Category: Harm Reduction

Vaping provides no gateway
A major study conducted across the UK has concluded that regular use of electronic cigarettes among people 11–16 years of age ‘remains very low, at three percent or less, and remains largely confined to regular smokers’.
The study, led by professor Linda Bauld of the University of Stirling and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, examined data from five large scale surveys with different designs and sampling strategies conducted between 2015 and 2017: The Youth Tobacco Policy Survey; the Schools Health Research Network Wales survey; two Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Smokefree Great Britain-Youth Surveys; and the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey. Cumulatively these surveys were said to have collected data from more than 60,000 young people.
In their conclusion, the researchers said that their paper highlighted the current rates of e-cigarette use among young people in the UK, where e-cigarettes formed a part of a tobacco harm reduction policy landscape.
While it was estimated that there were 2.9 million e-cigarette current users among adults in Great Britain, regular use among people 11–16 years of age remained at three percent or lower, and remained largely confined to regular smokers.
Regular e-cigarette use among never smokers was very rare.
These low rates of regular use suggested that youth experimentation was not currently leading to greater frequency of use; however, comparing youth e-cigarette data and trends across surveys and countries was crucial to better understand youth trends.
Survey measures had to be designed to assess frequency of use, rather than just ever- or past-30-day use.
The full study is available at: http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/9/973/htm.
August 31, 2017
Smoking costs unaffordable
China will be unable to bear the economic and social costs of tobacco smoking if it doesn’t speed up its tobacco-control efforts, according to a story by Sun Wenyu for the People’s Daily Online.
A recent report issued jointly by 37 organizations, including the Chinese Preventative Medicine Association and the Chinese Association of Tobacco Control, said that China’s tobacco consumption accounted for 44 percent of worldwide consumption.
China had added 15 million new smokers in five years and the country needed urgently to step up its efforts to control tobacco.
The results of a nationwide adult tobacco survey that was published in 2015 indicated that 27.7 percent of Chinese people above the age of 15 were smokers. It indicated, too, that the total number of smokers in the country had reached 315 million.
According to the ‘Healthy China 2030’ blueprint issued by the State Council, China aims to lower the proportion of smokers to 20 percent by 2030.
The story said that ‘experts’ believed that tobacco consumption had become a global issue that threatened public health and led to serious consequences. Smoking caused major chronic non-infectious diseases, and these diseases accounted for 85 percent of the total deaths in China.
Though progress had been made, China had a long way to go before it could reach the goals set in the Healthy China 2030 blueprint.
It would be unaffordable for the country to pay for the economic and social losses if it didn’t speed up the process of tobacco control.
The story said that experts had called on the country to pass legislation ‘to establish a smoke-free country and comprehensively ban public smoking’.
‘In addition, the experts believe that China should reduce tobacco advertisements, increase tobacco tax, and make smoking cessation a basic public health service,’ the story said.
August 31, 2017
Management board changes
Kingsley Wheaton (pictured), MD, Next Generation Products (NGP) at British American Tobacco is to manage the integration of NGP into the wider business.
‘Now that we have built a successful NGP business which is poised for substantial growth, we will be fully integrating NGP into our existing business infrastructure across the Group – both within the functions and the regions – to leverage the scale and expertise of the whole group to drive growth in an area that is fast becoming a key part of our mainstream business,’ BAT said in a note posed on its website. ‘Kingsley Wheaton, managing director, Next Generation Products, will manage this integration process.’
The future of the NGP business was spelled out in a note posed on BAT’s website today saying that, following the acquisition of Reynolds American Inc, BAT was simplifying its regional structure.
The company’s organizational structure would in future be based on three regions:
- Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa (including East and Central Africa; West Africa and South Africa), whose regional director will be Ricardo Oberlander, formerly regional director, Americas.
- Europe and North Africa (including Russia, Ukraine, Caucasus, Central Asia, Belarus, and Turkey), whose regional director will be Tadeu Marroco, formerly regional director, Western Europe.
- Asia-Pacific and Middle East, whose regional direct will be Johan Vandermeulen, formerly regional director, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Jack Bowles, currently regional director, Asia-Pacific, will be appointed to the newly-created role of COO for the international business, excluding the US, where Debra Crew, who as president and CEO of Reynolds American, joined the management board with effect from July 27.
Andrew Gray, currently director, marketing, will be appointed chief marketing officer; while David O’Reilly, group scientific and R&D director, will remain a member of the management board, and will report to the chief marketing officer.
August 31, 2017
Lives versus livelihoods
The Indian government has been investigating how Bloomberg Philanthropies funds local tobacco-control activities, according to a Reuters story relayed by the TMA and citing a note from last year drafted by the intelligence wing of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The note was said to have raised concerns that the Bloomberg foundation was funding campaigns to ‘target’ Indian tobacco businesses and ‘aggressively’ lobby against the sector.
