Category: Harm Reduction

Foundation opposed
Canadian health organizations have responded to the announcement that Philip Morris International has pledged $1 billion to the newly-launched Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (https://www.smoke-freeworld.org/) by calling on the Canadian government immediately to restore public funding for tobacco control and to ensure that the costs of reducing tobacco use are passed on to the tobacco industry.
‘In this recent ploy, Philip Morris is using the same bag of tricks it invented in the 1950s, to create its own research bodies in order to manipulate the research environment and delay effective measures to reduce smoking,’ said Neil Collishaw, research director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada in a statement issued by the Coalition québécoise pour le contrôle du tabac.
‘We risk repeating the tragedy of past decades unless the government moves quickly to ensure that the new challenges of e-cigarettes and so-called reduced risk products are addressed by reliable and uncontaminated research.’
Melodie Tilson, director of policy for the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association, was quoted as saying that a year had passed since ‘we provided Health Canada with proposals for ways to protect public health from tobacco industry interference in research and policy’.
‘Since that time, we have seen no action on any of our 20 recommendations, nor any indication that these are a priority of Health Canada.
‘Recent events and the industry’s abuse of science as a front for tobacco marketing have increased our concerns that Canada is vulnerable to tobacco industry interference.’
Meanwhile, Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said the most recent intrusion of the tobacco industry into research funding was all the more dangerous in the context of massive cuts to tobacco control funding by the previous government, and the failure of the new government to restore resources for independent activities.
‘External policy research was abandoned by Health Canada in 2012,’ she was quoted as saying. ‘The failure of the new federal government to restore this important work has left little national-level capacity for independent response to industry-funded disinformation.’
And Flory Doucas, co-director and spokesperson for the Quebec Coalition on Tobacco Control said the federal government should apply the polluter-pay principle to public health by levying a regulatory charge on tobacco manufacturers. ‘We have previously made this recommendation as a way to require the industry to internalize some of the costs they impose on society.’
In the US, Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said Philip Morris had a long history of deceiving the public and doing whatever it took to sell cigarettes.
‘This is not the first time Philip Morris has announced that it is funding “independent” research, nor is it the first time it has claimed to support “independent” researchers, he said in a statement.
‘Each of its past efforts have been nothing more than a smokescreen to divert attention from its marketing practices, the harm its products cause and the strong scientific consensus that already existed – both about the harm of its products and the scientifically proven ways to reduce tobacco use. There is no reason to believe that this announcement is any different.’
September 18, 2017
Don’t panic!
Four scientists have co-authored a study debunking some of the most pervasive myths about the dangers electronic cigarettes pose to young people, according to a piece by Guy Bentley published at washingtonexaminer.com.
Bentley says the study is a wide-ranging critique of former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s 2016 report on e-cigarettes and young people that had added fresh momentum to a moral panic over youth vaping.
Fears of young people experimenting with e-cigarettes had since been used as a justification for higher taxes, tighter regulations, and de facto bans on vapor products, Bentley wrote.
This was despite research showing that e-cigarettes posed just a fraction of the risks of traditional tobacco cigarettes and the growing body of evidence that they helped adults quit smoking.
By labeling youth vaping a ‘major public health concern’, Murthy’s report had given an air of credibility to the more extreme parts of the anti-vaping crowd.
But a study published on September 6 in the journal Harm Reduction had served as a much-needed corrective to the hysteria that had pervaded the public debate on e-cigarettes in the wake of Murthy’s report.
First off, the study conceded Murthy was correct to observe there were several hundred percent increases in the number of youths who had tried e-cigarettes from 2011 to 2015. But the authors point out this observation obscured the more important measure in terms of public health, which was how frequently youths were using e-cigarettes.
The data showed youth vaping was ‘either infrequent or experimental’. Only a tiny proportion of young people who reported using e-cigarettes were doing so on a regular basis.
