HEADS UP - NEWS - UPDATES! (When we know, you'll know!)

[kristin]

This persistent claim that "nicotine harms the adolescent brain" is based on studies that "indicate that smoking during adolescence increases the risk of developing psychiatric disorders and cognitive impairment in later life. In addition, adolescents who smoke suffer from attention deficits." Much of this claim is also based on studies of rats, not humans.


However, it's important to note that the studies were of adolescent and adult cigarette smoking, which obviously exposes a person to many chemicals that are far more problematic than nicotine. For example, smoke-free nicotine products don't expose users to carbon monoxide (created by combustion,) which can deprive cells and tissues -- including the brain -- of oxygen.


That said, there's no evidence demonstrating that there was a higher number of adults with psychiatric disorders and cognitive impairment as a result of the past smoking rates that were nearly quadruple what they are today. That older adults who smoke were diagnosed later in life with these conditions could just as well be because they finally got the help they needed after years of coping by self-medication.


tobacco Control is keen on giving the public the impression that nicotine use causes mental health issues, when it's really an "association." There's a "chicken or the egg" problem of not knowing which came first -- the mental health issue or the nicotine use.


Additionally, it's long been established that people with mental health issues are also much more likely to use other substances to "self-medicate," so it's disingenuous of tobacco Control to attempt to paint nicotine use as somehow different than other substance use -- that for nicotine alone it's a cause rather than a symptom of mental health challenges.


Imagine blaming aspirin for causing headaches because so many people with headaches use aspirin.

Nicotine Addiction and Mental Health: Breaking the Cycle | SBM - Society of Behavioral Medicine

Two health crises among youth — a mental health crisis and nicotine addiction— pose increasing threats to a generation of young people. In 2023, over 2.1 million youth reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, including 10% of high school students and 4.6% of middle school students. Among...

www.sbm.org

 

[kristin]

"In its new progress report to the court, the agency brags that it has issued “over 18 million refuse-to-accept decisions, over 67,000 refuse-to-file decisions, and approximately 46,000 marketing denial orders.” Most of those 46,000 MDOs were for bottled e-liquid made by small- to medium-sized manufacturers—including many tiny businesses with no retail footprint outside their own cities."

CASAA director Jim McDonald (@whycherrywhy) reporting for @Vaping360

https://vaping360.com/vape-news/7302/fda-pmta-report-bad-news-for-small-companies/

 

[kristin]

A non sequitur, indeed.

(See link to full ALA statement at the end of the post.)

While they're not wrong that this underscores the urgent need to "improve access to quit smoking resources and ensure that quit smoking resources are culturally appropriate" (Black Americans who smoke are more likely to smoke menthol, and are less likely to vape or receive adequate healthcare, including smoking cessation assistance,) there's no evidence that banning things lead to people quitting those things. Indeed, bans on drugs haven't led to less drug use and instead have led to far more deadly products (such as fentanyl) appearing on the illicit market. So there's really no reason to believe a ban on menthol would lead to less smoking and a safer public.

Furthermore, having "an interest" in quitting doesn't translate to actual quit attempts nor does it increase the success rate of quit attempts. Tobacco Control has long been saying "nearly 70% of people who smoke want to quit" and in 2022, 67.7% did still say they wanted to quit (down from an estimated 70% in 2000,) but only 53.3% made at least one quit attempt in the past year (down from 56% in 2020,) and only 8.8% of adults who smoked had successfully quit smoking for more than 6 months in the past year. However, there's no way to know how many started smoking again after participating in the NHI survey. Some studies have shown that about 65% to 75% would relapse within a year.

Studies of menthol bans in other countries found that "while 50% of menthol smokers switched to smoking non-menthol cigarettes, almost a quarter (24%) of menthol cigarette smokers quit smoking altogether," and "around 12% switched to other flavored tobacco products, and 24% continued smoking menthols."

Tobacco Control likes to focus on the 24% who quit smoking altogether and pretty much ignores how around 75% either switched to non-menthol cigarettes or somehow just kept smoking menthol cigarettes (either buying on the illicit market or adding menthol to regular cigarettes.)

