October 9, 2016
An ad summing up the five Smoke Free Movies policy goals – (1) R rating films with smoking (with two limited exceptions), (2) Certification of no payoffs for smoking, (3) Require anti-smoking ads, (4) Stop identifying brands, and (5) End subsidies for movies with smoking – is running in Variety and Hollywood Reporter tomorrow, October 11, 2016.
This ad, together with earlier ads on the history of Hollywood’s deals with Big Tobacco and how we know onscreen smoking causes kids to smoke, provides a concise summary of the whole campaign that advocates can use in their educational efforts.
(We are using these ads to prepare a range of fact sheets and graphic elements for everyone to use in their efforts, which will be available by the end of the month.
October 6, 2016
A federal court’s August 2016 ruling opened the door to FDA approving Teddy Bear cigarettes. Here’s some background to explain why: The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act requires tobacco companies to obtain FDA approval before marketing new tobacco products. This can be obtained by submitting a comprehensive new tobacco product premarket application, or by convincing the FDA that the new product is “substantially equivalent” to one already on the market.[1] In September 2015 the FDA issued a guidance document saying that a change to a product’s label that makes it “distinct” from the labeling of the existing product creates a “new tobacco product” requiring FDA review before the product can be marketed.
October 2, 2016
http://elections.kqed.org/article/2010101856865/is-marijuana-safe-enough...
Broadcase September 28, 2016
October 2, 2016
Every two years, 180 nations meet for the Conference of the Parties (COP) to review progress and problems in implementing the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and develop new guidelines and protocols.
Implementing guidelines for FCTC Article 13 (Advertising and Promotion) consider smoking in movies —paid-for or not — to be a form of tobacco promotion that needs to be controlled. In preparation for the COP this November in Delhi, India, the Convention Secretariat prepared a report, Tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship: Depiction of tobacco in entertainment media, to guide discussion of this issue. The report notes that
October 1, 2016
It has been no secret that I have been critical of the campaign to pass Proposition 56, the $2 tobacco tax that would reinvigorate the California Tobacco Control Program and fund expansion of medical care for poor people. In particular, the campaign didn’t seem to have learned from defeats of past tobacco tax initiatives in California (Propositions 29 and 86 in 2012 and 2006), which also failed to engage the tobacco companies’ misrepresentations of what the tax actually did.
The Yes on 56 campaign was running a soft feel good ad (“Butterfly”) about smoking and kids that ignored the tobacco industry’s arguments. That strategy may work in elections when you have as more money or at least about as much money as the opposition. But it never works when fighting Big Tobacco, which will spend whatever it takes to stop public health.