Youth Smoking
DOCTORS DENY VALIDITY OF STUDY LINKING E-CIGARETTES WITH CIGARETTE ADDICTION
http://www.capitalberg.com/e-cigarettes-cigarette-addiction/29453/
The war between electronic cigarettes and combustible cigarettes is still fighting.
A recent study promoted the idea that e-cigarettes are responsible for cigarette addiction in teenagers. Days after it was published, other members of the scientific community started commenting, denying the validity of the survey, accusing the authors of promoting misleading information.
WHAT WAS THE STUDY ABOUT?
The initial study used a sample of approximately 1,000 high-schoolers enrolled in the 11th or 12th grade. None of the participants ever smoked a combustible cigarette. Almost half of them tried an e-cigarette.
After 16 months since the first round of interviews, the team tracked down the participants and asked them again about their smoking habits.
According to the study that was published on Monday in the on-line journal, Pediatrics, almost half of the teenagers that admitted to smoking electronic cigarettes were now struggling with a cigarette addiction.
The conclusions formulated by the team were that electronic cigarettes are only gateway nicotine delivery systems that eventually lead to cigarette addiction. They ended the paper by stating that the FDA was right when implementing the new measure that says minors are not allowed to buy electronic cigarettes on the territory of the United States.
THE REACTION OF THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY
The study was not well received at all by the medical community. Many of the professionals specialized in cigarette addiction stated that the survey was too vague and that its conclusions are rash and incorrect.
According to Ann McNeil, a Tobacco Addiction Professor at London’s King’s College, the paper has some loopholes that cannot be ignored.
For once, the authors only mentioned that half of the surveyed adolescents used an e-cigarette. However, they didn’t specify if the device was used on a regular basis or if the teens only tried it once or twice in their life.
On the other hand, they never did any follow-ups. They just returned after 16 months and counted the adolescents that developed a smoking addiction.
However, that isn’t necessarily an indicator of the fact that electronic cigarettes can lead to the development of a smoking addiction. It just shows that the teenagers that are inclined to try one thing will ultimately be inclined to try the other one.
What the doctors are arguing is that electronic cigarettes are not to be blamed in the case of the teens that developed a smoking addiction, rather their entourage and their curious nature.
Electronic cigarettes have been deemed by previous studies as being the safest quitting or nicotine-delivery option on the market.
What do you think? Which side has the most compelling arguments? In the war between e-cigarettes and combustible cigarettes who do you side with? Share your thoughts in the section below.
No general ban on tobacco advertising
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/health-or-free-market_no-general-ban-on-tobacco-advertising/42229592
A ban on advertising tobacco products in Switzerland has been rejected by the Swiss senate, who voted on Wednesday to protect a free market economy, rather than support health concerns.
The ban had been called for by the Swiss Health Minister Alain Berset, who said in Parliament that smoking was damaging not only from a health perspective, but also socially and financially.
The cabinet had argued that adverts had a particularly large impact on young people. According to a German study, the risk of young people taking up smoking increased by 46% if they were exposed to adverts for tobacco.
Opponents of the ban argued there was no proof that an advertising ban would stop people smoking.
Worldwide more than five million people die every year as a result of tobacco consumption. In Switzerland that number is 9,500.
Protecting youngsters
The nationwide ban on selling cigarettes and other tobacco products to minors was undisputed, with a majority of parliamentarians explicitly expressing their support for laws protecting children and young people.
In this respect, it was argued, a legal basis is needed for test purchases to ensure shops aren’t selling tobacco to underage customers. A majority also agreed the importance of an existing ban on tobacco adverts directed at minors.
Regional differences
Tobacco advertising is already banned on the radio and on TV in Switzerland, but in 15 cantons billboard advertising is also prohibited.
In ten cantons cigarettes cannot be sold to under 18s, but in other parts of the country they can be sold to 16-year-olds.
In eastern Switzerland, it’s traditional to see children lighting up as part of a special event that centres around a regional cattle show.
