September 12, 2016
Elizabeth Cox, Rachel Barry, and I just published “E-Cigarette Policymaking by Local and State Governments: 2009-2014” in Milbank Quarterly. This paper showed that the nature of the political opposition to public health policies designed to protect the public against e-cigarettes fundamentally changed after the major cigarette companies entered the market, coming to look like historic battles to regulate cigarette use. It also shows that the big health groups missed an opportunity by, for the most part, delaying their entry into the debate until after the cigarette companies were there.
Here is the Millbank Quarterly press release:
September 12, 2016
Disney has a firm policy about on-screen smoking, except for DreamWorks movies carrying its Touchstone label.
The latest is The Light Between Oceans, a PG-13 drama that shows star Rachel Weisz, another credited actor, and four extras smoking fewer than ten times, but delivering millions of tobacco impressions to audiences.
Touchstone has been Disney's distribution channel for other PG-13 DreamWorks films with smoking such as The Help, Lincoln, and Bridge of Spies. Disney's distribution agreement with DreamWorks was supposed to end in May 2016, with The BFG. Universal is set to release DreamWorks' R-rated The Girl on the Train in October 2016.
September 7, 2016
The WHO recently released “Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems and Electronic Non-Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS/ENNDS)” in anticipation of a discussion of these issues at the Seventh Conference of the Parties, which will be held in India in November 2017. The report has a cautious summary of the current state of the science and a set of very sensible regulatory options, all of which should be implemented now.
People can read the report for the details on the science summary, but the single most important statement is
The magnitude of these risks is likely to be smaller than from tobacco smoke, although there is not enough research to quantify the relative risk of ENDS/ENNDS over combustible products. Therefore, no specific figure about how much “safer” the use of these products is compared to smoking can be given any scientific credibility at this time. Existing modelling studies indicate, however, that in order for there to be a potential population-wide net health benefit from ENDS/ENNDS at present usage rates, these products would need to be at least three times “safer” than cigarettes. [citations deleted]
September 5, 2016
Laurie Zawertailo and colleagues from the Toronto just published a well-done study, “Concurrent e-cigarette use during tobacco dependence treatment in primary care settings: Association with smoking cessation at 3- and 6-months,” in Nicotine and Tobacco Research.
This large study followed 6526 Canadians who were trying to quit smoking forward in time for 6 months. They compared people who did and did not use e-cigarettes and found that smokers who used e-cigarettes were 30% less likely to successfully quit smoking at 3 months and half as likely to have quit at 6 months than those who did not use e-cigarettes.
They also found no significant effect on reducing the number of cigarettes per day at either time. Whether smokers were explicitly using e-cigarettes as part of the quit attempt also did not affect quitting success.
These results, including the fact that whether e-cigarettes are being used explicitly for quitting. are consistent with the meta-analysis that Sara Kalkhoran and I published in Lancet Respiratory Medicine (odds ratio [OR] 0.72, 95% CI 0.57 – 0.91).
Here is the abstract:
September 5, 2016
This blog post has been replaced with http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/court-opens-door-fda-authorizing-%E2%80%9Cteddy-...