September 15, 2017
The UN Global Compact is an initiative to engage companies “to align strategies and operations with universal principles on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption, and take actions that advance societal goals.”
Given the fact that the tobacco industry works consistently against human rights, the environment, and is a huge corrupting force in the word, it has always been irritating that the UNGC allowed them as members. The industry, of course, then used their membership as part of the “corporate social responsibility” PR efforts. In particular, the industry has worked to undermine implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a UN treaty.
Thanks to the efforts of many people and countries for several years, the UNGC is throwing the tobacco companies out. Here is their announcement, issued a few days ago:
UN Global Compact Integrity Policy Update
Updated 12 September 2017
More evidence that the US permissive policy environment for e-cigs is expanding the tobacco epidemic
September 14, 2017
Hong-Jun Cho, Lauren Dutra, and I recently published “Differences in adolescent e-cigarette and cigarette prevalence in two policy environments: South Korea and the United States” in Nicotine and Tobacco Research. This paper compares changes in e-cigarette and cigarette use in South Korea and the United States between 2011 and 2015. Korea has maintained restrictive policies on e-cigarettes whereas the US has left them essentially unregulated (a situation that the FDA will continue until at least 2022).
We found that In Korea adolescent e-cigarette use remained stable at a low level, whereas in the United States e-cigarette use increased. Most important, combined e-cigarette plus cigarette use declined in Korea whereas it increased in the US. The restrictive policies in Korea likely contributed to lower overall tobacco product use. These results are evidence against the claims that the availability of e-cigarettes is preventing youth from taking up cigarettes. They also add to the case that a permissive e-cigarette policy environment is making the overall nicotine/tobacco epidemic worse. It is also
Here is the abstract:
September 12, 2017
Derek Yach will lead Philip Morris International’s new Foundation for a Smoke Free World, the latest in PM’s corporate social responsibility PR efforts. It is also part of the company’s effort to promote its new heat-not-burn IQOS product.
Initial funding of $80 million a year (with a 12 year commitment) comes from Philip Morris, with the goal of engaging other nonprofits. (This is about .1% of PMI’s revenues and 1% of its profits.)
Like all past industry front groups, the foundation claims “PMI and the tobacco industry are precluded from having any influence over how the Foundation spends its funds or focuses its activities.”
If PMI was serious about achieving a smoke free world, it could stop aggressively lobbying against proper implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control or stop selling Marlboros and other cigarettes.
That’s what Derek would have said in response to this ruse back when he was a public health leader at WHO.
August 20, 2017
Our e-cigarette enthusiast colleagues in England have generally taken the position that England was different from the USA, so that evidence from America showing that ecigs were bringing low (of starting nicotine with cigarettes) risk kids were being drawn into the nicotine market by e-cigs than progressing to cigarettes was not happening in England.
Now a well-done longitudinal study from England (which includes among its coauthors some of the people who had been claiming e-cigarettes were not a problem for kids there) “Do electronic cigarettes increase cigarette smoking in UK adolescents? Evidence from a 12-month prospective study,” by Mark Conner and colleagues shows that, as in the USA
These results are quantitatively similar to the results of the US studies. These are big effects.
They also found evidence, consistent with the earlier cross-sectional study that Lauren Dutra and I published in 2014 that kids who used e-cigarettes and cigarettes at baseline were more likely to be smoking more cigarettes a year later. (Correcting for covariates reduced the magnitude of the association, but the direction did not change.)
August 20, 2017
The new paper by Daniel Giovenco and Christine Delnevo, “Prevalence of population smoking cessation by electronic cigarette use status in a national sample of recent smokers,” contributes to the emerging picture that intensive users of e-cigarettes are more likely to have stopped smoking while incidental users quit less.
The cross-sectional study (snapshot in time) uses the 2014 and 2015 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to examine the association between e-cigarette use and being a former smoker. The found that daily e-cigarette users were about 3 times more likely to be former cigarette smokers than non-e-cigarette users. (The e-cigarette advocates have been making a big deal about this finding.)