It should be noted that the follow-up for those who said they quit altogether after a ban is pretty dismal, with most surveys not extending beyond 6 months post-ban. In some cases, researchers even excluded from the analysis an undisclosed number of people who they followed up with who "refused" to answer or answered "don't know," which could skew the percentage of people who kept smoking or relapsed. As previously mentioned, it’s not uncommon for people to quit smoking for months or years and later relapse, so a 6 month follow-up is insufficient to determine the efficacy of menthol bans.

The studies also frequently use Canadian data after that country banned menthol, but 2 significant limitations to using that comparison are that 1) the black population of Canada is about 1/3 the size of the US population and 2) there was a relatively small market for menthol cigarettes prior to bans in Canada.

There is a lack a data on how many people in Canada switched to vaping, snus or nicotine pouches when they quit smoking. Canada was initially open to tobacco harm reduction, but the tide turned against these products shortly after the so-called "youth vaping epidemic," leading to the belief by many people who smoke that vaping wasn't any safer than smoking and that "vaping isn't quitting" (which could affect their answers on surveys as to whether they'd actually "quit.")

It should also be noted that after the FDA recently authorized a few menthol-flavored vapor products, the ALA released a statement that it "condemns" the authorization as "highly questionable and deeply troubling." (American Lung Association Condemns FDA's Approval of High-Nicotine Menthol E-Cigarettes) The ALA also significantly downplays the far lower risks of using products such as snus and nicotine pouches, while pushing people to keep trying (and failing with) nicotine gum, patches, inhalers, nasal spray and lozenges.

According to the CDC, "smoking rates have been declining for Black Americans, from 19.4% in 2011 to 14.4% in 2020" without having a menthol ban and about 81% of black Americans who smoke use menthol cigarettes. With the availability of smoke-free menthol products, such as vapes, snus and nicotine pouches, the smoking decline in that population could go even faster.

If the menthol ban has the same "success" as seen in Canada, around 75% of people who smoke menthol in the U.S. would continue to smoke and, if the ALA had its way, they wouldn't have the option to switch to far lower risk menthol products.

If the ALA truly wanted to "improve access to quit smoking resources," it wouldn't be supporting banning smoke-free menthol products along with cigarettes and cigars.

Here is the full ALA statement:

New CDC Study Shows More People Who Smoke Menthol Cigarettes Want to Quit, But Too Many Aren’t Getting Help

Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Office of Smoking and Health released an article titled “Adult Smoking Cessation—United States, 2022” in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

www.lung.org

 

[kristin]

CASAA THR NEWS
Media claims vaping causes ‘vape face.’ More evidence vaping is helping drive smoking decline. PMTA report may mean bad news for small companies. Will SCOTUS protect people or profits? ALA’s non sequitur on menthol and more!

READ MORE: https://casaa.org/media-claims-vaping-causes-vape-face-and-more-tobacco-harm-reduction-news/

 

[kristin]

"Doctors, tobacco researchers and political leaders warn that Zyn’s marketing — which shows the brand in smoke-free environments like at work and in transportation — may perpetuate nicotine addiction among existing users or introduce nicotine to younger people."

"A better strategy from a public health approach, says Pamela Ling, the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California San Francisco, "would be to tailor nicotine pouch availability to prescriptions, smoking cessation clinics, quit lines and other programs to help consumers with tobacco and nicotine addiction."

Meanwhile, the most deadly tobacco product--cigarettes--would still be easy to buy just about everywhere. Good plan.

Every single adult who currently smokes was once a younger person who didn't smoke. The idea that making safer alternatives to smoking more difficult to purchase than cigarettes will keep young people from ever smoking (or encourage adults to quit nicotine use) is delusional.

Furthermore, adults who are existing nicotine consumers may be more concerned about the far greater health effects of smoking than the extremely low risks from smoke-free nicotine products. Either way, whether or not they want to continue using nicotine is not any one else's business.

