February 11, 2016
When President Obama announced his new "War on Cancer" I decided it would be worth a blog post commenting on how the fastest, most cost-effective way to reduce cancer would be to reduce smoking.
After all, we know how to do it. All it takes is political will.
Before I had a chance to draft such a post Allan Erickson, who led tobacco control efforts at the American Cancer Society until he retired, sent me this letter, which makes all the points I would have made.
It is worth a read.
BEGINNING THE END OF TOBACCO USE
February 6, 2016
Joe Biden, Vice President, United States of America
Dear Mr. Vice President:
We commend you on your important new assignment to lead the revitalized ‘War on Cancer’ as President Obama announced in his State-of-the-Union speech. We are aware that the organization and planning for this major effort are well underway, and we hear the thrust of the so-called ‘War’ is to be focused on research, early detection and treatment of cancer.
February 8, 2016
Eric Crosbie, Patricia Sosa, and I just published "The importance of continued engagement during the implementation phase of tobacco control policies in a middle-income country: the case of Costa Rica" in Tobacco Control.
February 3, 2016
Guild awards ceremony, the American Lung Association publicly criticized him, which was reported by the celebrity website TMZ, the Dolby Theater where the Oscars are held announced that their ceremony would be smokefree, including e-cigarettes. (Full story here and here.)
There is still no official confirmation from the Academy itself.
Let's hope that this decision to stop promoting tobacco at the Oscar ceremony is foreshadowing a more substantial institutions response from Hollywood to stop promoting smoking by implementing an R rating for smoking movies.
February 2, 2016
The MPAA just announced that Hail, Caesar! — the new Coen Bros. film opening nationally on Friday 5 February 2016 — has been rated “PG-13 for some suggestive content and smoking."
The film is distributed by Universal Pictures (Comcast).
The MPAA began adding “smoking” descriptors – small-print labels – to its ratings of a small fraction of wide-release movies with tobacco imagery in 2007. Through 2014, 88 percent of top-grossing, youth-rated films with smoking carried no “smoking” label, including three-quarters of PG-13 films with more then fifty tobacco incidents.
In 2015, a UCSF-Breathe California analysis of the MPAA’s descriptors concluded:
The device of labeling one out-of eight youth-rated films with smoking may lead the public to believe mistakenly that it can rely on MPAA’s ratings to inform parents about the presence of and risk from smoking on screen. In contrast, the 2014 Surgeon General report stated that an R rating for smoking would reduce youth smoking by 18 percent. Reference
The Coen Bros. have made eight top-grossing films since 2003, and also had screenwriting credits on Unbroken (2014) and Bridge of Spies (2015). Here’s a breakout:
February 2, 2016
We just released a new report that evaluates the retail marijuana legalization proposals in California from a public health standard. While the specific initiatives are in California, the issues apply everywhere. Here is the UCSF press release on the report. The full report is available here.
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE
11 am (ET), Tuesday, February 2, 2016
To coincide with publication in eScholarship Initiative
UC San Francisco
Jennifer O’Brien, Asst. Vice Chancellor/Public Affairs
Source: Elizabeth Fernandez (415) 502-6397
[email protected] | @EFernandezUCSF
Legalized Marijuana in California Could Hurt Public Health, Analysis Says
UCSF Study of Proposed State Initiatives Could Create a New “Tobacco Industry” If Unchecked