Category: Public health

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”

To tax or not to tax? Response to EU on taxing vaping and other reduced risk products

vultures
Shoo..!

European Commission consultation: the Commission is consulting on applying excise duties (i.e. tax) to vape products and other reduced risk alternatives to smoking – see here for consultation page with online form for interested parties to complete – please do add your response.

New Nicotine Alliance response: I have been working as an Associate Member of the New Nicotine Alliance to put together a briefing for this consultation. The NNA summarises the main points: EU Tax policy – harmful to health – our briefing.

There is no case on principled or practical grounds to apply excise duties to vaping products and other products that offer a much safer alternative to smoking. The value to health and wellbeing associated with switching from smoking to vaping will exceed any benefits arising from revenue collection.

Main briefing: The full briefing: Revision of the Tobacco Excise Directive: Implications for low-risk nicotine products (24 pages – PDF)

Summaries: the Executive summary and Conclusion of the briefing are reproduced below.

Idealised excise regime
Summary: idealised excise regime

Continue reading “To tax or not to tax? Response to EU on taxing vaping and other reduced risk products”

WHO tobacco meeting – could the FCTC do something useful on vaping?

I’m sometimes accused of being a WHO-sceptic, or worse. No more! In the run up to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control  COP-7  meeting in Delhi, 7-12 November, I have been challenged to say something positive about how the FCTC could do useful and constructive things on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from a public health point of view, other than the default answer “absolutely nothing at all”.

I sometimes refer to ENDS – Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems – to mean vaping equipment and liquids, e-cigarettes etc. Apologies.

Here we go… Continue reading “WHO tobacco meeting – could the FCTC do something useful on vaping?”

New Nicotine Alliance calls for repeal of EU e-cigarette regulation and snus ban

trash

New Nicotine Alliance proposes that the forthcoming Great Repeal Act is used to repeal pointless, burdensome and restrictive EU regulation of e-cigarettes and to lift the illegal, unethical and anti-scientific ban on snus.  This may be a ‘quick win’ from Brexit at the point of the departure of the UK from the EU.  The government will need to show that there are at least some benefits.

The Great Repeal Act will not actually repeal that much of substance. It will mainly just convert the vast body of EU law that applies in the UK to domestic law. But there is scope for some crowd-pleasing repeals of especially poor regulation, of which the TPD provisions related to tobacco harm reduction are the most obvious candidate.

Here is the NNA letter to Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt.  Continue reading “New Nicotine Alliance calls for repeal of EU e-cigarette regulation and snus ban”

Anatomy of a public health tweet

Capewell Tweet 30 Sept 2016
Professor Capewell is worried – but why?

Professor Simon Capewell, the Vice President of Health Policy at the Faculty of Public Health, states in a tweet on 30 September 2016.

Vaping adverts could lead children to try smoking cigarettes

But how true is that? And how much care did Professor Capewell take to ensure that it is a reasonable thing to say? Let us examine:

  1. How wrong is Professor Capewell’s tweet?
  2. How much blame is attributable to the study authors?
  3. In conclusion: what should we make of this tweet?

Continue reading “Anatomy of a public health tweet”

You want a debate about nicotine? Let’s have one. Letter to Mitch Zeller, America’s vape regulator

FDA is ‘anti-proportionate’ in its approach to smoking and vaping

A recent article in the New York Times (A Lobbyist Wrote the Bill. Will the Tobacco Industry Win Its E-Cigarette Fight?) falsely suggested that opposition to FDA’s deeming rule for e-cigarettes is all about tobacco industry interests. It quoted Mitch Zeller of the FDA on the e-cigarette industry. Zeller is the federal official responsible for regulation of vaping and tobacco products in the United States (see my Bluffer’s Guide). It struck many of us that this was a hostile and one-sided statement that sits uneasily with Zeller’s call for a debate about nicotine just 16 months ago. So we have written to Director Zeller making seven observations in response to his quote in the NYT.

  1. The growth in e-cigarette use – a threat or a threat disruptor?
  2. The dramatic decline in adolescent smoking
  3. The (in)frequency of adolescent e-cigarette use
  4. The limited use of nicotine by adolescent vapers
  5. The situation with fires and explosions
  6. The trends in adult smoking
  7. FDA’s approach is “anti-proportionate”

Here’s the letter, jointly from me and Eli Lehrer at the R Street Institute, an American think-tank. Continue reading “You want a debate about nicotine? Let’s have one. Letter to Mitch Zeller, America’s vape regulator”

When you thought public health could go no lower – it just did

sunvaping
Except that is wrong in every way

The news coverage:

British newspapers, the main domestic vector of the anti-scientific public health dogma and baseless fear-mongering, were yesterday filled with prominently positioned garbage articles about vaping:

Not one single element of these headlines has any grounding in reality, and all are grossly misleading.  The contributory negligence or cynicism of journalists in reporting vaping health stories is now commonplace.  However, in this discussion, I would like to focus on the extraordinary negligence of the scientist behind these claims. Continue reading “When you thought public health could go no lower – it just did”

Professor Glantz makes an irresponsible and baseless claim about vaping risks

venturaquote

I am particularly concerned about a sweeping statement made by one of the most vocal activists in tobacco control, Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Francisco. He asserts completely incorrectly and irresponsibly that a new study shows long-term vaping risk could equate to half the risk of smoking. This is a grotesque exaggeration.

Here I take a closer look at the claim and the study that supposedly lies behind it, looking at six failures in Professor Glantz’s reasoning: Continue reading “Professor Glantz makes an irresponsible and baseless claim about vaping risks”

Do not read this or discuss it and in no circumstances should you comment

Australian Council on Smoking & Health Parody of the 1953 meeting between Big Tobacco and PR company Hill & Knowlton
Warning: misleading people about the benefits of e-cigarettes is logically and morally equivalent to misleading people about the harms of smoking

A new discussion paper on e-cigarettes has come out in Australia. “Options to minimise the risks associated with the marketing and use of electronic nicotine delivery systems [ENDS] in Australia” by Professor Chapman and some of his following at the University of Sydney. [PDF – 8.5Mb or via Scribd as embedded below or linked here]. Continue reading “Do not read this or discuss it and in no circumstances should you comment”

Beyond the Quit: what happens when e-cigs go wrong? – Louise Ross

Foxys Vape Bar
Meet people where they are or want to be

Guest post by Louise Ross, Service Manager at Leicester City Stop Smoking Service – the pioneering e-cig friendly service for smokers who want to quit.  Louise explains how her service is teaming up with a vape bar and vaper to give practical help to smokers as they master vaping as an alternative to smoking. This is real public health to me – and I hope the public health establishment is paying attention and reflecting carefully on what is happening here.

Louise starts here… Continue reading “Beyond the Quit: what happens when e-cigs go wrong? – Louise Ross”