Cigarette smoking among U.S. high school students at an all-time low, but e-cigarette use a concern
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/p0609-yrbs.html
Current cigarette smoking among U.S. school students lowest in 23 years.
Cigarette smoking among high school students dropped to the lowest levels since the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) began in 1991, but the use of electronic vapor products, including e-cigarettes, among students poses new challenges according to the 2015 survey results released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although current cigarette use decreased significantly from 28 percent in 1991 to 11 percent in 2015, new data from the 2015 survey found that 24 percent of high school students reported using e-cigarettes during the past 30 days.
“Current cigarette smoking is at an all-time low, which is great news. However, it’s troubling to see that students are engaging in new risk behaviors, such as using e-cigarettes,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “We must continue to invest in programs that help reduce all forms of tobacco use, including e-cigarettes, among youth.”
In May 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized an important rule extending its authority to all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. The rule includes, for the first time, a restriction on the sale of these products to minors nationwide.
A wealth of data on teen health-related behaviors
The YRBS provides important data related to student behaviors, such as behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence.
The 2015 survey findings indicated that youth continue to be at risk by using wireless devices while driving:
Among high school students who had driven a car or other vehicle during the past 30 days, the percentage of high school students who texted or e-mailed while driving ranged from 26 percent to 63 percent across 35 states and from 14 percent to 39 percent across 18 large urban school districts.
Nationwide, 42 percent of students who had driven a car or other vehicle during the past 30 days reported texting or e-mailing while driving. This percentage did not change from 2013.
The 2015 survey findings showed encouraging reductions in physical fighting among adolescents.
The percentage of high school students nationwide who had been in a physical fight at least once during the past 12 months decreased from 42 percent in 1991 to 23 percent in 2015.
However, nationwide, the percentage of students who had not gone to school because of safety concerns is still high.
Six percent of students missed at least 1 day of school during the past 30 days because they felt they would be unsafe at school or on their way to or from school. The percentage of students not going to school because of safety concerns decreased from 2013 (7 percent) to 2015 (6 percent).
The survey also included questions on prescription drug use.
Prescription drug use among youth decreased from 20 percent in 2009 to 17 percent in 2015. Nationwide, 17 percent of students had taken prescription drugs (e.g., Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin, codeine, Adderall, Ritalin, or Xanax) without a doctor’s prescription one or more times during their life.
The 2015 YRBS report also included data on youth sexual risk behaviors.
The percentage of high school students who are currently sexually active (had sexual intercourse during the past three months) has been decreasing since 1991, dropping from 38 percent in 1991 to 30 percent in 2015. Current sexual activity also decreased from 34 percent in 2013 to 30 percent in 2015.
Among high school students who are currently sexually active, condom use decreased from 63 percent in 2003 to 57 percent in 2015, following more than a decade of increases that peaked in the early 2000s. Condom use did not change from 2013 (59 percent) to 2015 (57 percent).
The proportion of currently sexually active students who had drunk alcohol or used drugs before last sexual intercourse decreased from 25 percent in 1999 to 21 percent in 2015, but did not change from 2013 (22 percent) to 2015 (21 percent).
Nationwide, 10 percent of all students had ever been tested for HIV. This is a decrease from 13 percent in 2011 and 2013.
Trends in dietary and sedentary-related behaviors, such as drinking sugar-sweetened beverages and screen time, have varied in recent years:
There was a significant decrease in drinking soda one or more times a day from 27 percent in 2013 to 20 percent in 2015.
From 2003-2015, the percentage of high school students playing video or computer games or using a computer three or more hours per day (for non-school related work) nearly doubled from 22 percent to 42 percent.
“Health risk behaviors among youth vary over time and across the nation, making the YRBS an important tool to better understand youth. The YRBS helps us identify newly emerging behaviors and monitor long-standing youth risk behaviors over time,” said Laura Kann, Ph.D., chief of CDC’s School-Based Surveillance Branch. “While overall trends for the 2015 report are positive, the results highlight the continued need for improvements in reducing risks among teens.”
