January 30, 2013
The Food and Drug Administration is planning to hold a "facilitated dialog" between health researchers and the tobacco companies on the issue of industry-funded research. Ruth Malone, my colleague at UCSF and editor of the journal Tobacco Control, has written an eloquent letter to the FDA explaining why she is declining this invitation and calling on others to do the same.
I applaud Ruth for writing this letter and urge all scientists and public health professionals to do the same.
The FDA needs to cancel this misconceived enterprise and devote its energy to promoting public health by doing things like banning menthol.
Here is Ruth's letter:
Center for Tobacco Products
Food and Drug Administration
January 30, 2013
Dear colleagues:
January 21, 2013
Chris Millett and other colleagues at Imperial College London and I just published a paper in Pediatrics, "Hospital Admissions for Childhood Asthma After Smoke-Free Legislation in England," that shows that childhood asthma admissions, which had been rising 2% a year before England put a strong smokefree law in place, dropped by 8.9% immediately after the law and continued to fall after that.
This is a particularly important paper because during the long debate before the law tobacco industry allies (including the Minister of Health for some of the time) claimed that if workplaces, including pubs, were made smokefree smokers would smoke more at home, thereby harming their children. (The same claim pops up from time to time around the world.) Earlier work by my group showed in the US that smokefree laws are associated with more voluntary smokefree home policies, especially when there are smokers in the house. This new paper shows there are substantial health benefits for kids.
January 17, 2013
Several of my colleagues and I submitted a public comment to the FDA docket regarding a “Report to Congress on Innovative Products and Treatments for Tobacco Dependence.”
We commented on the fact that at least two e-cigarette companies, Sottera, Inc., which promotes the e-cigarette brand NJOY, and VMR Products LLC, which promotes the e-cigarette brand V2Cigs, along with the e-cigarette industry’s trade association, Smokefree Alternatives Trade Association (SFATA), directed their consumers to provide public comment to this docket on “treatments for nicotine dependence” in direct e-mails to consumers and on their websites. The companies’ action was important because Sottera, Inc. had successfully sued the FDA to stop the agency from regulating e-cigarettes on the grounds that they were not therapeutic drugs and/or devices.
January 14, 2013
It’s just like clockwork. A few days before an important public health report that could damage the tobacco companies is due to be released, a “new” report pops up in the press designed to discredit or deflect the upcoming report.
This time the important public health report is the American Lung Association’s annual State of Tobacco Control, due to be released on Wednesady, January 16. This report, which grades the federal government and the states on a range of tobacco control policies, including tobacco taxes, tobacco control program funding, smokefree air, and cessation funding, almost always generates media and public attention.
January 13, 2013
There is a long and well-developed literature about the placebo effect where people think a treatment worked when, in fact, it was no better than a sugar pill. Personal testimonials about the benefits of e-cigarettes do not constitute scientific evidence that they are effective ways to quit smoking.
If and when there are high quality longitudinal studies showing that e-cigarettes as actually used actually help people quit smoking conventional cigarettes, I will modify my opinions on e-cigarettes as cessation aids. As of now, the reality is that such studies simply do not exist. Until they do the US Federal Trade Commission and, once it takes jurisdiction, the Food and Drug Administration (and other similar authorities in other countries) should prohibit making or promoting such claims by companies selling e-cigarettes.
To avoid contributing to the misinformation on this point, I do not post the testimonials I am sent.