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:
February 13, 2012
Eric Crosbie just published a paper in Salud Publica Mexico (2012 Feb;54(1):28-38) that uses tobacco industry documents, key informant interviews, and other materials to describe how the tobacco industry has dominated and continues to dominate tobacco policy making in Costa Rica.
During the mid-to-late 1980s, Health Ministry issued several advanced (for their time) smoking restriction decrees causing British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) to strengthen their political presence there, resulting in passage of a weak 1995 law, which, as of August 2011, remained in effect. Since 1995 the industry has used Costa Rica as a pilot site for Latin American programs and has dominated policymaking by influencing the Health Ministry, including direct private negotiations with the tobacco industry which violate Article 5.3's implementing guidelines of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).
The Costa Rica experience demonstrates the importance of vigorous implementation of FCTC Article 5.3 which insulates public health policymaking from industry interference.