February 3, 2019
Lauren Lempert, Bonnie Halpern-Felsher and I submitted this public comment to FDA. It is based on Lauren's testimony to the FDA meeting on treating youth nicotine addiction. (You can view the slides from the meeting here.) The bottom line from the health testimony at the meeting is that there are not yet proven nicotine addiction treatments for youth and that the FDA needs to concentrate on preventing the addiction in the first place. As this comment discusses, there are a lot of things FDA could and should do right now by simply enforcing existing law. FDA should also stop making statements about the safety and efficacy of e-cigarettes for harm reduction and cessation that would be illegal if a company made them without first demonstrating their accuracy. These statements also promote youth use of e-cigarettes and the subsequent nicotine addiction.
This comment has Regulations.gov tracking number 11kk33--998800ii--qzzmii; a PDF is available here.
February 3, 2019
Maggie Kulik and I have already published two papers showing that, contrary to the “hardening hypothesis,” namely that there is a hard core group of smokers that “cannot or will not quit” that underlies the whole harm reduction ideology that is used to justify promoting e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products, and other new tobacco products. The first of these papers showed that, contrary to the hardening hypothesis, as smoking prevalence fell in the USA and EU, the remaining smokers smoked less and quit more. In other words, rather than hardening, the remaining smoking population is softening. The second paper found the same thing in people with psychological distress, a group with high baseline smoking rates.
February 3, 2019
Candice Bowling and I just published “Conflict of Interest Provisions in State Laws Governing Medical and Adult Use Cannabis” in American Journal of Public Health. We evaluated the conflict of interest provisions in all the available state medical and adult use cannabis laws and generally found that they were not adequate to address the pressures associated with the rapidly-emerging legal cannabis industry.
Here is the abstract:
February 3, 2019
Aaron Baum, I, and others just published “Estimating the long-run relationship between state cigarette taxes and county life expectancy” in Tobacco Control that contributes to the growing literature that tobacco taxes can help reduce health disparities. Using life expectancy data from all US counties from 1996 trough 2012, we found that a one-dollar increase in cigarette tax per pack (in 2016 dollars) translated to an increase in life expectancy of 1 year over the following decades, with the first 6-month increase in life expectancy appearing after 10 years. There was a larger life-expectancy benefit of increases in cigarette excise taxes in lower-income counties compared with higher-income counties, which is evidence that cigarette taxes can help reduce health disparities.
Here is the abstract:
January 28, 2019
Philip Morris International's Foundation for a Smokefree World (FSFW), a thinly disguised part of the company's efforts to market its IQOS heated tobacco product and rehabilitate PMI's image, is seeking to partner with WHO.
Today a letter signed by 89 health organizations and 170 public health leaders (including me) was sent to the WHO DIrector General urging WHO to reject FSWS's offer. The letter is accomanied by two short briefing papers, one analyzing FSFW's strategy of framing its efforts under the Sustainable Development Goals, and another summarizing some of the actions by a wide range of organizations to block FSFW's efforts on behalf of the PMI and the tobacco industry generally.
WHO should promptly reject FSFW's latest efforts as a violation of FCTC Artcle 5.3.