The American Medical Association (AMA) is calling on the federal government to ensure consumers are aware of vaping-product ingredients.
It says that ‘research shows that the use of products containing nicotine in any form among youth – including e-cigarettes – is unsafe and can cause addiction’.
‘As the popularity of electronic cigarettes continues to grow among the nation’s youth, the … AMA adopted policy at its annual meeting this week to further strengthen its support of regulatory oversight of electronic cigarettes,’ the organization said in a press note issued on June 15. ‘The new policy urges the federal government to take action to ensure consumers are aware of the ingredients and nicotine content in e-cigarettes, e-cigarette cartridges and e-liquid refills.’
“Given that e-cigarette cartridge manufacturers are not required to list the ingredients contained in their products, we are concerned that consumers have an inaccurate reflection of the amount of nicotine and type of substances they’re inhaling when using e-cigarettes,” the AMA’s president Barbara L. McAneny, M.D, was quoted as saying. “We urge the federal government to move quickly to regulate e-cigarettes and require manufacturers to list the ingredients and nicotine content on product labels – further delaying regulation will only serve to put youth at further risk. The AMA will continue to advocate for more stringent policies to help keep all harmful tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, out of the hands of our nation’s youth.”
‘Research shows that the use of products containing nicotine in any form among youth – including e-cigarettes – is unsafe and can cause addiction,’ the note said. ‘To address concerns about unknown ingredients in e-cigarettes, the new policy specifically calls for prohibiting the sale of any e-cigarette cartridges and e-liquid refills that do not include a complete list of ingredients on its packaging, and requiring that the accurate nicotine content of e-cigarettes, e-cigarette cartridges, and e-liquid refills be prominently displayed on the product labels alongside the soon-to-be-required warning, which states that nicotine is an addictive chemical.
‘According to the latest data, the use of e-cigarettes, hookah, non-cigarette combustible tobacco, or smokeless tobacco by youth is associated with cigarette smoking one year later. ‘Furthermore, the risk of progressing to conventional cigarette smoking is increased with use of multiple forms of non-cigarette tobacco, suggesting that novel tobacco products have the potential to undermine public health gains in combatting the smoking epidemic.
‘E-cigarettes were the most commonly used tobacco product among US middle school and high school students for the fourth year in a row in 2017. Among youth who had used an e-cigarette 17 percent indicated their reason for use was that they are less harmful than other forms of tobacco such as cigarettes.
‘For the last five decades, the AMA has been a proud supporter of anti-tobacco efforts ranging from urging the federal government to support anti-tobacco legislation prohibiting smoking on public transportation to calling on tobacco companies to stop targeting children in their advertising campaigns.’
Tag: United States
Ingredients labeling sought
Panic stalks the land
A story in Reason magazine makes the point that a yearning for bad news on vaping has rendered some opponents incapable of accepting official figures that show that what they see as an epidemic among young people is nothing of the sort.
Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason magazine, said that, last week, voters in San Francisco had overwhelmingly approved a ban on the sale of “flavored tobacco products”, including electronic cigarettes, in part because of the rising popularity of e-cigarettes among teenagers.
Supporters of this and other, similar measures who said they wanted to protect teenagers from the temptations of vaping gave no weight to the interests of adult smokers who used e-cigarettes to quit, a process in which flavor variety played an important role.
In any case, three days after the San Francisco vote, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had published survey data showing that in 2017 vaping declined among middle school students and remained steady among high school students after falling in 2016.
‘E-cigarette alarmists were so flummoxed by reality’s failure to fit their narrative that they insisted the survey must be wrong,’ Sullum wrote.
Later in his piece, Sullum said that critics viewed sweet flavors as inherently suspect. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had argued that the FDA should not tolerate e-cigarettes that tasted good and that it should take faster action to rid the marketplace of kid-friendly e-cig flavors. The FDA had begun to move on this epidemic but its actions were slower-moving than was the wildfire spread of e-cigarette use among kids.
‘Never mind that “the wildfire spread of e-cig use among kids” perceived by Schumer coincides with what the CDC says is a decline in e-cig use among kids,’ said Sullum. ‘The more fundamental problem is that Schumer seems incapable of conceiving that “kid-friendly e-cig flavors” also appeal to adults, which makes vaping more attractive as a harm-reducing alternative to smoking. The implication is that banning those flavors could be deadly to smokers who would otherwise switch. Anyone who ignores that prospect is only pretending to care about public health.’FDA deadline nears
The US Food and Drug Administration has advised that June 30 is the deadline for ‘certain manufacturers of deemed tobacco products to provide a listing of their tobacco products to FDA’.
In a note issued through its Center for Tobacco Products, the agency said it had undertaken efforts to educate those who could be affected by answering questions such as: what is the tobacco product listing requirement; what types of changes trigger the requirement and when doesn’t it apply; what steps should companies take to make sure they’re in compliance?
More information is available on the FDA’s new web feature.Smoking revisited
In the last few decades, the lung cancer rate in China has risen sharply, but the culprit is not smoking; it’s pollution.
This is according to a piece by Robert Hoffman posted on the American Thinker website.
