Live Webcast at Harvard School of Public Health

[catsitter]

Might be good to send in some questions, join the live chat, tweet, whatever -

The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Watch the Live Webcast

CAN E-CIGARETTE REGULATION PROTECT THE PUBLIC'S HEALTH?
Making sense of the Science
Presented in Collaboration with Reuters
Thursday, April 16, 2015
12:30-1:30pm ET
Watch at ForumHSPH.org


The burgeoning e-cigarette market has provoked deliberations about emerging e-cigarettes science, public health concerns and regulatory policy approaches. Some scientists perceive e-cigarettes as a potentially less harmful alternative to traditional tobacco products. By contrast, others fear e-cigarette use will promote tobacco consumption by "re-normalizing" tobacco use, especially among teens and young adults. The FDA plans to regulate e-cigarettes and will release rules regarding warning labels, youth access and vending machine sales sometime in the future. The World Health Organization also has weighed in, issuing strong guidelines for regulation. These steps have been applauded by some public health pundits and criticized by others. This Forum event will explore aspects of the fiercely debated e-cigarette market, including marketing to youth, content of warning labels, design of products, evidence for science-based policymaking, and context of e-cigarettes within the lengthy history of tobacco use and control.
E-mail questions for the expert participants any time before or during the live webcast to theforum@hsph.harvard.edu.

Or Tweet them to @ForumHSPH using #EcigsForum.

We'll also be conducting a live chat on The Forum's E-Cigarette Regulation web page.
EXPERT PARTICIPANTS
Howard Koh, Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and 14th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2009-2014)

Vaughan Rees, Lecturer on Social and Behavioral Sciences, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Interim Director, Center for Global Tobacco Control, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Kenneth Warner, Distinguished University Professor of Public Health, and Former Dean, University of Michigan School of Public Health

K. "Vish" Viswanath, Professor of Health Communication in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and in the McGraw-Patterson Center for Population Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

David Hammond, Associate Professor, University of Waterloo School of Public Health and Health Systems, and Former Advisor to the World Health Organization for the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

MODERATOR
Scott Malone, Editor-in-Charge, General News, Northeastern United States, Reuters

 

[caramel]

As Ayn Rand correctly observed, there is no such person as the "public". It's a collection of individuals. Let's see if the debate figures this out or if they keep talking about that generic guy "public".

 

[Tache]

Do we know the positions (on vaping) held by the individual members of the expert panel? Has anyone heard of, or about, them?

 

[caramel]

Google is your friend...

I'll start with H. Koh. "Think of the children" prohibitionist:

"As I conclude more than five years of service as the Assistant Secretary for Health, it is my fervent hope that we can someday relegate the tobacco epidemic to the history books. Let us stop this suffering once and for all and give our kids a fighting chance for a healthy future." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-howard-k-koh/the-tobacco-fight-is-far_b_5639507.html?)

"Dr. Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health, has urged leaders of U.S. schools of public health to join an effort to make U.S. colleges and universities smoke-free, which would include banning e-cigarettes." (http://www.mailman.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/Fairchild1218.pdf)

"At this rate, roughly two children in every third-grade American classroom today will die prematurely from smoking-related causes. That is 5.6 million of our children," (E-cigarette risk debate rages on, latest study claims devices safer than tobacco : LIFE : Tech Times)

""Flavored cigarettes attract and allure kids into lifetime addiction. FDA's ban on these cigarettes will break that cycle for the more than 3,600 young people who start smoking daily."

etc.

Feel free to check the others, one at a time, and post here the results.

 

[catsitter]

Follow that with Vaughan Rees:

Dr. Vaughan Rees, interim director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control Research at the Harvard School of Public Health, questions their utility as a cessation aid. "E-cigarettes are not able to deliver enough nicotine to satisfy addicted smokers to make the devices a viable quitting option," he says.

Another danger is that smokers will use e-cigs in addition to tobacco products and postpone their quitting efforts. Since the lifetime health risk from tobacco use is related to years of smoking, not just the number of cigarettes smoked, dual use is unlikely to benefit health. In addition, nicotine itself is hardly harmless. It raises blood pressure and makes the heart work harder, which can be dangerous for people with coronary artery disease. "Because smoking has become less convenient and less socially desirable, smoking rates have dropped. E-cigs may be undermining those gains," cautions Dr. Rees. E-cigs: A threat to the heart?

Vaughan Rees, a tobacco researcher at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, thinks that e-cigarettes need to improve before they can replace cigarettes — and that, for now, they should be regulated as tobacco products. Although they do present an opportunity to improve public health, he adds, care needs to be taken to ensure that they don’t flourish alongside conventional cigarettes. “Then we’ve got a double problem,” he says.Regulation of E-Cigarettes Set to Stack Up - Scientific American

 

[WhiteHighlights]

K. "Vish" Viswanath

From the Harvard page (with snips)
In recognition of his academic and professional achievements, Dr. Viswanath has received several awards, including the Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award (2014) from the American Society of Preventive Oncology for distinguished achievement in continued national tobacco control efforts.

Dr. Viswanath’s work focuses on translational communication science to influence public health policy and practice.
His research is supported by funding from private and public agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
He was the Chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Center for Health Marketing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2007-2010.

From his lab page publications list:
Nagler RH, Viswanath K. Implementation and Research Priorities for FCTC Articles 13 & 16: Tobacco Advertising, Promotion, and Sponsorship and Sale to and by Minors. Prepared for Global Network of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, October 24, 2011 for submission to Nicotine and Tobacco Research. 2013 Apr;15(4):832-46.

 

[EBates]

A Stacked Deck or what?