It said that while the foundation’s ‘claimed intention to free India of tobacco cannot be faulted’ given tobacco’s known risks, the industry generated US$5 billion in revenue annually and provided a livelihood for millions of people.
The three-page note, which was reportedly reviewed by Reuters, said also that ‘foreign interests making foreign contributions…for purposes of lobbying against an established economic activity raises multiple concerns’, such as creating an ‘adverse economic impact’ on 35 million people.
Since 2014, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is said to have tightened surveillance of non-profit groups, saying they are acting against India’s national interests. Thousands of foreign-funded charities’ licenses have been canceled for misreporting donations.
The Reuters piece said that according to a senior government official aware of the investigation, the ministry’s note had been the reason for a rejection of a foreign funding license renewal of at least one Bloomberg-funded India charity in October 2016.
Some critics say the government is using the foreign funding law as a tool to silence non-profit groups which have raised concerns about the social costs of India’s rapid economic development.
August 30, 2017
A positive role for nicotine
Lung experts at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center are testing whether nicotine can help people with a chronic inflammatory lung disease called sarcoidosis, according to a story on news-medical.net.
Why nicotine? “Around 2000, we learned two things,” said Dr. Elliott Crouser, a pulmonologist specializing in sarcoidosis.
“There was new evidence that nicotine is an anti-inflammatory, and from other studies we discovered smokers were less likely to get sarcoidosis.
“So we’re testing whether nicotine can be a solution. We hope people will actually get a secondary benefit – not only will their lung disease get better, but they’ll feel more energized and have better quality of life.”
Crouser described sarcoidosis as “tricky” because it mimicked other diseases. “It’s frequently misdiagnosed,” he said. “Sarcoidosis can look like lung nodules, pneumonia, scar tissue, even lung cancer. It can involve other vital organs, and it differs from one person to the next.”
Left untreated, sarcoidosis can cause severe lung damage and even death. And unlike in the case of most lung diseases, the main symptom isn’t shortness of breath, but debilitating fatigue.
Current treatments such as steroids often have side effects harsher than the symptoms of the disease itself. “We can’t use the medications for very long before these side effects occur,” said Crouser. “They can be severe, such as the development of osteoporosis, cataracts, diabetes or high blood pressure and complications related to those.
“We need better, more tolerable options.”
So Crouser is leading a clinical trial at the Wexner Medical Center to test nicotine patches as a potential treatment for sarcoidosis.
The full story is at: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20170828/Lung-experts-test-nicotine-patches-as-potential-treatment-for-sarcoidosis.aspx.
August 30, 2017
Scramble for HNB sticks
With the South Korean government expected to raise taxes on the consumable sticks used in heat-not-burn (HNB) tobacco devices, an increasing number of vapers are stocking up on these products, according to a story in The Korea Bizwire.
Sources within the convenience store industry said yesterday that sales of IQOS HEETS had increased drastically since reports emerged last week that the taxation committee of the National Assembly’s Strategy and Finance Committee had agreed to increase a special consumption tax imposed on HNB products.
If the tax on HNB products increases as has been predicted, the price of a pack of 20 sticks is expected to rise from around 4,000 won – under the price of a pack of traditional tobacco cigarettes, 4,500 won – to 5,000 won.
At the convenience-store chain 7-Eleven, sales of HEETS on August 22-27 increased by more than 60 percent on those of the previous week.
Given a previous week-on-week sales increase of 1.7 percent, and given that other convenience-store chains are also experiencing strongly-increased sales, it seems clear that vapers are bulk purchasing ahead of the proposed tax hike.
Meanwhile, according to a story by Song Seung-hyun for The Investor, the government is in need of additional tax revenue to fund the welfare pledges it has made.
August 30, 2017
No harm-reduction urgency
The EU Commission has sidestepped – for five years at least – a question on ‘the potential of nicotine delivery devices to reduce the harm linked to smoking tobacco’.
In July, Carolina Punset, a Spanish member of the EU Parliament, said in a preamble to two questions posed to the Commission that nicotine-delivery devices had been regulated for the first time in the EU in 2014 through Directive 2014/40/EU.
‘The directive introduced a series of strict criteria concerning quality, safety, consumer information and sale, and recognised the differences between nicotine delivery devices and conventional tobacco products,’ she said.
‘Since the directive was adopted in 2014, a discrepancy in member states’ public policies on those products has been found, particularly with regard to the reduction of harm linked to tobacco consumption amongst smokers and its possible use in policies intended to combat the effects of smoking. Whilst some countries, such as the UK and France, are openly exploring the potential of nicotine delivery devices to complement their tobacco control policies, other countries are still sceptical of them.’
Punset then asked:
1. ‘Does the Commission have data, based on member states’ experiences and figures, on the potential of nicotine delivery devices to reduce the harm linked to smoking tobacco?’; and
2. ‘Have specific monitoring and follow-up mechanisms been introduced for those products to enable the member states to share best practices on the matter?’
In its answer, the Commission pointed out that the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) 2014/40/EU entered into force on May 20, 2016.