‘The war on tobacco, breathlessly waged by liberals and others who yearn to command everyone and everything, is based on the hysteria that smoking and being around the reprobates who smoke, as the surgeon general has declared, kill us,’ he said. ‘That countless other things do is dismissed as a distraction, not germane to the clear scientific facts.
‘A look at the clear scientific facts actually conveys quite a different conclusion.
‘According to nearly all the studies done, as opposed to the mere assertions, about 10 percent of lifelong cigarette-smokers contract any stripe of cancer. Those who consume three or more packs a day have a three-to-four-percent higher rate of lung cancer than the non-smoking population.
‘And among that non-smoking population, 10 to 15 percent are likely to get cancer of anything. ‘Thus, it would appear that in the absence of post hoc ergo propter hoc, you are more likely to be felled by cancer if you don’t smoke.’
Hoffman goes on to say that during the past few decades, the lung cancer rate in China has risen sharply, but that the culprit is not smoking.
The culprit is, he says, pollution, and the rate is considerably higher in the country’s smog-ridden cities.Saving lives
A leading US public health expert has criticized two researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for denying that smoking is known to be more hazardous than is vaping.
According to Dr. Michael Siegel (pictured), a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, the researchers made the denial in an article published in the Summer 2018 issue of the Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine. Dr. Ana Maria Rule, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, was said to have argued that: ‘Even if vaping proves safer than smoking, that’s still a long way from a gold stamp for their safety’.
And Dr. Joanna Cohen, a professor and director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control, was quoted as stating: ‘They are likely safer than continuing to smoke combustible cigarettes, but without the long-term studies, we just don’t know’.
Writing on his blog, The Rest of the Story, Siegel said that the problem with this denialism was not merely that it spread misinformation. ‘The problem is that this is exactly the kind of false propaganda that is deterring many smokers from trying to quit smoking using vaping products and is causing some ex-smokers to return to smoking,’ he said.
‘Whether they realize it or not, this is precisely the effect statements like those being made by these Johns Hopkins researchers are having on the public. In fact, several national surveys have demonstrated that the public is largely misinformed about the relative hazards of smoking vs. vaping. And it is this misperception that has stunted what otherwise could have been a much more substantial shift from smoking to vaping in this country. In other words, this isn’t just a question of misleading the public. It’s a question of saving lives, or failing to do so.
‘Hopefully, these researchers will publish a correction or retraction of these claims so that we can begin the process of restoring some semblance of a science base in the field of tobacco control.’Flavors have role in THR
The Heartland Institute has urged the US Food and Drug Administration to acknowledge tobacco harm reduction (THR) products as tools that have been shown to have a positive impact on public health.
The Institute was responding to an FDA advanced notice of proposed rulemaking aimed at obtaining information related to the role that flavors play in tobacco products.
Lindsey Stroud, the Institute’s state government relations manager said that anti-tobacco campaigns and tax increases had tried to curb the use of tobacco products, but that they offered only a strategy of “quit or die”. There was another approach: tobacco harm reduction, which explicitly included the continued use of tobacco or nicotine, and was designed to reduce the health effects of tobacco use.
There were numerous THR products currently on the market in the US – including snus, electronic cigarettes and vaping devices, and HNB products – all of which effectively delivered nicotine in a less harmful way than combustible cigarettes.
‘Flavors are an important component of THR products and vital to helping many smokers cease using combustible tobacco,’ she said.
Stroud’s response looks in depth at the role of flavors in THR products, at youth and tobacco harm reduction, at advertising and e-cigarettes; and it presents some recommended regulatory priorities.Tobacco use in decline
The current use among US high school students of any tobacco product decreased from 24.2 percent (3.69 million) in 2011 to 19.6 percent (2.95 million) in 2017, according to findings made public yesterday by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings, from the 2017 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, showed, too, that among middle school students, current use of any tobacco product decreased from 7.5 percent (0.87 million) in 2011 to 5.6 percent (0.67 million) in 2017.
‘By product, among both middle and high school students, there were decreases in use of cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco, pipes and bidis, and an increase in e-cigarette use, according to a press note issued through the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
‘Despite the overall decline, in 2017, about one in five high school students and one in 18 middle school students currently used a tobacco product. ‘For the fourth year in a row, e-cigarettes continued to be the most commonly used tobacco product [the FDA deems e-cigarettes to be tobacco products] among high school (11.7 percent; 1.73 million) and middle school (3.3 percent; 0.39 million) students.
‘Furthermore, about one in two (46.8 percent) high school students who currently used a tobacco product and two in five (41.8 percent) middle school students who currently used a tobacco product reported using two or more tobacco products.’
The authors were said to have concluded that the sustained implementation of population-based strategies, in co-ordination with the regulation of tobacco products by the FDA, were critical to reducing all forms of tobacco product use and initiation among young people.
‘Youth tobacco use rates, particularly e-cigarette use, continue to be of concern to FDA,’ the note said. ‘This spring, FDA announced a Youth Tobacco Prevention Plan, which includes a series of enforcement actions to prevent initiation of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, by youth.
