March 30, 2014
The reason that I have been so quiet for the past three weeks is that I was on vacation in Costa Rica (a great smokefree place) for two weeks, then attending the Fourth Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Tobacco or Health in San Jose Costa Rica.
The conference, organized by the Costa Rica Ministry of Health and Interamerican Heart Foundation with support of a range of agencies, brouught together about 400 energized and committed public health professionals for serious discussions about progress to date and how to deal with the tobacco companies' increasing aggressive opposition.
There was way too much going on to provide a detailed report, but in many ways the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries are well ahead of the USA. Here are some examples:
March 6, 2014
Earlier this week my colleagues Rachel Grana and Pam Ling published “Smoking Revolution”: A Content Analysis of Electronic Cigarette Retail Websites in American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
They find that e-cigarettes are being aggressively marketed with health claims and smoking cessation messages that are not supported by the available evidence. Meanwhile the Obama Administration sits quietly.
Maybe the state attorneys general will go after them for fraud.
Here is the abstract:
Background: Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have been increasingly available and marketed in the U.S. since 2007. As patterns of product adoption are frequently driven and reinforced by marketing, it is important to understand the marketing claims encountered by consumers.
Purpose: To describe the main advertising claims made on branded e-cigarette retail websites.
Methods: Websites were retrieved from two major search engines in 2011 using iterative searches with the following terms: electronic cigarette, e-cigarette, e-cig, and personal vaporizer. Fifty-nine websites met inclusion criteria, and 13 marketing claims were coded for main marketing messages in 2012.
March 6, 2014
Today JAMA Pediatrics is publishing our study of the relationship between e-cigarette and cigarette use in 40,000 US kids. The paper is available here; the accompanying editorial is available here.
Here is the UCSF press release about the study:
UC SAN FRANCISCO
Jennifer O’Brien, Executive Director/Public Affairs
Source: Elizabeth Fernandez (415) 502-6397 (NEWS)
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: www.ucsf.edu
Twitter: @EFernandezUCSF
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2014
TO COINCIDE WITH PUBLICATION IN JAMA PEDIATRICS
E-Cigarettes: Gateway to Nicotine Addiction for U.S. Teens, Says UCSF Study
First National Analysis Strongly Associates E-Cigarettes with Smoking for Many Adolescents
March 5, 2014
On March 4, 2014 the City Councils for both Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA, unanimously passed laws adding e-cigs to their clean indoor air laws.
The ecig/tobacco companies pulled out all the stops to fight the LA ordinance, including hiring well-connected lobbyists, running radio ads and robocalls, but in the end the City Council resisted the pressure and enacted a strong law that will protect people in indoor workplaces, restuarants, bars and other public places and some outdoor areas from ecigarette air pollution.
The LA ordinance does allow e-cigarette use in vaping lounges; the specific language is being prepared now. It is important that these establishments be defined carefully as places that only sell e-cigarettes and related materials. In particular, they should not be allowed to serve food and drink to avoid opening up a loophole in the law.
The Long Beach law is even more comprehensive. Here is a summary of what happened there from the Coalition for a Smokefree Long Beach:
March 3, 2014
The e-cig/tobacco companies are trotting out the argument that the LA City Council does not need to include e-cigs in its clean indoor air law and instead wait for the FDA to regulate e-cigs.
This reminds me of how, back in the 1990s, while fighting federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration efforts to issue a smokefree workplace rule, the tobacco companies were telling local city councils that they didn't need to pass clean indoor air laws but rather wait for OSHA (which never did issue the rule).
The industry assertions that LA (and other cities and states) should wait for the FDA is even more cynical. Leaving aside the Obama Administration FDA's flaccid performance in actually doing anything meaningful to regulate tobacco, as I pointed out last summer, the fact is that the FDA has no jurisdiction to regulate WHERE people use e-cigarettes.
Big tobacco and their flacks know this.
The LA City Council should see past this (and the other) phony arguments and pass a strong law keeping indoor spaces free of e-cigarette pollution.