‘Article 20 of the TPD contains requirements relating to safety, quality and consumer protection of electronic cigarettes,’ it said.
‘The Commission monitors regulatory developments relating to electronic cigarettes. In this respect, it remains in close contact with member states, to enable the exchange of available information and experience, by means of different fora, including Expert Group on Tobacco Policy, its Subgroup on Electronic Cigarettes and the upcoming Joint Action on Tobacco Control.
‘The input received will feed into findings that will be presented as a part of the report on the application of the TPD, which is due in 2021, as required under Article 28(1) of the TPD.’
August 30, 2017
Risk continuum quantified
The use of electronic cigarettes carries much less cancer risk than does tobacco smoking, though the use of some types of e-cigarettes is more-risky than the use of others, according to a story by Iqra Mumal on lungdiseasenews.com quoting a new study.
The research, entitled, Comparing the cancer potencies of emissions from vaporized nicotine products including e-cigarettes with those of tobacco smoke, was published in the journal Tobacco Control.
The story said that both the scientific community and the public had been divided over the health risks associated with vaporized nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn devices.
Studies had shown that vaporized nicotine products, or VNPs, could expose people to cancer-causing agents, but the question was how much cancer risk they posed.
Dr. William E. Stephens of the University of St. Andrews, the UK, led a team that sought to determine the cancer risk of the individual compounds in VNPs, and then calculate an overall VNP cancer risk.
They looked at published analyses of emissions to generate cancer-risk figures for a number of nicotine-delivering products, including cigarettes, e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn devices, and medicinal nicotine inhalers.
Each of the products were found to have different cancer potencies. Cigarette smoke had the highest. potency, while most e-cigarettes had cancer potencies that were less than one percent of cigarette smoke, though a small minority had much higher potencies than did others.
This minority of e-cigarettes was associated with high levels of carbonyls – or carbon compounds – that the products generated when a lot of power was applied to their atomizer coils.
Another finding was that heat-not-burn devices had lower cancer potency than did cigarette smoke but much higher potency than most e-cigarettes had.
The team concluded that cigarettes posed the highest lifetime cancer risk, and that they were followed on the cancer-risk scale by heat-not-burn devices, then e-cigarettes and medicinal nicotine inhalers.
Mumal’s story is at: https://lungdiseasenews.com/2017/08/25/study-finds-that-cancer-risk-of-e-cigarettes-is-much-lower-than-that-of-cigarette-smoke/
August 29, 2017
No urgency to health plans
The proceeds of a health development surcharge on tobacco companies in Bangladesh, Tk 9 billion, has been unused during the past three fiscal years due to a lack of a specific guidelines for spending the revenue, according to a story in The Financial Express.
In that time, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17, the government failed to use the money for campaigning against tobacco consumption.
This was said to be due to the slow pace of approval and implementation of the Health Ministry’s Health Development Surcharge Management Policy.
A draft of the policy was approved at an inter-ministerial meeting on February 15 and it is scheduled to go before the cabinet this month.
An official at the Health Ministry was quoted as saying that the surcharge revenue could be used by the ministry’s National Tobacco Control Cell to execute a national tobacco control program that would ‘rehabilitate’ tobacco-users, create alternative jobs for tobacco farmers and ensure overall health development.
It has taken a long time to get to this point. The government imposed the surcharge in the budget for the financial year 2014-15.
But it wasn’t until January 2016, and then only at the South Asian Speakers’ conference, that the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina instructed the authorities to adopt a national tobacco control program with the revenue from the surcharge.
Following the instruction, the ministry of health framed the draft surcharge policy and sought the opinions of nine relevant ministries including those of finance, agriculture and industries.
The health ministry published the draft on its website in December 2016 for public opinion.
August 29, 2017
Smoke-free future possible
Philip Morris Singapore (PMS) said recently that about three million smokers had switched to its IQOS device, according to a story on The Online Citizen, which Wikipedia describes, in part, as a community blogging platform involved in political activism in Singapore.
The company, an affiliate of Philip Morris International said that more than 232,000 smokers converted to IQOS globally in July 2017 alone.
‘The number of smokers who switched to IQOS to date is equivalent to about five times the number of people who smoke in Singapore,’ the story said. ‘This proves that a smoke-free future is a concrete possibility.’
Lawrence Chew, general manager of PMS, was quoted as saying the company’s ambition was that all the people who would otherwise continue smoking switch to scientifically-substantiated smoke-free alternatives as soon as possible.
“But we cannot achieve this mammoth task alone,” he said. “All stakeholders of the industry have a role to play. We are encouraged by the growing number of experts and governments that are taking steps to support the role that science and innovation can have for public health, and hope Singapore will too.”
The story said that, recently, the UK, the US and New Zealand had joined a growing number of countries who recognized the need to review the evidence of the potential benefits of smoke-free products for public health, and announced steps to leverage their potential in their plans for a future without smoke.
August 25, 2017