About the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)
CDC’s YRBSS is the only surveillance system designed to monitor a wide range of priority health risk behaviors among representative samples of high school students at the national, state, and local levels.
National, state, and large urban school district surveys are conducted every two years among high school students throughout the United States. These surveys monitor health risk behaviors including unintentional injuries and violence; sexual behaviors related to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection; tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use; unhealthy dietary behaviors; and physical inactivity. The surveys also monitor obesity and asthma.
More than 15,000 U.S. high school students participated in the 2015 National YRBS. Parental permission was obtained for students to participate in the survey, student participation was voluntary, and responses were anonymous. States and large urban school districts could modify the questionnaire to meet their needs. The 2015 YRBSS report includes National YRBS results and results from surveys conducted in 37 states and 19 large urban school districts.
The National YRBS is one of three HHS-sponsored surveys that provide data on substance abuse among youth nationally. The others are the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration – a primary source of statistics on substance use among Americans age 12 and older (http://www.samhsa.gov/data/population-data-nsduh) – and the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse/National Institutes of Health and conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (http://monitoringthefuture.org). The MTF study tracks substance use and related attitudes among students in the 8th, 10th, and 12th grades.
The 2015 YRBS data are available at www.cdc.gov/yrbs.
Dutch tobacco policy goes up in smoke amid political tensions
The Netherlands refuses to take significant action as ruling parties fear blowback
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/dutch-tobacco-policy-goes-up-in-smoke-amid-political-tensions-1.2669071
The Dutch are good with their teenagers. Surveys show the youngsters are the happiest in Europe, with plenty of friends, relatively little bullying at school, and few unwanted pregnancies. So it comes as no surprise to see that smoking is disappearing too among the under-16s.
A new study by the National Statistics Office shows a consistent drop over the past 20 years. In the late 1990s some 10 per cent of under-16s had already taken up the regular smoking habit – but now that figure has dwindled to just 1.3 per cent, the trend is consistently downwards.
The statistics confirm a survey by Maastricht University a few years ago which showed smoking in school – whether behind the bike sheds or elsewhere – was just not cool anymore. In sociological terms, smokers were “no longer among the most influential majority group”.
The truth though is that the Netherlands has not overnight become a society where things change automatically for the better. This transformation is directly linked to a ban on the sale of cigarettes to under-16s introduced in 2003 – combined with a rigorous no-smoking policy in schools.
In a nutshell, enforcement has worked, a proposition supported by the second part of the latest statistics office survey, which shows that young people are simply falling prey to the killer addiction later – in their 20s, when they are free to make their own life choices.
Twentysomething smokers
In fact, the figures show that the highest proportion of smokers of any age is among twentysomethings. Almost 40 per cent of them smoke, 60 per cent of them every day.
The habit falls back slightly for the over-30s, but by then – as the song says – it’s a hard habit to break. A huge 85 per cent simply continue on smoking every day to the detriment of their health, particularly as they get older.
In fairness to the dogged Dutch, those who kick the habit are relentless in their determination. Some 30 per cent of smokers who quit never smoke again, well above the European average of 21 per cent. The problem though remains. It’s just the smokers who are older.
But are smokers really victims, or is smoking, indeed, simply a lifestyle choice?
Very much the former, say Amsterdam lawyer Benedicte Ficq and lung-cancer patient Anne Marie van Veen, who are planning a court action against tobacco companies for “purposely and premeditatedly” endangering smokers’ health – something the companies will vigorously deny.
“Our point is that smokers’ ability to choose has been influenced by the addition to cigarettes of addictive substances such as nicotine and additives with the specific intention of limiting that freedom of choice”, says Ficq, who wants possible prison sentences for tobacco company executives.
“This is unacceptable on many levels but particularly when children and young adults are among those being targeted.”
Victims or not, almost one-quarter of Dutch citizens over 15 are smokers – and roughly half that number will die of smoking-related diseases at a rate of about 20,000 a year.
