Research Articles

With Excess Menthol Use Affecting Black Americans, U.S. Policy Efforts Continue to Fall Short (March 24, 2021)

In the United States, menthol cigarettes rose to popularity during the 1950s. At about the same time, manufacturers began focusing their marketing efforts on Black Americans. The effects of these campaigns can be felt today, with Black smokers making up more than one quarter of all menthol users in the United States.

Why Bans of Low-Risk Nicotine Alternatives to Smoking in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) Will Do More Harm Than Good (March 17, 2021)

In 2020, The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), a Bloomberg partner for 'The Initiative to reduce tobacco use', published its fourth position statement on e-cigarettes. In it, The Union called for a blanket ban on all electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and heated tobacco products (HTPs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Newsletter (Volume 1, Issue 1) (March 09, 2021)

One of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 3 is to "strengthen the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in all countries, as appropriate." The indicator for measuring the implementation of FCTC is "age-standardized prevalence of current tobacco use among persons aged 15 years and older."

New Zealand Proposes Vape Products Should Carry Health Warnings in Maori (February 17, 2021)
Under the new proposals, nicotine-containing vaping products would be required to carry a warning label pointing out their addiction potential in both English and te reo Maori, similar to the ones found on cigarettes. Click for detail

An open letter from Darryl Tempest - Executive Director of the Canadian Vaping Association (February 17, 2021)
Beamsville, ON, Feb. 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For the better part of the last decade, advocates have fought for vaping to be recognised as a harm reduction tool for adult smokers. In the time since, science has caught up with the industry's message and vaping has been recognized by all health organizations as far less harmful than smoking. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence concluding that vaping is less harmful, smokers and society at large are still being sent mixed messages by the government and misleading information by media to support a sensationalistic narrative. Click for detail

FCTC Secretariat relaunches plan for accelerated tobacco control, Part II: A case study (January 25, 2021)
In Part I, I discussed failures in the implementation of the Global Strategy to Accelerate Tobacco Control 2019-2025 (GS2025). As that post indicates, there are many factors contributing to shortcomings on this front. In the current piece, I focus on one where a country, Thailand, which, in my opinion, is still facing challenges in reducing smoking rates despite putting in place policies as outlined in GS2025. Click for detail

It's Time for America to Reclaim its Role in Global Health Leadership. (January 25, 2021)
For decades, the US was a leader in global health. It played a key role in establishing the World Health Organization (WHO), steered the eradication of diseases like smallpox, and guided the development of innumerable standards that underpin modern health policy. Then came the Trump Presidency. Over the past four years, and particularly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration repeatedly failed to embrace sound health policy, to disastrous effect. The election of Joe Biden must bring about a reversal of these failures. Click for detail

Perspectives regarding the Report on the Tenth Meeting of the WHO (January 25, 2021)
Perspectives regarding the Report on the Tenth Meeting of the WHO Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation to be considered at the 148th session of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization. Click for detail

Accelerating change: foundation blog (December 23, 2020)
It was an era in which we became accustomed to daily death tolls broadcast on TV; work, school, and play shifted to virtual space; and masks served as both a life-saving accessory and confounding controversy. On many fronts, the era was marked by despair, not only from the virus proper, but also from the isolation. Click for detail

FCTC Secretariat relaunches plan for accelerated tobacco control, highlighting WHO's bureaucratic inaction (December 17, 2020)
In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Global Strategy to Accelerate Tobacco Control 2019-2025 (GS2025). Described as "a blueprint for the global tobacco control community," this strategy sought to accelerate implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Two years later, one cannot help but notice the absence of any report on progress toward this goal-an absence that was made all the more glaring when the WHO relaunched GS2025 last month. Intended to coincide with what would have been the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the FCTC (COP9), this relaunch only highlighted ongoing failures in policy implementation. Click for detail

The Birth of Harm Reduction Informs the World's Need for Safer Nicotine (November 07, 2020)
Early in 1987 the Conservative government took the radical decision to provide sterile injecting equipment to people who inject in response to the HIV crisis. Only a few months before, it had run an anti-heroin campaign. Now it was giving out free syringes. Click for detail

Tobacco Regulation: Who is Getting It Right? (September 30, 2020)
I recently addressed the 2020 GTNF conference on the topic of "who is getting tobacco regulation right?". My answer was blunt: at present, very few! If we were, we would not have eight million deaths a year from tobacco use. Nor would we have 1.3 billion people still using tobacco products, most in a toxic combustible or dangerous smokeless form. The goal of a regulator should be primarily to reduce that harm in the fastest possible time. Sadly, this isn't the case today. Click for detail

State ownership of tobacco companies and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. (September 22, 2020)
The focus of this report is on the contradictions and conflicts experienced by governments that own major stakes in tobacco companies, yet are required to support tobacco control at the same time because they are signatories to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The broader tobacco control environment is not covered by the report, although the context is important. Click for detail