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The US Food and Drug Administration needs to take a stronger stance against retailers that illegally sell tobacco products to children, according to a new report from the US Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General (OIG). In a report published Thursday, the OIG says that the FDA didn’t scrutinize repeat violators enough, and in some states, the agency may have been disproportionately focused on sellers in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The report also suggested that the FDA needs to do a better job overseeing online retailers and should work with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to help crack down on online sales to kids.

Millions of Americans are being exposed to toxic secondhand smoke and have a byproduct of nicotine in their blood without even knowing it. That’s according to a new study published by University of Florida health researchers in the Nicotine and Tobacco Research journal. The findings suggest 56 million Americans are unknowingly and routinely exposed to toxic secondhand smoke. The researchers analyzed a survey of more than 13,000 adults and detected cotinine in the blood of 51% of people. Cotinine is an indicator that someone has been exposed to nicotine within a few days, primarily tobacco products. 

We don’t know in absolute terms, we might never know it with full precision, as the complexity of human biology makes it a daunting problem given the diversity of individual responses and potentially affected biological systems. However, we can make very robust estimates and inferences from the existing short and mid-term knowledge,  which is substantial: hundreds of well-designed experiments on emissions testing, biomarkers, pre-clinical and even clinical studies clearly indicate in about 10 years of rigorous observation that risks (understood as potential for harm) of vaping are dramatically reduced in comparison with smoking. [...]

THE MEDIA IS AWASH WITH CONCERNS about youth vaping. However a balanced assessment should consider both the harms as well as the benefits. I did a risk-benefit analysis based on the latest evidence and found that the benefits of youth vaping outweighed the risks at a population level. To be clear, kids should not vape or smoke or drink alcohol or use drugs. However, in the real world, some will do these things. Understanding the full impact is crucial as youth vaping is the main driver of vaping policy. Policy should be based on evidence, not on moral judgements or emotion.

Vaping does not act as a gateway into smoking, the most comprehensive study carried out suggests. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London said there was “tentative” evidence that products such as e-cigarettes might be speeding up the demise of smoking. Professor Peter Hajek, director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine’s Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London, said: “The results of this study alleviate the concern that access to e-cigarettes and other low-risk nicotine products promote smoking.