February 11, 2014
I will be presenting a free webinar on smoking in the movies that will present the current science, policy solutions, and state of play on February 25, 2014 from 10:00 - 11:30 Pacific Time sponsored by the UCSF Smoking Cessation Leadership Center.
The webinar is free, but the Smoking Cessation leadership center asks people to register in advance here: https://cc.readytalk.com/r/3eecieimeib4&eom
Interested people can get CME credits, too.
The new ITC study of US smokers is a treasure trove of data; shows continuing "softening" of smoking
February 8, 2014
The International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project released an extensive report summarizing data collected from US smokers last week that provides a very detailed view of what has and has not changed for smokers' between 2002 (when the first wave was collected) through 2011 (when the last wave was collected).
The ITC project is a longitudinal study, which follows the same people forward in time, so it gives the best view of what is changing and what is staying the same for smokers.
In order to keep their sample size big enough to draw reasonably precise conclusions, however, the ITC project recruits additional smokers at each survey wave (roughly annually) to replace smokers who quit or die, so there is the possibility that the nature of the cohort is changing over time. This could be a particularly important effect if, as smoking prevalence drops, the remaining smokers are increasingly the "hard core" who harm reduction advocates describe as people who "will not or cannot quit."
February 5, 2014
CVS's decision to stop selling cigarettes has been generating a huge positive response and, as I discussed yesterday, could make a substantial contribution to further denormalizing smoking and the tobacco industry.
I was just on NPR's The Takeaway talking about the implications of the CVS decision and they played a clip of the movie Thank You for Smoking that highlighted how effectively Big Tobacco used Hollywood to hook kids on cigs. In my comments I made the point that onscreen smoking is the most important factor promoting smoking to kids today and an R rating for smoking would prevent the early deaths of 1,000,000 kids alive today.
February 5, 2014
Yesterday the FDA launched its $115 million anti-smoking ad campaign on television, radio, the internet, and other media. The ads, designed to educate at risk youth about the loss of control they will suffer if they smoke are well done and strongly presented.
Like the Legacy Foundation's effective "truth" campaign the ads, while directly targeted to youth include messages that have strong potential to "trickle up" to young adults who, as the Surgeon General pointed out in 2012 and again in 2014, are right in the tobacco companies' marketing bulls eye. These ads, especially the "bully" series also could stimulate older smokers to quit.
February 5, 2014
In a move that shows real corporate social responsibility CVS/Caremark pharmacies has announced that is it going to stop selling cigarettes. This is an important substantive move that further removes exposure to tobacco and tobacco marketing from more people's lives and will make an important contribution to reaching former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop's vision of a smokefree society.
In press accounts CVS had said that they doubt that this move will actually reduce smoking. I think that is too pessimistic an assessment. Millions of people visit their pharmacies and removing tobacco imagery will almost certainly help prevent relapse of people who are trying to quit smoking. It is also one less place (actually over 7000 less places) that former smokers will be tempted to impulse by a pack of cigarettes.