New, documentary-style public service announcements (PSAs) for Tobacco Free Florida (US) are said to take a ‘refreshingly respectful approach to encouraging smokers to quit,’ according to a story by David Griner for Ad Week.
Instead of extreme scare tactics, the PSAs, by the Alma advertising agency, acknowledge that smokers are often fully aware of the dangers and costs of smoking and that they’re struggling to make the right choice.
They know smoking is dangerous. They know it’s expensive. They know it makes them a bad influence on their children. And they know they need to quit.
The PSAs are said to be aimed at Florida’s rural communities, where, the agency says, smoking rates are 33 percent higher than they are in the rest of the state.
The real-life vignettes introduce smokers – most often working parents under daily financial stress – who admit they’re tired of the physical and financial toll of smoking.
The campaign is based on Alma research into both its target audience and the tactics that might change their behaviors.
Angela Rodriguez, Alma’s vice president of strategic planning and insights, said that ethnographic research last year had indicated that quitting was driven by the hopes smokers had for themselves and their children.
“These aspirations showed that cessation is about bigger, longer-term dreams more than about being scared or lectured into the right decision,” she was quoted as saying.
“We also learned that those same scare tactic approaches don’t always connect.”
The full story is at: http://www.adweek.com/creativity/these-incredibly-crafted-anti-smoking-ads-drop-the-fear-tactics-in-favor-of-empathy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Adfreak+(Adfreak)
Tag: United States
Empathy replacing enmity
Listing ingredients
The US Food and Drug Administration has published its revised guidance on the Listing of Ingredients in Tobacco Products.
In a note issued through the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, the agency said the guidance was intended to assist manufacturers and importers making tobacco product ingredient submissions to the FDA, as required by the Tobacco Control Act.
The guidance announces that the FDA intends to enforce the ingredient listing submission requirements of section 904(a)(1) only with respect to finished tobacco products and their components or parts that are made or derived from tobacco, or containing ingredients that are burned, aerosolized or ingested during tobacco product use,’ the note said.
‘For example, ingredients of cigarette paper should be submitted to FDA as it is burned during the use of a cigarette and produces constituents that are inhaled by the smoker.’
The note added that, for example, the FDA did not intend to enforce the ingredient listing submission requirement in respect of coils, wicks and mouthpieces.
Information of what components and parts require an ingredient listing submission is at: https://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/Labeling/RulesRegulationsGuidance/ucm191982.htm?utm_source=Eloqua&utm_medium=email&utm_term=stratcomms&utm_content=guidance&utm_campaign=CTP%20News%3A%20Listing%20Guidance%20Update%20-%2041318.
The guidance is said to streamline the requirements for manufacturers by clarifying ways in which tobacco product manufacturers or importers can satisfy the ingredient listing requirements by providing one listing that corresponds to multiple products.
‘It explains the statutory requirement to submit a list of all ingredients in tobacco products, who submits ingredient information, what information is included in the submissions, how and when to submit the information, FDA’s compliance policies, and definitions,’ the note said.
The note issued a reminder to manufacturers and importers of ‘deemed tobacco products’ that were on the market as of August 8, 2016, that the deadline to submit ingredient listings is May 8, 2018. For small-scale manufacturers, the deadline was said to be November 8, 2018.PMI to webcast results
Philip Morris International is due to host a live audio webcast at www.pmi.com/2018Q1earnings from 09.00 Eastern Time on April 19 to discuss its 2018 first-quarter results, which will be issued about 07.00 the same day.
During the webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, CFO Martin King will discuss the results and answer questions from the investment community and news media.
The audio webcast may be accessed also on iOS or Android devices by downloading PMI’s free Investor Relations Mobile Application at www.pmi.com/irapp.
An archived copy of the webcast will be available until 17.00 on May 18 at www.pmi.com/2018Q1earnings.
The slides and script will be available also at www.pmi.com/2018Q1earnings.Altria to webcast results
The Altria Group is due to host a live audio webcast from 09.00 Eastern Time on April 26 to discuss its 2018 first-quarter business results. The company will issue a press release containing its business results about 07.00 the same day.
During the webcast, chairman, CEO and president Marty Barrington and CFO Billy Gifford will discuss the company’s results and answer questions from the investment community and news media.
The webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, can be accessed at altria.com or through the Altria Investor App.
Pre-event registration is necessary at www.altria.com/webcasts.
