Read articles from United States of America

January 13, 2022 by nytimes.com

[...] “Smoking is back,” said Isabel Rower, a 24-year-old sculptor, one of the spirited Americans outside Clearing. “Weirdly, in the last year or two, all my friends who didn’t smoke, now smoke. I don’t know why. No one is really addicted to it. It’s more of a pleasure activity.” Across New York City, as the pandemic waxes and wanes, a social activity that had seemed diminished, or replaced (with vapes, cannabis and education), seems to have reappeared. Have cigarettes, those filthy, cancer-causing things — and still the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — lost their taboo?

January 11, 2022 by filtermag.org

Spike Babaian is the Swiss Army Knife of vaping. She is a fierce advocate for tobacco harm reduction, a vape business owner who has helped hundreds if not thousands of smokers to quit, a published researcher, an educator and an activist against flavor bans. At her store in East Harlem, a predominantly low-income Latinx and Black neighborhood, she helped people with some of the highest rates of smoking switch.

“We quit smoking and we thought everyone should have that chance, and the government took it away.”

“Even though there isn’t a lot of money in East Harlem, there are a lot of smokers,” Babaian told me [...]

January 10, 2022 by thetimes.co.uk

Toxins in e-cigarettes could cause damage to the user’s eyesight, a US study suggests.

People who use the devices, or “vape”, were 34 per cent more likely to suffer from visual impairments compared with those who had never tried e-cigarettes, while former users were 14 per cent more likely, researchers from the University of California found. The study assessed 1,173,646 adults aged between 18 and 50 between 2016 and 2018. They were asked in a questionnaire if they smoked or vaped, and if they suffered from visual impairment.

January 07, 2022 by filtermag.org

For the past couple of years, Skip Murray has updated a Twitter thread every time a vape shop shuts down. On December 31, 2021, she added her own.

Since 2018, Murray had run Lakes Vape and Rec Supply in Brainerd, Minnesota, a small town and tourist destination a few hours north of Minneapolis. A fierce consumer advocate and self-described “optimist,” she knew that she’d one day have to close her store, even if she could never quite admit it to herself.

“Realistically, I knew this was going to happen,” Murray told Filter. “But I kept hoping that something—something—would change. I was holding out hope that the world would come to its senses.”

January 07, 2022 by cancer.gov

To get FDA approval to sell a prescription drug in the United States, you have to prove that the drug is safe and effective. What is required to get FDA to clear an e-cigarette for marketing approval?
We don't talk about “approving” tobacco products, because tobacco products are inherently harmful, and are not judged by the same standard as drugs. Instead, we talk about marketing “authorizations.” But it's a very important distinction between the safety and efficacy standard for approving drugs and the one needed to issue marketing authorization for e-cigarettes. [...]

January 05, 2022 by upi.com

Sales of all cigarettes in Massachusetts declined by up to 33% after the state instituted a ban on menthol-flavored cigarettes, an analysis published Tuesday by JAMA Internal Medicine found. "We learn from Massachusetts that a menthol flavor ban effectively reduces both menthol and overall cigarette sales," study co-author Samuel Asare told UPI in an email. "Smokers who strongly preferred these flavors needed to quit or switch to non-flavored cigarettes," said Asare, principal scientist for tobacco control research for the American Cancer Society.

January 05, 2022 by filtermag.org

On December 14, Dr. Robert Califf, President Joe Biden’s pick to be the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), faced questions from senators about how he would lead the agency over the next three years.

There had been some expectation that legislators would dig into Califf—a cardiologist who previously served as the deputy commissioner of the FDA’s Office of Medical Products and Tobacco, [...] Anyone hoping for a clear indication of how Califf would position the FDA around tobacco harm reduction was disappointed, and observers were left to pick through limited past indications of his potential future impact in the field.

December 30, 2021 by webmd.com

Kid-friendly flavored e-cigarettes are still widely available online and in stores, despite a federal judge's ruling that should have pulled the products off store shelves by early September, a new report shows. [...] Today, more than 100 flavored vaping products with enticing flavors like Gummy Bear, Funnel Cake, Fruit Punch, Berry Crunch Cereal and Blueberry Lemonade are still sold through the five top online e-cigarette retailers, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids report found. Flavored vapes also were widely available in convenience stores and gas stations located in eight cities across the country, the report added.

December 30, 2021 by forbes.com

Juul pods have never been more boring and flavorless. This is thanks to President Donald Trump.

Once available throughout the United States in a cornucopia of varieties including cucumber, mango and crème brulee, under threat of a looming government, Juul pulled all flavors except from mint and tobacco from shelves starting in late 2019.

Ever since, flavor seekers have been forced to suffer through the earthy bitterness of “flue-cured” Virginia tobacco or seek illicit-market options, including buying forbidden Juul pods from “friends” in overseas locations where the flavor pods are still available, like Russia.

December 29, 2021 by news-medical.net

Since the introduction of electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, to the United States in 2006, intense debate has surrounded the marketing, regulation and use of these nicotine-delivery products. Surprising new research led by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center has found that adult smokers with no plans to quit are more likely to quit smoking traditional combustible cigarettes if they switch to daily vaping. "These findings are paradigm-shifting, because the data suggest that vaping may actually help people who are not actively trying to quit smoking. [...]