June 3, 2019
While Mitch McConnell's bill raising the federal age for selling tobacco products did not include state preemption as I was worried it would, it still contains a very dangeous provision requiring states to raise their legal ages to 21 by amending the Synar Ammendment to raise the age from 18 to 21.
The Synar Amendment, passed in 1992 by Congress, requires states to reduce sales of tobacco to youth under 18 or risk losing some of their Substance Abuse and Mental Health funding from the federal government. Unfortunately, the tobacco companies used Synar to get a lot of bad state laws passed that ended up blocking effective tobacco control measures. (You can read the details for 33 of the states here.) The McConnell bill could start that process all over again by creating a rush to pass state legislation raising the age to 21 together with a lot of bad technical details that will actually make it easier for Juul, Philip Morris, and RJ Reynolds to continue preying ok kids by simply overwhelming the health groups in state legislatures.
June 2, 2019
The tobacco companies (including e-cig companies) work through surrogates to claim that bans on the sale of flavored tobacco products limits freedom, the case just got stronger that flavor bans help people quit smoking (which improves lives and reduces tobacco company profits).
Specifically, Michael Chaiton and his colleagues followed smokers beginning before Ontario Canada ended the sale of menthol cigarettes until a year later and found that more menthol smokers quit than smokers who did not use menthol cigarettes. Because the tobacco companies have not pushed menthol as hard in Canada than the US, menthol use is lower, so the benefits of a ban on menthol would be even higher in the US than in Canada.
As they point out in their paper,
June 1, 2019
My colleagues at UCSF, Stanford and Georgia State University have submitted this public comment to the FDA. The Regulations.gov tracking number is 1k3-9a7v-3arc. A PDF of the comment is here and the four attachments are here (1, 2,
June 1, 2019
I got the following email from a friend at the convention:
"I was at the convention yesterday (May 31) and someone mentioned to me that Juul was one of the top contributors. I did notice that other contributors included some cannabis companies like Weedmap, but JUUL was at the top of the list."
I suppose Juul gave all that money as part of their ongoing effort to protect public health.
May 30, 2019
As I described on May 16, 2019, Juul filed a cleverly worded initiative to overturn San Francisco’s ban on flavored tobacco products (at least as they apply to e-cigarettes) and generally roll back enforcement of a wide range of laws against e-cigarettes.
The first step in this process is for the City Attorney to write a “ballot title and summary” that will appear on the petitions that Juul will circulate to collect signatures to put the measure on the ballot. The ballot title and summary is meant to inform voters so that they know what they are signing without being lawyers.
The City Attorney has a responsiblity to be neutral in the way that he descrbes the initiative to be fair to all parties.
The City Attorney completely abrogated his responsibility in this matter.