January 24, 2017
Most people know me for my work on tobacco, but I have also been active in higher education funding policy. Here is a press release abot a major new report I helped write. The full report is available here.
Public Higher Education: Free Tuition for California Students to the UC, CSU and Community College Systems Is Possible Today
January 24, 2017--A tuition-free college education in California is possible. A new policy paper released today demonstrates that it is entirely possible today to provide the same accessible, low-cost university experience that California successfully offered its students from the 1960s through the 1990s.
The report demonstrates that we can revive the California Master Plan for Higher Education—eliminating tuition, restoring state per student funding to where it was in 2000 (adjusted for inflation), and providing seats for all students—would only cost the median California household $48 per year.
The paper, The $48 fix: Reclaiming California’s Master Plan for Higher Education, is collaboratively authored by a working group of academics whose exhaustive research points the way to a logical, coherent way for California to afford no-cost community college and university tuition.
January 22, 2017
Lauren Dutra and I just published “E-cigarettes and National Adolescent Cigarette Use: 2004–2014” in Pediatrics. Here is the press release that UCSF issued on it:
E-Cigarettes are Expanding Tobacco Product Use Among Youth
First National Analysis Shows E-Cigarettes Attract Low-Risk Adolescents Who Were Unlikely to Start Smoking
January 19, 2017
The Hill just reported that the FDA has issued its first ever product standard, to limit the amount of tobacco-specific nitrosamine N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) to 1 microgram per gram of smokeless tobacco. The FDA would also require an expiration date on smokeless tobacco (because this carcinogen builds up over time due to bacterial action in the tobacco).
Here is the FDA’s summary of the proposed rule, which is scheduled to be released for public comment on Monday in the Federal Register.
SUMMARY: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing a tobacco product standard that would establish a limit of N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) in finished smokeless tobacco products. FDA is taking this action because NNN is a potent carcinogenic agent found in smokeless tobacco products and is a major contributor to the elevated cancer risks associated with smokeless tobacco use. Because products with higher NNN levels pose higher risks of cancer, FDA finds that establishing a NNN limit in finished smokeless tobacco products is appropriate for the protection of the public health.
January 10, 2017
Eric Soule and colleagues recently published an important paper documenting that people around e-cigarettes can be exposed to levels of particulate air pollution as high as has been measured in smoky bars. Their paper “Electronic cigarette use and indoor air quality in a natural setting” published in Tobacco Control reporting the results of measuring the levels of air pollution at an “e-cigarette event” in a hotel meeting room where they measured the levels of fine particle air pollution during the event.
Specifically, they found very high levels of particles, varying between 300 and 820 µg/m3 . These are levels that are found in very smoky bars or major forest fires. (The levels were less than 4 µg/m3 before the event.
These measurements probably underestimate actual levels of pollution because the Sidepak device that was used to collect the data does not detect particles below 1 micron, which includes many e-cigarette aerosol particles.
Here is the abstract:
NTRODUCTION:
January 5, 2017
Tory Spindle and colleagues at VCU recently published a study, “Electronic cigarette use and uptake of cigarette smoking: A longitudinal examination of U.S. college students,” that followed 3757 students at Virginia Commonwealth University for a year to examine the relationship between e-cigarette use among never cigarette smokers at the beginning and whether they were smoking conventional cigarettes a year later. They found, controlling for a wide range of demographic and behavioral variables, that e-cigarette users at baseline were about 3.4 times as likely to be smoking cigarettes a year later as young adults who were not using e-cigarettes.
This effect is consistent with a similar study of young adult males in Switzerland as well as all the studies of adolescents.
Here are the highlights and the abstract:
HIGHLIGHTS
• E-cig and cigarette use has not been studied in college students longitudinally.