‘Further, FDA continues to invest in compelling, science-based campaigns, like “The Real Cost” and “This Free Life,” to educate youth about the dangers of all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.
‘In fall 2017, FDA further expanded “The Real Cost” campaign to include an online e-cigarette prevention ad. A full-scale e-cigarette prevention effort under “The Real Cost” brand umbrella is planned for fall 2018.’Flavor ban gets the nod
Photo: Larry D Crain Voters in San Francisco, California, have approved a city-wide ban on the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes and certain chewing tobaccos, and vaping liquids, according to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Proposition E was supported by 68 percent of voters and opposed by 31 percent.
San Francisco supervisors last year unanimously approved the ban, but it was put on hold after R.J. Reynolds collected enough signatures to put it on the ballot. The company was said to have spent at least $12 million on the campaign opposing the measure.Before the ban, the Consumer Choice Center’s senior fellow, Jeff Stier, said that California law already prohibited the sale of e-cigarettes to anyone under 21. As such, the ordinance would change the legal status of the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults exclusively.
Stier called on the FDA to “speak out about how a local ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults could undermine the FDA’s comprehensive regulatory plan to fight smoking, given the role flavors in e-cigarettes play in helping adult smokers quit.”Following the vote, Bonnie Herzog, MD Equity Research for Tobacco and C-Stores at Wells Fargo Securities, said that while she expected tobacco stocks would come under pressure because of the vote, the ban was not a “deal-breaker” for the menthol category.
“As we have written in the past, we believe the net negative impact for major tobacco manufacturers will be limited since we expect many consumers will likely move their purchases online or cross border ultimately having the greatest negative impact on retailers,” she said.Ban would impair FDA plan
The US Food and Drug Administration has been warned that a proposed local ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products, including flavored e-liquids, could undermine the agency’s comprehensive regulatory plan to fight tobacco smoking.
Today, voters in San Francisco will vote on whether to approve a Board of Supervisors’ ordinance, Proposition E, that includes a ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes.
According to a press note from the Consumer Choice Center, proponents of the ban claim the measure is necessary to protect ‘kids’.
“Yet,” according to the Center’s senior fellow Jeff Stier (pictured), “California law already prohibits the sale of all e-cigarettes to anyone under 21. As such, the ordinance would change the legal status of the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults exclusively.”
Stier is calling on the FDA to “speak out about how a local ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults could undermine the FDA’s comprehensive regulatory plan to fight smoking, given the role flavors in e-cigarettes play in helping adult smokers quit”.
The press note said that the FDA, which was studying whether to regulate e-cigarette flavors, had already noted the potential life-saving nature of e-cigarette flavors, saying that, ‘certain flavors may help currently addicted adult smokers switch to potentially less harmful forms of nicotine-containing tobacco products’.
Stier said that “because the San Francisco Ordinance would do nothing to prevent sales to kids, and everything to ban sales to adults who use flavored e-cigarettes to quit smoking, the FDA should alert the public to how the ordinance would undermine federal anti-smoking efforts”.Call for 'sin tax' repeal
Excise taxes should be repealed in the US because they harm the poor disproportionately by requiring them to pay a higher portion of their incomes in taxes, say members of the Project 21 black leadership network.
In its Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America, Project 21 calls for repealing both gasoline taxes and ‘sin taxes’ on items such as tobacco, non-tobacco nicotine products, alcohol, soda, and fatty foods.
This, it says, would reduce the burden on those who were economically at risk.
“With fuel prices on the rise, repealing taxes that can add up to 60 cents per gallon of gasoline would give much-needed relief for the poor who are hurt the most by rising prices,” said Project 21 member Rich Holt, a political consultant who also co-chairs the Ohio Center-Right Coalition meeting. “For the working poor who must drive to work, cutting fuel consumption simply isn’t an option. Each additional dollar spent on gasoline is a dollar that can’t be spent on food, medical care and other necessities.”
Project 21’s blueprint says that ‘sin taxes’ on items including fatty foods, sodas, alcohol, tobacco and non-tobacco nicotine products such as e-cigarettes are less about promoting public health than about generating government revenue. It cites a report by the UK’s Adam Smith Institute that found: ‘Sin taxes are blunt instruments which are more likely to deter moderate users than abusers’.
The Adam Smith Institute noted also that the bottom 10 percent of wage earners spent four times as much on taxes on cigarettes than did the top 10 percent; that the bottom 20 percent of wage earners spent nearly twice as much in alcohol taxes than did the top 20 percent; and that the bottom 20 percent spent seven times as much in taxes on fatty foods than did the top 20 percent.
“Federal and state excise taxes combined can add an average of $179 per year to a family’s gasoline bills,” said Project 21 co-chairman Stacy Washington, a nationally-syndicated talk radio host on the American Family Radio and Urban Family Talk networks. “While this might have little impact on wealthy and solidly middle-class drivers, it can have a devastating impact on those living near the poverty line.
“Add sin taxes on tobacco, alcohol and fatty foods and there is a heavy toll imposed on poor Americans, who are disproportionately minorities.
“Project 21 is calling for government to get off the backs of our poorest citizens by repealing these regressive taxes now.”
