October 5, 2018
The report by Public Health England that concluded that e-cigs are 95% safer than conventional cigarettes continues to be widely quoted to oppose sesnibe regulation of e-cigarettes.
As I have noted before, there were many problems with the PHE report the day it was released in August 2015.
But, given that research on e-cigarettes is rapidly accumulating, the most serious criticism of the PHE report is now that it is bacdly out-of-date. It was released over 3 years ago (and written some time before that), before almost all the research supporting our current understanding of e-cigarettes was published.
For example, since PHE was published, we know that:
October 1, 2018
Wendy Max and her colleagues at UCSF just published “Modelling the impact of a new tobacco product: review of Philip Morris International’s Population Health Impact Model as applied to the IQOS heated tobacco product” in Tobacco Control. This paper uses the information published in Philip Morris International’s Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) application that was submitted to the FDA to assess the confidence that one can have in PMI’s prediction that, on balance, IQOS would have net population benefits.
They find many biases in the construction of the model and the assumptions behind it, all of which tend to overstate benefits and understate risks, which make PMI’s economic model inappropriate for public health decision making.
Another more general contribution of the paper are extensive supplementary tables that describe all the available models and their strengths and weaknesses.
Here is the abstract:
September 30, 2018
Several people have asked me what I thought of the letter Clive Bates and three other people sent to Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of the World Health Organisation of September 4, 2018 complaining about WHO’s position on e-cigarettes and other tobacco industry “harm reduction products.”
The first thing that struck me is that there were only 4 signatories, compared to the 53 on a similar letter he sent to WHO back in 2014. I have no doubt that, with a little more time, Clive could have lined up some more signatures, but the list of people who are still buying his ideas is shrinking as the evidence for the dangers of these products keeps piling up:
September 17, 2018
Lauren Lempert listened in to the presentations and scientific discussion of the RJR application to market Camel Snus as a modified (i.e., reduced) risk tobacco product on September 14, 2018. After that session, she and I prepared this public comment, which we submitted to the FDA Camel Snus MRTP docket. The tracking number is 1k2-95hg-nfon and a PDF of the comment is available here.
COMMENT PREPARED AFTER THE TPSAC MEETIING ON CAMEL SNUS
RJR failed to demonstrate that Camel Snus, as actually used by consumers, will significantly reduce harm to individuals or benefit population health. FDA should not issue an MRTP order allowing RJR to market Camel Snus with modified risk claims
Lauren K. Lempert, JD MPH; Stanton A. Glantz, PhD
UCSF TCORS
Docket FDA-2017-N-4678-0001
September 17, 2018
September 14, 2018
Stella Bialous and I just published “Heated tobacco products: another tobacco industry global strategy to slow progress in tobacco control” in Tobacco Control discussing how the latest round of heated tobacco products fits into and supports the tobacco companies’ political efforts to avoid meaningful regulation and protect their ability to sell all their products – including conventional cigarettes.
We see these products as a reaction to the effective reductions in tobacco use that are being implemented around the world, including those stimulated by the FCTC: