March 23, 2017
Eric Crosbie, Patricia Sosa, and I just published “Defending strong tobacco packaging and labelling regulations in Uruguay: transnational tobacco control network versus Philip Morris International” in Tobacco Control. It shows how local and international tobacco control advocates collaborated to defend Uruguay’s strong graphic warning labels against PMI’s trade challenge and provides a model for similar collaborations globally.
In order to facilitate dissemination, we have also translated the paper into Spanish and also made it available for free on the UCSF open access server as well as directly from the journal. Here are the links:
Tobacco Control: English version http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2017/03/22/tobaccocontrol-2017-053690
Tobacco Control: Spanish version http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/tobaccocontrol/suppl/2017/03/15/tobaccocontrol-2017-053690.DC1/Uruguay_UCSF_published-Spanish.pdf
UCSF (free access): English version http://escholarship.org/uc/item/07n9m5wn#
March 22, 2017
The Regulations.gov tracking number is 1k1-8vee-7yms. A PDF version is here.
The FDA’s Proposed Tobacco Product Standard Limiting NNN Levels in Finished Smokeless Tobacco Products is Well-Justified, but the Regulatory Impact Analysis Understates Benefits and Overstates Costs
Docket Number: FDA-2016-N-2527
UCSF TCORS
Wendy Max, Lauren Lempert, Benjamin Chaffee, Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, Eunice Neeley, Lucy Popova,[*] Peyton Jacob, Stanton Glantz
March 22 2017
In its proposed rule setting a tobacco product standard requiring that the mean level of N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) in finished smokeless products sold in the U.S. must not exceed 1.0 μg/g of tobacco, the FDA took a major positive step towards protecting public health and reducing cancer risks associated with smokeless tobacco use. Congress gave FDA the express authority to regulate the design and contents of tobacco products by creating tobacco product standards, and UCSF TCORS applauds FDA for taking this action.
March 22, 2017
On March 15, 2017, several friends of mine, together with others, released “Ending Cigarette Use By Adults In A Generation Is Possible: The Views Of 120 Leaders In Tobacco Control,” which attracted moderate press attention.
While I agree that cigarette use could be ended in generation – actually in 5-10 years – if we could muster the political clout to implemented what we know works – I take strong exception to the pro-industry harm reduction arguments in this report. Indeed, I believe that some of the policies advocated in the report will slow progress.
As one of the 120 “leaders” who responded to the poll used to construct this document, I strongly object to the subtitle, “The views of 120 leaders in tobacco control.” The views in this report do not reflect my views. While the body of the report contains a disclaimer stating that it is only the authors’ views, the title suggests something quite different.
March 21, 2017
BAT just published its mathematical model to predict the public health impact of the growth in e-cigarette use in the UK (press release below). The basic structure of the model is pretty straightforward – people starting with cigarettes or e-cigarettes, becoming dual users, and quitting or not. (It is not wildly different in basic structure from the one Sara Kalkhoran and I published in August 2015 or the one Levy and colleagues recently published.)
I read the paper and was surprised that BAT was claiming that it showed the public health benefits of e-cigarettes in the UK. Why? As the press release says (specific text bolded below), “the proportion of all deaths due to smoking-related diseases falls from 8.4% and 8.1%, respectively” without and with e-cigarettes. (Compare the solid and dashed lines in their Figure 9.) This difference is well within the uncertainty in the prediction process. In other words, BAT’s own model says that if lots of people start using e-cigarettes, there is virtually no health benefit.
March 19, 2017
I have been following the evidence that cell phone radiation can have adverse health effects for several years and think that the evidence for adverse health effects of cell phones is about where it was in the early 1960s for cigarettes. (I use several studies showing damage to sperm as examples in my textbook Primer of Biostatistics.) I have also been impressed at how, like Big Tobacco and global warming deniers, the cell phone industry has tried to keep people in the dark about the emerging evidence.
I have also worked for decades with the California Department of Public Health and come to respect the high quality of the work they do. So I was interested to read in the newspaper a few weeks ago that in 2010 they had prepared a “guidance document” on the health effects of cell phone radiation that had been buried. The 2010 CDPH document summarized the science regarding health risks from cell phone radiation, and offered consumers precautionary recommendations.
It took seven years and a lawsuit in Superior Court brought by my colleague Joel Moskowitz from UC Berkeley (who used to work on tobacco) to force its release.
The CDPH’s cell phone guidance document offers the following conclusions and recommendations: