February 22, 2014
This is an informative email I received from Ellen Shaffer at CPATH:
Negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement are currently meeting in Singapore in the hopes of ironing out a set of thorny political issues remaining after years of talks. Among the most important of those issues is the treatment of tobacco in what would become the largest regional trading bloc in the world.
After years of study and debate, several TPP countries have endorsed the unanimous call by public health, medical, and legal organizations to support the only effective policy: excluding tobacco entirely from TPP provisions. Malaysia has proposed such a carve out.
However, the U.S. has leaked that it may propose a half-measure that will leave intact avenues for the tobacco industry to block or overturn tobacco control regulations and laws like plain packaging.
February 21, 2014
Last Sunday, February 26, 2014, San Francisco radio station KCBS broadcast a 30 minute interview with me that covered the state of tobacco control, including:
- the fact that we could reach C. Everett Koop's goal of a smokefree society in 3-5 years here in California and 10 years if people live Governor Jerry Brown and President Barack Obama were willing to stand up to Big Tobacco and do what we know works
- Smokefree movies
- the FDA
- e-cigarettes
- the fact that Jerry Brown is the first governor to take tobacco money in 20 years and that Assembly Speaker Perez, also who takes tobacco money, has aggressively protected tobacco interests in the Legislature. (Sacramento Bee editorial page editor Dan Morain had a great column on this on February 9 on this point.)
The full interview is here: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/02/17/kcbs-in-depth-ucsf-dr-stanton-glantz-on-smoking-and-the-tobacco-industry/
February 21, 2014
One of the huge potential loopholes in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act is that it allowed tobacco companies to market products that are "substantially equivalent" (SE) to existing products without going through a full FDA new product application. Products that were placed on the market before March 11, 2011 could be marketed while the FDA considered the SE application.
Yesterday, February 21, 2014, the FDA announced that it had taken its first action to require that a tobacco product be removed from the market on the grounds that it is not "substantially equivalent" to a pre-existing product.
As the FDA stated in its press release,
February 16, 2014
There has been a lot of coverage of the federal indictment of former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell and his wife Maureen for accepting bribes from Star Scientific, which makes two anatabine-based dietary supplements: CigRx®, a tobacco alternative; and Anatabloc®, for anti-inflammatory support. The media attention has been focused on "gifts" of use of a house, Ferrari, paying for a wedding dress, and a Rolex watch.
What has got less attention is that the thing that Star Scientific wanted was for scientists at two state universities, University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University, to do studies designed to prove that Anatabloc was beneficial. Moreover, to hide Star's role as a sponsor and to save the company from paying for the research, Star (and Gov McDonnell) wanted the state's Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission (which provides grants for the promotion of economic growth and development in tobacco dependent communities using proceeds of the Master Settlement Agreement) to pay for the studies.
Star also wanted state employees to serve as research subjects.
February 16, 2014
On February 15, the New York Times reported the election year politics were making it all but impossible for President Obama to get "fast track" authority he needs to get the TransPacific Partnership (and likely a similar TransAtlantic deal) through Congress. Fast track is an agreement in which Congress cedes is authority to amend a trade deal and only allows an up-or-down vote. It effectively freezes the public out of the process.
According to the Times, "Last month, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he had no plans to schedule a vote on trade promotion authority. On Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi told reporters that giving Mr. Obama that authority was “out of the question.”