November 28, 2016
Stanton Glantz, Professor of Medicine and Director of the UC San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education is seeking an individual to conduct policy research in the evolving policy environment around marijuana policy and how it interacts with tobacco control policymaking at the state and local level.
The project involves preparing detailed case studies on policy making in states with a variety of marijuana policies, including research on the development and passage (or defeat) of relevant legislation, implementation, funding and management of marijuana and tobacco control programs, efforts of public health advocates to promote public health programs, and opposition to public health policies by the marijuana and tobacco industries and their allies and surrogates. Data collection will involve researching written records, relevant laws, analyzing campaign contribution information, conducting interviews and doing field research.
November 21, 2016
It took some time for the news to make it here from Australia, but the Daily Mail reports that Ryan Gosling — star of The Nice Guys (R, Time Warner) — told a Sydney radio show that "I smoked myself out" in the film and "never want another cigarette again!"
And no wonder. TUTD reports that The Nice Guys, now on video worldwide, features:
• 24 smoking actors, including Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe
• L&M (Philip Morris) cigarette brand display
• 400+ tobacco incidents, making it the smokiest film of the year (as of Nov. 2016)
• 1.8 billion tobacco impressions delivered to domestic theater audiences
• A smoking "disclaimer" in the closing credits of the US release.
The disclaimer states:
November 16, 2016
E-cigarette advocates love to present e-cigarettes as a disruptive technology developed in China to compete with the big cigarette companies. Lauren Dutra, Rachel Grana, and I looked in the previously secret tobacco industry documents and found that Phillip Morris had been working on what became e-cigarette technology since 1990 and had developed a functional system well before the Chinese
This work, summarized on our new paper “Philip Morris research on precursors to the modern e-cigarette since 1990” just published in Tobacco Control found
▸ Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist, is often cited as, in 2003, inventing the modern e-cigarette, which some see as a disruptive technology to compete with conventional cigarette companies.
▸ Philip Morris has researched nicotine aerosol technology similar to the modern e-cigarette since 1990.
▸ Philip Morris developed nicotine aerosol technology to attempt to keep health conscious smokers from using nicotine replacement while circumventing regulation and restrictions on cigarettes.
▸ In the 1990s, concerns about triggering Food and Drug Administration regulation of cigarettes led Philip orris to shift its focus towards pharmaceutical applications of aerosol technology
November 15, 2016
Last week federal judge Richard Seeborg ruled against the plaintiffs in the national class action lawsuit that claimed that the MPAA ratings were a form of commercial speech that did not warrant First Amendment protections.
The MPAA, studios, and theaters argued successfully that the ratings were “opinions” and not subject to restrictions on commercial speech that were designed to protect the public interest.
The scientific evidence that smoking in movies causes kids to smoke was not at issue. The court simply said, that despite the science showing that onscreen smoking caused kids to smoke, the MPAA was free to award youth ratings to movies with smoking.
This item is cross-posted from the Smoke Free Movies blog at https://smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/blog/court-rules-mpaa-award-youth-ratin...
November 9, 2016
California voters handed Big Tobacco a resounding defeat Tuesday when they passed Proposition 56 to raise the cigarette tax by US$2 a pack (with increases in e-cigarettes and other tobacco products). This is the first increase in cigarette taxes in California in 18 years.
The money will fund health care for poor people and reinvigorate California’s tobacco control program.
Economists project that the effect of the price increase alone will cut smoking prevalence from today’s 9.4 percent to 7.1 percent in 2020; the fact that Prop 56 quadruples the funding for the state’s aggressive tobacco control program will make that effect even bigger.
The drop in smoking due to Prop 56 is so large that it will save California families, taxpayers and businesses $1 billion a year in health costs starting next year.