July 20, 2013
California's landmark Proposition 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, was enacted as a ballot initiative in November 1986. The Proposition was intended by its authors to protect California citizens and the State's drinking water sources from chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm, and to inform citizens about exposures to such chemicals. Proposition 65 requires the Governor to publish, at least annually, a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. Products containing chemicals on the Proposition 65 list are required to carry the following warning in California: "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm."
July 17, 2013
At the same time that the the e-cig companies (which are increasingly the conventional cigarette companies) are vigorously fighting FDA regulation of e-cigarettes, they are telling state and local officials they should not act to protect people from secondhand e-cig "smoke" because the FDA will take care of it.
The fact is that, while the FDA could and should regulate the e-cigarette product and how they are marketed, the fact is that the FDA has no authority to regulate where e-cigarettes are smoked.
The e-cig companies know this and are hypocritical in using the FDA's inaction on e-cigs to justify fighting sensible laws, such as California's SB648, to prohibit the use of e-ciagrettes anywhere that you cannot smoke conventional cigarettes.
This argument reminds me of when the cigarette companies were telling local and state officials that they should not enact smokefree laws because OHSA was working on doing so at the same time that they were aggressively (and successfully) fighting to block OSHA action.
In this case the hypocracy is even greater, since the FDA has no authority to regulate where e-cigs are used.
July 17, 2013
Capstone, which describes itself as "a Washington, DC-based policy analysis and regulatory due diligence research firm that provides expert advice to long-term investors," has evaluated Lorillard's criticism of the FDA TPSAC analysis of menthol and concluded that Lorillard's "the criticism of their [TPSAC's] research is unwarranted."
In particular, Capstone agreed that the conclusion that youth who initiated with menthol cigarettes are at greater risk of progression to established smoking and experience higher levels of nicotine dependence was correct.
For access to the report please contact Capstone at [email protected]
July 2, 2013
Reiner Hanewinkel and his colleagues have just published a paper that examines the interaction between socioeconomic status and other social determinants of health behavior and the effects of exposure to on screen smoking on youth smoking in six European countries. They found that the effect of exposure to smoking was independent of these variables, indicating that the effects occur across the board.
Here is the abstract of their paper: