July 28, 2016
The fourteen states hand out the most lavish subsidies to Hollywood film producers together spent $1.48 billion on movies proven to recruit kids to smoke from 2010 to 2016 — $150 million more than they invested over the same period to reduce smoking.
Smokefree Movies now tracks top subsidy states and countries, updating our dollar estimates weekly. Watch the totals grow at How you pay...
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2010 to 2016, six individual states spent more to subsidize smoking movies than on programs to reduce smoking: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada and New Mexico.
New York State and Pennsylvania spent nearly as much to promote smoking as they did to reduce smoking. California, Connecticut and North Carolina spent at least two-thirds as much on films with smoking as they did on tobacco control.*
July 26, 2016
Matt Springer and our colleagues at UCSF just published "One Minute of Marijuana Secondhand Smoke Exposure Substantially Impairs Vascular Endothelial Function" in Journal of the American Heart Association. Here is the press release UCSF sent out about the paper, which provides a good summary:
One minute of exposure to second-hand smoke (SHS) from marijuana diminishes blood vessel function to the same extent as tobacco, but the harmful cardiovascular effects last three times longer, according to a new study in rats led by UC San Francisco researchers.
In a healthy animal, increased blood flow prompts arteries to widen, a process known as flow-mediated dilation (FMD). When FMD is compromised, as happens during SHS exposure, blood flow is impeded, and the risks of heart attack, atherosclerosis and other heart problems increase, said UCSF’s Matthew Springer, PhD, professor of medicine and senior author of the new study.
“Your blood vessels can carry more blood if they sense that they need to pass more blood to the tissues,” Springer said. “They dilate to allow more blood through. But that’s inhibited by exposure to smoke.”
July 25, 2016
Jan Czogala and colleagues just published “Secondhand exposure to vapors from electronic cigarettes” in Nicotine and Tobacco Research in which they measured the air pollution produced by e-cigarettes using both smoking machines and, more important, actual use by people in the same room.
They found, not surprisingly, that e-cigarettes pollute the air with nicotine and fine particles. This is what one would expect because, unlike conventional cigarettes, e-cigarettes do not generate any sidestream smoke because they do not smolder between puffs the way conventional cigarettes do. Because they do not burn tobacco, they do not put combustion products into the air.
July 19, 2016
This is a very important development, given all the money that Big Tobacco has thrown at African American leadership and media over the years.
I am particularly proud of the role that UCSF's Valerie Yerger (right) and Carol McGruder (left) have played in this effort.
Once less excuse that the Obama Administration has for blocking FDA action on menthol, too.
July 18, 2016
Our latest Smoke Free Movies, which runs in Variety and Hollywood Reporter this week, ad traces the relationship between Big Tobacco and Hollywood since the 1920's. Check out the ad and the details of the history at http://smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/sfm-ads/ad-113