Bentley’s piece is at: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/teen-vaping-is-not-a-public-health-crisis-despite-the-moral-panic/article/2633559
September 8, 2017
$14 a year is not enough
The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) has passed a resolution aimed at guaranteeing farmworkers the right to collective bargaining, according to a story by Stephanie Carson for Public News Service, relayed by the TMA.
And later this month, Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) members will vote on a proposed boycott of Reynolds American products to protest against the working conditions. FLOC, according to Wikipedia, is a labor union representing migrant farm workers in the Midwestern US and North Carolina.
FLOC member Catherine Crow said there were a lot of issues in North Carolina, most of which had to do with farmworkers having a lack of representation and a lack of freedom of association.
This meant that farmworkers risked losing their jobs if they came across and spoke out against issues such as wage theft, poor housing conditions, and poor working conditions.
They had no job security.
Crow said that since RJ Reynolds, the parent company of Reynolds American, offered products other than tobacco, the boycott would extend to other areas including electronic cigarettes.
“[W]e’re going to be looking to target the companies that sell that product as well, like 7-Eleven and other convenience stores,” Crow said.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, FLOC representatives reportedly challenged British American Tobacco during its Annual General Meeting (AGM) in London over what FLOC described as human rights abuses on BAT contract farms.
In a note on its website, FLOC said that BAT, which at the time was planning to pay US$49 billion to complete its acquisition of Reynolds American, was asked about its failure ‘to be transparent and take concrete action despite numerous reports detailing human rights abuses’ on its contract farms.
This year was said to have marked the seventh year that FLOC had attended the shareholders meeting.
‘During the 2014 AGM, BAT chairman Richard Burrows claimed that there were no labor or human rights violations in the BAT supply chain,’ the note said.
‘Since then, independent research groups including SwedWatch and Human Rights Watch have published reports detailing serious human rights abuses on BAT contract farms in Bangladesh and Indonesia respectively, echoing what FLOC has been reporting for years from the fields of North Carolina.
‘In BAT’s own corporate audit report, they admitted instances of worker death by heat stroke, workers being sprayed by pesticides, and poor housing conditions, among other issues.’
After the meeting, FLOC leaders were said to have met directly with BAT executives to discuss the issues and ‘real solutions’ in more depth.
But FLOC said that while BAT had stated that it had wanted to work with FLOC to resolve issues in the BAT supply chain, human rights violations would continue until BAT agreed ‘to guarantee freedom of association and implement a practical mechanism that allows farmworkers to denounce abuses and act as their own auditors.’
September 6, 2017
Natural selection end-game
Researchers report they have spotted signs that human DNA is still evolving, and such evolution could eventually reduce smoking, according to a HealthDay story citing a new study.
“It’s a subtle signal, but we find genetic evidence that natural selection is happening in modern human populations,” said study co-author Joseph Pickrell, an evolutionary geneticist at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center.
Pickrell and his colleagues explored the genomes of ‘60,000 people of European descent from California and 150,000 from Great Britain’. The researchers looked for signs of mutations that are linked to longer life spans.
The researchers found that a genetic variation linked to Alzheimer’s appears to be fading in older women, possibly because women who have it tend to die earlier.
They also found similar evidence that a genetic variation linked to heavy smoking in men is becoming less common.
“It may be that men who don’t carry these harmful mutations can have more children, or that men and women who live longer can help with their grandchildren, improving their chance of survival,” said co-author Molly Przeworski in a Columbia news release. She is an evolutionary biologist at the university.
The study was published on September 5 in the journal PLOS Biology.
The HealthDay story is at: https://consumer.healthday.com/general-health-information-16/evolution-anthropology-972/evolution-not-over-for-humans-726038.html.
September 6, 2017
Bigger is better in Taiwan
Warning labels on cigarette packs sold in Taiwan are too small and not frightening enough to be effective, according to a story in The Taipei Times quoting academics speaking at a forum held in Taipei on Monday.
The difference between the number of people who smoked in Taiwan, three million, and the number who smoked in Hong Kong, 640,000, might be due to the difference in the sizes of the warning labels, they said at the Tobacco Hazard and Prevention Forum for Cross-strait Locations, Hong Kong and Macau.
