January 22, 2017
Lauren Dutra and I just published “E-cigarettes and National Adolescent Cigarette Use: 2004–2014” in Pediatrics. Here is the press release that UCSF issued on it:
E-Cigarettes are Expanding Tobacco Product Use Among Youth
First National Analysis Shows E-Cigarettes Attract Low-Risk Adolescents Who Were Unlikely to Start Smoking
January 19, 2017
The Hill just reported that the FDA has issued its first ever product standard, to limit the amount of tobacco-specific nitrosamine N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) to 1 microgram per gram of smokeless tobacco. The FDA would also require an expiration date on smokeless tobacco (because this carcinogen builds up over time due to bacterial action in the tobacco).
Here is the FDA’s summary of the proposed rule, which is scheduled to be released for public comment on Monday in the Federal Register.
SUMMARY: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing a tobacco product standard that would establish a limit of N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) in finished smokeless tobacco products. FDA is taking this action because NNN is a potent carcinogenic agent found in smokeless tobacco products and is a major contributor to the elevated cancer risks associated with smokeless tobacco use. Because products with higher NNN levels pose higher risks of cancer, FDA finds that establishing a NNN limit in finished smokeless tobacco products is appropriate for the protection of the public health.
January 10, 2017
Eric Soule and colleagues recently published an important paper documenting that people around e-cigarettes can be exposed to levels of particulate air pollution as high as has been measured in smoky bars. Their paper “Electronic cigarette use and indoor air quality in a natural setting” published in Tobacco Control reporting the results of measuring the levels of air pollution at an “e-cigarette event” in a hotel meeting room where they measured the levels of fine particle air pollution during the event.
Specifically, they found very high levels of particles, varying between 300 and 820 µg/m3 . These are levels that are found in very smoky bars or major forest fires. (The levels were less than 4 µg/m3 before the event.
These measurements probably underestimate actual levels of pollution because the Sidepak device that was used to collect the data does not detect particles below 1 micron, which includes many e-cigarette aerosol particles.
Here is the abstract:
NTRODUCTION:
January 5, 2017
Tory Spindle and colleagues at VCU recently published a study, “Electronic cigarette use and uptake of cigarette smoking: A longitudinal examination of U.S. college students,” that followed 3757 students at Virginia Commonwealth University for a year to examine the relationship between e-cigarette use among never cigarette smokers at the beginning and whether they were smoking conventional cigarettes a year later. They found, controlling for a wide range of demographic and behavioral variables, that e-cigarette users at baseline were about 3.4 times as likely to be smoking cigarettes a year later as young adults who were not using e-cigarettes.
This effect is consistent with a similar study of young adult males in Switzerland as well as all the studies of adolescents.
Here are the highlights and the abstract:
HIGHLIGHTS
• E-cig and cigarette use has not been studied in college students longitudinally.
December 19, 2016
In 2000, motivated in part by the sea of litigation facing the tobacco industry, the huge California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) voted to divest the tobacco stocks that it held directly. Perhaps because they were so small, it did not instruct its outside investment advisors to divest their tobacco holdings.
Since then, the tobacco companies have soldiered on despite paying out hundreds of billions of dollars in settlements and continue to sued, most notably in Quebec, Canada and Florida. Because nicotine is an addictive drug they have been able to raise prices faster than consumption has dropped and so continued to remain profitable. Indeed, tobacco stocks are at an all-time high.
At the same time, CalPERS’ tobacco holdings (through the outside investors) have grown to several hundred million dollars.
As a result, last summer the CalPERS Investment Committee (which consists of the whole Board of Directors) narrowly voted to reassess its 2000 decision to divest. (The letter I wrote them last May urging them to leave the policy as it was is here; at the time I was not aware of the fact that CalPERS held tobacco stocks through their outside investment managers.)