February 11, 2019
CDC requested public comments on what steps they can take to better fight the tobacco epidemic. Here is what we suggested. The tracking number on Regulations.gov is 1k3-9875-2kpn and a PDF of the comment is available here.
CDC should promote strategies proven effective at the local and state levels including banning all flavored tobacco products, improving community education, and engaging vulnerable populations to prevent youth initiation to tobacco, ensure smokefree air, and eliminate tobacco-related disparities
Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, PhD; Maya Vijayarghavan, MD, MAS; Jonathan Polansky, BA;
Anabel Razo, BA; Aditi Venkatesh; Maria Fernanda Bernal;
Lauren Kass Lempert, JD, MPH; Stanton Glantz, PhD
UCSF Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science
February 11, 2019
February 10, 2019
Lauren Lempert and I published a paper showing that the cigarette companies use colors in the packaging to affect how smokers perceive the strength and taste of products even when the companies don’t change the physical cigarette. We argued that the FDA should treat pack colors as an “ingredient” and consider packaging changes when evaluation substantial equivalence claims made by cigarette companies to get their new products approved. Other investigators (cited in our paper) had shown that the companies use colors to get around the legal prohibitions of using words like “light” and “mild” to make misleading health claims.
Now Karma McKelvey, Bonnie Halpern-Felsher and their colleagues at Stanford have shown the same thing for kids.
Their paper, “A cigarette pack by any other color: Youth perceptions mostly align with tobacco industry-ascribed meanings “ published in Preventive Medicine Reports shows that youth do perceive specific and industry-meaning messages from the colors of cigarette packs.
February 10, 2019
An op-ed in Sacramento Bee recently described the dangers of accidental ingestion of marijuana-laced edibles by children and calling for childproof packaging. It is also accompanied by a video from Fresno County illustrating seizures of unlicensed marijuana edibles and high potency concentrates, many of which are clearly imitating common candies and attractive to children. Both are worth reading/watching.
In the recent regulatory battle, the State proposed initially to drop even the existing requirement for "child-resistant" primary packaging. Fortunately, that was reinstated in the regulations after protests, but many from the industry continue to falsely portray the products as harmless and not requiring child resistant packaging.
Thanks to Matthew Marson and Lynn Silver for sharing this with me so I could pass it along.
February 7, 2019
Tom Wills and colleagues just published “E-cigarette use and respiratory disorder in an adult sample,” documenting the link between e-cigarette use and asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, controlling for smoking among a large sample of Hawaiians. The found e-cigs increase the risk of COPD by a factor of 2.58, with dual users (people use e-cigarettes and cigarettes at the same time) higher than using cigarettes or e-cigarettes alone. They found similar risks for e-cigarettes, cigarettes, and dual use for asthma.
February 6, 2019
Kaitlyn Berry and colleagues just published “Association of Electronic Cigarette Use With Subsequent Initiation of Tobacco Cigarettes in US Youths” in JAMA Network Open that further strengthens the overwhelming case that e-cigarettes are expanding the tobacco epidemic by bringing low risk kids who are unlikely to start using tobacco with cigarettes. In addition, they show that e-cigarettes are a gateway to cigarettes, with a stronger effect for e-cigarettes than other tobacco products.
The effect of e-cigs as a gateway for cigarettes was very large for low risk kids, an adjusted odds ratio of 8.6, compared to the odds ratio of 3.5 for the intermediate-to-high-risk kids.
They also highlight the importance of other tobacco products as starter products for kids, although the differential effect on low-risk kids seen with e-cigarettes is not present for the other products.