council Victoria, says that there’s been a marked increase in vapers calling Quitline, especially in the last two years. Though Quitline’s vaping clients range in age from 12 to 79, the majority of people who vape are under 30.
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- Category: January 2023
The Australian Medical Association has called for stronger, strictly enforced regulations on vaping, telling the federal government Australia is at risk of losing the public health battle on vaping if strong action isn’t taken.
AMA President Professor Stephen Robson said Australia had been a world-leader on tobacco and nicotine control for decades but has dropped the ball with vaping.
“Vaping is not harmless, it is not safe, it is not part of tobacco control,” Professor Robson said.
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- Category: January 2023
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – The new year started in Miami Beach with a ban on cigarette smoking on the beach and at public parks after most city commissioners voted in support of it.
It’s a measure that Dave Dobler, of the Volunteer Cleanup nonprofit organization, and other local environmental activists advocated for and celebrated.
“Cigarette butts are the number one most littered item on beach cleanups and we find thousands and thousands and thousands of them,” said Dobler, an avid kayaker.
Police officers will be able to arrest repeat offenders at their discretion. The maximum punishment is a $500 fine and 60 days in jail.
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- Category: January 2023
Vapers can be heavily fined or face jail in some holiday hotspots around the world.
Vape brand Blo Bar has recently revealed the countries where holiday-makers need to be careful the next time they head abroad.
There are 35 countries that have regulations or bans on vaping, with Thailand having some of the strictest laws that can see you jailed up to 10 years over the act, The Sun reports. Tourists who are on holiday in Colombia or Iran won’t be able to vape in public spaces because it’s illegal.
While it’s not illegal to vape in Turkey, it is illegal to purchase an e-cigarette in the country.
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- Category: January 2023
The American Physicians Research Institute has issued a position statement on the subject of vaping, and it is very positive. The Baltimore based organisation has relied on the quality independent research that has been conducted in the United Kingdom and ignored the laughably bad junk science produced in the States.
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- Category: January 2023
According to data compiled by Eurostat, 19.7 per cent of the EU population smokes daily. In 2019, 5.9 per cent smoked 20 or more cigarettes on a daily basis, and 12.6 per cent smoked fewer than 20 units. The countries that smoke the most in the EU are Bulgaria, with 28.2 per cent of the population consuming tobacco daily, then Turkey (27.3 per cent), Greece (27.2 per cent), Hungary (25.8 per cent) and Latvia (24.9 per cent).
The countries with the fewest smokers are Sweden (9.3 per cent), Iceland (11.2 per cent), Finland (12.5 per cent), Norway (12.9 per cent) and Luxembourg (13.5 per cent).
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- Category: January 2023
Decades of research show that constituents other than nicotine are the harmful agents in tobacco products. This knowledge is incorporated into the nicotine regulatory policies of countries leading in tobacco control, such as the UK and New Zealand. Alternative nicotine products, such as nicotine replacement therapy and e-cigarettes, are now endorsed in the UK by a number of healthcare bodies in a tobacco harm reduction approach that encourages tobacco users to completely switch to a less risky nicotine-containing product. [...]
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- Category: January 2023
Taipei, Jan. 12 (CNA) The Legislative Yuan on Thursday passed a slew of amendments to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act that completely ban e-cigarettes and raise the legal smoking age from 18 to 20.
The revisions introduced by the Cabinet in January last year stipulate that the manufacture, import, sale, supply, display, advertising and use of all tobacco-like products, including e-cigarettes, shall be prohibited.
Violators face fines ranging from NT$10 million (US$328,403) to NT$50 million, according to the new law.
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- Category: January 2023
The news media play an essential role in shaping public opinion. Analyzing a specific issue reported in the news media provides insight and considerations for a government to form a policy. This study aimed to assess the portrayal of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) in Indonesian news media, including the variety of arguments being presented and the actors behind them.
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- Category: January 2023
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has just published a video, featuring Johanna Cohen, the Bloomberg professor of disease prevention and the director of the school’s Institute for Global Tobacco Control, calling for a “common language” in tobacco control.
“With the introduction and marketing of new nicotine products, it’s not only the marketplace that has diversified,” Cohen says in the video. “The number of terms used to describe these products has expanded significantly as well. Often with word choice that serves tobacco industry interests.”
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- Category: January 2023
At the end of December, Robert Califf, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Brian King, the director of the agency’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), published an op-ed outlining a new framework to maximize smoking cessation.
In the piece, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the authors argue for a so-called smoking cessation “care package.” This includes encouraging health systems to provide social and clinical support, offering medication and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), and moving forward on plans to ban menthol combustibles and lower the nicotine levels in cigarettes.
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- Category: January 2023
The research covered 25 studies comprising 1,810 participants who smoked. The authors found that nearly two thirds of the tests analyzed showed e-cigarettes do not bring any additional harm to a smoker’s health, specifically in relation to heart rate, blood pressure and cardiovascular test. In fact, researchers evaluated evidence from two clinical studies that showed that the use of e-cigarettes could lead to a potential benefit. For example, participants with hypertension experienced a clinically significant reduction in systolic blood pressure after one year of electronic nicotine delivery systems use.
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- Category: January 2023
Compared to combustible cigarettes, electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes can deliver a sufficient amount of nicotine with a significantly reduced emission of toxicants, which render them as potential harm reduction candidates for tobacco and smoking replacement. However, the use of e-cigarettes is not harm-free and the long-term health effect of using e-cigarettes is yet to be established. Given the high prevalence of e-cigarette use across the globe and its potential health concerns, it is imperative to conduct actual use behavior assessments to better understand how e-cigarettes are being consumed in real-world conditions. [...]
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- Category: January 2023
Victoria's health promotion foundation is urging the federal government to act "swiftly" to stop Australian youths from vaping, as its consultation on proposed reforms enters the final week. VicHealth chief executive Sandro Demaio described vaping use among the youth population as "exploding" over the past two years.
"The industry has used the pandemic … and uncertainty young people have been facing … to push these products very successfully onto young people," Dr Demaio said.
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- Category: January 2023
POPULARITY for smoke-free nicotine products has been heating up across retail lately, making them key additions to any store owner’s range.
To help capitalise on this, though, Philip Morris Limited (PML) reckons that retailers should stay stocked up on the latest technology advancements across the category to meet growing demands from customers.
Kate O’Dowd, head of commercial planning UK & Ireland at PML, said: “The race to switch adult smokers to alternative products between convenience retailers and large multiples, and the speed with which manufacturers and their brands are developing and commercialising the most innovative products to meet growing demand show everyone is feeling the heat.