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- Category: January 2023
On December 10, 1948, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), declaring the month Universal Human Rights month. The theme for 2022 was “Dignity, Freedom, and Justice for All,” with a call to action to #StandUp4HumanRights. Unfortunately, for many suffering from tobacco addiction, their human right to harm reduction seems to have been lost amid that theme.
From seat belts to alternatives to smoking, harm reduction is the application of less harmful products and behaviors to limit the adverse effects of substances and everyday consumer goods. [...]
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- Category: January 2023
Almost 100 people die in Ireland from smoking-related diseases every week, public health doctors have warned, as the HSE launched its quit-smoking campaign for 2023.
Research shows if people quit for 28 days they are five times more likely to quit for good, and a range of tools are now provided to help them. Matthew O’Donoghue from Tipperary started smoking at 18, but later began to see it was controlling his activities.
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- Category: January 2023
Disposables and youth vaping are likely to be the major themes shaping developments in the e-cigarette world over the coming year. Concerns about both are likely to affect debates on matters such as vaping taxes, flavour bans and environmental measures that are expected to take place throughout numerous important jurisdictions.
For example in Europe, the Tobacco Excise Directive (TED) negotiations will dominate the year in the EU. Meanwhile the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) revision may start getting some shape that will in turn likely influence other countries and their legislation. [...]
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- Category: January 2023
Every Friday afternoon, I receive the worst email of the week. It is an automated search on the PubMed database, an index of the biomedical literature covering over 30 million published papers. The search tries to pick up new studies relevant to tobacco harm reduction and typically finds 30–70 new papers each week. Once the email comes in, I look through the abstracts and write down hot takes on the ones that seem relevant to policy or practice. Then I share with public health and consumer advocates. To be honest, it is often a dispiriting experience. [...]
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- Category: January 2023
“Kiwis need to have their say on the Government’s proposed measures aimed at youth vaping, with submissions closing on 15 March,” says Nancy Loucas, Executive Coordinator of CAPHRA (Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates).
Her comments follow Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall launching a consultation document titled ‘Proposals for the Smoked Tobacco Regulatory Regime’.
As well as crunching combustible tobacco, proposals include tightening current restrictions on vaping product safety requirements and packaging. It also considers some restrictions on the location of Specialist Vape Retailers (SVRs) as well as reducing nicotine levels in disposable vapes.
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- Category: January 2023
Government attitudes toward vaping and nicotine vary. In the United Kingdom, vaping is essentially encouraged by government health agencies. Because smoking creates a costly burden for the UK’s National Health Service, the country stands to save lives and money if smokers switch to e-cigarettes.
Many other countries also allow a regulated vaping market, but are less enthusiastic about the practice. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has had authority over vapor products since 2016, but has refused to create a plain system of standards for e-cigarettes and e-liquids. [...]
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- Category: January 2023
More than 161,000 people in the country die every year due to tobacco use or smoking, increasing the risk of lung cancer by 20 to 30 per cent.
Second-hand smoking increases the risk of heart disease in non-smokers by 25-30 per cent. [...] The minister said that the government is working to build a 'tobacco-free Bangladesh' by 2040.
"Therefore, public places and transport should be made 100 per cent smoke free. Educational institutions should ensure that students do not smoke. Tobacco should be socially boycotted as it is poison," he added.
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- Category: January 2023
Office for National Statistics figures recorded the lowest proportion of smokers in the UK to date, with e-cigarettes playing a "major role" in the decline.
The ONS data shows 9.4% of people aged over 18 in Dorset were smokers in 2021, down from 10.9% the year before. It was also a fall from 12.9% five years ago.
Last year, a further 30.8% of adults in the area were ex-smokers while 59.8% had never smoked.
Men in Dorset smoked more than women with 12.1% taking up cigarettes, while 7.1% of women smoked.
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- Category: January 2023
VAPING or the use of e-cigarettes has been proven to be more effective in helping people drop their smoking habit, compared to merely using patches and gums, based on a study published by Cochrane, an international nonprofit organization.
According to a Cochrane report, titled "Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation," there was high certainty evidence that smokers were more likely to stop smoking for at least six months, using nicotine e-cigarettes versus using nicotine replacement therapies. The latest Cochrane review showed evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes led to higher quit rates than e-cigarettes without nicotine, which are also known as no-stop-smoking intervention.
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- Category: January 2023
Most people who still smoke made a bad life choice when they were in their teens, before their brains were fully developed, thinking that they could quit smoking later. In middle age, they found that tobacco smoking had addicted them to nicotine, because tobacco companies were allowed to develop the most addictive cigarettes possible. They lacked the support, the strength, and the other sources of pleasure in their lives that would have made it easier to quit. The standard medically-recommended methods for quitting they thought would help them actually only have a success rate of 10% or less.
