December 11, 2015
Lucy Popova and I, together with colleagues here at UCSF and at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and University of California, Davis Medical Center just published "Testing antismoking messages for Air Force trainees" in Tobacco Control.
We tested a vartiety of existing anto-smoking ads on Air Force recruits and found that ads featuring negative effects of tobacco on health and sexual performance coupled with revealing tobacco industry manipulations had the most consistent pattern of effects on perceived harm and intentions. This means that anti-smoking advertisements produced for the general public might also be effective with a young adult military population and be a cost-effective tool to educate young adults in the military.
Here is the abstract:
Introduction Young adults in the military are aggressively targeted by tobacco companies and are at high risk of tobacco use. Existing antismoking advertisements developed for the general population might be effective in educating young adults in the military. This study evaluated the effects of different themes of existing antismoking advertisements on perceived harm and intentions to use cigarettes and other tobacco products among Air Force trainees.
December 9, 2015
“A license to kill is also a license not to kill,” says James Bond’s new boss, the mysterious M, in Spectre (2015).
The film’s producers didn’t pay attention. Despite years of warnings from WHO and the CDC, tobacco shows up in the latest Bond film alongside a record twenty-three product placements for beer, watches, cars and other brands.
Spectre’s opening shot shows a giant skeleton puffing a cigar in a Mexico City parade on the Day of the Dead. Bond (Daniel Craig) soon has Spectre assassin Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona) — and Sciarra’s cigarette — in his sniper scope.
Those are the only tobacco images in the two-and-a-half hour film. Yet by 6 December 2015, they had delivered 247 million tobacco impressions to US and Canadian moviegoers alone.
December 7, 2015
Kai-Wen Cheng, Feng Liu, Mariaelena Gonzalez, and I just published “THE EFFECTS OF WORKPLACE CLEAN INDOOR AIR LAW COVERAGE ON WORKERS’ SMOKING-RELATED OUTCOMES,” in Health Economics, which adds to the literature that smokefree workplace laws not only protect people from secondhand smoke but also facilitate quitting.
Here is the abstract:
December 4, 2015
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued a draft rule making some public housing (cigarette and cigar) smokefree, including the required “regulatory impact analysis” (RIA, cost-benefit analysis in plain English). Like similar analyses that the Obama Administration FDA has produced, it wildly overstates costs and understates benefits.
My colleagues and I at UCSF will be putting in a formal public comment on both the rule itself as well as the cost-benefit analysis, but I thought it would be worth sharing my preliminary thoughts on the regulatory impact analysis in case this information would be helpful to others.
The biggest issues are:
November 24, 2015
Hollywood's animated characters are smoking less — a lot less.
From 2002 to 2011, Breathe California's Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! data shows that 27 percent of top-grossing animated films featured tobacco. The top three in terms of audience exposure:
#1. Rango (PG, 2011, Viacom) with more than fifty tobacco incidents on screen, delivered 948 million domestic tobacco impressions.
#2. The Incredibles (PG, 2004, Disney) with more than twenty tobacco incidents, delivered 925 million tobacco impressions.
#3. The Simpsons Movie (PG-13, 2007, Fox), also with more than twenty tobacco incidents, delivered 586 million tobacco impressions.
Other animated films delivering more than 100 million tobacco impressions each:
Bee Movie (PG, 2007, Viacom)
Corpse Bride (PG, 2005, Time Warner)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (PG, 2009, Fox)
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (PG, 2004, Time Warner)
The Ant Bully (PG, 2006, Time Warner)