August 12, 2015
We just submitted a 29 page comment responding to the questions that FDA posed regarding packaging and warning labels for liquid nicotine and related products.
Feel free to use this information in preparing your comments. (The deadline for submitting them is the end of the month.)
The full comment is available here.
The tracking number is 1jz-8kin-qyu8.
July 27, 2015
Pru Talbot and her colleages at UC Riverside just published an important paper, "Unexpected nicotine in do-it-yourself electronic cigarette flavourings" in Tobacco Control. The title says it all.
The bottom line of the paper is:
The current finding of nicotine in DIY flavouring products that are expected to be nicotine free and our prior finding that a DIY bottle of nicotine (134.7 mg/mL) was unlabelled, are important public health problems. These products, which are presented to the consumer as ‘nicotine free’ (http://www.tastypuff.com/product/joosy-froot/), could lead to unwanted addiction, poisoning, or even death.
They go on to recommend
July 27, 2015
On July 23, 2015, I posted my first comment on Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on Marijuana Policy releasing its report “Pathways Report: Policy Options for Regulating Marijuana in California,” (link) with primarily positive critiques. The report addressed important public health issues that in many cases aligned with the Tobacco Education Research Oversight Committee’s (TEROC) recommendations to the Blue Ribbon Commission (which likely were received after the report had been finalized so probably did not influence the report’s language).
Rachel Barry, a member of my research team and I have now completed a side-by-side comparison of the TEROC and BRC recommendations (table below, PDF).
July 23, 2015
On July 21, 2015 Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy released its report “Pathways Report: Policy Options for Regulating Marijuana in California,” which provides broad policy recommendations on legalizing marijuana in California. The report recognizes the potential problems of a wealthy profit-motivated marijuana industry and the potential damage to public health.
Overall, this report is thoughtful and contained several strong recommendations on local control, public usage, health messaging, research priorities, and marketing/advertising restrictions supportive of tobacco control.
It recognizes that big money and corporatization of marijuana poses serious problems for public health. This is probably the most important conclusion in the report.
“Develop a highly regulated market with enforcement and oversight capacity from the beginning, not an unregulated free market; this industry should not be California’s next Gold Rush.” (P. 23)
Health advocates need to put heat on California "GO" Committee to rescue tobacco control legislation
July 22, 2015
For years (decades?) the Assembly Government Organization Committee (GO) is where the Assembly Speaker sends tobacco control legislation to die.
It served this function recently when it killed two bills that had passed the Senate, one to include e-cigarettes in California’s clean indoor air law and youth access law and another to raise the age of purchase of tobacco to 21.
Adam Gray (D-Merced), of course, denied that all the tobacco money he accepted had any effect on his policy decisions. According to a story in the San Jose Mercury News,
Gray refuted health advocates' claims that the $38,100 in campaign contributions he's accepted from tobacco companies over the last 2 1/2 years, including $8,400 he received in May, has influenced his work under the Capitol dome. He also denied having any contact with Big Tobacco about the bill.
"My re-election campaign and my public policy work are entirely separate issues," Gray said. "I don't talk about them together because campaign contributions never have any impact on the public policy decisions I make as a lawmaker."