Category: Research

  • Reynolds Releases Harm Reduction Paper

    Reynolds Releases Harm Reduction Paper

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    Reynolds American Inc., the BAT Group’s U.S. subsidiary, released its inaugural white paper, “Tobacco Harm Reduction: Creating A Better Tomorrow for Public Health in America,” reports PR Newswire. This is the first in a series of white papers aimed at raising awareness on tobacco harm reduction (THR) as a public health strategy that encourages adult smokers who are uninterested in quitting tobacco altogether to migrate to noncombustible product alternatives.

    The goal of the Reynolds’ white paper series is to highlight the progress of THR, address the challenges and have dialogue on the path forward.

    “THR has the potential to bring about one of the greatest public health achievements of our time,” said Priscilla Samuel, executive vice president of scientific research and development. “We hope the information presented in this white paper will spark renewed conversation on THR among all stakeholders, including regulators and policymakers, which could lead to effective regulation and access to noncombustible product alternatives for adult smokers who are uninterested in quitting.”

  • Study: Menthol Ban Increased Smoking Among Black Women

    Study: Menthol Ban Increased Smoking Among Black Women

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    Massachusetts’ menthol cigarette ban led to a net increase in smoking among Black adults, according to a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, reports the Reason Foundation.

    Samuel Asare, principal scientist in tobacco control research at the American Cancer Society, suggested that banning menthol cigarettes is counterproductive to public health goals and called for better health equity.

    “As the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] plans to eliminate menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes, interventions should address possible increases in cigarette smoking among Black females,” the research letter states.

    The research showed that the menthol ban led to an 8.1 percent relative decrease in smoking among adults aged 25 and older, with the prevalence of current cigarette use dropping from 13 percent in 2019 to 12 percent in 2021. Part of this decrease was due to a 56.8 percent relative decrease in smoking among Black men. However, with a 58.6 percent relative increase in smoking among Black women and an equal prevalence of smoking among both genders in 2019, the menthol cigarette ban led to a net increase in smoking among Black adults in Massachusetts.

  • MEPs Ignorant about New Nicotine Products

    MEPs Ignorant about New Nicotine Products

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    Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are less aware of key issues surrounding new nicotine products than in previous years despite being asked to vote on important new legislation concerning the topic in the coming months, according to a new survey, reports BusinessWire.

    The third annual survey, conducted by business intelligence researcher Tamarind Intelligence, publisher of ECigIntelligence and TobaccoIntelligence, shows that the more MEPs know about new nicotine products (e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches and heated tobacco), the more likely they are to consider that these products are less harmful than cigarettes.

    The report shows that: MEPs rarely believe that new nicotine products are as harmful as smoking—only 19 percent of responses, the lowest number since the annual survey was launched in 2020—and a majority believe they are less harmful than smoking; MEPs with no knowledge of new nicotine products are becoming far more likely to acknowledge that they don’t know the risks; MEPs with some knowledge of new nicotine products strongly tend to believe (76 percent of responses) that they are less harmful than smoking; and while very few MEPs consider that new nicotine products should be more restricted than traditional tobacco, and a majority believe online sales should be allowed for adults (with age verification), more MEPs are unsure how they should be regulated than in previous years.

    “Our third annual MEP survey results are particularly relevant given the recent launch of the European Commission’s public consultation on evaluating the legislative framework for tobacco control at the end of February 2023 and the adoption by the European Parliament of the BECA committee’s recommendations over a year ago,” said Tim Phillips, managing director of Tamarind Intelligence. “As some of the questions in the commission’s consultation are similar to the ones we asked in our MEP survey, it will be fascinating to see if MEPs’ views on the topic of new nicotine products will be in line with responses to the public consultation.”

    The survey was carried out online and anonymously, and all data from it remains confidential other than as used in consolidated analysis. The survey was sent to all MEPs (from all member states and political parties), and responses were obtained from 43 MEPs representing 6 percent of the European Parliament.

  • Vaping Studied Among French-Speaking Youth

    Vaping Studied Among French-Speaking Youth

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    One in eight youth aged 14 to 25 in French-speaking Switzerland is a frequent e-cigarette user, reports Le News.

    A study by Unisante, which surveyed 1,362 young people, 59 percent said they had consumed e-cigarettes at least once and 12 percent said they used them frequently (more than 10 days over the past month). Of those that responded, 59 percent said they consume the products when out at night while 40 percent said they consume them at home. The survey showed that 63 percent of respondents preferred e-cigarettes because of the flavors while 40 percent cited lack of tobacco smell and 30 percent cited ease of use.

