Category: Harm Reduction

FSFW calls for public input
The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW) is launching two online processes designed to inform and guide the Foundation’s long-term research initiatives.
The first is a public comment period to solicit input on research priorities. The second is a call for letters of intent for early scoping grants that will help assess areas of research with the greatest potential to accelerate the end of smoking.
Researchers, policy makers, smokers and others with relevant experience or expertise are being invited to contribute.
“We encourage everyone with an interest in reducing death and disease from smoking to share informed opinions and creative suggestions on where we should focus our research efforts,” said Dr. Derek Yach, the founder and president of the FSFW.
“In particular, we are looking for new ideas, fresh thinking and innovative collaborations – expanding beyond the traditional tobacco control community – that will deliver dramatic and rapid progress toward a smoke-free world.”
In a press note issued on Tuesday, the FSFW said that since the Foundation’s formation in September, its leadership had been listening to and engaging with public health experts from around the world in a variety of forums, including conferences, one-on-one meetings and a Foundation-hosted research symposium.
‘Through these discussions and experiences, it became apparent that some potential areas of research exploration will need more detailed scoping and development before the Foundation issues large-scale requests for research proposals in 2018,’ the note said.
‘To prepare for the launch of an aggressive set of research programs in 2018, the Foundation is now accepting letters of intent for early scoping grants to gather more information on potential research topics related to smoking cessation, harm reduction and alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers. ‘These grants are detailed on the Foundation’s website, www.smokefreeworld.org. Letters of intent are due Monday, December 11, and are the first step of an application process that will culminate with the awarding of initial scoping grants in January.’
In parallel, the Foundation is asking for public input on four questions to help determine its highest research priorities.
‘The questions are designed to identify areas of unmet need and potentially significant impact on smoking cessation, harm reduction, and alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers,’ the note said. ‘The public can respond to the questions through the Foundation’s website until December 18. The questions will inform a draft version of the Foundation’s research agenda that will go online for public review in early 2018.’
December 1, 2017
Minimum pricing mooted
Setting a minimum price for tobacco products could be used as part of a campaign to reduce the number of smokers in Scotland, according to a BBC Online story.
The proposal was made after the Scottish government announced it would introduce minimum alcohol pricing from next May.
Public health experts in Scotland are suggesting, too, that raising the price of tobacco products and reducing their availability, in part by incentivising retailers not to sell them, might help tackle health inequalities.
NHS [National Health Service] Health Scotland and the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP) at the University of Edinburgh have put forward these and other ideas as part of a new national tobacco strategy.
They want to see also mass media campaigns to encourage smokers to stop, and to reduce exposure to second-hand smoke.
They recommend that effective policy actions should focus on reducing health inequalities.
Twenty-one percent of adults in Scotland smoke, down from 28 percent in 2003.
However, adult smoking levels have been static since 2013.
And rates are still highest in the financially poorer areas of the country, with 35 percent of adults in the least well-off areas smoking compared to 10 percent in the most well-off areas.
Dr. Garth Reid, principal public health adviser at NHS Health Scotland and one of the study’s authors, said Scotland’s health was improving but that the gap between the health of the best and least well-off was widening.
NHS Scotland claims that smoking causes more than 10,000 deaths a year.
November 24, 2017
Local studies needed
Indonesia needs more studies conducted by local researchers to reveal the impact of tobacco consumption on the nation’s health and health care costs, according to a story in The Jakarta Post citing an Antara News Agency report.
“We have often talked about the impact of tobacco use in the country, but we are just quoting information and data on the matter from reports by researchers in foreign countries,” said the Health Minister, Nila Moeloek.
Now that the National Health Insurance (JKN) program had been implemented in Indonesia, it was easier for researchers to conduct studies into the impact of tobacco consumption on public health and the healthcare costs involved in treating tobacco-related diseases, she said.
The Healthcare and Social Security Agency data had shown that 20-25 percent of JKN expenditure went to the treatment of non-communicable diseases related to tobacco consumption, such as cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer.
Nila said a study conducted by the Russian government found that the high incidence of tuberculosis in that country was related to alcohol and tobacco consumption.
“It’s probable that our researchers can conduct such a study given the high number of smokers in Indonesia,” she added.
November 24, 2017
India wants an end to ENDS
India’s Union health ministry is planning to issue an advisory note to all states about what it sees as the health risks of vaping, according to a story on indianexpress.com.
The story said the note was likely to say that products such as ‘e-cigarettes, electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS), nicotine and flavoured hookah’ were ‘extremely harmful to health’ and that they had not been approved in any form by the ministry of health and family welfare.
“The public will be advised, in their own interest, not to use any such products, sold or marketed in any form and under any name or brand,” a senior ministry official said.
