Smokers

The agency unveiled a two-pronged approach to reduce smoking.

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced the initial results of its nationwide crackdown on retailers selling e-cigarette and vaping products to minors.

In the first success of its nature for “nanny state” advocates after many years of trying, Philadelphia Thursday became the first major city to attempt to control the non-alcoholic drink choices of its residents by enacting a 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax on soda, tea, sports and energy drinks. This is expected to embolden nanny state tax advocates across the United States.

England’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) recommended on April 28th that doctors “promote the use of e-cigarettes, NRT and other non-tobacco nicotine products as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking in the UK.”

Some states, including California and Illinois, are now considering proposals that would increase the legal age limit required to consume tobacco and tobacco-like products, including electronic cigarettes, from 18 years old to 21. Hawaii was the first state to enact such laws, which became effective January 1, 2016.

Tobacco opponents say that we’ve had too little experience with e-cigarettes to know whether they are safe. While it is true that we don’t yet know the health consequences of long-term use, that should not discourage smokers from switching.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, we join the Managing Editor of Budget & Tax News, Jesse Hathaway as he speaks with Dr. Brad Rodu. Rodu is a Senior Fellow for The Heartland Institute as well as a researcher for the University of Louisville. Rodu and Hathaway discuss the FDA’s missing data regarding tobacco harm reductions.

The National Cancer Institute is wasting taxpayer dollars on slanted e-cigarette research that didn’t ask or answer an obvious and important question.

A range of obvious conflicts of interest has led to the replacement of several FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) members.

Two public health officials in Fargo, North Dakota, this week were the source of grossly misleading claims about smokeless tobacco for a local media story.

The contrast between the spin put on youth e-cigarette use data last Fall and the story told by the actual data, released last month, is startling but not surprising, given the U.S. government’s over-zealous tobacco prohibition posture.

Publishing a study of tobacco-specific nitrosamines in American smokeless tobacco products (abstracthere), Dorothy Hatsukami and colleagues at the University of Minnesota called for the FDA to issue “regulations…to reduce levels of…NNK and NNN in smokeless tobacco products to the lowest levels possible.” The authors make illogical and unscientific claims in their article and media interviews (here).

Recently I attended a forum on e-cigarettes, sponsored by a political organization that wanted to educate its attendees about the devices. During the discussion my opponent [from the prohibitionist American Legacy Foundation] repeated the baseless claim that there is no evidence that e-cigarettes help smokers quit.