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- Category: April 2023
Common wisdom warns against smoking cigarettes in the presence of supplemental oxygen, whether at home, in a hospital or in an industrial setting.
And in the modern era, with electronic cigarettes as an alternative, the press has extensively covered incidences of exploding lithium batteries and the burn injuries sustained by individuals in their vicinity.
But researchers led by Steven Kahn, M.D., chief of burn surgery at MUSC, recently uncovered a novel, underreported pattern of injury and shared their findings in the Journal of Burn Care & Research.
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- Category: April 2023
Thailand’s general elections on May 14 might just bring about the end of the country’s draconian vape policies. Merely possessing a nicotine vape can currently get your item confiscated, land you with a big fine or even send you to prison for up to five years. Severe penalties and corrupt enforcement have seen Thailand branded the world’s worst country to be a person who vapes. But Thai tobacco harm reduction activists are hopeful that things will soon change.
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- Category: April 2023
U.S. cigarette smoking dropped to another all-time low last year, with 1 in 9 adults saying they were current smokers, according to government survey data released Thursday. Meanwhile, electronic cigarette use rose, to about 1 in 17 adults.
The preliminary findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are based on survey responses from more than 27,000 adults.
Cigarette smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, and it’s long been considered the leading cause of preventable death.
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- Category: April 2023
WHO IS ADVISING AUSTRALIA'S HEALTH MINISTER Mark Butler on vaping? The Minister has been seriously misinformed about the benefits and risks of vaping, and its huge public health potential. His views are out-of-step with Health Ministers in New Zealand, the UK and Canada which have evidence-based policies on vaping. His advisers appear to be a small group of ideologically-driven tobacco control academics and health bureaucrats with extreme anti-vaping views. [...] Mr Butler says vaping is “dangerous in and of itself” and believes the flawed gateway theory based on a report by Professor Emily Banks, that has subsequently been debunked, here and here and previously here.
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- Category: April 2023
One day after the Minnesota House approved a marijuana legalization bill, the Senate companion version cleared its final committee in that chamber, sending it to the floor.
The Senate Finance Committee passed the legislation from Sen. Lindsey Port (D) in a voice vote on Wednesday.
That marked the 13th and final panel in the body to advance the measure. The House bill went through 15 committees before being approved on the floor on Monday.
“It’s a very complex bill,” Port told members of the panel. “Its entire goal is to legalize, regulate and expunge.”
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- Category: April 2023
Tobacco giant Altria Group Inc is set to face trial Monday in a lawsuit by San Francisco’s public school district accusing the company of fueling a teen vaping epidemic, along with e-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc.
The San Francisco Unified School District says teachers and staff “have had to go to extreme lengths to respond to the ever-growing number of students using e-cigarettes on school grounds,” and is seeking to force Altria to pay for the cost of tackling the problem.
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- Category: April 2023
Accurate information enables informed decisions. So, why wait? The Agency needs to communicate to the public comprehensively and consistently, sharing current information about its authorized modified-risk tobacco products, and educating adult smokers—who would otherwise continue to smoke—about how these innovative, smoke-free options differ from cigarettes.
Of course, the best choice is to never begin using tobacco and nicotine products, and for anyone who smokes to quit products containing nicotine and tobacco altogether. However, many don’t, and these smokers—and those who care about them—would benefit from information about better alternatives to continued smoking.
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- Category: April 2023
The Dutch government on Friday said it would ban the sale of all types of nicotine pouches in the Netherlands, while widening the rules for tobacco to include all other types of tobacco-free nicotine products.
The government said the ban would make it easier to uphold the rules regarding nicotine pouches, which are currently only allowed if they contain less than 0.035 grammes of nicotine.
The new rules will also prohibit the use of nicotine pouches and other tobacco-free nicotine products in places where smoking is not allowed.
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- Category: April 2023
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced $420 million to reduce “tobacco use globally.” This new eye-watering amount should be good news. But because of Bloomberg’s self-interested understanding of nicotine use, it can only follow from his previous financial contributions that this money will do far more harm than good.
Describing the commitment of $420 million over four years, the Bloomberg press release explains that “$280 million will be aimed at reducing tobacco use in low- and middle-income countries,” and the other $140 million will go toward “reducing e-cigarette use among teenagers in the United States.”
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- Category: April 2023
A lack of clear information around less harmful cigarette alternatives is preventing more smokers from quitting, new research shows.
In a recent survey commissioned by British American Tobacco (BAT) and carried out by market analysts Kantar, 41 per cent of adult nicotine users in the UAE and Saudi Arabia were aware of how to reduce the harm imposed by smoking.
Data also showed 85 per cent of adult UAE smokers were open to switching to nicotine products such as vapes, compared with 35 per cent of smokers in Saudi Arabia.
