November 25, 2013
November 24, 2013
A couple years ago the California Legislature passed a sensible law designed to stop inappropriate outsourcing of state government positions, a favorite ploy of Republicans to give tax money to their corporate pals at the expense of middle class workers. While I support this position the reality is that there are some times when it does make sense for the Department of Public Health to contract with outside agencies. The way that the California Department of Public Health has interpreted this law has led to some longstanding elements of the California Tobacco Control Program being defunded.
The Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, which has responsibility to oversee the program and advise the department and State Legislature has been pressing the Department on this issue.
Given the potential seriousness of this situation I decided to add my voice to the discussion by sending the following letter:
November 21, 2013
Secretary Diana Dooley
California Health and Human Services Agency
1600 Ninth Street, Room 460
Sacramento, CA 95814
Ron Chapman, MD, MPH
Director and State Health Officer
California Department of Public Health
1615 Capitol Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95814
Dear Secretary Dooley and Director Chapman:
November 24, 2013
Once of the concerns that I had about the FDA getting into the tobacco business was that it would divert limited resources available to the public health community into useless bureaucratic processes.
This concern was realized in spades as people worked to get public comments into the FDA in response to its request for public comments on its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM) on menthol.
The FDA is required to consider information submitted by the public (including the tobacco companies as well as public health and other interested parties) to its "docket," which is the office record of submitted materials. Only comments submitted to the docket can be considered.
The way that the FDA has chosen to interpret this requirement, however, has generated a lot of extra work that adds nothing of substance to the discussion, as the following tale from the Tobacco Control Legal Consortium illustrates:
November 21, 2013
Lauren Lempert and I just submitted a public comment on the FDA's Advanced Notice of Potential Rulemaking for menthol.
Our key points:
- The FDA should simply ban menthol rather than menthol as a characterizing flavor.
- There would be large and rapid health benefits because of people quitting smoking and fewer kids starting
- It would be easier to enforce
- Smuggling, to the extent that it exists, would be less of a problem
- While the effects on smoking initiation and cessation are more important, the industry's own research, properly interpreted, shows increased toxicity of cigarette smoke when menthol is added
- The FDA cannot take industry scientific submissions at face value
You can read the whole submission here.
November 20, 2013
BELLE (Fox, May 2014) has been rated “PG for thematic elements, some language and brief smoking images.” Watch the smokefree trailer.
BELLE is the dramatized biography of Dido Elizabeth Belle, daughter of an enslaved, biracial mother and a British admiral, raised as a ward in the household of the admiral’s uncle, William Murray, Earl of Mansfield and Lord Chief Justice of England. Ruling in a 1772 legal case, Mansfield put England on the path to outlawing slavery.