 

[caramel]

David Hammond

“I hold my judgment because I do believe that the five million smokers in Canada deserve to receive more support when they’re trying to quit, as most of them are,” Hammond said. (E-Cigarettes pose dilemmas for regulators, tobacco control advocates - The Globe and Mail)

"In most of these policy discussions, smokers have received very little consideration. I'd suggest that this is unfortunate. I don't believe that it's melodramatic to state that for many hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of these Canadian smokers that vaporized nicotine may be one of their better options for avoiding death through their addiction to cigarettes." in a very extensive statement here: https://openparliament.ca/committees/health/41-2/40/dr-david-hammond-1/only/

 

[caramel]

A Stacked Deck or what?

3 to 1.

..........

 

[WhiteHighlights]

A Stacked Deck or what?

in one of those tv ad voices ... but wait, there's more!

David Hammond
Dr. Hammond works closely with regulatory agencies around the world and has previously served as an Advisor to the World Health Organization for Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Publications:
• Czoli C, White CM, Hammond D. Electronic cigarettes in Canada: Prevalence of use and perceptions among young adults. Canadian Journal of Public Health 2014; 105(2): e97-e102.
CONCLUSIONS: Awareness of e-cigarettes among surveyed youth and young adults is quite high. Almost one fifth (16.1%) of participants reported trying e-cigarettes, with evidence of use among non-smokers.

Electronic cigarettes in Canada: Prevalence of use and perceptions among youth and young adults | Czoli | Can J Public Health

His list of publications has a lot about ‘perceptions’: Perceptions of UK youth of branded and standardized “plain” cigarette packaging; Pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs in the United States: An experimental evaluation of the proposed FDA warnings; Health warnings on tobacco packages: A Review; Beyond light and mild: cigarette brand descriptors and perceptions of risk in the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey.

 

[Kent C]

Kenneth Warner:

"The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Dr. Kenneth Warner, a tobacco policy expert, from the University of Michigan’s school of public health. “It’s a little bizarre to think that there is a report that deals with people in this way.... I hold to the comment I made for MSNBC: ‘Is there any other company that would boast about making money for the public treasury by killing its customers?’”


Who's killing who?

enuf said.....

 

[caramel]

His list of publications has a lot about ‘perceptions’:

Well he has a PhD in Psychology.

 

[WhiteHighlights]

David Hammond

“I hold my judgment because I do believe that the five million smokers in Canada deserve to receive more support when they’re trying to quit, as most of them are,” Hammond said. (E-Cigarettes pose dilemmas for regulators, tobacco control advocates - The Globe and Mail)

"In most of these policy discussions, smokers have received very little consideration. I'd suggest that this is unfortunate. I don't believe that it's melodramatic to state that for many hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of these Canadian smokers that vaporized nicotine may be one of their better options for avoiding death through their addiction to cigarettes." in a very extensive statement here: https://openparliament.ca/committees/health/41-2/40/dr-david-hammond-1/only/

caramel,
I'll agree that David is coming around. I was reviewing his website that so far has nothing about e-cigs on it. Smoking cessation is NRT or medications and they're looking at smartphone apps. A psych degree can go either way. (disclosure: I did undergrad studies in psych, mom had a masters degree). It's too easy to get the results you want depending on how you phrase the questions.

The 2nd link you provided has the option to see what came before and after his presentation. There is some interesting Q&A and his was a voice of sanity on a few occasions. But at the end the subject of flavors comes up. His reply:

On your last point about flavouring, real harm reduction advocates suggest that you keep the flavours in because that makes smokers want to use it. I think it would be more conservative and probably prudent to eliminate the cotton candy flavours, the cherry flavours. My opinion is that if an adult smoker is genuinely using this to help him quit, they don't necessarily need cotton candy flavouring to promote this product.

EEK! I use cotton candy in my DIY! I'm sure we can continue to educate him

 

[CarolT]

The words, "Harvard School Public Health," tell you everything you need to know. Namely, that it's guaranteed to be a stacked deck of fraud-committing charlatans, who have numerous powerful political connections and ties to wealthy oligarchs.

 

[caramel]

Let's not forget that we have seen some excellent work by psychologists:



It's the mechanical engineers that don't seem to get it.

As for cotton candy, I suspect diacetyl anyway....

 

[caramel]

Incidentally I first viewed the video above while first researching e cigs and it strongly motivated me to try them. I am grateful to Dr. Dawkins to be nicotine free in 3 months, through a painless method.

 

[catsitter]

Anybody got the time/expertise to go harass these folks at a live chat today? 12:30 - 1:30

Can E-cigarette Regulation Protect the Public’s Health? | The Forum at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

 

[catsitter]

If you can stomach all the usual lies, propaganda and general B.S., here's the video of the event:
Can E-cigarette Regulation Protect the Public’s Health? | The Forum at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

 

[Tache]

I got a real chuckle when the first question was from Reuters. The CDC released their Youth Smoking Survey results at one pm, right in the middle of the webcast, so the Reuters question was about the panel's reaction to the significant reduction in high school smoking rates. You could really see that it took them aback for a moment or two, then they jumped on the increase in e-cigarette use as justification for more regulation.

 

[Bill Godshall]

Was too busy trying to diffuse the CDC's lies yesterday to watch this thing at Harvard.

Regarding the presenters, Koh is an e-cig prohibitionist who made many false fear mongering claims about them when he worked at Obama's DHHS during the past five years.

While Ken Warner and Dave Hammond are more objective, neither have stated any opposition to the FDA's proposed deeming regulation (that would ban >99.9% of e-cigs, and give the e-cig industry to Big Tobacco).

Not familiar with the other panelists except to know that they aren't THR advocates.

Then again, the puritans at Harvard would never invite a THR advocate to participate on a panel discussion about e-cigs, smokeless tobacco or anything else involving THR.