December 27, 2015
We just submitted the following public comment to the FTC regarding its proposal to monitor e-cigarette marketing. This is not only valualbe in its own right, but would also provide useful information to the FDA should the Obama Administration actually let the FDA do anything about e-cigarettes. The comment is also available as a PDF here. The FTC tracking number is 00032.
Detailed information and reports on electronic cigarette marketing and sales is essential for understanding the skyrocketing popularity and use of various electronic cigarette products among youth and young adults
FTC File No. P144504
Lauren K. Lempert, JD MPH
Benjamin W. Chaffee, DDS PhD
Lucy Popova, PhD
Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, PhD
Margarete C. Kulik, PhD
Stanton A. Glantz, PhD
UCSF Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science
Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education
University of California, San Francisco
FTC proposal is at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/FTC/InitiativeDocFiles/750/Notice.pdf
December 23, 2015
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: