Category Archives: Uncategorized

E-cigarette advocates like to point out that because there is no combustion, e-cigarettes expose users to lower levels of many carcinogens (cancer-causing chemicals).  Even so, there are still some carcinogens in e-cigarette aerosol exposure to e-cigarette aerosol damages DNA and reduces repair in animal and human cells and causes cancer in animals.  Now there isContinue reading “First epidemiological evidence linking e-cigs to cancer in people”

Caleb Alexander, together with colleagues at Johns Hopkins, UCSF and I just published “The Opioid Industry Documents Archive: A Living Digital Repository” in American Journal of Public Health. This paper describes the growing Opioid Industry Documents Archive that is part of the UCSF Industry Documents Library and outlines opportunities for research and public education withContinue reading “Here’s an approachable introduction to the growing collection of industry insider documents on opioids, free to all”

Last February, the Texas federal judge hearing the tobacco companies’ lawsuit against the graphic warning labels Congress ordered the FDA to put on cigarettes in 2009 delayed the implementation date until April 2023, after several such delays, first in May 2020. By the way, the judge didn’t actually rule against the FDA, he just putContinue reading “Texas Trump judge puts off effective date for FDA graphic cigarette warning labels again, this time until Jul 8, 2023”

Most of the research on the effects of local and state bans on the sales of flavored tobacco products have assessed sales rather than actual use by youth. (They consistently showed big drops in sales of flavored tobacco products.) Summer Hawkins and colleagues at Boston College published “Flavoured tobacco product restrictions in Massachusetts associated withContinue reading “Direct evidence that flavor sales bans substantially reduce youth cigarette and e-cigarette use”

The evidence is rapidly accumulating that e-cigs are harm enhancing rather than harm reducing. Accepting for the sake of argument, even if one accepts claims that e-cigs are less toxic than conventional cigarettes, for e-cigs to be harm reducing smokers who use them need to stop cigarettes — what the tobacco companies and FDA callContinue reading “Smokers do not “switch completely” to e-cigs; e-cigarettes cut quitting by 83% in smokers trying to quit”

On October 12, 2021, FDA authorized the sale of RJ Reynolds’ Vuse Solo e-cigarette. When I read the FDA’s Technical Project Lead summary of its scientific justification for authorizing the sale of RJ Reynolds’ Vuse Solo e-cigarette, I was struck by the fact that it ignored the broad scientific literature on e-cigarettes and seemed toContinue reading “FDA bent over backwards to authorize sale of RJR’s Vuse Solo e-cig”

Earlier this month Bloomberg reported that Philip Morris had asked FDA to convince Americans that nicotine isn’t that bad, citing research showing that most wrongly think that nicotine causes cancer.  This effort seems part of Philip Morris effort to promote its IQOS heated tobacco product as well as Juul e-cigarettes (in which Altria, parent ofContinue reading “FDA should ignore Philip Morris request to tell public nicotine doesn’t cause cancer”

Altria (owner of Philip Morris) has made two moves to get ready to enter the US marijuana market. It registered to lobby on marijuana commercialization in Virginia and has submitted two US patents for cannabis vaporization devices. According to the report in Cannabis Wire, “Altria supports the federal legalization of cannabis under an appropriate regulatoryContinue reading “Altria moving toward entering US marijuana market”

Just as litigation against the tobacco companies beginning with the Minnesota settlement has led to over 90 million pages of previously secret tobacco industry documents being made public, the recent settlement between state attorneys general and with McKinsey Company will make internal McKinsey documents available to the public. The tobacco industry documents have led toContinue reading “More opioid industry documents being made public”

Here in the USA and many other countries there are debates on the health effects of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products and whether they are, as the tobacco companies claim, reducing harm, some countries have decided to just prohibit their sale entirely. In doing so they have avoided skyrocketing youth use and can sit onContinue reading “How Thailand successful fought tobacco industry efforts to overturn its ENDS ban”