December 22, 2014
Congressmen Henry Waxman and Frank Pallone and Senator Dick Durbin have written a letter to all the state attorneys general to use the MSA to reign in out-of-control e-cigarette advertising. Their statement and copies of all the letters are here.
They also (again) call for FDA action, but, as I have noted before, it will be years before anything meaningful materializes from the FDA. There is a lot that the states AGs can do. Here in California, for example, Attorney General Kamila Harris could enforce the consent agreement NJOY signed promising not to introduce flavors. There is also a lot of deceptive marketing going on all over the country.
December 22, 2014
The lead editorial in the Sacramento Bee yesterday (Sunday, December 21, 2014), "E-cigarette boom among kids more than Feds’ fault: Tobacco money keeps state sidelined" is worth reading everywhere.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article4654587.html#storylink=cpy
Here is what they said:
December 20, 2014
Amanda Fallin, Maria Roditis, and I just published "Association of Campus Tobacco Policies With Secondhand Smoke Exposure, Intention to Smoke on Campus, and Attitudes About Outdoor Smoking Restrictions" in American Journal of Public Health.
We surveyed California college students between September 2013 and May 2014 with a range of policies (smoke-free indoors only, designated outdoor smoking areas, smoke-free, and tobacco-free). We found:
- Stronger policies were associated with fewer students reporting exposure to secondhand smoke or seeing someone smoke on campus.
- On tobacco-free college campuses, fewer students smoked and reported intention to smoke on campus.
- Strong majorities of students supported outdoor smoking restrictions across all policy types.
- Comprehensive tobacco-free policies are effective in reducing exposure to smoking and intention to smoke on campus.
In short, smoke and tobacco free policies are widely accepted and are working on campus.
The paper is available here.
December 19, 2014
Last week, the University of Michigan released its NIH-funded Monitoring the Future survey that found that e-cigarette use had surpassed conventional cigarette youth among middle and high school students. The results appropriately received major press coverage (including US News, USA Today, NY Times) and, of course, dismissive commentaries from long-time industry apologists (example).
The results continue to contribute to the emerging picture of how the e-cigarette epidemic is developing and highlight the fact that it is necessary to keep the fact that the epidemic is still developing in mind when interpreting research results:
December 17, 2014
In September, shareholder advocacy organizations announced that they were filing shareholder resolutions with the major movie studios regarding the portrayal of tobacco in youth-rated films (covered by the New York Times). Shareholder concerns stem from publication of the 2012 US Surgeon General report, Preventing Tobacco Use among Youth and Young Adults, which concluded that “there is a causal relationship between depictions of smoking in the movies and the initiation of smoking among young people.”
Shareholders were concerned that this data, and the publicity it has received, reflected a reputational risk to the company, and could hurt the company’s long-term profitability. Citing data from the Surgeon General’s report, in 2014 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wrote that: “Giving an R rating to future movies with smoking would be expected to reduce the number of teen smokers by nearly one in five (18%) and prevent one million [1,000,000] deaths from smoking among children alive today.”