That raises questions from anti-smoking campaigners about why the government is choosing what they regard as easy options – scary pictures on cigarette packages and public information campaigns – rather than tough love in the form of substantial tax increases, a form of enforcement that’s been shown to work in Sweden and Australia.
Tax rise
A vocal advocate of hitting smokers where it hurts – in their pockets – is Eric van den Burg, an alderman in Amsterdam with prime minister Mark Rutte’s Liberal Party. In his opinion, smokers should face an immediate tax increase of at least €10 a packet.
Where the tobacco interests and the pro-choice lobby in the Liberals are wrong, he contends, is that not every person is capable of making an independent-minded decision about smoking. “Addicts are not free to choose – that’s what makes them addicts,” he argues.
Van den Burg also points to the inevitable voter backlash that would follow in next year’s general election were the Liberal-Labour coalition to pluck up its courage and act for what he sees as the public good by increasing tobacco taxes.
His calculation is simple: in a political landscape in which Rutte’s Liberals are being closely challenged by Geert Wilders and his anti-immigrant Freedom Party, a tax hike on fags would lead directly to the loss of two or even three crucial seats.
For Labour, the blowback would be even worse, he maintains, simply because there tends to be more smokers among people on lower incomes, typically Labour followers.
Still, such cold-hearted realpolitik couldn’t possibly be the rationale for making public health decisions that cost lives. Could it?
Combating tobacco: The youth taking control
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/06/01/combating-tobacco-the-youth-taking-control.html
Every year, World No Tobacco Day is observed on May 31 to draw attention to the paradoxes surrounding tobacco.
There is now wider agreement that there is a tremendous price to pay for cigarette consumption: respiratory troubles, lives and productivity lost from smoking-attributable diseases, or all the money spent. It is a burden that more and more countries are not willing to carry anymore. Except Indonesia.
Cigarettes are everywhere here. You just need to look around wherever you’re standing to see people blowing cigarette smoke, or flicking ashes to the ground.
Myriad cigarette ads practically line the streets. It is “normal” to smoke. We are in fact the world’s third-worst cigarette smoking country — and smokers here are getting younger.
Three out of 10 smokers are aged between 15 and 30, and most smoke their first cigarette before they turn 19, according to the national 2013 Basic Health Survey (Riskesdas).
Production of cigarettes is being strongly pushed, with the Industry Ministry targeting a whopping 421.1 billion cigarettes for production this year through its tobacco production roadmap.
Combined with lax regulations on cigarette marketing and advertisements, it’s no wonder that Indonesia has a rampant smoking problem, an old problem getting younger as it is increasingly noticeable among youths.
Remember that unsettling viral video of the smoking baby, already addicted at the age of 2. The impact on young people goes much deeper than smoking itself even.
The global NGO Human Rights Watch recently released a report on the thousands of children in Indonesia that work on tobacco farms with hazardous conditions, their lives being endangered by acute nicotine poisoning and harmful pesticides.
Thus, we cannot just rely on the government’s efforts, which are lukewarm at best. Apart from policies like Law No. 109/2012 regulating materials that contain addictive substances in tobacco products, and the Health Minister’s Decree No. 28/2013 concerning pictorial health warnings and health information, there has been neither much breakthrough nor serious commitment on strengthening tobacco control.
Thus, the government no longer functions as a controlling and regulating organization for society.
Therefore, civil society actors have strived to become influential over policy. The youth, in particular, have done so in ways unimaginable in earlier times. They are steering the tobacco control reform to break out of the lethargic mode it is stuck in.
There’s no sense in waiting for a stronger, better effort on tobacco control. If this problem persists, there will be little chance for young people to maximize their potential and be productive, which will lead to a disastrous waste of the anticipated demographic bonus.
It’s simple — there are currently 65 million people classified as youth, and more than a quarter of them are smokers, so in the next 30 to 40 years they face a high probability of contracting non-communicable diseases attributed to tobacco.