    Disposables are the most popular choice for youth, and 49.4 percent of respondents said their parents knew they used the products. Half of respondents said they’d seen advertising for the products, and two-thirds were aware of the health risks and risk of addiction.

    In Switzerland, 19 percent of those aged 15 to 24 smoked combustible cigarettes daily in 2017.

  • Over Half of Americans Support Tobacco Ban

    Over Half of Americans Support Tobacco Ban

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    A new paper showed that over half of Americans would support a ban on the sale of all tobacco products, reports Vaping360.

    The paper was published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

    According to the results of a survey, detailed in the paper, 57.3 percent of respondents strongly or somewhat supported prohibiting the sale of all tobacco products while 62.3 percent of respondents supported a menthol cigarette ban.

    The survey did not provide a definition of “tobacco products,” so it is unclear how many respondents believed e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches were included in the category.

    Survey data was compiled from a spring 2021 web panel of 6,455 people ages 18 and older, weighted to match Census Bureau proportions for demographic variables like sex, age, income, race, education and region. Four scientists from the CDC Office on Smoking and Health and one scientist from the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education compiled and analyzed the data.

  • Survey Details Advocacy for Safer Nicotine

    Survey Details Advocacy for Safer Nicotine

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    Knowledge-Action-Change (KAC) has released a global survey investigating the role and activities of consumer organizations advocating for access to safer nicotine products (SNPs) and tobacco harm reduction.

    Carried out by KAC’s Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction project, the research was published in Public Health Challenges.

    It reveals that there are 54 active consumer advocacy groups working around the world to raise awareness about, and promote the availability of and access to, SNPs, which include nicotine vaping products (e-cigarettes), Swedish-style snus, nicotine pouches and heated-tobacco products.

    The authors of the survey found that the vast majority of organizations (42) were operated entirely by volunteers, most of whom had successfully quit smoking with the help of SNPs.

    Only seven of the groups had any contracted or paid staff (13 people globally), and for the last full year, the total funding for all organizations surveyed amounted to $309,810. This is in stark contrast to the millions of dollars spent on campaigns by actors, such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, seeking to limit access to SNPs, such as nicotine vaping products. The paper also notes that none of the consumer advocacy organizations reported receiving funding from tobacco or pharmaceutical companies.

    This paper starkly demonstrates the major imbalance in resources available to consumer organizations advocating for access to safer nicotine products and those opposed to tobacco harm reduction, unfairly skewing the debate.

    Gerry Stimson, director, KAC

    Many of these organizations are members of four regional umbrella organizations covering Latin America (ARDT Iberoamerica), Africa (CASA), Europe (ETHRA) and Asia-Pacific (CAPHRA).

    “This survey offered a unique opportunity to map these advocacy organizations for the first time and provide valuable insight into how they are operating all over the world,” said Tomasz Jerzynski, lead author and data scientist for the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction project. “The sustainability of these organizations is one of the main concerns that has come out of the data. All of these groups face challenges due to their small numbers of core workers and their dependence on volunteers.”

    “This paper starkly demonstrates the major imbalance in resources available to consumer organizations advocating for access to safer nicotine products and those opposed to tobacco harm reduction, unfairly skewing the debate,” said Gerry Stimson, report author, director of KAC and emeritus professor at Imperial College London. “It also highlights why consumer groups must be recognized as legitimate stakeholders in the policy sphere.”

  • FDA Urged to Expand Menthol Ban

    FDA Urged to Expand Menthol Ban

    Image: Tobacco Reporter archive

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should extend the ban on menthol cigarettes to other products, like pipe tobacco and cigarette tubes, according to researchers at the Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies and Ohio State University, reports EurekAlert!.

    “Tobacco companies have rebranded their roll-your-own cigarette tobacco as pipe tobacco to avoid taxes and rebranded flavored cigarettes as flavored cigars to skirt a federal ban,” said Andrea Villanti, deputy director of the Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies and co-principal investigator of a study published in Tobacco Control discussing the addiction potential of menthol cigarette alternatives. “We have already seen companies advertising pipe tobacco and cigarette tubes alongside cigarettes and filtered cigars. The products we tested in our study are likely to be products that tobacco companies will promote following a ban on menthol cigarettes.”

    Research showed that mentholated pipe tobacco and tubes in a roll-your-own cigarette were the most appealing substitutes for menthol cigarettes and resulted in the highest number of indicators for future nicotine addiction. The proposed menthol ban does not include these products, however.