An archived copy of the webcast will be available on altria.com or through the Altria Investor App.
The free app is available for download at www.altria.com/irapp or through the Apple App Store or Google Play.US suffering flavor blur
The findings of two recently-published studies on the emergence of hookah use in the US indicate that public health officials might need to consider broadening their tobacco prevention efforts beyond traditional cigarettes, according to a story by David J. Hill of the University of Buffalo, US, published on medicalxpress.com.
“Taken together, the results from these two studies underscore the important role hookah has played in the tobacco product landscape,” Jessica Kulak, the lead author on both papers, was quoted as saying. Kulak, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Primary Care Research Institute of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo.
Kulak published both papers as part of her dissertation through collaborations with colleagues at the Rutgers University School of Public Health and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The first study, published in March in the American Journal of Health Behavior, examined patterns and trends of hookah use among public high school students in New Jersey.
The findings were said to have shown significant increases in hookah use across three indicators – those who had ever used hookah, those who were currently using hookah and those who smoked hookah frequently.
Overall, 23.6 percent of New Jersey high school students were found to have ever used hookah in 2014, significantly higher than the nearly 18 percent who reported ever using it in 2008, Kulak and her colleagues reported.
In 2014, past 30-day hookah use (11.8 percent) was said to be as high as e-cigarette use (12.1 percent) and higher than other-tobacco-product use. Among all high school students, frequent hookah use increased from 1.6 percent in 2008 to 2.9 percent six years later.
Kulak and her colleagues cited a variety of factors that might be contributing to the popularity of hookah among teens. For example, hookah tobacco was taxed at a lower rate than were cigarettes, and it was sold in a variety of flavors, many of which had been banned in cigarettes.
Many hookah users believed also that it was not as harmful as other tobacco products.
Kulak’s second dissertation-based paper, also published in March in Substance Use & Misuse, looked at hookah’s role in nicotine product initiation among college students.
For this study, Kulak surveyed 832 college students in Western and Central New York. Among study participants who reported having used a nicotine product at some point, 25 percent said hookah was the first product they had tried. Only combustible cigarettes (39.5 percent) were reported more frequently.
Among students who ever smoked cigarettes, most reported these as their introductory product. Nearly half of the students who had never smoked cigarettes reported that hookah was the first tobacco product they smoked.
This study suggested also that hookah users were less likely than were combustible-cigarette smokers to use multiple tobacco products – such as combustible cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.
Based on the findings of the two studies, Kulak said public health agencies might need to consider revising the surveys and other data collection instruments they used to account more accurately for hookah use.
In addition, she said, there were opportunities for further regulation by the US Food and Drug Administration, especially banning flavors in hookah tobacco.
The full story is at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-hookah-critical-role-tobacco-product.htmlIn support of delay
Pushing the US Food and Drug Administration to regulate quickly on vaping products puts smokers at risk, according to a piece by Sally Satel for the American Enterprise Institute.
Satel, M.D., a practicing psychiatrist and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine, described teens and electronic cigarettes as comprising a combustible issue that’s been heating up the headlines lately.
She said it might (or might not) be a simple coincidence that the panicky coverage coincided with a recent lawsuit demanding that the FDA sped up regulation of vaping products. But, orchestrated or not, rushing the FDA to regulate put smokers at risk.
The lawsuit, filed at the end of March by a coalition of seven anti-tobacco groups, including the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and five individual pediatricians, took aim at a key decision the FDA made last July. The agency pushed back the pre-market application submission deadline for e-cigarettes from August 2018 to 2022.
The plaintiffs want the original deadline re-instated, claiming that the regulatory delay is illegal.
‘I believe that the delay is wise (and note that regulatory agencies routinely change compliance deadlines),’ Satel wrote. ‘The postponement gives the agency and Congress time to replace the burdensome and costly pre-market approval procedure, which would have crippled the vaping industry, with a more efficient regime.
Satel’s piece is at: http://www.aei.org/publication/why-the-panic-over-juul-and-teen-vaping-may-have-deadly-results/US panics over e-cig
In an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner, Paul Blair has condemned recent media attacks on the electronic cigarette JUUL as doing a disservice to consumer freedom.
‘In the last week alone, Time, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NBC News, and dozens of local papers and news broadcasters have run hit pieces on America’s most popular electronic cigarette, JUUL,’ he said in his piece published on April 6. ‘This moral panic isn’t organic. It is a co-ordinated attack orchestrated by nanny-state activists funded by the likes of Mike Bloomberg. These crusaders are doing a great disservice to consumer freedom without regard for the truth or its impact on public health. We deserve better.’
