March 9, 2019
Several people and reporters have contacted me asking how Juul can get away with advertising its products on television and radio, where cigarette advertisements have been prohibited since 1971. The short answer is that the law prohibiting broadcast advertising of cigarettes applies to cigarettes, not tobacco products in general and Juul is not a cigarette.
Having said that, there may be other avenues for stopping the Juul ads, as well as its major PR print advertising campaign to claim that the company only wants to provide a better alternative to adult smokers while it continues to make bushels of money selling Juul to youth and young adults: All these ads are making illegal therapeutic (they can help users quit smoking) and modified risk claims (they are healthier) without the legally-required approvals from FDA.
March 9, 2019
On March 18, 2019, Mohinder R. Vindhyal and colleages will be presenting Impact on Cardiovascular Outcomes Among E-Cigarette Users: A Review From National Health Interview Surveys at the American College of Cardiology meeting. This study adds to the growing literature (other papers: 1, 2, 3) that people who use e-cigarettes are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and strokes. They also, for the first time, found an association with circulatory problems.
March 7, 2019
As part of the global open access movement, the University of California has been working to renegotiate its contract with Elsevier to make all papers published by UC faculty open access as soon as they are published in a way that does not increase total costs to UC and its faculty.
This is also being driven by the rapidly increasing subscription costs and open access fees that Elsevier (and other publishers) are charging while increasing profit margins. (Here is a good article in The Atlantic about the issue.)
UC has been negotiating with Elsevier for months and UC has been without a contact with Elsevier since January 1, 2019. The negotiations broke down last week after Elsevier emailed UC faculty trying to mobilize them against the UC negotiating team (which includes, for the first time, faculty).
February 27, 2019
After years of arguing that people didn’t need to worry about increasing e-cig use among kids in England, because of the different (from the USA) regulatory environment, e-cig cheerleading Public Health England announced e-cig use among kids doubled in the last 4 years. And that was before Juul invaded.
As expected, the Public Health England (a government agency) minimized the effect, as did, ASH England and other e-cig enthusiasts minimized this huge increase on the grounds that few kids were “regular” e-cig users. This argument ignores the fact that the evidence (collected by e-cig enthusiasts!) shows that among kids who use tobacco in England, more than half are initiating nicotine use with e-cigs and any e-cig use predicts future smoking. Indeed, the “gateway” effect in England is about 12, compared to 3-4 in the USA.
And even if the kids did not add cigarettes later, bathing developing brains in nicotine is a very bad thing because the neurological changes are permanent.
February 24, 2019
Dharma Bhatta and I presented this abstract at the 2019 Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco meeting. It shows about the same risks as the earlier studies. This is also exactly what one would expect to happen based on the biological effects that e-cigs have on blood vessels and platelets.
POS4-99
ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE USE AND MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION AMONG ADULTS IN THE UNITED STATES POPULATION ASSESSMENT OF TOBACCO AND HEALTH
Dharma N. Bhatta, PhD, MPH, Stanton Glantz, PhD. University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Background: Electronic cigarettes are battery operated nicotine delivery devices, popular for smoking cessation tools and as an alternative product to combustible cigarettes. This study aim is to determine the association between electronic cigarette use and myocardial infarction.
Methods: Adults age 18 and older at Wave 1 (n = 32,320; 2013-2014) and Wave 2 (n=26,447; 2014-2015) of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study in the United States of America were used. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to determine the associations between e-cigarette use and myocardial infarction, adjusting for cigarette smoking, demographic and clinical variables.