There is hope though. Young people today are not staying silent and doing nothing. In fact, the Global Youth Tobacco Survey of school-aged young people, revealed that three out of four students agreed that tobacco smoke was dangerous and that smoking should be prohibited in public spaces.
This awareness marks a rise in young voices, such as those of millennials, who are conscious of their ability to create social movements, and fight for causes.
There are many initiatives started by young people that aim to reduce the negative impact of tobacco, such as Penggerak Nusantara (Archipelago Movers) who promote peer education among students on the impacts of tobacco.
There is also Smoke Free Agents, an initiative that encourages students to demand their right to tobacco-free spaces and identify violations of tobacco control regulations in their schools and neighborhoods.
All these initiatives aim to inspire and empower young people to make informed decisions regarding smoking. This also demonstrates a shift from a top-down and hierarchical cascade of information to one that is peer driven.
Social norms can change, including the normalization of cigarette smoking. There is of course the factor of power relations that underlies tobacco control. But youth leaders have the power to influence not only their peers, but important policies as well.
It might be a hefty challenge, but focusing prevention efforts relentlessly on young people will be the key to achieving not only a tobacco-free World No Tobacco Day, but a tobacco-free generation.
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Anindita Sitepu is a health psychologist and Olivia Herlinda is a pharmacist and health policy observer. Both work for the Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives.
Tobacco foes fight youth-targeting tactics
Big Tobacco is frequently accused of searching for new ways to hook younger smokers.
Tuesday, May 31 is both World No Tobacco Day and the statewide launch of the Seen Enough Tobacco campaign.
Anthony Billoni, Director of Tobacco-Free WNY, says his group is working to raise awareness of youth-targeting strategies used by the tobacco industry.
“We know that tobacco kills one in two users, so they’re basically killing off half of their customer base,” Billoni said. “They call the youth ‘replacement smokers,’ replacement tobacco users.’”
Seen Enough Tobacco is using social media, digital advertising and a children’s book titled “Jack and Jill (and Tobacco)” to get its message out to the community. The
campaign’s new website, seenenoughtobacco.org, is a resource for learning how to protect children from tobacco marketing.
A recent CDC study reports that smoking among U.S. high school students is at its lowest level in 22 years. However, according to Billoni, tobacco companies are working
harder than ever to appeal to young people.
“The fact is that still, kids are becoming addicted,” he said. “A low number is not a zero number. We still are concerned about kids that are yet to become addicted that are getting addicted, and that’s what we’re working toward.”
Billoni also noted that gures showing a decline in tobacco usage are skewed by a rise in electronic cigarette usage, most of which contain nicotine as well. E-cigarettes were originally marketed as a smoking alternative which help smokers quit, but a trend in recreational e-cigarette use among teens presents an issue.
Many young people who do not smoke cigarettes choose to “vape” and Billoni fears that, once addicted to the nicotine in e-cigarette juice, they will eventually turn to cigarettes. Big Tobacco reportedly spends over $500,000 a day in New York State marketing in places where opponents say children can see the targeted messages.
Tracking the Global Tobacco Epidemic Among Youth
Tobacco use is a leading preventable cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide with nearly 6 million deaths caused by tobacco use every year. Cigarette smoking is the most common form of tobacco use in most countries, and the majority of adult smokers initiate smoking prior to the age of 18. Limiting access to cigarettes among youth is one strategy to curb the tobacco epidemic by preventing smoking initiation and reducing the number of new smokers.
Map of countries where the Global Youth Tobacco Survey has been conducted.
Surveillance of tobacco use among youth is a critical step in stemming the epidemic of tobacco globally. CDC’s tobacco control program has played a critical role in assisting countries around the globe in collecting essential information. The Global Tobacco Surveillance System (GTSS), a collaborative venture between U.S. CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, WHO, and other external partners, is globally recognized as the standard for conducting adult and youth tobacco use surveillance and tracking key indicators consistently across countries. A key aspect of GTSS is the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), the largest youth surveillance system in the world. The GYTS conducts surveys of children aged 13-15 years enrolled in school and has been operational in more than 180 sites. Since 2012, a standard protocol has been followed by 91 sites producing consistent and comparable data.
