Tag: United States

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH US) has said that it is time to phase cigarettes out of the US market.
In a press note issued yesterday, the day on which the US Food and Drug Administration announced crackdowns on various tobacco and nicotine-delivery products, ASH focused on the announcement by the FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, MD, that he intended to begin the process of banning the sale of menthol cigarettes.
‘Menthol was left out of a cigarette-flavoring ban in 2009, and the result is that African Americans smoke menthol cigarettes at a much higher rate – and suffer the consequences – than the general population,’ the note said. ‘But it’s long past time to think about doing away with cigarettes altogether. As Stanford University’s Robert Proctor put it in his book Golden Holocaust, “the cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization”.’
ASH went on to say that the addition of menthol made the first cigarette a person smoked easier on the throat, which made inhaling easier and increased nicotine addiction.
It said that menthol brands had been heavily marketed to African Americans, resulting in nearly nine out of 10 African American smokers using menthol cigarettes.
And it said that cigarettes generally still caused nearly 500,000 deaths in the US annually, over 1/5th of all deaths.
‘As a society, we have become numb to the harm caused by cigarettes, thanks largely to a century-long tobacco-industry public relations campaign to normalize smoking,’ the note said. ‘But take a step back, and imagine a new product coming on the market tomorrow that is highly addictive and deadly when used as intended. It would be removed from the shelves immediately.
‘Ask yourself another question: at what age do I want my kids to start smoking? The answer for nearly everyone is obviously “never”. Most smokers want to quit and wish they had never started. Nearly all made the “choice” to smoke that first cigarette as children; by adulthood, they were already addicted.’
Laurent Huber, executive director of ASH, was quoted as saying that the mass marketing of cigarettes, a highly sophisticated, addictive and defective nicotine delivery device that killed over seven million people globally every year, was an abuse of corporate power and a human rights violation. “Banning menthol is a step in the right direction, but it is time to go one step further and phase cigarettes out of the market to prevent millions of unnecessary deaths,” Huber said.
ASH said the FDA was precluded from banning tobacco sales when it was given authority over tobacco products. ‘But all the states and many local jurisdictions are empowered to end the sale of cigarettes and protect the lives of their citizens,’ the note said. ‘Such a move was politically impossible when we first learned of the health harms caused by smoking – about half of adults smoked. But we’ve made progress in the past 50 years, and driven that figure down to about 14 percent.
“It’s now within reach,” Huber said. “With the stroke of a pen, communities can end the number one preventable cause of death and disease.”

The US Food and Drug Administration has been told that it should refrain from a crackdown across the vaping category but act decisively against its ‘bad actors’.
Jeff Stier, senior fellow at the Consumer Choice Center, offered this advice as the FDA prepares its new action plan on electronic cigarettes.
Stier put forward some ‘simple steps’ for the FDA to follow if it wanted to adhere to common ground.
“We should all be able to agree that e-cigarettes are not entirely safe and should not be used by kids,” said Stier.
“At the same time, as Public Health England has been saying for more than three years, e-cigarettes are around 95 percent less harmful than combustible cigarettes and can help smokers quit. To maximize protection to Americans of all ages, the FDA must finally formulate sensible, science-based policies to achieve two key goals:

• “Prevent youth from initiating the use of any nicotine-containing product, including e-cigarettes.
• “Foster switching by adult smokers who have been unable to quit by other means.”

Stier said the FDA was threatening that, because of ‘news reports,’ public opinion and data about youth use that the agency hadn’t released, it might soon remove many e-cigarettes from the market, including most flavors, as well as the pods they come in, until a manufacturer applies for and receives approval for each product.
The agency was warning also that it might ban sales everywhere except in vape shops.
“But it’s not too late,” said Stier. “In its new plan, the FDA should implement the legitimate common ground by taking the following three steps:
1: “Focus on the bad-actors. The FDA should act swiftly and forcefully, as it has the authority to do, against any retailer caught selling an e-cigarette to a minor.
2: “The FDA must work constructively with the industry it regulates.
3: “Make good on the promise to change misconceptions about nicotine, which, while addictive, is not the major cause of tobacco-related disease.”
Stier then moved on to what he believed the FDA should not do:
1: “Remove e-cigarettes from all stores except vape shops.
2: “Allow either side to erode common ground. Just as the FDA shouldn’t be lenient with those who sell or give e-cigarettes to kids, it shouldn’t allow false assertions about the risks of e-cigarettes to stand unchallenged.
3: “Fall prey to the notion that the FDA has in its power the ability to prevent every last youth from ever trying an e-cigarette.”
Stier said that when it gave the FDA authority to regulate recreational lower-risk nicotine products, Congress believed the FDA could be sophisticated enough to prevent youth use while helping adults quit smoking.
“Sadly, to date, the FDA has accomplished little on either front,” he said. “These failures don’t justify a misplaced ‘crackdown’ on e-cigarettes. They require an intensive focus on stopping the bad actors.
“If the FDA doesn’t get it right – this month – President Trump should ask, in an exit interview, why FDA leadership couldn’t achieve a central promise of the administration: improving our lives not with more regulation, but with less of it, wisely implemented.”