Stories

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 20,200 Ohioans die from smoking-related illnesses each year. Ohio is going through the worst overdose crisis in its history, with 5,300 Ohioans dying of drug overdose in 2021. That means tobacco is killing more than three times as many Ohioans as drug overdoses. Ohio’s smoking rate is one of the highest in the country, coming only behind West Virginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana in the percentage of residents who smoke. So people are dying of tobacco use, and they are continuing to smoke.

What do delegates to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control COP-10 meeting need to do their job well. This provides commentary on the agenda and papers and range of background resources. The question for many delegates will be: how do I get through this week? There may be moments of inspiration, but these will punctuated with long periods of tedious speeches and deliberations from which all but a few will be excluded.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Health warned on Sunday that e-cigarettes, shisha and heated tobacco products (HTPs) have caused serious effects on users’ health, urging people, especially youth, not to try these products. “The Ministry of Health is very concerned that most e-cigarettes, shisha and HTPs are beautifully designed, attractive to young people to try,“ the ministry said in a statement. “In fact, e-cigarettes, shisha and HTPs have really caused hazards to health and society,“ it said.

A new study published in Addiction has found that cytisine, a low-cost, generic stop-smoking aid that has been used in eastern Europe since the 1960s, increases the chances of successful smoking cessation by more than two-fold compared with placebo and may be more effective than nicotine replacement therapy. It has a benign safety profile, with no evidence of serious safety concerns.  Sounds perfect for your New Year resolution, doesn’t it? But there’s a catch: Cytisine is not licensed or marketed in most countries outside of central and eastern Europe, making it unavailable in most of the world, including many low- and middle-income countries where it could make a big difference to global health.

Why the ban on importing disposable vapes won't work. A ban will: - Fuel the black market. The black market will go underground and supplies will be readily available - Some vapers will relapse to smoking - a health disaster. Prohibition simply hands the market to criminal gangs with no age of sale retrictions, no quality control and no tax paid. Good one Mark Butler!

With COP10 due to take place next week, and with consumers denied a seat at the table, Lindsey Stroud walked us through how consumers are making their voice heard at the Good COP / Bad COP event, which will be livestreamed from COP10 in Panama!

Nicotine may have some deleterious and costly health effects, but so do winter sports, mountaineering, motorcycling and many other activities we leave to personal choice. (I have never been asked to work on a government anti-skiing campaign, though if the opportunity arose I would happily volunteer my services for free.) But it is absurd that vaping is now the target of much more opprobrium than alcohol. I suspect part of the explanation can be found in an HM Government health warning which appeared on cigarette packets in the 1980s: ‘Most Doctors Don’t Smoke.’ Indeed so. Most doctors don’t vape either. But, in my experience, doctors drink a lot.

Harm reduction is a successful public health strategy, for example, in minimising the harms of drug use. Tobacco harm reduction should, therefore, be a central strategy of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in addition to the measures for demand and supply reduction which are necessary, but not sufficient. WHO FCTC has been influential in encouraging a global response to tobacco control, but it has been challenging to show a strong and consistent association between the implementation of FCTC measures and smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption outcomes.

Anti-smoking activists have worked for centuries to get people to stop smoking. One successful way to do that is by recognizing that many smokers are addicted to nicotine. They need their “fix.” That’s why people endorse nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) to help smokers quit. But rather than accept victory, many anti-smoking crusaders now embrace incoherent and seemingly contradictory positions regarding tobacco-harm reduction.

Britain's government will ban the sale of disposable vapes and limit their cornucopia of flavors to prevent children from becoming addicted to nicotine, officials said Monday. It also plans to stick to a contentious proposal to ban today’s young people from ever buying cigarettes. “You talk to any parent or teacher, they’ll talk to you about the worrying rise in vaping among children," Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters. “Children shouldn’t be vaping, we don’t want them to get addicted. We still don’t understand the full long-term health impacts of vaping. So it is right we take strong action to stamp this out.”