Last week the Biden White House announced it was delaying a decision on the FDA’s well-reasoned product standards that would end the use of menthol in cigarettes and cigars, sparking outrage from leaders in the African American community: The White House is ignoring the real human cost of delay. Based on the Biden FDA’s analysis, everyContinue reading “Biden follows Obama and Trump by caving to industry pressure to delay menthol ban”
Category Archives: FDA
E-cigs associated with increased heart attacks; dual use is worse
Muhammad Talal Ashraf and his colleagues recently published “Association between e‑cigarette use and myocardial infarction: a systematic review and meta‑analysis” that pools the results of epidemiological studies and found that overall e-cigarette users are more likely to have had heart attacks than nonusers (odds ratio [OR] 1.44; 95% CI 1.22-1.74). They also found that dualContinue reading “E-cigs associated with increased heart attacks; dual use is worse”
Synthetic cooling agents make e-cigarettes more attractive and easier to inhale
Sales of “ice” e-cigarettes have been increasing rapidly, with US sales growing by more than 10 times from 2017 to 2021. In 2023 57.9% of US youth used ice e-cigarettes, often combined with other flavors (such as strawberry ice, frosted mint or tobacco ice). Ice e-cigarettes are being marketed around the world. The cooling effectContinue reading “Synthetic cooling agents make e-cigarettes more attractive and easier to inhale”
New national data shows kids using “ice” tobacco products; FDA needs to include them in pending menthol product standards
Last week the CDC and FDA published the 2023 statistics on youth tobacco use from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (FDA press release). The good news is that high school student overall tobacco use is down significantly compared to 2022 (from 16.5% to 12.6%), driven in large part by a drop in e-cigarette use (fromContinue reading “New national data shows kids using “ice” tobacco products; FDA needs to include them in pending menthol product standards”
First longitudinal evidence linking e-cig use and death
Shauna Goldberg Scott and her colleagues recently published the first longitudinal evidence (where people are followed forward in time, the strongest kind of epidemiological study) showing that e-cigarette use was associated with increased risk of death. Their paper, Demographic, Clinical, and Behavioral Factors Associated With Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems Use in a Large Cohort inContinue reading “First longitudinal evidence linking e-cig use and death”
Netflix documentary Big Vape is worth watching
Like Jamie Ducharme’s book Big Vape, the four hour (in four episodes) Netflix documentary Big Vape tracks Juul’s development from an idea by two Stanford grad students to compete with Big Tobacco by creating a less dangerous product to replace cigarettes into part of the tobacco industry. It does a particularity good job of highlightingContinue reading “Netflix documentary Big Vape is worth watching”
FDA tiptoes toward enforcement of rules prohibiting unauthorized ecigs
It is currently illegal to sell almost every e-cigarette on the market. (The exceptions are a few e-cigarettes produced by RJ Reynolds, NJOY and Logic Technologies.) But FDA has been very slow to take strong formal enforcement actions. As of October 2022, FDA, working through the Department of Justice, had sought injunctions against 6 small-timeContinue reading “FDA tiptoes toward enforcement of rules prohibiting unauthorized ecigs”
Simple ways FDA could improve review of new tobacco product applications
One area of broad agreement between industry and public health at FDA’s recent “listening session” on the Center for Tobacco Product’s pending strategic plan was that FDA should be more transparent about the standards it uses for judging new tobacco products. My UCS colleagues and I submitted this public comment listing several specific ways thatContinue reading “Simple ways FDA could improve review of new tobacco product applications”
CTP should finally set a maximum nicotine level for tobacco products
In 2018 FDA announced that it was working on a rule setting a maximum level of nicotine in cigarettes. As part of our public comments to FDA on its pending strategic plan my UCSF colleagues and I urged FDA to finalize such a rule and expand its scope beyond just cigarettes. (A PDF is here.Continue reading “CTP should finally set a maximum nicotine level for tobacco products”
CTP should finalize the rules prohibiting menthol in cigarettes and prohibiting characterizing flavors in cigars, including menthol analogs
The fact that menthol is the most important additive in tobacco products is clear from the fact that the tobacco companies made exempting menthol from the ban on characterizing flavors in the original 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act as well as the companies ongoing (unsuccessful) efforts to fight local and state prohibitionsContinue reading “CTP should finalize the rules prohibiting menthol in cigarettes and prohibiting characterizing flavors in cigars, including menthol analogs”
Stanton Glantz blog 