Big Tobacco’s viral hit may be its biggest success since cigarettes

New York (CNN) — Governments around the world have tried to kill the tobacco industry. Zyn, the brand of flavored oral nicotine pouches that comes in small, round containers resembling

www.albanyherald.com

 

[kristin]

Imperial Tobacco Canada (a subsidiary of British American Tobacco,) which sells 10 brands of cigarettes in Canada, has the audacity to say the availability of "illegal" smoke-free nicotine products is the "serious public health issue" that the Canadian government needs to address.

We live in a truly bizarro world.



RECENT MEDIA REPORTS CONFIRM THRIVING ILLEGAL NICOTINE MARKET IN QUEBEC

 

[kristin]

A Kentucky judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the state’s new PMTA registry law. The new law will ban the sale in Kentucky of all vape products except those that have either have received FDA authorization, are still undergoing review by the FDA, are currently undergoing appeal, or have had an FDA marketing denial order (MDO) stayed or reversed by the FDA or a court.

Attorney Greg Troutman told The Kentucky Lantern earlier that his clients would appeal the decision.

https://vaping360.com/vape-news/7304/kentucky-judge-dismisses-lawsuit-challenging-pmta-registry-law/

 

[kristin]

A snippet from this must-read article for THR advocates:



"Nicotine was not only that generally sinister thing, a “chemical,” but it was one you could become addicted to. Again, it’s understandable that people who weren’t specialists in addiction science wouldn’t realize that the concept itself was a much-debated thing, and people who had grown up in a War on Drugs era when “drug addicts” were seen as an undifferentiated group of miserable, ruined junkies naturally saw addiction itself—regardless of the addictive substance concerned—as a terrible condition.



Again, of course, there are those who ought to know better who use the concept to spread distrust; it amused me a few years ago when the then U.S. surgeon general, Jerome Adams, said that nicotine was “as addictive as .......” Leaving aside the whole issue of how you assess comparative addictiveness, the logical corollary here was that ...... is no more addictive than nicotine, but I doubt he would have wanted to spread that as a public health message."



In any case, some definitions of addiction or dependency now stipulate that it must be harmful, and it’s highly questionable whether nicotine—once separated from cigarette smoking—falls into that category. So there’s even a case to be made that nicotine addiction doesn’t exist as a problem in the first place. But the bottom line is that it is widely perceived to be harmful and addictive.



And that is a huge obstacle for THR to overcome."
~ Barnaby Page, @ECigIntel

https://tobaccoreporter.com/2024/08/01/the-case-for-nicotine/

 

[kristin]

"This study presents clear evidence showing that vaping in addition to smoking can increase your risk for lung cancer."
~ Marisa Bittoni, Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.

No, it really doesn't.

Here is the study link: Vaping, Smoking and Lung Cancer Risk

Researchers compared people who smoked and vaped at the time of their lung cancer diagnosis to people with lung cancer who smoked but didn't vape; people with lung cancer who neither smoked nor vaped, and people without cancer who smoked and/or vaped.

A quick review shows that they did not:
- Determine whether or not the person vaped at all before being diagnosed with cancer.
- Determine how long each person vaped before being diagnosed with cancer.
- Determine how often, how much or what the person vaped in addition to smoking.
- Compare cancer rates for people who both smoked and vaped with people who had quit smoking and just vaped.
- Compare cancer rates for people who both smoked and vaped with people who had never smoked and only ever vaped.
- Adjust for people who smoked more than 1 pack of cigarettes per day.
- Have "consistent information on duration of smoking cessation or the levels of continued cigarette smoking among those who reported vaping."

Therefore, they cannot establish that it was the vaping that increased the risk of cancer. It could be that those people smoked more heavily than those who didn't vape and just so happened to have started vaping as a means to quit just before their diagnosis.

The researchers are missing way too much information to conclude that vaping was the cause of the increased risk.

Smoking, vaping called a deadly combination for lung cancer risk - UPI.com

Adobe Stock

www.upi.com

 

[kristin]

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that five more #vaping product companies may continue to sell their products until the FDA conducts new scientific reviews of their applications (PMTAs.) The court found that those five petitions posed the same issues as an earlier case ruling involving Triton Distribution.