    “The present findings suggest that components of menthol roll-your-own products, including menthol rolling papers, cigarette tubes and pipe tobacco, should be included in the menthol cigarette and flavored cigar product standards,” said Theodore Wagener, director of the Center for Tobacco Research at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center—Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute and corresponding author of the study. “Their absence from this restriction will result in a critical loophole that is already being exploited by the tobacco industry and has the potential to lessen the potential public health benefits of the proposed menthol ban.”

  • Flavor Ban Didn’t Stop Vapers

    Flavor Ban Didn’t Stop Vapers

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    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban on flavored tobacco products, except for menthol and tobacco flavors, did not stop consumers from vaping, reports EurekAlert!, citing a study published in Tobacco Control.

    The study showed that less than 5 percent of the 3,500 adult e-cigarette users surveyed quit using e-cigarettes in response to the ban. The remaining respondents switched to other forms of tobacco products or flavors of e-cigarettes that are not covered by the ban. 

    “An increasing body of literature shows that e-cig flavors themselves cause damage when inhaled, so it makes sense to ban flavors,” said Deborah J. Ossip, a tobacco research expert and professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences and Center for Community Health and Prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) who co-authored the study. “But the ban doesn’t appear to be working. People—including youth—can still get flavored products and are still using them.”

    Lead study author Dongmei Li, associate professor of clinical and translational research, obstetrics and gynecology and public health sciences at URMC, stated that a big issue is that the ban did not cover products such as disposable e-cigarettes and e-cigarettes that use tanks rather than cartridges or pods.

    “Other forms of flavored e-cigs, especially disposable e-cigs, have become very popular after the FDA policy,” Li said. “The FDA policy also did not ban menthol[-flavored] or tobacco-flavored products—and our study shows many people switched to menthol-flavored e-cigs after the ban. It seems many people find menthol to be a nice flavor.”

    Of the survey respondents, nearly 30 percent switched to tank or disposable flavored e-cigarettes and another 30 percent switched to menthol-flavored or tobacco-flavored pods; 14 percent switched to combustible products, like cigarettes, and 5 percent switched to smokeless tobacco. Less than 5 percent quit using e-cigarettes following the ban.

  • Study: Major Drop in Vaping by Under-20s

    Study: Major Drop in Vaping by Under-20s

    Use of e-cigarettes vaping devices dropped during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new study.

    Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, found that usage of vaping products dropped seven percent overall from 2018 to 2020 – including a 17 percent drop among people aged 18 to 20.

    Researchers published their findings Friday on the JAMA Network Open after gathering data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for the study, according to media reports.

    The survey included a total of 994,307 respondents. In 2017, the CDC reported 4.4 percent of U.S. adults reported use of an e-cigarette. The figure climbed 25 percent to 5.5 percent in 2018.

    ‘This increase, primarily observed in younger age groups, was associated with the concurrent rise in the availability of flavored products and high nicotine–concentration pod mod devices (modular vaping devices with refillable or replaceable nicotine cartridges, or pods, such as JUUL brand devices),’ the researcher’s wrote in the study.

    Data from 2019 was not gathered. In 2020, overall usage of e-cigarettes fell to 5.1 percent, a seven percent drop from two years earlier. The most dramatic shift was seen among people aged 18 to 20 years old – the youngest group included in the study.

  • Study Finds Link Between Social Media, Tobacco Use

    Study Finds Link Between Social Media, Tobacco Use

    According to a new study, individuals who viewed tobacco content on social media were more than two times as likely to use the substance compared with those who were not exposed. Both organic content, such as friends’ post, and curated content, or advertisements, were included in the study.

    Findings of the meta-analysis were published in JAMA Pediatrics and also showed that even among never-users, those who viewed tobacco-related content on social media were more than twice as likely to use it in the future than non-viewers.

    Because results are based largely on surveys conducted at one point in time, a direct cause cannot be confirmed, according to The Hill.

    The review included 24 datasets, complete with information from 139,624 individuals, the majority of whom were adolescents. The studies also took place in a range of countries that included the United States, Indonesia and Australia.

    “The proliferation of social media has offered tobacco companies new ways to promote their products, especially to teens and young adults,” said study co-author Jon-Patrick Allem of the Keck School of Medicine in a statement.

    Those exposed to tobacco on social media were also more likely to have had past 30-day tobacco use, while similar associations of past, current and future use were seen for exposure to tobacco promotions, active engagement with content, passive engagement and exposure among youths and adolescents. 

    Individuals who consumed content on more than one platform were more likely to report current use or future susceptibility compared with single platform viewers. 

    Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram and Snapchat were among the platforms hosting tobacco-related content. Notably, relative social media newcomer TikTok was not included in the analysis, but researchers have plans to conduct further studies on new platforms including TikTok and refine associations by different tobacco form, such as e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.