Blair pointed out that vapor products have been on the market for nearly a decade and that, during that time, teen smoking rates have plummeted to the lowest levels they’ve been in history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What was recent was simply the dramatic growth in JUUL’s market share compared to the shares of others. In public affairs, it was easier to demonize one company than an entire industry, he said. That’s what was happening here.
Blair’s piece is at: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-crusade-against-juul-and-other-vaping-products-is-childish-even-for-tobacco-control.I’d walk three miles …
People will be disappointed if they try to buy tobacco products in the US town of Greenwood, Nebraska, according to a story by Kevin Cole for the Omaha World Herald.
A gas station/convenience store closed about four months ago, leaving the Cass County town of about 680 people without a tobacco retail outlet, village board member Kevin Gerlach said.
And the Uptown Saloon, a bar and restaurant, quit selling tobacco products several years ago, according to a woman who answered the phone at the business.
“It’s just the way the cards fell,” Gerlach said. “If someone wants to buy tobacco, there are gas stations about three miles outside of town on the local interchange.”
Last summer, the board made the village park a tobacco-free space and now, if a business wanted to start selling tobacco in town, it would have to get approval from the board.
“I’m a third-generation Greenwood resident, and I think [approval] would be pretty unlikely,” Gerlach said. “In the town’s heyday, back in the 1950s, there were five bars and two or three stores that all sold tobacco. Those days are over.”
Meanwhile, Autumn Burns, of Tobacco Education and Advocacy of the Midlands, said Greenwood was the first town she had heard of in Nebraska without any tobacco sales. She applauded the town’s decision to make its park tobacco-free because it’s “a great role model” for the community’s youth.
“I think it’s really inspiring,” Burns said. “They’re showing small communities can take the lead making tobacco-free spaces. I’m also impressed with Cass County as a whole because Greenwood, Elmwood, Weeping Water and Murray have all implemented tobacco-free parks.”Tariff threats ‘troubling’
A trade war between the US and China could have a devastating impact on North Carolina’s tobacco growers, according to a story by Brian Murphy and Zachery Eanes for the News & Observer.
North Carolina exported leaf tobacco worth more than $156 million to China last year, making China the biggest national consumer of the state’s tobacco.
However, the value of North Carolina’s tobacco exports to China was already down – from more than $184 million in 2015 and $166 million in 2016 – when, on Wednesday, China announced plans to impose higher tariffs on more than 100 US products, including tobacco.
Tariffs on unmanufactured tobacco would be raised from 10 percent to 35 percent, while duties on cigarettes and cigars would be pushed up from 25 percent to 50 percent, according the US Department of Agriculture.
The tariffs are only proposals at this time and would not go into effect until at least the middle of May, leaving time for negotiations between the two nations.
Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, urged the nations to negotiate and “produce an agreement that serves the interests of the world’s two largest economies”.
Meanwhile, Larry Wooten, president of the North Carolina Farm Bureau, said the situation was troubling, to say the least, in relation to tobacco. “When you add pork and soybeans, it really hits North Carolina,” he added.
In addition to being the US’ largest producer of tobacco, North Carolina plants 1.6 million acres of soybean.
In total, North Carolina exported $2.3 billion in goods to China in 2016 up from $1.4 billion in 2006, according to the US-China Business Council. China was the state’s third-largest trading partner after Canada ($6.2 billion in goods) and Mexico ($3.1 billion).
The News & Observer story is at: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article207952919.html.FDA moving on e-cigs
The commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb has said that the agency is considering whether it could bring electronic cigarettes into the over-the-counter (OTC) regulatory pathway, according to a CNBC report relayed by the TMA.
Gottlieb said the OTC pathway would give the agency more tools to look at both safety and benefit, study whether or not an e-cigarette promoted smoking cessation, and study toxicity and the way it affects the lung.
This move was said to be part of the sweeping plan to overhaul tobacco regulation that the Commissioner announced in July.
“At the very time I am trying to take nicotine out of combustible tobacco, I don’t want to be sweeping the market of products that provide an alternative to smokers who want to get access to nicotine,” Gottlieb said.
The idea flows from the FDA’s continuum of risk policy that recognizes that conventional cigarettes are the most harmful and other nicotine products are potentially less risky.
