Category: Gateway

Will the Netherlands become the next casually negligent ally of the cigarette trade? Twenty-four experts advise a rethink

So let’s make the e-cigs less appealing and see what happens… what could possibly go wrong?

The Netherlands is proposing to ban e-cigarette flavours – what could possibly go wrong?

The government of the Netherlands,  led by Paul Blokhuis, State Secretary for Health, Welfare and Sport, is in imminent danger of fooling itself into becoming an unwitting ally of the cigarette trade.  By taking measures to make vaping less attractive (notably by proposing a ban on all non-tobacco flavours for e-cigarettes), it threatens to degrade the appeal of a low-risk rival to cigarettes, provide regulatory protection to the cigarette trade, prolong smoking, obstruct quitting, and add to the burden of disease and death. All this in the name of protecting youth, while managing to harm both adults and adolescents. Quite a feat for any politician.

The problem is hubris – believing that the world responds to regulation in the way the regulator thinks it should. Experience suggests foreseeable perverse consequences will be the result of the ill-conceived prohibitions of much safer alternatives to smoking, including flavoured e-cigarettes.

It really isn’t difficult to understand why and how this would happen – I can only assume the State Secretary received very poor advice, which would not be unusual in this field.  Nevertheless, twenty-four international experts have set out the arguments and evidence in detail in a submission to the Dutch government, hoping to spare Mr Blokhuis later embarrassment and, even more importantly, to avoid yet more death and disease from smoking in the Netherlands.  It should also be a wake-up call to like-minded politicians and naive policymakers in the United States, European Union, and the World Health Organisation who continue to fail to grasp the impact of low-risk products in the real world.

The case is set out in 30-page submission to a Dutch government consultation on the measure.  The relevant documents are:

To provide a more digestible version of the submission, I have included below the twelve sections of the summary below with a link to the corresponding twelve sections with more detail and references.

Continue reading “Will the Netherlands become the next casually negligent ally of the cigarette trade? Twenty-four experts advise a rethink”

European Commission SCHEER scientific opinion on e-cigarettes – a guide for policymakers

“C’mon… we’ll never get away with that“

Introduction

The SCHEER opinion on e-cigarettes

On 23 September 2020, the European Commissions’ Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) provided its Preliminary Opinion on Electronic Cigarettes (context & abstract, preliminary report PDF).  This opinion is important because it is one input to the report on the implementation of the EU Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EC, under Article 28 of the Directive.  This review should complete by 20 May 2021, and it may form the basis for a further revision of the Tobacco Products Directive.  The Committee’s mandate (Request for Scientific Opinion) sets out its terms of reference.

Consultation

The preliminary scientific opinion is open for consultation responses until 26 October 2020. The consultation system is here: Public consultation on electronic cigarettes and looks designed to deter responses to the extent possible. ETHRA, European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates, provides guidance on responding here.  However, that is not the only way to respond to it, though responding directly is important.  Another way is to approach the people who are intended to make sense of and use the opinion – policymakers in EU member states and European Commission, politicians in the EU legislature, and stakeholders in the political policymaking process. This post is for them.

This post

In this post, I discuss why the SCHEER preliminary opinion offers no useful analysis or relevant insights to policymakers. It is not that the committee has not reviewed a lot of literature: it has. It stems from a more fundamental problem: a failure to frame the scientific knowledge in a way that will assist policymakers in considering what, if anything, to do next.  Though policymakers should be the primary audience, the report also provides little of value to other communities of interest – smokers, vapers, parents, public health or medical practitioners, or businesses.

It starts with reproducing the report abstract and then groups my advice to appropriately sceptical policymakers under ten headings. Continue reading “European Commission SCHEER scientific opinion on e-cigarettes – a guide for policymakers”

Twitter Q&A: debunking tobacco harm reduction misconceptions

I did a Twitter chat with the Campaign for Safer Alternatives on the typical objections raised to tobacco harm reduction. For those interested in the responses but who missed the live chat or got as confused as I did in trying to follow threaded answers, here is the chat as it unfolded over 15 questions with everything in the right order.

Continue reading “Twitter Q&A: debunking tobacco harm reduction misconceptions”

Is Australia falling behind on tobacco policy?

