April 22, 2019
Today the California Department of Public Health Tobacco Control Program launched its latest response to the e-cigarette epidemic with the strongest message so far, Nicotine = Brain Poison. The campaign includes very strong media as well as print. My favorite detail is the use of two Juul’s to make up the equal sign in the print ads.
Here is the summary of the facts behind the campaign, which has been added to the Department’s outstanding wwwFlavorsHookKids.org website.
April 20, 2019
One of Big Tobacco’s most important strategies for thwarting public health is preemption, where they get a higher level political jurisdiction to take away communities’ rights to pass local legislation protecting public health. (Philip Morris and its sidekick Juul, are trying to preempt effective Tobacco 21 legislation both to protect against effective Tobacco 21 laws and also as part of their effort to fight bans on the sale of flavored tobacco products.)
Cal Matters’ Dan Morain pointed out that cannabis interests are now working hard to do the same thing in California to remove communities’ rights to avoid being dragged into the cannabis market. Here is his April 19, 2019 story:
Backers of the 2016 initiative that legalized commercial marijuana sales promised voters that cities and counties would be able to regulate weed sales in their jurisdictions.
Now, legislation facing its first hearing on Tuesday would hedge on that promise.
April 19, 2019
The American Thoracic Society recently sponsored a very informative webinar on e-cigarette toxicology, that explains why the fact that Juul (and others) use nicotine salts increases nicotine delivery as well as very clear information on the adverse effects of e-cigarettes, particularly flavors, on the lungs. I highly recommend everyone take the time to watch it. The longer you watch the better it gets. It is available here.
April 17, 2019
In a letter sent on April 15, 2019, three U.S. Senators — Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Edward Markey (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) — queried thirteen of America's largest media companies on how many of their films and TV shows featured toxic tobacco imagery in the past five years and asked each company to take a position on recommended policies to protect kids' health.
The Senators reminded traditional broadcast and film producers CBS, Comcast, Disney (owns Fox), Lionsgate, Sony, and Viacom that kid-rated smoking remains a major public health threat. Several of these companies also run on-demand film and TV services.
Senators also broke new ground by warning "disrupter" streaming and on-demand companies Alphabet (YouTube), Amazon (Prime), Apple (iTunes, Apple TV+), AT&T (owns Warner), Hulu (controlled by Disney), and Netflix not to make the same mistakes with tobacco that old-line companies have.
April 16, 2019
Lauren Lempert and I read the complaint in the class action Juul lawsuit filed in Florida. We think this lawsuit, which echoes the state and federal lawsuits against the tobacco companies, is strong. Because fraud and strict liability may be harder to prove, the complaint also includes negligence claims. It also lays a nice groundwork for a claim under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act claim, using similar arguments as the federal 2006 RICO case (described in Sharon Eubanks and my book Bad Acts), and in fact suggesting that Philip Morris/Altria/Juul deliberately used the same advertising and marketing techniques (but amped up with social media and newer advertising strategies than were not available in the earlier case) that were deemed to be RICO violations by Philip Morris and the other cigarette companies.
The fact that Juul studied how they could learn from the cigarette companies by researching how to design their product and market to kids using the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library was especially fun.