May 4, 2016
Today, May 4, 2016, Governor Jerry Brown signed five tobacco control bills into law as part of the Governor’s special legislative session.
The Legislature's passage and Governor Brown's signing of these six laws represents Sacramento standing up against Big Tobacco for the first time in a long time and restoring California's leadership position in fighting Big Tobacco. Bringing e-cigarettes into the California's clean indoor air and tobacco licensing laws, closing loopholes in the state's clean indoor air law, raising in the age to 21, and ending the raid on California's anti-tobacco education and research activities to pay for enforcing tobacco license laws are all big steps forward.
In particular, it is a reversal of the trend we documented in out 2014 report, Tobacco Control in California, 2007-2014: A Resurgent Tobacco Industry While Inflation Erodes the California Tobacco Control Program. The last, seemingly minor bill changing the way retailer liscense fees are handled will increase funding for California's tobacco control and research programs by about $2.5 million a year (that had been getting diverted to pay for the licensing programs).
May 3, 2016
In June 2015 we published our paper “The smoking population in the USA and EU is softening not hardening” in the journal Tobacco Control. We showed that as smoking prevalence has declined over time, quit attempts increased in the USA and remained stable in Europe, US quit ratios increased (no data for EU), and consumption dropped in the USA and Europe. These results contradict the hardening hypothesis which is often used as part of the tobacco industry’s strategy to avoid meaningful regulation and protect its political agenda and markets, claiming that there is a need for harm reduction among those smokers who “cannot or will not quit.” Indeed, rather than “hardening” the remaining smoking population is “softening.”
In February 2016 we received an email from Robert West, editor of the journal Addiction, informing us that Addiction was about to publish an article by Plurphanswat and Rodu entitled “A Critique of Kulik and Glantz: Is the smoking population in the US really softening?” whose sole purpose was to critique our Tobacco Control paper, and offered to let us respond to the criticism.
May 1, 2016
That’s what Hollywood's attorneys are apparently asking a judge to decide. It’s the film industry’s first official response to the national class-action lawsuit filed against the MPAA and its member companies in March.
Read a summary of their legal logic in the entertainment industry trade journal The Hollywood Reporter posted shortly after the lawyers’ filing on Friday, 29 April 2016.
Or, better yet, read their actual filings, linked below and compare what they say (or don't say) in response to the facts in the plaintiff's case.
Invoking the First Amendment just to keep selling cigarettes to kids seems like overkill. Why don’t they just stop doing it?
April 30, 2016
Fox's new promotional trailer for 'Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie,' hitting theaters in July 2016, shows London fashionista Patsy lighting up a Rothmans cigarette — while coyly covering up the UK health warning on the front of the box.
'Absolutely Fabulous' revives a cringe-inducing British TV comedy series (1992-2012) starring Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon and Joanna Lumley as Patsy Stone.
The 'official international trailer' shows other smokers, including partying supermodel Kate Moss, who is pushed off a parapet into the Thames. Spoiler alert: Moss emerges from the river with her cigarette intact.
Rothmans, a British American Tobacco brand, is gaining market share in Europe.
The MPAA has R-rated 'Absolutely Fabulous' for 'language including sexual references, and some drug use.' The BBC Films production opens in the US on 22 July 2016
This item is cross-posted from http://smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/blog/summers-ab-fab-movie-features-cigar...
April 30, 2016
While e-cigarettes deliver lower levels of carcinogens than conventional cigarettes, they deliver the same, or a more dangerous, amount of ultrafine particles than conventional cigarettes. Ultrafine particles trigger inflammatory processes that lead to heart and lung disease and can trigger heart attacks. E-cigarette optimists have discounted possible effects of the ultrafine particles in e-cigarettes, arguing that the literature linking particles to heart disease and heart attacks is based on research on air pollution and active and passive smoking, all of which involve combustion.
A new, very well done study by Roberto Carnevale and colleagues, “Acute impact of tobacco versus electronic cigarette smoking on oxidative stress and vascular function,” published in Chest on April 11, 2016, puts this argument to rest. They show that smoking one e-cigarette impacts the functioning of arteries as much as smoking a conventional tobacco cigarette in nonsmokers and smokers alike.