May 7, 2018
Here are links to all my blog posts on San Francisco’s Proposition E, RJ Reynolds Tobacco’s effort to overturn the law ending the sale of all flavored tobacco products in San Francisco that was unanimously passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. This list is current as of July 20, 2018.
San Francisco tobacco product flavor ban: It’s not over yet
San Francisco strongly supports end to selling flavored tobacco products
RJ Reynolds' latest argument against Prop E: It doesn't ban the sale of all tobacco products
NPR story on Juul, flavored tobacco products and San Francisco Prop E (6 May 2018)
May 7, 2018
May 2, 2018
On May 1, RJ Reynolds "contributed" another $2.5 million in cash and $40,000 in nonmonetary contributions to its No on Prop E campaign in its effort to overturn San Francisco's law ending the sale of flavored tobacco products. This brings their total to $11,587,824.27. RJR is still footning the enire bill.
NOTE: In a previous version of this post, I incorrectly reported that the San Francisco Republican Party Central Committee contributed $6,000 to No on E. I got this backwards; No on E (RJR) paid the SF Republican Central Committee $6000 to place a No on E position in the Republican slate mailer.
May 1, 2018
Jesse Elias, Yogi Hendlin, and Pam Ling just published “Public versus internal conceptions of addiction: An analysis of internal Philip Morris documents” in PLOS Medicine. This paper uses previously secret internal tobacco industry documents to show that Philip Morris has a sophisticated understanding of nicotine addiction that goes well beyond the pharmacology of nicotine as a drug.
It is important for the FDA to be at least as sophisticated as Philip Morris as the FDA develops its “comprehensive nicotine policy,” in particular by recognizing that by solely focusing on nicotine as a drug FDA could be falling into the trap that Philip Morris has built for it (and other similar agencies and public health authorities around the world).
Here is the press release that PLOS sent out:
Philip Morris’s understanding of addiction revealed by internal documents
April 30, 2018
Matthis Morgenstern, Alina Nies, Michaela Goecke, Reiner Hanewinkel just published “E-Cigarettes and the Use of Conventional Cigarettes: A Cohort Study in 10th Grade Students in Germany” that shows that never smoking 10th grade students (age 15-16 years old) who start nicotine use with e-cigarettes are about twice as likely to be smoking cigarettes 6 months later. In addition, consistent with all the other earlier studies, the effect is bigger in kids at lower risk of starting nicotine use with cigarettes.
There are now so many of these gateway studies that I have lost count. The amazing thing is the consistency of findings. All show a gateway effect for e-cigarettes with the odds of subsequent smoking increased by a factor of 2-3, except for England, where the odds increase by a factor of 12.
Here is the abstract:
Background: In 2015, 12.1% of 12– to 17-year-olds in Germany had reportedly already tried e-cigarette smoking at least once. We carried out a study of the “gateway” hypothesis, according to which the use of e-cigarettes can motivate adolescents to start smoking conventional cigarettes.