According to the 2012 U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on youth and young adults, exposure to tobacco advertising is one of the routes by which youth are exposed to tobacco products (3). The GYTS data collected between 2000 and 2014, in 174 sites show that youth aged 13-15 have reported exposure to advertisements about tobacco on T.V., videos or in movies in the past 30 days (range 15.2% in Albania in 2009 to 90.4% Paraguay in 2008). They also saw advertisements for tobacco products on billboards (2.2% in Madagascar in 2008 to 93.4% in Uruguay in 2007), and in newspapers or magazines (1.6% in Madagascar in 2008 to 88.0% in Paraguay in 2008). Not only did the students see tobacco advertised, they also reported being offered free cigarettes by a tobacco company (1.2% in Madagascar in 2008 to 48.2% in Singapore in 2000).
These data from GYTS demonstrate the value of surveillance. If we can measure it then we can do something about it. Challenges remain in tobacco use prevention and control among youth and GYTS data are an important source of information for countries to use in making decisions about tobacco control policy for this vulnerable population and to target prevention activities. Many sites have adopted and ratified the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to measure tobacco control and prevention efforts. We know from research that adoption of tobacco retail environment strategies to reduce and prevent marketing and sales of tobacco products to youth are critical to addressing youth initiation and use of tobacco products.
And, the majority of the sites for which data are reported have ratified the FCTC, Article 16 which recommends prohibiting sale of tobacco products to youth.
The fight against tobacco is not over
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/05/08/hks-policycast-the-fight-against-tobacco-not-over/hyptaQoelAwnHM0RBXNqHM/story.html
The Boston Globe presents the Harvard Kennedy School PolicyCast, a weekly podcast on public policy, politics, and global issues. HKS PolicyCast is hosted by Matt Cadwallader.
At this point, efforts to end tobacco use seem almost passe.
While it wasn’t so long ago that smoking was ubiquitous, most millennials, the largest generation in the country, have never been able to smoke in a Massachusetts bar or restaurant, much less in an office or on an airplane.
For many of us, the fight against tobacco has fallen off the radar. But that doesn’t mean the problem has been solved.
“Tobacco’s going to kill 1 billion people in the 21st century,” says Dr. Howard Koh on this week’s Harvard Kennedy School PolicyCast podcast. “There’s no other condition that reaches those extraordinary figures.”
Dr. Koh, a professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and former assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, says that it’s not yet time to declare mission accomplished.
“We have to keep talking about this huge issue because so many people are suffering and dying preventable deaths due to tobacco dependence. . . . We still have young people trying cigarettes every day. Several thousand a day, in fact, start for the first time.”
Efforts to curb nicotine addiction have taken on new dimensions in recent years, and in several ways Massachusetts has been at the forefront.
The national movement to raise the minimum age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21 began in Needham back in 2005, and has been picking up steam. Earlier this year Boston followed suit.
Just recently, the Massachusetts State Senate passed a bill that would raise the age statewide, and Governor Baker has indicated that he supports the idea “conceptually.”
Passing such a law would make Massachusetts just the thirdstate to do so after Hawaii enacted the change in January and California passed its law in May.
This year another big change came on opening day at Fenway Park. While smoking has been banned in the park for many years, the use of smokeless tobacco, nicknamed spit or chew, has long been a part of baseball culture.
Now due to new regulations enacted by the city of Boston, Fenway is one of a handful of Major League Baseball stadiums where even smokeless tobacco is unwelcome. This was in response to a study released last year by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that the use of chew among baseball players has a significant impact on whether high school athletes pick up the same habit.
Perhaps the most intriguing issue in tobacco control has been the rising popularity of e-cigarettes.
