September 24, 2013
September 19, 2013
RUSH, a biopic that depicts the 1976 rivalry between Ferrari driver Nikki Lauda and MacLaren driver James Hunt. opens in LA today and nationally on September 27.
Philip Morris emblazoned its Marlboro brand on MacLaren team cars that season; it later switched its allegiance to Ferrari. As a result, the film is saturated with Marlboro imagery. While the film is rated "R" in the US for reasons other than tobacco, RUSH's theatrical trailers repeatedly display the Marlboro logo In recreated racetrack, pit and garage film footage. An early trailer also shows Hunt smoking.
In late August, Legacy, the American Academy of Pediatrics and six state Attorneys General wrote Universal, asking the studio to keep smoking and the Marlboro logo out of RUSH advertising seen by kids in print, on TV and online. John Britton (UK) also warned that RUSH's promotion would re-connect Marlboro to Formula One for another generation and asked that smoking and Marlboro logos be removed from the film's advertising material.
September 19, 2013
UCSF Awarded $20 Million Federal Grant on Tobacco Regulatory Science
New Research Will Help in Regulation of Tobacco Products to Protect Public Health
UC San Francisco will receive a five-year, $20 million grant as part of a first-of-its-kind tobacco science regulatory program by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
The overall aim is to conduct programs of multidisciplinary research that will inform the FDA’s regulation of the manufacture, distribution and marketing of tobacco products to protect public health.
UCSF is one of 14 institutions nationally to be awarded the new Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS) grants.
The UCSF principal investigator is Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.
“Our results will provide information that the FDA can use to improve its regulatory decision making,” Glantz said. “They will also help the public and public health authorities around the country and the world to develop better policies to curb the global tobacco epidemic.”
September 18, 2013
In my experience Big Tobacco usually wins when the policy discussion is out of sight, in behind-the-scenes backroom negotiations. And that is certainly where the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations have been happening.
Things started to change a couple weeks ago when the Sacramento Bee critized Obama for backing down on his already-tepid attempt to protect tobacco regulations from Big Tobacco. Things accelerated substantially when the New York Times published an op-ed by NY Mayor Bloomberg crititizing Obama's back down, followed by a strong New York Times editorial supporting Malaysia's tobacco carve out from the TPP (and citicisim Obama for not supporting Malaysia).
September 17, 2013
I just submitted a public comment to the FDA opposing the proposal to have the FDA establish a third party process for handling industry research. My cover letter said
I wish to submit the attached material, which includes comments I originally posted to my blog (http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/blogs/sglantz), including the comments submitted by a wide spectrum of academic and other leaders in the tobacco control community, for the FDA’s consideration in evaluating the possible role of independent parties in industry sponsored research.
As detailed in the attached comments, creating such an arrangement is a very bad idea.
Thank you for your consideration.
And I attached the full range of blog comments triggered by Ruth Malone's letter on why she did not go to the FDA's "moderated dialog" with the industry. You can read the full blog posts here and here.