This seems unlikely given that the population of Taiwan is about 23 million and that of Hong Kong is about seven million.
There is a significant smoking-prevalence difference: about 15 percent in Taiwan and 10 percent in Hong Kong, but attributing this to health warnings seems to be a giant step.
Warning labels in Taiwan took up 35 percent of tobacco packaging and were ‘a light reminder’, the academics said.
On the other hand, warning labels and graphics take up 85 percent of tobacco packaging in Hong Kong. They include pictures of long-time smokers and the effects that smoking has on the body, and warning messages such as, ‘Smoking causes strokes and ‘Smoking kills’.
University of Hong Kong professor Lam Tai-hing was quoted as saying that ‘pictures’ were thought to scare many young people off smoking.
In Taiwan, the Health Promotion Administration said it was aware of the statistics, and that amendments to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act had been sent to the Executive Yuan.
The amendments would increase the size of warning labels on cigarette packaging to 85 percent.
And they would hike fines for the illegal distribution of e-cigarettes in a bid to deter sales and distribution of these devices.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said it would convene a panel to discuss the kinds of pictures that would be a deterrent to smoking.
September 6, 2017
Smoking down in Ukraine
The incidence of smoking in Ukraine has fallen by 20 percent during the past seven years, according to the World Health Organization citing the results of the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS).
The WHO said that the reduction in the incidence of smoking had come about because Ukraine, following WHO recommendations, had strengthened its anti-tobacco legislation.
“Ukraine ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2006, and since then tobacco control in the country has been strengthened, said Dr. Marthe Everard, WHO representative and head of the WHO country office in Ukraine. “This has helped to achieve a significant reduction in tobacco use. However, a lot of work still needs to be done. All tobacco control stakeholders – the government, politicians, experts, scientists, civil society activists – should strengthen and join up their efforts.”
Speaking at the launch of the GATS findings, Everard said that using the GATS framework helped the country identify and understand the outstanding problems it faced in further reducing the number of smokers.
The 20 percent reduction in the country’s smoking incidence between 2010 and 2017 was largely due to a reduction in smoking among men. No significant reductions were seen in the proportion of women who smoke.
In 2017, 7.2 million adult Ukrainians smoked daily, including 35.9 percent of all adult men and 7.0 percent of all adult women.
However, fewer adults were said to be considering quitting smoking, which, the WHO said, might be linked to a decrease in the number who reported having been exposed to anti-tobacco advertising. It might be linked also with the fact that smoking in public and tobacco advertising are still seen in Ukraine, despite their being banned.
WHO said that the results of GATS 2017 would be used to develop Ukraine’s tobacco control policy further to fulfil the requirements of the FCTC.
It identified what it saw as areas for urgent attention:
- ‘using legislation to strengthen compliance with existing policy, in particular regarding the ban on smoking in public places and on the marketing of tobacco products;
- ‘providing access to free or affordable services to support people in quitting tobacco use;
- ‘strengthening measures warning people of the risks of tobacco use;
- ‘maintaining regular increases in the price of tobacco products through effective tobacco tax increases.’
September 5, 2017
SM acquires V2 Tobacco
Swedish Match has acquired V2 Tobacco, previously a privately-owned smokeless-tobacco company primarily active in Europe.
The purchase price was not disclosed in a press note posted on Swedish Match’s website today, but V2 Tobacco, which was started in 2006 and which has its headquarters in Silkeborg, Denmark, was said to have an annual turnover ‘in the range of’ SEK160 million.
Annual production at V2 Tobacco, which has about 60 employees and which is said to have modern and flexible production facilities, is ‘close to 20 million cans of chew bags and snus combined’.
The company has a brand portfolio that includes Thunder, Offroad, and Phantom.
It is active in more than 25 markets, but its main markets are Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Germany, Switzerland and on-line. It is said to have a small but growing presence in ‘certain other European markets’.
