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To understand the extent to which people who smoke, people who vape and nonsmokers would switch between smoking cigarettes and vaping in response to policies (price increases, restrictions on nicotine, places, and information on addictiveness and/or health risks) aimed at decreasing tobacco use by people who smoke and vaping by nonsmokers.

Alternative nicotine products can have a "significant" impact on reducing smoking rates as demonstrated by case studies in Japan and Sweden, a report showed Friday. In a policy paper dubbed “Safer Nicotine Works,” Tholos Foundation said it has found that alternative nicotine products, ranging from snus, nicotine pouches and gum to vapes and tobacco heating products, help people quit smoking cigarettes. Japan saw smoking rates, those that smoked cigarettes daily, decline from 19.8 percent to 17.8 percent in just two years between 2017 and 2019 after tobacco heating products were introduced to the market in 2016, the report said. The rate had dropped less than 2 percent over a 14-year period from 2003.

Researchers used Twitter's academic application programming interface (API) to collect over 6.6 million tweets between August 2006 to August 2022 involving hashtags #vape and #vaping. This dataset, which represented all available relevant tweets on Twitter during this period, was chosen due to Twitter's historical API access, which ceased after Elon Musk's acquisition. A Python script was used to filter tweets mentioning terms like “fact check,” “misinformation,” and “fake news” in the context of vaping. This narrowed the dataset down to 10,057 tweets from 2,925 users. [...]

Infants born to mothers who used marijuana during pregnancy were twice as likely to be underweight and nearly twice as likely to be premature than infants who were not exposed to cannabis, a new study found. Cannabis-exposed infants were 2.5 times as likely to be admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit, compared with unexposed babies, according to the study. “We know that THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the main psychoactive constituent in cannabis, can cross the placenta from mother to fetus and bind to receptors in the fetal brain,” said first author Maryam Sorkhou, a postdoctoral student at the University of Toronto, in a statement.

Every year 1.3 million lives are lost to cancers caused by smoking tobacco across the UK, US and BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), according to a new study, funded by Cancer Research UK. Researchers found that together, the seven countries represented more than half of the global burden of cancer deaths every year. They concluded that smoking, as well as three other preventable risk factors – alcohol, overweight or obesity, and human papillomavirus (HPV) infections caused almost 2 million deaths combined.

There are now just 14 days left to apply to the 7th Tobacco Harm Reduction Scholarship Programme. Alongside a grounding in policy and practice, successful candidates will receive a 12-month bespoke mentoring programme to undertake a THR-related project of their own design, plus $12k in financial support. New Scholars are also invited to the Global Forum on Nicotine in Warsaw, Poland, to learn more about tobacco harm reduction and meet leading figures from the field. Applications for the 2024-25 Programme close on 30 November and there are 25 entry-level places available. On completion of the first Scholarship, graduates of the THRSP potentially have access to up to a further three years of funded support from K•A•C, through the one-year Enhanced Scholarship Programme and the two-year Kevin Molloy Fellowship. To apply click here.

“So little is published about the grassroots groups which advocate for tobacco harm reduction, but as our briefing paper shows, there is much to be said,” Jessica Harding, director of external engagement at the public health group Knowledge-Action-Change, told Filter. KAC, based in the United Kingdom, has just released the latest report under its Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR) project. It explores both the critical importance of international consumer advocacy groups in this space, and their exclusion from policy discussions to determine the future of tobacco harm reduction (THR).

WITH THE GREATEST OF HUMILITY, I would like to announce that I have won the UK Vaping Industry Association’s Most Supportive Public Health Professional/Researcher Award for 2023. The award was announced at the annual UKVIA Forum and Industry Recognition Awards ceremony in London on Friday 10 November 2023.

For the first time, there are more young people who begin to use nicotine through vaping rather than through cigarettes, according to new research from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). “We now have a shift such that there are more ‘never smokers’ who vape than established smokers,” said MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researcher Benjamin Toll, director of the MUSC Health Tobacco Treatment Program, in a statement. “That is a massive shift in the landscape of tobacco. These ‘never smokers’ are unlikely to start smoking combustible cigarettes—they’re likely to vape and keep vaping. And it’s this group, ages 18 to 24, who are going to forecast future e-cigarette users.”

Three leading tobacco harm reduction experts join us to give their predictions, hopes and fears for the Tenth Conference of the Parties of the FCTC, which was due to take place on 20 November 2023 before being postponed at the eleventh hour.