Koh describes e-cigarettes as a “double-edged sword” that have added an unexpected twist to public health officials’ efforts. Two camps have emerged, one arguing that e-cigarettes can be a useful tool in helping smokers quit, and the other taking a more cautious approach, worried that they may be used by teenagers as a stepping stone into further tobacco use.
So far the data have been inconclusive. A recent study found that 16 percent of US high schoolers had tried e-cigarettes, a more-than tenfold increase over the last five years, but it also came at a time when cigarette use among the same group had dropped significantly.
Tobacco control isn’t a new topic, but in the effort to stop 1 billion preventable deaths, we still have a long way to go.
US bans e-cigarette, cigar sales to those under 18 years old
US regulators on Thursday took their first steps to crack down on e-cigarettes and cigars, increasingly popular among American youth, and banned sales to anyone under age 18 in hopes of preventing a new generation from becoming hooked on nicotine.
The Food and Drug Administration’s action brought regulation of e-cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco and hookah tobacco in line with existing rules for cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco. The new rules take effect in 90 days.
Health advocacy groups hailed the move, while industry officials said it could cripple many of the smaller companies that make e-cigarette devices they say can help traditional smokers quit. Wall Street analysts expect the regulation to herald a new wave of consolidation led by big tobacco companies.
The FDA said it will require companies to submit e-cigarettes and other newer tobacco products for regulatory review, provide it with a list of their ingredients and place health warnings on packages and in advertisements.
The FDA’s regulation had been highly anticipated after the agency issued a proposed rule two years ago on how to oversee the US$3 billion e-cigarette industry and these other products.
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell said health officials still do not have the scientific evidence showing e-cigarettes can help smokers quit and avoid the known ills of tobacco. In the interim, the quick uptake of e-cigarettes by young people has added urgency to instituting consumer protections, Burwell said.
“Nicotine does not belong in the hands of kids,” Burwell told reporters.
E-cigarettes are hand held electronic devices that vaporise a fluid typically including nicotine and a flavour component. Using them is called “vaping.”
Three million US middle and high school students reported using e-cigarettes in 2015, compared with 2.46 million in 2014, making them the most commonly used tobacco products for youngsters, according to the most recent federal data.
“This is a real epidemic and banning the sales of these products to minors, much like cigarettes, is a critical step to protecting their health now and into the future,” said Democratic US Representative Lois Capps of California.
Other groups including American Academy of Pediatrics also lauded the FDA move. However, public health advocates have also urged the agency to ban the use of flavoured nicotine liquid in e-cigarette and personal vaporisers.
They say the flavours, which can range from bacon to bubble gum, are a major draw for youngsters to take up vaping. FDA officials said they would consider future regulation on flavours based on further study of the potential risks and benefits of vaping.
In 2009, Congress allowed the FDA to extend its oversight to all tobacco products. The agency began focusing on e-cigarettes, which were quickly gaining traction in the US market.
Cigars had previously not been regulated by the FDA. Their makers had lobbied for their more expensive, typically hand-rolled products to be excluded from such oversight. The agency’s new rules ban flavours in cigars, in another effort to prevent youth use.
Erika Sward, Assistant Vice President for National Advocacy at the American Lung Association, described the regulations as “a win for public health.” She said that the association was disappointed that while the FDA relied on anecdotal information to ban flavours on cigars, it did not use the same metrics regarding e-cigarettes.
The FDA will review products introduced after February 15, 2007, but will give e-cigarette manufacturers up to two years to submit their applications. E-cigarette makers can continue to sell those products while the review is pending.
Agency officials expect that most products on the market will require its review, a costly prospect for the many smaller manufacturers of vaping devices.
“The winners are the large tobacco manufacturers, primarily Altria and Reynolds (American), which have the experience and financial wherewithal” to deal with FDA processes, said Adam Fleck, an equity analyst at Morningstar. “The net result is a very fragmented e-cigarette market is likely to be consolidated.”
Shares in Altria and Reynolds were little changed on Thursday.
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Source URL: http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health/article/1941593/us-bans-e-cigarette-cigar-sales-those-under-18-years-old