‘In this transaction, Swedish Match will acquire 100 percent of the shares in V2 Tobacco (production and sales/marketing in Denmark),’ the press note said.
‘The current CEO and one of the founders of the company, Marc Vogel, has agreed to remain with the company, which will be operated for the most part independently from other Swedish Match businesses.
‘The closing date of the transaction is August 31st.’
“We are very excited about this transaction,” said Lars Dahlgren, president and CEO of Swedish Match. “A vibrant and independent V2 Tobacco business fits very well as a complement to our existing organization. V2 Tobacco´s modern and adaptable production allows Swedish Match improved flexibility and expanded opportunities to adapt to changing consumer desires, helping Swedish Match to move further toward its vision of a world without cigarettes.”
Meanwhile, Vogel said it had been important to find a buyer who shared V2 tobacco’s values and ambitions for the future.
“With their long history, competence and their extensive work with product quality, Swedish Match will give our operation in Silkeborg new and better opportunities to develop and grow,” he said.
September 1, 2017
SM expands in US
Swedish Match is to invest $40.9 million to expand its production facility at Owensboro, Kentucky, US, according to a 14WFIE story relayed by the TMA.
As well as adding 34,000 square feet to its existing facility; it will add, too, a 16,000-square-foot production area for ZYN, a smokeless and spitless tobacco-derived nicotine pouch.
The construction is expected to start this month and to be completed by July 2019.
Established in 1973, the Owensboro facility employs 342 people, including a 26-member research and development team added during a 2015 expansion.
The expanded facility is expected to require another 36 full-time employees.
September 1, 2017
Poor dying too soon
People living in the most deprived parts of England and Wales are more than twice as likely to succumb to avoidable deaths than are those living in the most well-off areas, according to a story by May Bulman for The Independent citing new statistics.
Smoking is said to be a likely contributor to the higher rates of avoidable deaths in deprived regions.
Bulman said that figures collated by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed that in areas with the highest levels of social deprivation there were 18,794 deaths from causes that were considered avoidable, compared with 7,756 in the least-deprived areas. It was not clear what period these figures referred to.
The ONS report comes four years after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there was “shocking” local variation in ‘early death rates’ which could “not continue unchecked”.
But the new figures appear to indicate that social deprivation is still closely linked to deaths that could have been avoided with timely and effective public health interventions.
September 1, 2017
E-cigarettes are “fun”
Former smokers are nearly three times more likely to abstain from cigarette smoking if they puff on an electronic cigarette two out of every three days a month, according to a story by Dennis Thompson for HealthDay, citing a new study that analysed a US federal survey on smoking.
The study was published on August 31 in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
“E-cigarettes are an effective way to get cigarette smokers to quit, but you really need to use those e-cigarettes,” said lead researcher Professor David Levy.
“Using them a couple days a month isn’t going to be anywhere near as effective as if you use them most, if not all, days in a month.”
The odds of a smoker successfully quitting increases by 10 percent with each additional day of e-cigarette use, said Levy, a professor with Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, in Washington, D.C.
However, pulmonologist Dr. Louis De Palo was said to be concerned that e-cigarettes did too good a job replacing traditional tobacco cigarettes.
“People don’t get addicted to the other forms of nicotine replacement because they aren’t fun,” said De Palo, who’s an associate professor of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
“Gum doesn’t taste very good. The nose inhaler burns a little bit. The patches are irritating. And none of them give you the psychological satisfaction of holding something in your hand and smoking,” he explained.
“E-cigarettes are highly addictive, easy to use, and fun,” De Palo continued. “This study doesn’t address the strategy for eventually weaning people off e-cigarettes.”
For this study, Levy and his colleagues reviewed data from more than 24,000 participants in the 2014/2015 Tobacco Use Supplement-Current Population Survey, a regular survey on smoking administered by the US Census Bureau.
The full text of Thompson’s piece is at: https://consumer.healthday.com/cancer-information-5/electronic-cigarettes-970/e-cigs-may-help-smokers-quit-but-hellip-726072.html.
September 1, 2017