November 10, 2017
This letter, sent to the San Francisco supervisor who is sponsoring legislation on how to implement legalized marijuana in San Francisco, urges her to keep public health issues in mind. So far, the health community has been all but absent from the public discussion (except Americans for Nonsmokers Rights). (A PDF of the letter on letterhead is here.)
November 3, 2017
Supervisor Malia Cohen
City Hall
San Francisco, CA
c/o [email protected]
Dear Supervisor Cohen,
After working with you on your path-breaking tobacco control legislation, we have been surprised that the cannabis legislation that you are carrying forth is not addressing the serious public health issues raised by legalization. We urge you to broaden the focus of the discussion beyond the business of cannabis to consider the public health implications of this legislation before it is finalized.
November 9, 2017
Clayton Velicer, Gideon St. Helen, and I just published “Tobacco papers and tobacco industry ties in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology” in the Journal of Public Health Policy. RTP is one of the journals that the tobacco and other industries use to publish their work. We show a strong pro-tobacco industry orientation in the editors and conclusions in the papers published there. Scientists and regulators need to be aware of these biases.
Here is the abstract
November 7, 2017
Tingting Yao and our colleagues just published “Relationship between spending on electronic
cigarettes, 30-day use, and disease symptoms among current adult cigarette smokers in the U.S.” in PLOS ONE. This paper shows that smokers who use e-cigarettes report having more chest pain, are more likely to notice blood when brushing their teeth, to have sores or ulcers in their mouth, and to have more than one cold than smokers who did not use e-cigarettes in the last 30 days. Even after controlling for cigarettes smoked per day, e-cigarette expenditures or use was associated with greater odds of wheezing and shortness of breath.
This paper adds to the evidence that dual use of e-cigarettes with cigarettes is more dangerous than smoking cigarettes.
Another interesting finding is that the amount of money spent on e-cigarettes is a better predictor of health effects than reported e-cigarette use. This variable may capture differences in e-cigarette systems as well as how heavily they are used.
Here is the abstract:
October 31, 2017
Battle of the Sexes (Fox, PG-13) spotlights a struggle for gender equality on the pro tennis circuit and a much-hyped 1973 tennis match between women's champion Billie Jean King and hustler Bobbie Riggs.
The film also touches on tobacco giant Philip Morris' sponsorship of King and other players who broke away to form their own women's professional tour. Four decades after Philip Morris bankrolled the Virginia Slims Tour, Battle of the Sexes displays or mentions the Virginia Slims brand thirteen times, among its eighty tobacco incidents. Virginia Slims are still sold in the US and around the world.
Two of the film's three smokers are based on actual women who smoked: tour promoter Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) and tennis player Jane "Peaches" Bartkowicz (Martha MacIsaac). The third is an un-named extra.
In its first six weeks, Battle of the Sexes delivered more than 100 million tobacco impressions to movie audiences, many unaware of the film's tobacco backstory:
Philip Morris pushes tobacco at women
October 30, 2017
David Hammond and colleagues just published “Electronic cigarette use and smoking initiation among youth: a longitudinal cohort study,” a large well-done longitudinal study of Canadian high school students that found that, like all the other similar studies from the US and UK, kids who started with e-cigarettes we more likely to be smoking conventional cigarettes a year later and also more likely to have become daily smokers.
In addition to controlling for a wide range of demographic and behavioral factors, they controlled susceptibility to cigarette smoking which contributes to the strength of the study.
The paper is especially interesting because nicotine-containing e-cigarettes are illegal in Canada, which strongly suggests that the gateway effect of e-cigarette use does not simply depend on the availability of nicotine. Nicotine containing e-cigs are illegally available at vape shops, but only nicotine-free e-cigs are available in supermarkets and convenience stores. There are no legal restrictions on youth purchase of these e-cigarettes in Canada.