August 14, 2015
After years of the tobacco companies bullying governments in court, it is nice to see health advoacte pushing back when government caves to Big Tobacco. Here is a press release that the International Union against Turbulosis and Lung Disease just put out:
Civil society groups in Pakistan have issued a high court petition to prevent the Ministry of National Health Services Regulation and Coordination from withdrawing life-saving legislation to reduce tobacco use. The new law – which was due to come into force on 31 July – required 85 per cent of the surface area of all tobacco packaging to be covered with harrowing photos of the health consequences of smoking. Now, after months of delay, the warnings could be diminished in size to just 50 per cent.
The legal intervention from the Coalition for Tobacco Control Pakistan (CTC-Pak) blocks the immediate watering-down of the law and calls health and finance ministers to account for reneging on a policy proven to protect public health. Tobacco industry pressure to weaken and delay the measure has been intense since the law was announced by Health Minister Saira Afzal Tarar in February 2015, because graphic health warnings encourage smokers to quit and discourage non-smokers from starting.
August 12, 2015
We just submitted a 29 page comment responding to the questions that FDA posed regarding packaging and warning labels for liquid nicotine and related products.
Feel free to use this information in preparing your comments. (The deadline for submitting them is the end of the month.)
The full comment is available here.
The tracking number is 1jz-8kin-qyu8.
July 27, 2015
Pru Talbot and her colleages at UC Riverside just published an important paper, "Unexpected nicotine in do-it-yourself electronic cigarette flavourings" in Tobacco Control. The title says it all.
The bottom line of the paper is:
The current finding of nicotine in DIY flavouring products that are expected to be nicotine free and our prior finding that a DIY bottle of nicotine (134.7 mg/mL) was unlabelled, are important public health problems. These products, which are presented to the consumer as ‘nicotine free’ (http://www.tastypuff.com/product/joosy-froot/), could lead to unwanted addiction, poisoning, or even death.
They go on to recommend
July 27, 2015
On July 23, 2015, I posted my first comment on Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on Marijuana Policy releasing its report “Pathways Report: Policy Options for Regulating Marijuana in California,” (link) with primarily positive critiques. The report addressed important public health issues that in many cases aligned with the Tobacco Education Research Oversight Committee’s (TEROC) recommendations to the Blue Ribbon Commission (which likely were received after the report had been finalized so probably did not influence the report’s language).
Rachel Barry, a member of my research team and I have now completed a side-by-side comparison of the TEROC and BRC recommendations (table below, PDF).
July 23, 2015
On July 21, 2015 Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy released its report “Pathways Report: Policy Options for Regulating Marijuana in California,” which provides broad policy recommendations on legalizing marijuana in California. The report recognizes the potential problems of a wealthy profit-motivated marijuana industry and the potential damage to public health.
Overall, this report is thoughtful and contained several strong recommendations on local control, public usage, health messaging, research priorities, and marketing/advertising restrictions supportive of tobacco control.
It recognizes that big money and corporatization of marijuana poses serious problems for public health. This is probably the most important conclusion in the report.
“Develop a highly regulated market with enforcement and oversight capacity from the beginning, not an unregulated free market; this industry should not be California’s next Gold Rush.” (P. 23)