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- Category: June 2021
What we do know is that people don't just use one or the other. In fact, most people start vaping nicotine with flavors or without flavors, and then they add other layers. They've become more sophisticated, especially in youth. Because then they get into, well, "You can get some from the black market most often," and they can actually fill in the cartridges with whatever they just purchased. The unfortunate part of it is that there was an epidemic of lung injury, associated death, and hospitalization. Several people needed lung transplantation. [...]
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- Category: June 2021
The Chief Executive Officer of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), Mrs Delese Mimi Darko, says there is no proof that smoking of water-pipe tobacco, commonly called shisha, and electronic cigarettes are safer compared to the regular cigarette sticks. “Do you know that an hour’s session of shisha amounts to smoking 100 to 200 sticks of cigarette?” “It really saddens my heart to see well known people in society recklessly smoke shisha on social media platforms just to be in the trends. “What do we think we are teaching our future generation?”
“As role models, we all need to support and play our role to fight this global tobacco disease pandemic,” [...]
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- Category: June 2021
An ever accumulating volume of scientific and preclinical data is suggesting that e-cigarettes are at least as harmful as regular smoking, i.e. combustible cigarettes you light up, and not a safe alternative. Understandably, most of the focus has been on the effects on the lungs, cardiovascular disease, and addiction. But recently, a growing body of scientific studies are starting to show the serious potential negative effects e-cigarette use may have on the brain.
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At the end of March, China said that it would soon regulate vaping products like cigarettes. That means nicotine vapes would fall under the control of the country’s tobacco monopoly—a development with huge implications in China and potentially the rest of the world. The nation produces roughly 90 percent of the planet’s e-cigarettes. In China, the government and Big Tobacco are one and the same. The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and China National Tobacco Corporation [...] is both the agency in charge of tobacco regulation and the manufacturer of tobacco products. [...]
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- Category: June 2021
Auckland dairies are selling cut-price cigarettes imported and distributed by gangs as part of a vast and growing tobacco black market. A smattering of dairies across the city, particularly in the east and south, are embroiled in the illicit trade. Along with legal, taxed tobacco, they’re also offering packets of Asian-origin cigarettes to customers in the know, distinctive because they lack the plain packaging mandated by law in New Zealand.
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Smoking in early puberty in boys may have negative consequences for their future generations of offspring, a study from the University of Bergen (UiB) shows.
By continued analysis of data gathered in the large international RHINESSA, RHINE and ECRHS studies, researchers have found that the health of future generations depends on actions and decisions made by young people today. This is particularly relevant for boys in early puberty and mothers/grandmothers both pre-pregnancy and during pregnancy, the study shows.
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Five local authorities have banned smoking in pavement pubs, cafes and restaurants, and others are considering following suit, before a new push by the government to make England smoke-free in less than a decade.
The Covid outdoor eating culture has given the issue of smokers outside pubs and cafes a new visibility. Last summer there was an attempt to push through an amendment to legislation in the House of Lords to make pavements smoke-free, but it failed.
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The department of health is pushing forward on a draft bill in an effort to get more stringent anti-smoking laws passed.
The department’s Lynn Moeng told EWN that the Control of Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill is currently in the pipeline, and that government is working as ‘fast as it can’ to have it processed.
“We are now finalising the process and once we have done that before it even gets to Cabinet, it needs to be approved by a few technical committees,” she said.
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- Category: June 2021
On 28 May, WHO, alongside the Ministry of Health of Uzbekistan, Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Uzbekistan and the Uzbekistan Medical Students’ Association (UzMSA Phenomenon), launched the “Commit to Quit” nationwide campaign online in association with World No Tobacco Day, with the aim of expanding access to services for those looking to quit tobacco.
Tobacco use causes a significant health burden, killing over 8 million people a year around the world. Seven million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use, with a further 1.2 million non-smokers dying from exposure to second-hand smoke.
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- Category: June 2021
Last year the Australian Retailers Association’s newish chief Paul Zahra spectacularly tore up a contract tied to the group’s lobbying for the legalisation of e-cigarettes. It was “the right decision”, he later told this newspaper, and he had “no regrets”. Anyway, the somewhat niche issue wasn’t worth his members’ time. Even if it came with a $250,000 payment every six months, secretly sourced (through a PR firm) from Philip Morris International.
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British American Tobacco (BAT), which trades in Ireland as PJ Carroll, has accused the State’s tobacco regulator of “inaction” for failing to rein in its commercial rivals over allegations that some of them are selling new products that it claims may be in breach of last year’s ban on menthol-flavoured cigarettes. The Health Service Executive said a year ago that it would investigate tobacco companies for allegedly breaching the Europe-wide ban on menthol flavours, which some have allegedly tried to circumvent with techniques exploiting loopholes while marketing them as menthol substitutes.
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Cigarette smoking is associated with a number of diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Recently, there has been an increase in the use of electronic cigarettes (ECs) and tobacco-heating products (THPs) as an alternative to cigarettes, which may reduce the health burden associated with smoking. However, an exposure continuum when smokers switch to ECs or THPs compared to complete smoking cessation is not well established.
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- Category: June 2021
Scientific papers suggesting that smokers are less likely to fall ill with covid-19 are being discredited as links to the tobacco industry, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today.
Journalists Stéphane Horel and Ties Keyzer report on undisclosed financial links between certain scientific authors and the tobacco and e-cigarette industry in a number of covid research papers.
In April 2020, two French studies (shared as preprints before formal peer review) suggested that nicotine might have a protective effect against covid-19 - dubbed the "nicotine hypothesis."
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Complete 3-hour North American Coverage hosted by RegWatch in partnership with Rights4Vapers and presented by DViNE Laboratories.
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E-cigarettes are promoted in many countries as a safer alternative to tobacco. However, in the EU, there has been a long-running debate about the health effects of these products.
As e-cigarettes are so new, the Commission has been cautious when it comes to how they are regulated across the bloc.
At the moment, they are covered by the Tobacco Product Directive as they contain nicotine. However, a new report says they could fall under pharmaceutical regulation in the future.
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Smoking is very bad for you.
No, seriously. Smoking is astonishingly bad for you. Something like 15% of all deaths worldwide are attributable to tobacco smoking: about 8 million deaths a year, out of about 55 million. In India alone, it probably contributes to about 800,000 deaths a year, if my calculations (9% of all deaths in India; about seven people die per 1,000 in India per year; 1.3 billion people in India) are correct.
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“According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), India is home to 12 per cent of the world’s smokers. There are approximately 120 million smokers in India and more than 10 million people die each year due to tobacco in India,” said Dr Suresh Goyal, senior consultant of pulmonary medicine at Ivy Hospital, in an online awareness session. He said smoking affects almost all organs of the body. “It causes various types of cancer, like mouth, lungs, food pipe, kidney and pancreas etc. It leads to heart diseases, stroke, lung diseases (asthma and COPD) and various eye problems.
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It’s World No Tobacco Day and we have sent our detailed letter and multiple critical expert comments to the WHO Director-General. The covering note and links to relevant documents are reproduced below. I hope it causes them to pause and reflect. My guess is that Tedros has been very badly advised here.
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A study published today in BMC Public Health demonstrates a potentially harmful relationship between adolescents using e-cigarettes who then go on to smoke tobacco cigarettes. This behavior may undermine hard-won progress in tobacco control that have been largely delivered through preventing smoking initiation in youth. Author of the study, Jean Long, talks more about the research in this blog.
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Today marks “World No Tobacco Day”, a World Health Organization initiative to draw attention to the dangers of tobacco, what governments and health agencies are doing to combat it, and to encourage smokers to quit. Unfortunately for Australian smokers who are struggling to give up the smokes, there’s little to celebrate. The same government that’s bungling the Covid-19 vaccine rollout is failing in this avenue too. The 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey reveals that the annual rate of smoking cessation among Australians over 14 shrank by nearly half between 2013 and 2019, [...]