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- Category: January 2023
Despite continued local media purporting of a youth vaping epidemic in the Gopher State, youth vaping and use of combustible cigarette products has significantly declined. This is welcoming news and should be of use to lawmakers ahead of the 93rd Legislature, when, undoubtedly, the topic of adult access to flavored tobacco and vape products will be debated.
According to the Minnesota Student Survey, conducted by the Minnesota Department of Education, in 2022, only 6% of 8th graders, 7% of 9th graders, and 14% of 11th graders reported past-month use of e-cigarettes. These are substantial declines from 2019 when youth vaping peaked in the Gopher State. [...]
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- Category: January 2023
E-cigarette users searching for a New Year’s resolution should look no further than kicking the habit, officials said.
The New York State Health Department said e-cigarette use remains stubbornly-high, especially among young adults from ages 18 to 24, even as traditional tobacco use has been declining for decades.
“I encourage New Yorkers who use e-cigarettes to ring in the New Year by making a resolution to quit using e-cigarettes and other vaping devices, which contain highly addictive nicotine, in order to prevent long-term harm to people’s health,” State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said in a release.
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- Category: January 2023
The World Journal of Oncology recently retracted a February 2022 article claiming that nicotine vapers face about the same cancer risk as cigarette smokers. "After publication of this article," the editors explain, "concerns have been raised regarding the article's methodology, source data processing including statistical analysis, and reliability of conclusions." Because "the authors failed to provide justified explanations and evidence for the inquires [sic], subsequently this article has been retracted at the request of Editor-in-Chief."
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- Category: January 2023
In the last couple of years, I’ve written several articles for Tobacco Reporter on how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration thinks about science. Trying to get a novel nicotine product authorized by the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP)? Tell a story about why your particular vape, pouch or gum, is appropriate for the protection of public health, illustrated by data.
That’s how the system is supposed to work. FDA staff make decisions based on what the science says about the relative health risks and benefits of a novel nicotine product. The CTP’s website states: “Our ability to enact science-based regulation has the true potential to reduce the death and disease toll from tobacco products.”
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- Category: January 2023
When it comes to public health, we should follow the facts and science, as opposed to political posturing. If history has taught us anything, it’s that prohibition is rarely the answer when addressing a public health problem. Outright bans of products tend to produce the opposite result of their intent, spurring more product consumption and fueling unregulated black markets. Unfortunately, this is the approach the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking when it comes to adults over 21 consuming tobacco products.
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- Category: January 2023
Gangs are grooming vulnerable children to deal drugs and rewarding them with e-cigarettes, youth workers have said.
One organisation which supports young people aged 14 to 25 affected by criminal exploitation and violence, has described how children as young as 12 were getting hooked on disposable vapes.
“They want to look cool but [vapes] are highly addictive,” said Joanna Tweddle, of Edge North East, in Newcastle. “I work with a number of young children and I have one who will do anything for a vape pen. He has been asked to deal drugs and an Elf Bar is his reward at the end of it.
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- Category: January 2023
From this Friday (January 6), tobacco companies in Spain will be forced to pay for cleaning up the millions of cigarette butts discarded on the country's streets and beaches every year.
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- Category: January 2023
Several doctors have thrown their support behind Minister for Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek after she urged Australians to avoid vaping this year.
Ms Plibersek took to Twitter on New Year’s Day to outline a number of reasons why vaping is unhealthy and bad for the environment.
“Obviously it’s bad for your health, but it’s also terrible for the environment. Every vape that goes into landfill dumps plastic, poisons, nicotine salts, heavy metals, lead, mercury, and flammable lithium-ion batteries into the environment,” she wrote.
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- Category: January 2023
Waitrose has stopped selling single-use vaping products because of their negative impact on the environment and the health of young people.
The popularity of products such as e-cigarettes has soared over the past year, with vaping in Great Britain reaching record levels. About 4.3 million people are regular vapers, according to a recent report.
The company said it could no longer justify selling single-use products and that it had removed two types of e-cigarette from sale.
“Our move comes as reports suggest that the market growth is being fuelled by the popularity among those who haven’t previously smoked,” it said.
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- Category: January 2023
United States tobacco control did not have an easy 2022. So much turmoil has come and gone this past year that even the most dedicated harm reductionists and critics struggled to keep up at one point or another, as separate events blurred into one big pile of dysfunction.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it’s moving toward a federal menthol cigarette ban, much to the chagrin of social justice advocates. Congress granted the FDA the power to regulate synthetic nicotine, to which many small- and medium-sized vape manufacturers had switched in the hope of keeping their products on the market.