Commentary
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- Category: Paddy Costall
Paddy Costall | 6 March 2017
As one of the organisers of the Global Forum on Nicotine, it is easy to get caught up in the debates that take place around international issues, which arise from FCTC COP meetings, or the responses and campaigning relating to the TPD, the FDA Deeming Regulations, or TGA position on nicotine in Australia. What can get forgotten in all of this is the daily impact of laws and regulations on the lives of nicotine consumers.
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- Category: Attila Danko
Attila Danko | 6 February 2017
The New Nicotine Alliance, Australia, (NNA AU) last year submitted an application to Australia’s medicines and poisons regulatory authority, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), to legalise vaping with nicotine as a consumer product. The application was to exempt from Schedule 7 nicotine at concentrations of 3.6 per cent or less for self-administration with an electronic nicotine delivery system ('personal vaporiser' or 'electronic cigarette') for the purpose of tobacco harm reduction. On February 2nd this application was totally rejected in the TGA’s interim decision. Interim decisions are rarely reversed at the final decision.
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- Category: Attila Danko
Attila Danko | 16 February 2017
I wrote earlier this month about the TGA’s rejection of our application to legalise low-strength nicotine for vaping. Since then we have taken our campaign forwards.
A team of three consumer vaping advocates from the NNA AU, myself, Donna Darvill and Andrew Thompson, along with two specialists in harm reduction, Dr Colin Mendelsohn and Dr Alex Wodak, spent a day in Parliament House Canberra. We had multiple meetings with Members of Parliament, Senators and staffers from across the political spectrum.
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- Category: Clive Bates
Clive Bates | 29 December 2016
Sometimes we find ourselves talking at cross-purposes about vaping. Why? Consider three perspectives.
First, a health professional asks: “how should vaping be understood and used (or not) to reduce the adverse health effects of smoking?”
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- Category: Neil Mckeganey
Neil McKeganey, Christopher Russell | 27 September 2016
In the past few days, several pro-tobacco harm reduction academics and scientists who are registered to attend the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) in Brussels, Belgium this week (27-29 September), received a letter signed by two major anti-smoking organisations – the European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention (ENSP) and the U.S.-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK). This letter expressed to the recipients, including one of the authors of this blog (CR), the signatories’ ‘strong concern over the participation of renowned academics’ at a conference that is largely funded by the tobacco industry.
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- Category: Neil Mckeganey
Neil McKeganey | 6 September 2016
When it comes to policies aimed at reducing the harm of smoking there is a truth that daren’t be spoken, namely that many smokers actually enjoy smoking. In the current climate of tobacco control policies aiming for a tobacco free world, the realization that many people want to continue to engage in a behaviour that they know to be harmful is hard to acknowledge.
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- Category: Nicotine Science & Policy
Nicotine Science & Policy | 17 August 2016
Turkey has for many years implemented stringent efforts to reduce smoking rates. Smoke-free policies, a two hundred per cent price increase on cigarettes and comprehensive stop-smoking services have all been introduced in the last decade; all significant actions from a country known for the saying ”Smoking like a Turk”.
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- Category: Nicotine Science & Policy
Nicotine Science & Policy | updated 31 August 2016
Both Australia and New Zealand have legislation that was introduced before the introduction of e-cigarettes and which effectively makes possession of nicotine (Australia) or nicotine-containing e-cigarettes (NZ) illegal. In Australia there is a proposal to amend the scheduling of nicotine to make sale, possession and use of nicotine legal; in New Zealand the Ministry of Health proposes making nicotine e-cigarettes legal consumer products. Comments on both proposals are invited.
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- Category: Miroslaw Dworniczak
NSP Correspondent - Mirosław Dworniczak | 20 July 2016
On July 8th the Polish Parliament passed an act transposing the EU Tobacco Product Directive (TPD) into national law, some weeks after the mandated date of May 20th. This marks the end of a legislative process that started two years ago.
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- Category: Chris Ford
Chris Ford | 15 July 2016
Dr Chris Ford, the Clinical Director of International Doctors for Healthier Drug Policies, recently attended the Global Forum on Nicotine. Here are some thoughts from her and her colleagues afterwards.
The dogma that has pervaded global drug policy over the last fifty years is hard to comprehend. People have been using substances to alter the way they feel for thousands of years and there is no indication that this will ever stop. Like we do for all other potentially hazardous activities, provision of information and tools to reduce potential harms would be the action of a responsible and caring society.