Stanton Glantz blog
Commentary on tobacco, cannabis and public health
MAHA claims that nicotine is good for you echo decades of tobacco industry propaganda
The New York Times recently highlighted how many “Make America Healthy Again” influencers are promoting the benefits of nicotine, including reversing Alzheimer’s Disease and improving cognition. While we don’t know what role the tobacco companies are playing in this latest resurgence of claims that nicotine is a beneficial substance that poses little or no risk,…
FDA adds 18 chemicals to list of harmful constituents in tobacco products, including propelyene glycol and vegetable glycerine
The FDA is required to maintain a list of “Harmful and Potentially Harmful Constituents” (HPHC) in tobacco products. The original list was released in 2012 and was mostly toxicants in cigarette and other tobacco smoke and smokeless tobacco. In particular, this list did not include important compounds in e-cigarettes and other “new” tobacco products. In…
Evidence that ecigs are a gateway to smoking and promote relapse in former smokers keeps piling up
Jagdish Kaur from WHO and several colleagues from India’s new paper “E-cigarette use and subsequent tobacco smoking initiation: an umbrella review with Bayesian model meta-analysis” provides the most comprehensive summary of evidence that e-cigarettes promote cigarette smoking in nonsmokers available to date. They also show that e-cigarette use in former smokers promotes relapse to smoking.…
Nicotine pouches maintain the nicotine market for tobacco companies
Nicotine pouches (like ZYN and on!) are being touted by some advocates as a “harm reduction” alternative to smoking cigarettes. Kelvin Choi and colleagues examined whether this happens in real life in their new paper “Patterns of tobacco product use among US adults who use nicotine pouches and the association between nicotine pouch use and…
Broad evidence implicates e-cigarettes as a cause of cancer
Bernard Stewart and colleagues from Australia just published “The carcinogenicity of e-cigarettes: a qualitative risk assessment” in Carcinogenesis. This review (summary) of the literature cites 116 papers, 15 of which were published in 2025. The fact that so many of the citations are recent is important because the evidence on the health risks of e-cigarettes…
FDA releases 2025 NYTS data without any analysis; Altria and Rutgers (separately) provide summary results
In April 2025, the Trump Administration shuttered the CDC Office on Smoking and Health and stopped collecting data for the 2025 National Youth Tobacco Survey. Later, the Administration announced it was restoring the NYTS and transferring is administration to the FDA Center For Tobacco Products, which had been partnering with CDC since 2021. On March…
California’s “Unflavored Tobacco List” will improve compliance with and enforcement of flavored tobacco ban
Last year California passed AB 3218 to tighten up and simplify compliance with and enforcement of California’s ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products. Part of this was to have the Attorney General establish and maintain an Unflavored Tobacco List (UTL) that included those tobacco products that could be sold legally in California. to…
E-cigarettes are nearly as risky as cigarettes; dual use is worse: The evidence continues to pile up
Using e-cigarettes (vaping) has been promoted as a much safer alternative to smoking cigarettes. However, a new head-to-head comparison of actual disease in e-cigarette users compared to cigarette smokers published in Public Health Reports shows that this assertion is wrong. This new analysis of 124 studies on the association of e-cigarette use with disease outcomes…
What the BAT chief scientist had to say about causality half a century ago
E-cigarette advocates, global warming deniers and social media companies continue to sidestep the implications of research showing dangers of their products by, among other things, retreating behind the high walls of claims that the evidence is not “causal.” To put these claims in context, it is worth re-reading the last couple paragraphs from our book…
DOJ spying on Congress’ viewing of Epstein files echos tobacco company spying on researchers
On February 9, 2026, as required by Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Department of Justice gave members of Congress access to the unredacted Epstein files, but just made four computer terminals at available. This reminded me of a similar situation back in 1999, when the British American Tobacco (BAT) company opened its Guildford Depository to…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Stanton Glantz blog 