May 1, 2018
Jesse Elias, Yogi Hendlin, and Pam Ling just published “Public versus internal conceptions of addiction: An analysis of internal Philip Morris documents” in PLOS Medicine. This paper uses previously secret internal tobacco industry documents to show that Philip Morris has a sophisticated understanding of nicotine addiction that goes well beyond the pharmacology of nicotine as a drug.
It is important for the FDA to be at least as sophisticated as Philip Morris as the FDA develops its “comprehensive nicotine policy,” in particular by recognizing that by solely focusing on nicotine as a drug FDA could be falling into the trap that Philip Morris has built for it (and other similar agencies and public health authorities around the world).
Here is the press release that PLOS sent out:
Philip Morris’s understanding of addiction revealed by internal documents
April 30, 2018
Matthis Morgenstern, Alina Nies, Michaela Goecke, Reiner Hanewinkel just published “E-Cigarettes and the Use of Conventional Cigarettes: A Cohort Study in 10th Grade Students in Germany” that shows that never smoking 10th grade students (age 15-16 years old) who start nicotine use with e-cigarettes are about twice as likely to be smoking cigarettes 6 months later. In addition, consistent with all the other earlier studies, the effect is bigger in kids at lower risk of starting nicotine use with cigarettes.
There are now so many of these gateway studies that I have lost count. The amazing thing is the consistency of findings. All show a gateway effect for e-cigarettes with the odds of subsequent smoking increased by a factor of 2-3, except for England, where the odds increase by a factor of 12.
Here is the abstract:
Background: In 2015, 12.1% of 12– to 17-year-olds in Germany had reportedly already tried e-cigarette smoking at least once. We carried out a study of the “gateway” hypothesis, according to which the use of e-cigarettes can motivate adolescents to start smoking conventional cigarettes.
April 29, 2018
Yvette van der Eijk, Stella Bialous and I just published "The Tobacco Industry and Children’s Rights" in Pediatrics.
Here is the UCSF press release on the paper:
UNICEF “Muted” on Tobacco Control for Children
UCSF Paper Shows Big Tobacco Influenced Humanitarian Children’s Rights Agency
The tobacco industry manipulated the renowned children’s rights agency UNICEF for more than a dozen years, from 2003 until at least 2016, during which time UNICEF’s focus on children’s rights to a tobacco-free life was reduced, according to previously secret documents uncovered by UC San Francisco.
The research appears April 30, 2018, in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
April 28, 2018
The latest campaign finance statements are out and RJ Reynolds continues to be the sole financer of “No on E”, the referendum campaign to overturn San Francisco’s prohibition on the sale of flavored tobacco products, with $9,041,824. They are saturating people’s mailboxes with mailers touting freedom, government overreach, and crime, the industry’s longstanding arguments against everything. You can read this on the No on E website. Of course, they never mention their true motivation: RJR wants to protect its sales of menthol and other flavored tobacco products.
For a trip down memory lane, watch these videos of old tobacco industry political ads from 1978 (Proposition 5), 1980 (Proposition 10), 1982 (Kern County Proposition A), and 1983 (San Francisco Proposition P, at about 20 minutes into the video) where the industry was trying to block smoking restrictions. While the tobacco industry did defeat smoking restrictions in 1978 and 1980, by 1983 voters in San Francisco saw through their arguments and upheld San Francisco’s smoking restriction law. (I don’t know the outcome of Prop A.)
April 26, 2018
It’s bad enough that e-cigarettes are a strong gateway to cigarette smoking, including stimulating kids who are experimenting with cigarettes to become established smokers, but now there is evidence that, like cigarettes, they are a gateway for marijuana.
Hongying Dai and colleagues used the FDA PATH study to examine the association between e-cigarette (and cigarette) use at baseline with marijuana use one year later among kids who had never used marijuana at baseline. In their paper “Electronic cigarettes and future marijuana use: A longitudinal study” published in Pediatrics they find that any e-cigarette use at baseline about doubles the odds of using marijuana a year later.
The effects of smoking cigarettes at baseline is an independent effect with about the same magnitude.
The impact on younger kids was bigger.
We found a similar independent of marijuana use on cigarette smoking initiation in our study of the effects of youth initiating with any non-cigarette product (including e-cigarettes).
Dai and collagues have an interesting comment on what may be causing this effect: