October 30, 2015
The American Academy of Pediatics just released new Tobacco Prevention Guidelines. Among other things, the guidelines say:
"Advertising and promotion is a cause of tobacco use initiation in adolescents. Therefore, tobacco advertising and promotion that is accessible to children should be prohibited, including point-of-sale advertising, product placements in movies and other entertainment media, and promotion in print or Internet-based media accessible to youths.” [Emphasis added]
They also recommended against use of e-cigarettes for cessation.
October 30, 2015
The Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! movie database, created by Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails, contains detailed information on smoking in over 2300 movies released since 2002. Working with your volunteers, Breathe updates the database every week. This information forms the backbone of all the lists and charts on the Smoke Free Movies site.
Now you can search it for yourself. You can access it from a link in the upper right corner of the Smoke Free Movies website or directly at http://tutd.library.ucsf.edu.
Check it out!
October 24, 2015
Check it out at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/business/us-chamber-of-commerces-focus...
It is based on a lot of information in the tobacco industry documents. See for yourself at http://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu
October 21, 2015
Recently I received the following email from a colleague working for a state health department:
Throughout the last six months my colleges and I have been hearing professionals refer to e-cigarettes as harm reduction. A few months ago I was attending a Youth Engagement Alliance webinar where Dr. Terry Pechacek was presenting. During his presentation made it sound like e-cigarettes are harm reduction and mentioned moving all current cigarette smokers to exclusive use of e-cigarettes. Then a few weeks ago after meeting with an individual who works at our state health department he stated that he had heard something similar at a conference he attended a few weeks ago by Dr. Brian King. Now we are seeing more and more information come out to the public referring to e-cigarettes as less harmful than cigarettes. How should public health advocates respond to statements like this from well-known individuals when a large amount of our work has been focused on educating on the harms of e-cigarettes?
Any insight or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.
To provide some clarity, I contacted both Brian King and Terry Pechacek to see if this is an accurate understanding of what they think.
Here is what Brian King said:
October 18, 2015
Joe Nocera, the New York Times business columnist, ran another column extolling the virtues of e-cigarettes on October 17, 2015. He posed the rhetorical question, “Can e-cigarettes save lives?” and, not surprisingly, answered it “Of course they can.” Consistent with the industry’s position, he argued that public health would be better off if smokers switched from cigarettes to less dangerous e-cigarettes.
He would be right if that was all that was happening, but it isn’t. While some smokers do switch to e-cigarettes, most continue to use both at the same time (so called dual users). More important, there is consistent evidence that smokers who use e-cigarettes are less (not more) likely to quit smoking than smokers who do not use e-cigarettes.