October 1, 2016
Vivian Ho and colleagues recently published “A Nationwide Assessment of the Association of Smoking Bans and Cigarette Taxes With Hospitalizations for Acute Myocardial Infarction, Heart Failure, and Pneumonia” that concluded that “Smoking bans were not associated with acute myocardial infarction or heart failure hospitalizations, but lowered pneumonia hospitalization rates for persons ages 60 to 74 years. Higher cigarette taxes were associated with lower heart failure hospitalizations for all ages and fewer pneumonia hospitalizations for adults aged 60 to 74. Previous studies may have overestimated the relation between smoking bans and hospitalizations and underestimated the effects of cigarette taxes.”
September 27, 2016
A new analysis of marijuana legislation offers a framework for states that are considering legalizing the drug and want to protect public health, rather than corporate profits.
The policy analysis by researchers at UC San Francisco is intended as a roadmap to help prevent a legalized marijuana industry from becoming a new version of the tobacco or alcohol industries, replete with aggressive marketing and political strategies to protect their economic interests.
The paper draws upon historical accounts from tobacco and alcohol control to conclude that policy makers could learn from those regulatory lessons to shape marijuana laws that would minimize consumption and protect the public. In such a process, marijuana would be treated like tobacco, not alcohol, and would be subject to a robust, demand reduction program, using evidence-based strategies from tobacco control.
"Current state marijuana laws and pending legalization initiatives are modeled on U.S. alcohol policies, which prioritize commercialization and tax revenue generation at the expense of public health," said lead author and UCSF policy analyst Rachel Barry, MA, who is now a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh’s Global Public Health Unit.
September 22, 2016
Speakers:
Children and Tobacco 2017: Who’s Winning?
Jonathan Klein, MD, MPH, FAAP
Associate Executive Director, American Academy of Pediatrics
“Rather wreck my gums than my lungs:" Smokeless tobacco and California rural adolescent males
Benjamin Chaffee, DDS, MPH, PhD
Assistant Professor, Preventive and Restorative Dentistry Sciences
Booze, Butts or Both? Combating young adult tobacco use in bars.
Pamela Ling, MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine
Closing Remarks
Talmadge E. King, Jr., MD
Dean, School of Medicine
University of California San Francisco
There will also be two presentations from UCSF postdoctoral fellows.
Time: 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Place: UCSF Parnassus Heights (room pending)
For information, contact Jonathan Leff at 415-502-6341or [email protected] or visit http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/about-a-billion-lives
September 14, 2016
All These Sleepless Nights — Rated R for language and smoking throughout, drug use and some sexuality/graphic nudity. Rating certificate #50675. Source: MPAA Rating Bulletin #2442 (14 September 2016)
What we know about this film
A Polish documentary film about art students in Warsaw. At Sundance, it won the Directing Award in the World Cinema - Documentary category. Produced by Endorfina (Warsaw) and Pulse (UK). The film's distributor, The Orchard, is an LA-based independent. Limited showings at film festivals, so far. First R-rated film identified with smoking as a reason.
What we know about smoking descriptors
In 2007, having promised state Attorneys General it would address on-screen smoking, the MPAA announced “smoking” descriptors might be added to the ratings of some films. Since 2007, the MPAA has included "smoking" descriptors on:
• 11 percent (40 of 349) of top-grossing, youth-rated films with smoking
Top-grossing youth-rated films have delivered nearly half (46%) of all tobacco impressions to theater audiences since 2007. The top-grossing films that MPAA tagged for smoking accounted for 9 percent.
• 24 percent (33 of 140) of lower-performing youth-rated films with smoking
September 13, 2016
Cristin Kearns, Laura Schmidt, and I published “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents” in JAMA Internal Medicine. The full paper is available for free here.
Here is the UCSF press release on the paper.
Sugar Papers Reveal Industry Role in Shifting National Heart Disease Focus to Saturated Fat
A newly discovered cache of industry documents revealed that the sugar industry began working closely with nutrition scientists in the mid-1960s to single out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of coronary heart disease and to downplay evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor.
An analysis of those papers by researchers at UC San Francisco appears September 12, 2016, in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The internal industry documents, which were found in public archives, showed that a sugar industry trade organization recognized as early as 1954 that if Americans adopted low-fat diets, then per-capita consumption of sucrose would increase by more than one-third. The trade organization represented 30 international members.