March 5, 2012
Sungkyu Lee, Pam Ling, and I just published "The vector of the tobacco epidemic: tobacco industry practices in low and middle-income countries" in Cancer Causes and Control. This paper reviews the available literature -- largely based on previously secret tobacco industry documents available at the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, to show that the multinational tobacco companies use essentially the same strategies and tactics in low and middle income countries as they have used in richer countries.
March 5, 2012
Assemblyman Fuentes has introduced AB 2026 to extend California's $100 million a year giveaway to the big studios for another 8 years.
Between mid-2009 and 2011, California spent $75 million subsidizing movies including smoking and, so, were promoting smoking to kids. These films went on to make $1.1 billion at the box office, plus even more money in DVD and video streaming, making one wonder if they really needed the subsidy in the first place.
Even worse, if current patterns continue, movies with smoking subsidized by California taxpayers will account for about 17,000 new 12-17 year old smokers during the next cohort of 12-17 year olds, who will run up an estimated $270 million in smoking-induced costs. (Details of our analysis are here.)
The American Heart Association and California Medical Association have taken "oppose unless amended" positions on such subsidy bills. I hope that others will join them, including people who think that having world class higher ed and parks should be a higher priority in California than helping to sell cigarettes to kids.
February 16, 2012
There was a horrific incident yesterday when an e-cigarette exploded in a user's mouth, creating severe burns. (The ABC news story is available here.)
This is the starkest evidence yet that these products have poor quality control and need to be regulated.
Meanwhile, the FDA dithers along. Maybe the Consumer Product Safety Commission could issue an emergency order. Or state AGs could sue for fraud based on all the unsubstantiated claims the e-cig companies make on their web sites.
This is certainly all the evidence that the Department of Transportation needs to issue an emergency order banning e-cigs on airplanes. (We needs an underwear bomber when you can explode an e-cig?)
It is yet another reason why e-cigs should be included in clean indoor air laws, so that they are not used indoors.
To learn more about the unsubstantiated claims being made about e-cigs, check out Rachel Grana's presentation at our "It's About a Billion Lives" symposium available here.
February 16, 2012
The American Public Health Association (and other public health organizations) just sent out emails notifying their members that Congress was considering a huge cut to public health programs as part of the deal to extend the payroll tax cut and maintain money paid to doctors. This is a short-sighted measure that will greatly hurt not only pubic health programs, but contribute to exploding medical costs.
Here is the letter I sent my representative and senators; I urge everyone to express their views on this:
February 14, 2012
Mindful of the fact that the media companies will be coming back to the California legislature to renew (and maybe even expand) their $100 million/year subsidy program, much of which goes to providing taxpayer support to movies that promote smoking, Jonathan Polansky and I recently completed an analysis of the public health impact of these subsidies.
We hope that this report will contribute to a broader discussion of the real costs of these subsidies in terms of damaging public health. I am pleased that the California Medical Association and American Heart Association (Western States) have both voted to take positions of “oppose unless amended” on the issue of film subsidies unless they exclude films with smoking and other tobacco use. (As far as I know, no bill has yet been introduced).
The report, “California film subsidies and on-screen smoking: Resolving the policy conflict,” , available on the UC eScholarship website at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0t9099dr , concludes that: