Dr. Patricia Nez Henderson: “Racist” tobacco industry attending a conference makes me feel “threatened” Ahead of its Annual Meeting, SRNT Embraced Censorship This week, the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT) kicked off its annual conference in Baltimore, Maryland. After going virtual for last year’s conference because of COVID-19, this marked a return to in-person events for the membership-based organization. However, not all past attendees were welcomed to attend this year’s festivities. For more than 15 years, scientists and researchers employed by “commercial tobacco prod ..read more

In the face of CDC intransigence on EVALI, researchers at Rutgers University are calling for “behavioural and policy responses” to address misperceptions about nicotine vaping. During the summer of fall of 2019, thousands of news stories were written about what came to be known as e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI), which caused serious lung injuries in over 2800 people in the USA. As evidence continued to emerge linking these injuries and deaths to illicit tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) vaping products containing the thickening agent vitamin E acetate, the CDC sat b ..read more

Meredith Berkman of PAVE gets angry when called out for spouting misinformation This week’s must see video comes from the television show ‘The Doctors,’ which brought on longtime tobacco harm reduction advocate and researcher Dr. Michael Siegel for a lopsided segment with Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids’ Matthew Myers and Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes’ Meredith Berkman. Dr. Siegel, a professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine, took no prisoners when he was faced with rampant misinformation. Watch a portion of the intervie ..read more

Co-lead author Andrew Hyland found an 8x higher quit rate in smokers not wanting to quit who also vaped. A new study finding vaping can help smokers quit even if they don’t intend to stop smoking has received a lot of press attention. This includes coverage from the National Institutes of Health’s Research Blog. The below press release was issued by the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, which is where the research was conducted. Since the introduction of electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, to the United States in 2006, intense debate has surrounded the marketing, regulation and use ..read more

Philanthropy journalist Marc Gunther has released a new article on Medium entitled “The CDC’s EVALI screwup.” In it, Gunther reveals that the CDC has refused requests from respected public health researchers to correct past misleading claims that suggested nicotine vaping may be responsible for EVALI. “The CDC made a gross error,” says Michael Pesko, a health economist at Georgia State University. The CDC’s miscommunication is “actually killing people, in my opinion,” Pesko told me. Smokers who overestimate the dangers of e-cigarettes are less likely to switch to vaping, he says. Pesko was s ..read more

The majority of U.S. citizens and even doctors believe nicotine is primarily responsible for the tobacco-related disease and death actually caused by inhaling smoke from cigarettes. A new study from UCLA shows yet again this belief is mistaken and that smoke-free nicotine and tobacco products are far safer than smoking. This press release comes courtesy of the University of California, Los Angeles: Regular smokers are at heightened risk of developing cardiovascular disease, but crushing the butts in favor of a “smokeless” alternative like chewing tobacco, snuff or tobacco lozenges may go a lo ..read more

Cigarette smoking continues to decline among youth (2021 Monitoring the Future survey) Despite years of claims that vaping acts as a gateway to smoking, new results from the 2021 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey indicate that not only has interest in vaping waned among youth, but regular combustible cigarette usage is growing even rarer. In the aftermath of Juul fever, the EVALI scare, Tobacco 21 passage at the federal level, and COVID-19, the MTF survey results actually show significant declines in both teen smoking and vaping. Specifically, when it comes to 12th grade students: 5.4% vaped ..read more

Lead author PSU professor Jonathan Foulds News from Penn State University: Electronic cigarettes with cigarette-like nicotine delivery may help some people stop smoking cigarettes, according to a new study by Penn State College of Medicine and Virginia Commonwealth University researchers. By switching to e-cigarettes, the researchers said, tobacco users may reduce their exposure to certain carcinogens, or cancer-causing substances. For six months, the research team followed 520 smokers who were looking to reduce their cigarette consumption by at least 50% but had no plans t ..read more

Our friends at Vapor Voice have a story up about Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., who bravely made a speech before the ninth Conference of the Parties (COP9) about the need to recognize new science when deciding how to address the global smoking problem. Secretary Locsin Jr. urged the World Health Organization “to regain the momentum” of tobacco control and consider “evolving and latest scientific information” in solving the global smoking problem. Secretary Locsin Jr. was predictably attacked by anti-vaping activists, many of whom receive funding from billionaire form ..read more

Two years, two retracted studies. It is no secret that the American Heart Association is ideologically opposed to vaping. Whether in advocacy or ‘science,’ there is often no line they won’t cross in their quest to confuse and mislead adults about the relative risk of vaping versus cigarette smoking. In 2020, there was the famous Stanton Glantz heart attack study, which was retracted by the AHA journal thanks to the efforts of researchers like Dr. Brad Rodu and Dr. David Abrams. Now, AHA has retracted an entire press release about a non-peer-reviewed conference abstract that purported to link ..read more