Tobacco Center Faculty Blog

UCSF Tobacco Center has added a strong cannabis research group

October 14, 2019

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

As cannabis use has increasingly become legalized, commercialized and normalized understanding the health effects (both positive and negative) and what the appropriate public health responses and policies should be has become increasingly important.  In addition to its direct importance, there are important interactions between cannabis and tobacco, both biologically and at a policy level.  In recognition of these changes, the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education has added a cannabis research focus group with 20 faculty.  Some have been working on tobacco for years, others are new.  Check out the people and range of research here:  https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/research-topics/556 .

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FDA’s proposed warningsand accompanying color images will promote public understanding of the negative health consequences of smoking and should be implemented with some improvements

October 12, 2019

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

My colleagues at UCSF, Stanford, and Georgia State submitted this public comment to FDA on its proposed graphic warnings.  A PDF is available here.  The tracking number on Regulations.gov is 1k3-9cp7-u6bc.

 

FDA’s proposed required textual warning label statements and accompanying color images will promote greater public understanding of the negative health consequences of smoking and should be implemented with some improvements

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UCSF TCORS public comment on expansion of FDA HPHC list

October 2, 2019

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

My colleagues at the UCSF TCORS have submitted this public comment to the FDA on additions to its Harmful and Potentially Harmful Constituents list.  We support the FDA's proposal to add 19 new constitutents to this list and suggest adding more, including menthol.  A PDF of the comment, including the appendix, is available here.  The regulations.goc tracking number is  1k3-9cij-8wgr.

 

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Media giants sandbag Senators on child-safety data about smoking in their programming

October 2, 2019

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

 

The entertainment industry digs in...Last April, with nicotine addiction soaring among American schoolchildren, three U.S. Senators quizzed America's media companies about their own dependence on tobacco.

The letters from Senators Blumenthal, Markey and Van Hollen posed two simple questions: In the past five years, how much of your entertainment programming contained tobacco imagery? How many kids have seen it? 

The Senators addressed thirteen companies.* Only Google provided any tobacco content and viewer data; Lionsgate did not reply at all.

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Juul suspends its campaign for SF Proposition C

September 30, 2019

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

The San Francisco Examiner just reported that Juul has pulled the plug on its effort to pass Prop C, which would replace San Francisco’s current e-cigarette regulations with ones written by Juul.

My guess is that Juul did this for two reasons:

  1. The new Juul CEO, Philip Morris executive K.C. Crosthwaite, was put there to get Juul approved by FDA.  Continuing  a campaign that is making illegal health and therapeutic claims was likely not helping that, especially after Supervisor Walton filed a formal compliant with the FDA about them.
  2. Their private polling showed them losing or at risk of losing and they wanted to avoid the embarrassment of a defeat.

Unfortunately, Prop C remains on the ballot, which will require the health advocates to continue their campaign to make sure that it loses.  After all, some other tobacco interest could come in and revive the yes campaign.

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