Sources: Office for National Statistics (UK). Smoking habits in the UK and its constituent countries, 2016.  Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, National Drug Strategy Household Survey, 2016.

Updates: New Zealand moves / Media interviews

Update: two new submissions (available at Committee submissions page #336)

Introduction

I’m visiting Australia next week and looking forward to some good discussions with people holding any and all points of view on vaping, nicotine and smoking.  My aim is to share experience from the US and UK where we are seeing encouraging uptake of low-risk vaping alongside an unusually rapid decline in smoking. Historically, UK has always had substantially higher levels of smoking than Australia, but in 2016 that gap has finally closed. Both countries have comprehensive tobacco policies – albeit with some differences in the details and Australia generally the first to do new measures, like plain packaging. But there is one major difference. UK (and especially England) now encourages smokers to switch to low-risk alternatives like vaping, while Australia actively prevents it and actually criminalises people who try to protect their own health in this way.

Five talking points inspired by the Royal College of Physicians

The case I want to make is that Australia is missing an opportunity, and there is a human cost for that in terms of cancer, heart and lung disease and premature death. I’ve structured my talking points around five of the key findings of the excellent April 2016 Royal College of Physicians (London) report: see Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction and press release.  It was, of course, the RCP that first put the dangers of smoking on the public agenda with its groundbreaking 1962 report, Smoking and Health. Continue reading “Is Australia falling behind on tobacco policy?”

Democrats press FDA to proceed with destruction of the vaping market – we respond

Nobody knew nicotine policy could be so complicated

Earlier in May, eleven Democrat senators appeared to be channelling talking points from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids when they wrote a letter to the incoming FDA Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb.

Together with my co-conspirator, Sally Satel from the American Enterprise Institute, we have responded firmly but fairly with an article in Forbes: Senators’ Letter To FDA Commissioner Gottlieb Perpetuates Misconceptions About E-Cigarettes [pdf] Continue reading “Democrats press FDA to proceed with destruction of the vaping market – we respond”

Bad science, accountability and courage – speech by AG Tom Miller

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller
Tom Miller: “public policy through facts and science rather than ideology”

On 17 November 2016, the Iowa Attorney General, Tom Miller, gave a speech at the E-cigarette Summit 2016 (with biography) on e-cigarettes examining the claims of anti-vaping activists, and their scientific, ethical and legal basis. The full text of the speech is here: America Needs England (PDF). I reported an earlier speech here.

The speech should be widely read, especially in the United States. To facilitate an informed reading, I have reproduced the speech here, with some thematic subheadings, source links and illustrations [these are my additions].

Continue reading “Bad science, accountability and courage – speech by AG Tom Miller”

How not to be duped by gateway effect claims

Gateway to hell
DANGER: E-cigarette ‘gateway’ studies may expose gullible readers to reputational harm

Sometimes studies appear that can create the appearance of the discovery of a ‘gateway effect’ – the idea that vaping causes young people to progress to smoking.

Update: a ‘gateway’ study has just been published (13 June) and lots of dupes have duly fallen for it – see “Study published” below.

Beware! Here is an eight-point guide to evaluating such studies and the politically motivated claims that often go with them. Continue reading “How not to be duped by gateway effect claims”

Professor Glantz brings his anti-vaping crusade to Europe – I review his presentation

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome… Professor Glantz visits Europe

Regrettably, the influence of Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Fransisco is not confined to California or to the United States.  Last month he made a visit to Europe – to Austria in fact.  As good Europeans, we always take our American visitors seriously and listen to what they have to say. So I have done a review of the presentation he gave at the Austrian Acadamy of Sciences in Vienna.

Continue reading “Professor Glantz brings his anti-vaping crusade to Europe – I review his presentation”

Smoking and vaping among young people in England – reassuring new report

Children at play

Some quick notes on the NatCen report:  Survey of Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use among Young People in England – see Summary and Full report PDF.

NatCen is contracted by the official statistician to conduct this survey, which provides data for 2014 for England on substance-using behaviours of 11-15-year-olds. It’s is possible that alarmist conclusions will be spun from a lazy reading of some findings on e-cigarette use. In fact, the survey provides a reassuring picture of young people’s smoking and vaping habits. Continue reading “Smoking and vaping among young people in England – reassuring new report”