But, according to a senior health ministry official, the health ministry is in a quandary over whether to ban e-cigarettes under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, or the Poisons Act 1919.
Some states, including Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, Kerala, Mizoram, Karnataka, and Jammu and Kashmir have already banned e-cigarettes as an unapproved drug. While some of these states have banned e-cigarettes under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, some have used as well the Poisons Act.
And, just for good measure, the official said that nicotine had been declared a ‘lethal and hazardous’ substance under the Environment (Protection) Act and Insecticide Act.
In 2013, the Ministry of Health formed an expert group to assess and report on various forms of ENDs, which, in its final report in July said that scientific evidence clearly indicated that any form of nicotine use, or the use of ENDS, was hazardous. The group reportedly said, too, that, ‘besides, causing many forms of health disorders, nicotine is also classified as a poison and is fatal for human beings even in small dosage’.
Meanwhile, the Express reported that three sub-committees formed to examine the legal, advocacy and health aspects of e-cigarettes had strongly recommended a ban on them, stating that they had cancer-causing properties.
“Though companies claim that e-cigarettes help [smokers] give up smoking, but in reality they help initiate cigarette smoking as they deliver nicotine in an attractive way and attract youth,” the official said.
November 23, 2017
Teenage smoking plummets
The smoking rate among New Zealand teenagers has dropped by a third since last year, according to a Radio New Zealand story citing Ministry of Health figures.
The country’s Quitline was quoted as saying that this year 8,000 15-17-year-olds ‘are smoking’, down from 12,000 last year. A decade ago there were said to have been 35,000 in this age group ‘taking up the habit’.
Quitline’s clinical director Sharryn Gannon said the majority of young people were not picking up cigarettes – a trend that was creating “a new generation of ‘never-smokers’”.
Gannon said the average smoker took up the habit at age 14, and that if people could make it to age 25 without taking up smoking then it was likely they would never smoke.
Meanwhile, the overall smoking rate in New Zealand also has decreased, a decrease that included a five percent reduction among Maori men during the past two years.
Gannon said the increasing price of cigarettes and the availability of e-cigarettes were also reasons why people were quitting the habit.
November 20, 2017
E-cigs’ role with vulnerable
A group of UK health bodies and charities has called for more to be done to help smokers with mental health conditions quit, including providing them with access to electronic cigarettes and other treatments, according to a story on cancerresearchuk.org.
In its statement on e-cigarettes, the Mental Health & Smoking Partnership said that smoking remained ‘part of the culture in too many mental health settings’, and that vaping and nicotine replacement therapies should be made an easier choice than smoking.
Professor Ann McNeill, co-chair of the partnership, said that people with a mental health condition were more than twice as likely to smoke as were others.
“This is a great inequality leading to early death and years of chronic illness for many,” she said. “E-cigarettes provide a new opportunity for people to move away from smoking and avoid the terrible burden of death and disease it causes.”
The story is at: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/news-report/2017-11-15-vaping-should-be-part-of-support-to-help-smokers-with-mental-health-conditions-quit.
November 17, 2017
Real Cost campaign unreal
The US Food and Drug Administration is expanding its ‘Real Cost’ propaganda campaign to include attacks on vaping, according to a story by Dr. Carl L. Phillips for the Daily Vaper.
That campaign currently consisted of anti-scientific attacks on smoking and smokeless-tobacco use, targeting teenagers with gory images and misleading claims, Philipps said.
While vaping was a tougher target for such propaganda, it was expected that the FDA would continue with this approach.
Phillips reported that the FDA had disclosed one preview of the anti-vaping campaign.
The introduction inaccurately described the ‘Real Cost’ campaign as ‘educational’ and announced that, ‘The campaign is now expanding its focus on [sic] the dangers of vaping’.
It appeared that the FDA would, predictably, be focusing on nicotine. The introduction went on to assert, ‘We will show teens how nicotine can reprogram their brains, causing them to crave more and more’.
“The dishonesty would be astonishing to anyone not already familiar with US government anti-tobacco propaganda,” Phillips said.
The story is at: http://dailyvaper.com/2017/11/14/fda-releases-new-nonsensical-anti-vaping-ad/.
November 15, 2017
Teen smoking ‘staggering’
A ‘staggering number of teenagers’ are turning to tobacco use in the United Arab Emirates, a Federal National Council (FNC) session was told on Tuesday, according to a story in The Khaleej Times.
“Twenty-one percent of the UAE population are into smoking and 15 percent of them are teenagers under the age of 18,” said FNC member Saeed Al Rumaithi.
Al Rumaithi said it was crucial to launch more anti-tobacco awareness programs in schools because the number of teenage smokers was of massive concern.
