June 25, 2015
The new site features easier searching, better display of results, and linkage to other industry document collections.
Check it out at https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/.
PS: Exiting links to documents using the old legacy.libraty.ucsf.edu still work.
June 24, 2015
Smokeless tobacco and, more recently, e-cigarettes have been promoted as a harm reduction strategy for smokers who are “unable or unwilling to quit.” The strategy, embraced by both industry and some public health advocates, is based on the assumption that as smoking declines overall, only those who cannot quit will remain. A new study by researchers at UC San Francisco has found just the opposite.
The researchers analyzed survey data spanning 18 years in the United States and six years in the European Union. They found that, contrary to the prevailing assumptions, as the fraction of the population that smoked declined, the remaining smokers actually smoked less and were more likely to quit than to stick with it. The authors said their findings challenge the need to promote new forms of nicotine delivery, such as e-cigarettes, since the smoking population continues to quit smoking as a result of proven policies and interventions.
The paper, titled, “The smoking population in the USA and the EU is softening not hardening,” appears online in the June 24, 2015 issue of the journal Tobacco Control.
June 21, 2015
Frank Dusemund and colleagues just published a paper in Tobacco Control reporting a 22.4% drop in hospitalizations for acute exacerbated chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Graubünden, Switzerland after it passed a strong comprehensive smokefree law. This is a significantly larger drop than the 7.0% drop observed in the rest of Switzerland.
This drop is consistent with the 24% drop (95% CI 15% to 32%) in hospitalizations for respiratory conditions that we found in our 2012 meta-analysis of the effects of smoking restrictions on hospitalizations for heart attacks, strokes, and pulmonary conditions.
The list just keeps growing.
The economic argument, long trumpeted by the tobacco companies and their allies and front groups, has strongly become an argument for such laws. Public health advocates should be making these arguments not only for smokefree laws, but for tobacco control in general.
Here is their abstract:
June 21, 2015
Jasper Been and colleagues recently published a paper, “Smoke-free legislation and childhood hospitalizations for respiratory tract infections,” that is an important addition to the evidence that there are rapid health benefits following implementation of smokefree laws.
This paper examines hospital admissions for respiratory tract infections among children under 15 in England before and after implementation of England’s smokefree law in July 2007. They found that admissions immediately dropped by 3.5% following the law, with continuing declines after that. Between mide-2007 when the law passed and 2012 there were about 11,000 fewer hospital admissions for childhood respiratory tract infections than would have been expected based on patterns before the law.
That’s only a big positive health impact, but it is an immediate savings in medical costs.
Here is the abstract:
June 17, 2015
The UN is in the process of preparing a new set of Sustainable Development Goals, a follow-on to the existing Millennium Development Goals. This is a very important document because it guides a wide range of government and NGO policies worldwide. The final document, goals and targets will be approved by the UN Member States in September.
The Co-Chairs of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals released the Zero Draft of the document proposing goals and targets for the post-2015 agenda and invited comment. The Zero Draft is long, but do not be intimidated. Our comments refer to the relevant sections for tobacco, so you can jump to them.
The good news is that the draft specifically addresses accelerating implementation of the WHO FCTC and mentions decreasing premature mortality from NCDs. However, there is not enough specificity about tobacco, the draft does not list the FCTC as part of global commitments, and does not exclude the tobacco industry from public-private, as required by the FCTC. This exclusion could be exploited by the tobacco companies as an endorsement of their “corporate social responsibility” efforts that are designed to undermine implementing the FCTC and effective tobacco control policies.