The FDA appealed the Triton ruling in the Supreme Court, which is expected to be decided in the spring and could have a profound effect on the agency’s vaping product regulatory practices.

https://vaping360.com/vape-news/7305/fifth-circuit-cites-triton-as-precedent-to-vacate-five-more-mdos/

 

[WorksForMe]

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that five more #vaping product companies may continue to sell their products until the FDA conducts new scientific reviews of their applications (PMTAs.) The court found that those five petitions posed the same issues as an earlier case ruling involving Triton Distribution.

The FDA appealed the Triton ruling in the Supreme Court, which is expected to be decided in the spring and could have a profound effect on the agency’s vaping product regulatory practices.

https://vaping360.com/vape-news/7305/fifth-circuit-cites-triton-as-precedent-to-vacate-five-more-mdos/

It's great to get a little good news once in a while!

.

 

[kristin]

Imagine that you're doing a study on weight gain. You survey people who are overweight and ask them if they drink diet soda. You don't know if they were drinking diet soda before they became overweight or for how long they've been drinking diet soda. However, because you found that people who drink diet soda were more likely to be overweight, you conclude that means diet soda "probably" causes weight gain.

Of course, you wouldn't do something so silly, but that's pretty much what they did with this study -- except with myocardial infarction and e-cigarette use. They didn't ask the subjects if they were even vaping before they were diagnosed with myocardial infarction, yet go on to say that there's still "probably" an association.

This is in spite of their own admission that:
"In the absence of information about the type or extent of myocardial infarction or the order of presentation between MI/CHD and the use of e-cigarettes, we cannot assess whether the exposure occurred before or after the outcome; therefore, we cannot determine the temporal association between them."

Translation: We don't know which came first, the myocardial infarction or the e-cigarette use, so we don't have any evidence that e-cigarettes played a part in causing the myocardial infarction. ‍

Association between the use of electronic cigarettes and myocardial infarction in U.S. adults - BMC Public Health

Background Compared with conventional cigarettes, electronic cigarettes are less harmful in some studies. However, recent research may indicate the opposite. This study aimed to determine whether e-cigarette use is related to myocardial health in adults in the U.S. Methods This study used data...

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com

 

[kristin]

CASAA THR NEWS
Tobacco Control thinks safer nicotine products should need a prescription. Tobacco company pretends to care about public health. Two new studies falsely claim to find evidence of harm. Vape companies prevail in lawsuit against FDA and more!

https://casaa.org/tobacco-control-has-another-bad-idea-and-more-tobacco-harm-reduction-news/

 

[kristin]

Illinois Senate Bill 2662 will "prohibit the advertising, marketing or promoting of an electronic cigarette in a manner that is likely to cause a person to mistake it for an object that is anything other than what it is, a tobacco product."

As if the unethical businesses that would sell that kind of thing would care about yet another law? Also, the reporter apparently couldn't find #vaping products collected by school officials that actually "look like school supplies such as highlighters, erasers and pencil sharpeners" to photograph for the article. Why would that be?

Bills (and news articles) like this popping up around the US seem more like political theater designed to get votes and scare parents and teachers.

Morrison law to protect kids from damaging effects of nicotine

SPRINGFIELD – Nicotine companies are creating vapes that are designed to look like school supplies and therefore are easily concealed, leading State Senator Julie Morrison to pass a law to prevent these products from...

www.illinoissenatedemocrats.com

 

[kristin]

They simply cannot see the forest through the trees.

So why are some companies turning to nicotine analogs with appealing flavors? Because FDA's authorization of #vaping products has been "arbitrary and capricious," failing to authorize any of the non-tobacco or menthol products that most consumers prefer.

Bottom Line: If Public Health wants consumers to only buy regulated products, then the FDA has to authorize products that consumers actually want to buy.

