July 25, 2017
The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids has been keeping an eye on the campaign expenditures for the “local concerned citizens” that are working to force a referendum on the menthol/flavor ban. Here are the numbers as of July 15, 2017 (campaign filing on July 20):
- RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company has spent $723,769 in support of the Let’s Be Real referendum to undo the SF flavor ordinance. That includes $600,000 in loans and $123,769 in in-kind support (polling, data support, consulting/expenses, and employee time).
- The campaign has paid $150,000 to Goco Consulting in Sacramento (petition circulating) and $2,000 to Rojas Communication Group in Tarzana for campaign consulting.
- The campaign has an outstanding bill of $10,927.12 owed to the Monaco Group in Santa Ana for campaign literature and mailings.
- Cash on hand is $448,000.
This investment shows that there is going to be a major effort to roll back the law. This is the best evidence that advocates should keep pushing replications of the law everywhere.
July 25, 2017
While the evidence that kids who initiate tobacco product use is already pretty bulletproof, all the studies so far have been from the US. Now two new studies, one from Scotland and one from Canada, are taking the case global.
The first study, "Relationship between trying an electronic cigarette and subsequent cigarette experimentation in Scottish adolescents: A cohort study," by Catherine Best and colleagues, followed 3807 Scottish adolescents (11-18 years old) who had never smoked a cigarette forward in time for 1 year. The youth who smoked e-cigarettes at baseline were twice as likely to have smoked a conventional cigarette by follow-up 1 year later. The authors controlled for a wide range of variables, including susceptibility to smoking, a well-established predictor of future smoking. The fact that the authors followed the youth forward in time supports concluding that e-cigarette use was increasing the liklihood of subsequent cigarette smoking.
July 14, 2017
When I testified in support of Supervisor Malia Cohen’s ordinance ending the sale of flavored and menthol tobacco products in San Francisco, I talked about how it had the same feeling as in 1983 when I testified for San Francisco’s new smoking restriction law. While laws restricting flavored tobacco product sales already existed, the San Francisco ordinance, now signed into law to take effect in April 2018, is the strongest to date and will serve as a model for other local governments looking to adopt legislation.
When I made the comparison I didn’t realize how closely history would be repeating itself.
As with Supervisor Cohen’s flavor/menthol law, back in 1983 the Francisco passed clean indoor air ordinance (which was not even 100% smokefree) attracted national attention, the tobacco companies knew that it could become the model for others around the country and world. In a last-ditch effort to stop the law they forced a referendum (popular vote) on the law.
June 29, 2017
Earlier this week the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (the local legislative body) unanimously passed second reading of the strongest law in the country limiting sales of flavored tobacco products. It prohibits sale of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol, anywhere in the City and County of San Francisco. Mayor Ed Lee has already said that he will sign the law. It will take effect April 1, 2018.
Supervisor Malia Cohen and her legislative aide Brittni Chicuata really did their homework on this issue. At the three hour committee hearing on the bill Supervisor Cohen showed a real in-depth understanding and even challenged some of the “tobacco industry talking points” that were dutifully presented by some locals.
The industry is clearly worried that this law could break the dam on local flavor bans (just as the San Francisco smokefree law did back in the 1980s) and flew several lobbyists out to testify against the ordinance. One even specifically threated to sue. (Surprise!) They even ran radio ads and brought their road show, featuring Al Sharpton, to town.
June 27, 2017
Samir Soneji and colleagues just published a meta-analysis of 9 longitudinal studies that examined the effect of e-cigarette use on subsequent cigarette smoking behavior. Each of these 9 studies started with kids who had never smoked a cigarette and compared the odds that they would go on to smoke cigarettes later (usually a year later) among kids who were and were not using e-cigarettes at baseline (the beginning of the study). They found that the pooled odds ratio for subsequent cigarette initiation was 3.62 and for current (30 day) smoking was 4.28.
These results are adjusted for a wide range of potential confounding demographic, psychosocial, and behavioral risk factors. Soneji and colleagues also do extensive sensitivity analysis to demonstrate that their findings are robust.