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- Category: April 2023
E-cigarettes harm kids, teens, and young adults since most contain nicotine and other harmful chemicals. In addition, most young people who use e-cigarettes become addicted to nicotine which can negatively affect adolescent brain development well into young adulthood. Those using e-cigarettes may also be more likely to switch to tobacco cigarettes as they age. In most states, people have to be 18 years of age to buy e-cigarettes. In a few states, the minimum age is 21. Most schools have banned e-cigarettes just as they have stopped allowing tobacco smoking on school grounds.
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- Category: April 2023
MANILA, Philippines —Advocacy groups have warned of the “vape epidemic” among young people and urged the Department of Education (DepEd) and Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) to act since children’s lives are at risk.
The Child Rights Network (CRN) and Parents Against Vape (PAV) believe that the government’s education agencies are best suited to enforce Republic Act 11900’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) implementing rules and regulations.
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- Category: April 2023
There have been numerous incidents of students requiring emergency medical attention due to nicotine poisoning and other chemicals present in e-cigarettes and heated cigarette products, according to the Ministry of Health’s Medical Examination and Treatment Department.
The department said in a document sent to Departments of Health in provinces and cities that the use of electronic nicotine delivery (END) products and heated tobacco products (HTPs) is on the rise among students.
Many students have had to be rushed to the emergency room due to nicotine poisoning and the harmful substances in e-cigarettes and heated cigarettes.
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- Category: April 2023
Vaping in Australian schools is becoming widespread, with some students taking up e-cigarettes because they are seeing their peers vape.
Schools are increasingly expected to address an ever-expanding variety of societal issues affecting their students, ranging from physical fitness and obesity to bullying and mental health problems.
More recently, vaping has become a dominating concern that is impairing schools’ ability to deliver on their primary task of educating our young (here and here).
This state of affairs is occurring despite a regulatory system in Australia that bans the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, regardless of whether the devices contain nicotine.
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- Category: April 2023
The UK government set out ambitious plans in 2019 to make England smoke free by 2030. To achieve this, they recently announced plans to offer free vape starter kits to one million smokers in a bid to help them quit.
While smoking cigarettes is associated with a range of serious health problems, mounting evidence shows that vaping is also not without harms and risks. Given that there is still a lot we do not know about the health effects of vaping, we argue it is potentially irresponsible to recommend smokers switch to vaping to quit – especially when other medically proven methods to quit smoking already exist.
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- Category: April 2023
Quebec Minister of Health Christian Dubé announced a ban on flavours in nicotine vaping products which could go into effect in only 90 days.
Under the proposed regulation, all flavoured vapes, except for tobacco flavoured, will be forbidden in the province.
It’s devastating news for the 250,000 nicotine vapers who rely on various flavours to stay smoke-free. And for the hundreds of small business owners and the thousands of workers in Quebec’s vaping industry, the flavour ban amounts to a death sentence for their businesses.
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- Category: April 2023
Before starting filming the second episode of the Documentary Series, we made a quick visit to participate in a Conference in Colombia; we had the opportunity of talking with Ethan Nadelman (Founder of the Drug Policy Alliance), Ignacio Leiva (Asovape Chile), Julio "El Mono Vapeador" Ruades (ANESVAP Spain), and Jessica Harding (Knowledge-Action-Change). We asked them what Harm Reduction is to them, their goals, and if their dedication to the cause of improving public health through the more empathetic approach of Harm Reduction has provoked a division within their personal life and the passionate advocate they are.
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- Category: April 2023
A push by Gov. Kathy Hochul to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes in New York has become the focal point of a fierce and expensive lobbying fight, pitting Big Tobacco against the medical community.
Caught in the middle are Black smokers, who smoke menthol cigarettes at higher rates than white smokers, and are the main group the ban is meant to help. Decades of aggressive marketing by tobacco companies have caused Black smokers to consume menthol cigarettes, whose cooling sensation on the throat makes them more appealing and addictive.
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- Category: April 2023
We all know someone who still smokes, and we have all felt their struggles as they battled to quit. It’s not for lack of trying, nor “willpower”. Smoking is a pernicious addiction that kills 75,000 people every year in the UK, with 6.6 million people – or more than 13 percent of the adult population – continuing the habit. As Vice Chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Vaping in Westminster, we have both seen the benefits that vapes offer smokers, allowing them to move away from smoking-related diseases – and death - towards a less harmful alternative.
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- Category: April 2023
People who smoke switched entirely to using safer heated tobacco products when provided with them, found an important new study—even if they had no intention of quitting cigarettes, or had experienced past challenges in doing so.
The first-of-its kind study, known as CEASEFIRE, enrolled 220 participants. On average, they were 41 years old and smoked about a pack a day. They averaged two previous attempts to quit smoking.
The participants were randomized into two groups: one given a refillable vape, and one given a heated tobacco product—a device that heats sticks of tobacco to produce vapor, without the combustion that produces smoke. [...]