Vaping: Unregulated chemical in new e-cigs may alter brain development

Early research suggests these chemicals may be even more addictive than nicotine and have long-term effects on attention, learning and memory.

www.newsweek.com

 

[somdcomputerguy]

They simply cannot see the forest through the trees. ..nicotine analogs..

I'm so glad that I have at least 5 years worth of some of good old fashioned freebase nicotine in my stash.

 

[kristin]

According to Gallup polling, in 2003, 35% of adults under 30 smoked. Today, 18% of that age group vapes and only 6% smoke.

In 2003, 28% of adults 30 - 49 years old smoked. Today, only 8% of that age group vapes and 13% still smoke.

It's interesting how public health officials and tobacco control groups can look at those facts and still claim vaping has nothing to do with the reduction of adult smoking rates.

It's also funny how the article states, "While vaping presents fewer health risks than
tobacco smoking, public health officials would still prefer that U.S. adults not do either."

Well, adults who vape would prefer that public health officials would mind their own business about what we as adults choose to do, but we're not holding our breath.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/648521/cigarette-smoking-rate-ties-year-low.aspx

 

[kristin]

UK senior research nurse on taking part in a hospital project called "Swap and Stop" and switching to #vaping after smoking for 30+ years:
"I feel tons better and healthier within myself, as for the last 10-15 years, I had concurrent chest infections of bronchitis, and colds, but for the last two years, I’ve had no issues with this.

"In terms of trying to stop before, it has always been the negative language around wanting to quit.

"You were sort of doomed to fail before you started, because it was hard, you were going to get cravings, it would be horrible and you were just not going to succeed.

"This time I felt the language was all changed, so I felt this is more about preparing you to change to healthier habits and options, so I was doing everything I would do with a cigarette, but without the added toxicity that comes with smoking."

York nurse hails hospital stop-smoking scheme after vape switch

York research nurse Paul Brittain says he feels "tons better" after ditching tobacco.

www.bbc.com

 

[kristin]

Yet another study using the "gateway theory" to blame #vaping for causing smoking and drug use without considering "common liability to addiction" as a possibility.

The gateway theory relies on the observation that people will use one substance and then go on to use other substances, but the catch is that the order can often be swapped. For example, researchers often cite tobacco use as leading to marijuana and alcohol use, but it's also been observed that people who use marijuana or alcohol are more likely to later start smoking tobacco. Proponents claim that tobacco, alcohol and marijuana are all gateway substances, yet they can offer no explanation for why someone would go from using one substance to the other.

On the other hand, common liability to addiction looks at overall risk of substance use in the individual. For decades -- long before vaping existed -- we've known that some demographics are at greater risk for smoking, alcohol and drug addiction. This includes being a veteran, low income, LGBT+ and having mental health disorders. The substance use is thought by many experts to be a form of "self medicating." This would better explain why people who use one substance would be far more likely than non-users to try other substances.

The bad news for these gateway proponents is that we have clear evidence contradicting a causal link between vaping and the initiation of smoking. If vaping was leading to smoking, then it would be reasonable to expect to see smoking rates rise as vaping rates rose. One look at this chart shows that simply hasn't happened even in the highest smoking risk age groups.

Article Link: Vaping linked to smoking cigarettes, marijuana, other drug use | The University Record

Study Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871624003259

 

[kristin]

CASAA director Jim McDonald (@whycherrywhy) explains in this article for @Vaping360 just how much is riding on the Supreme Court ruling next year in the FDA’s challenge to the Triton decision:
"The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to hear the FDA’s venue petition. If it does not accept the case—or if it rules against the FDA—the Fifth Circuit could conceivably continue to accept MDO appeals from manufacturers across the country.

"If the high court finds the FDA improperly denied hundreds of thousands of premarket tobacco applications (PMTAs), FDA regulation of vaping products might have to go back to square one—or even be completely revamped. And if the Supreme Court justices rule the FDA’s PMTA review practices were proper, finding a venue for appeal will be the least of the vaping industry’s problems."

https://vaping360.com/vape-news/7670/fifth-circuit-court-accepts-mdo-appeals-from-across-the-country/