The session looked also at the positive outcomes of initiatives carried out by the National Anti-Tobacco Committee (NATC) formed by the Ministry of Health and Prevention.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Health and Prevention, Abdul Rahman Mohammed Al Owais, told the session that the issue was “complex”.
Al Owais said the NATC had already had some success. Fourteen quit-smoking clinics across the UAE had seen a 25 percent increase between 2015 and 2016 in the number of people attending the clinics.
Furthermore, 20 percent of the people who went to the clinics ended up quitting.
The NATC had increased by 150 percent the number of doctors specializing in the field.
November 15, 2017
HNB in wider distribution
US-based Vapor Tobacco Manufacturing (VTM) says that Tobacco Superstores, one of the largest tobacco store chains in the US, and Tobacco Town are offering its ‘3T® organic-technology heat-not-burn products’ in all their Arkansas stores.
In a press note issued yesterday, VTM said that 3T® Organic was the first and only HNB product available on the US market.
‘Customer feedback shows that 3T® Organic heat-not-burn devices are user-friendly, durable, economical, and have a “real” cigarette taste,’ VTM said in its note.
‘This is due to the Vapor Tobacco Manufacturing’s 3T® Organic heat-not-burn device which uses their patented liquefied tobacco from organic tobacco leaves, which is heated not burned, unlocking the rich, true tobacco flavor that is loved.’
3T® Organic Rechargeable was described as the only electronic nicotine delivery system that used USDA-certified organic ingredients.
November 15, 2017
Prices thrown into pot
If the price of legal marijuana must be competitive with black market marijuana to discourage underground sales, then the same logic should apply to nicotine products, according to a ctvnews.ca story quoting the head of Imperial Tobacco Canada.
Governments across Canada are preparing for marijuana’s legalization in 2018 and are creating legislative frameworks to regulate the industry. Bill Blair, the federal MP tasked with leading the drug’s legalization in Canada, has said the provinces generally agree that the price of legal marijuana should be roughly the same or lower than that of the marijuana that can be found on the street.
And Imperial’s Jorge Araya said that same rationale should apply to nicotine products.
Imperial wasn’t lobbying for lower taxes for traditional cigarettes but was against future increases as well as the federal government’s plan to require standardized packaging, he said.
Araya is lobbying also for a competitive tax regime for what he calls “less-risky” nicotine products, such as heat-not-burn products and electronic cigarettes, which, he says, represent the future of the industry.
“The first step is to stop tax increases provincially and federally because we are getting to a level where illegal tobacco is booming in the country,” Araya said in an interview after a speech organized by Quebec’s main employers’ association.
About 70 percent of the price of a pack of cigarettes was taxes, he said, and the illegal market in Canada represented 25 percent of sales and billions a year in lost revenue for governments.
“We will always advocate for very high taxation with (traditional) cigarettes,” he said. “We have to pay for the externalities and health impacts that we create – what we don’t want is to go higher than we are today,” he said.
Imperial Tobacco supports Bill S-5, which is making its way through the Senate and would legalize nicotine-containing vaping products in the country.
But Araya said the company was against the provision forcing companies to have standardized packaging for cigarettes because that would hinder the consumer’s ability to differentiate between products and with the black market.
Sindy Souffront, spokesperson for Health Canada, said in an email that vaping products, including e-cigarettes and e-liquids that contain nicotine, currently required authorization from Health Canada before they could be imported, advertised or sold in Canada.
“To date, no such products have been approved,” she said. “Under Bill S-5, manufacturers and importers of a vaping product containing nicotine would not be required to seek Health Canada approval, provided that the product does not make therapeutic health claims.”
Araya said that Imperial wanted to discuss nicotine products with the government and reach an agreement on how to treat taxation in a “very sustainable way”.
Meanwhile, a Quebec anti-tobacco coalition said it was misleading to treat tobacco like marijuana because tobacco, unlike pot, was tied to tens of thousands of deaths a year.
Flory Doucas, the group’s spokesperson, said “the goal of (Araya’s) speech was to rally the business community to the defence and interests of cigarette companies by stoking fear regarding new anti-tobacco measures and to publicize their new products.”
While Imperial Tobacco is lobbying the government on regulation, it is also waiting for a major court ruling that could force the company to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to smokers.
In 2015, a Quebec judge ordered three major cigarette companies, including Imperial Tobacco, to pay $15 billion to smokers as part of a class-action lawsuit.
The companies made arguments to the Quebec Court of Appeal about a year ago and are awaiting a decision.
Araya said his company isn’t ruling out going to the Supreme Court of Canada if it lost the appeal.
“Yeah, that’s one of the avenues, to go to the Supreme Court,” he said. “But at the moment that would be speculation. We are very confident about the strength of our arguments.”
November 14, 2017