Which nations today forbid & punish political satire besides Afghanistan, N Korea, Myanmar & USA?

FDA’s product standard setting a maximum level of nicotine should be expanded to all tobacco products including e-cigs and nicotine pouches My colleagues at UCSF and Stanford and I have submitted this public comment to the FDA on its prposed nicotine standard urging that the standard be extended…

2/#AB564 = $180M cut annually & 25% reduction in required long-term funding. With federal help shrinking, CA can’t afford to gut prevention & childcare. The real drivers of the illicit market (i.e. overproduction) aren't addressed. @cagovernornewsom.bsky.social must veto! Read FS: bit.ly/3IheHxN

FDA setting a maximum level of nicotine in tobacco products without exceptions for HTP and waterpipe will improve health My colleagues at UCSF and Stanford and I have submitted this public comment to the FDA supporting a product standard limiting nicotine in tobacco products and opposing…

Archived copy of Tobaccoscam website and ads on smokefree hospitality is available In 2002 I developed an educational campaign called Tobacco Scam designed to counter tobacco industry propaganda directed at restaurants and to expose the industry’s cooptation of the state and national restaurant…

Inhaled cannabis associated with increased risk of asthma and COPD independent of tobacco smoking Answering the question of whether inhaling cannabis increases the risks of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has been complicated by the fact that in the past almost all cannabis…

Archival copies of Smokefree Movies and Smokefree Media websites are available I ran the Smokefree Movies campaign from 2001 through my retirement from UCSF in 2020. This education/advocacy campaign put pressure on the motion picture industry to stop promoting tobacco to young audiences through…

In UK 7 times more 16-17 year olds smoking than if there had been no e-cigs Jessica Mongilio and colleagues just published an innovative approach to assessing the association between e-cigarette use and smoking, the so-called gateway effect, that provides insights between the link between e-cigs…

3/3 There are 3 ways to portray these changes: DISHONEST: Smoking dropped, BUT vaping increased ACCURATE: Smoking dropped in association with increased vaping PLAUSIBLE: Smoking dropped BECAUSE vaping increased The 1st denies product substitution is plausible.

But, thanks to ecigs dramatically increasing teen nicotine use, total nicotine use (cigs plus ecigs) is still above where it would have been absent ecigs.

The evidence for the ecig gateway to smoking keeps piling up; ecig advocates continue to nitpick Su Golder and colleagues paper "Vaping and harm in young people: umbrella review" sums up the large existing literature on e-cigarettes' effects on youth, defined as people under 25. In contrast to…

The ecig gateway to smoking has two doors, another detail ecig advocates ignore. profglantz.com/2022/01/03/t...

This is a great example of cherry picking data to give a misleading picture. Few kids are daily e-cig users or smokers. Setting a daily use standard radically understates the level of addiction. As ecigs have got more addictive, however, days used has increased. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36342713/

Our public comment supporting creation of Calif Unflavored Tobacco List with some suggestions for improvements I previously suggested people provide public comments supporting the California Attorney General's procedures to create an Unflavored Tobacco Products List to facilitate implementation…

Later research, based on more data (through 2018) found that decline in current cig smoking slowed in 2014 from -0.75 to -0.26 %/year pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33272598/. And direct observation of individuals shows kids who vape more likely to smoke pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40829950/

No. Ecig advocates claim "common liability," but only some of the kids who start nicotine addiction with ecigs have characteristics similar to those who started with cigs: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33272598/. This argument is like when cig companies said lung cancer and smoking caused by same genes.

This new paper sums up a huge number of studies that consistently show that kids who start with ecigs are more likely to start smoking (about three times): pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40829950/ And ecigs carry almost as much disease risk as smoking: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38411454/

Nicotine use in adolescence still predicts established use later.

Past 30 day smoking (nicotine) predict established smoking in young adulthood (nicotine addiction tion).

What Foulds and the other ecig advocates ignore is that the increase in ecig use was way bigger than the drop in smoking. So ecigs are expanding youth nicotine addiction … by a lot.

UCSF launches new improved Industry Documents Library Today the UCSF Industry Documents Library launched a complete redesign of the website that aligns with evolving institutional and user research needs and delivers a new and improved user experience. What’s new? Advanced search capabilities:…

E-cigs and mental health: The arrow goes both ways When we did our meta-analysis of the association between e-cigarette use and actual disease, we excluded mental illness because of concern that the association went in both directions, i.e., people with mental illness might be more lively to use…

Clinical Oncology Society of Australia concludes “E-cigarettes are likely to cause lung cancer and oral cancer” The Clinical Oncology Society of Australia recently released its report E-cigarettes and Cancer: A Qualitative Risk Assessment that provides a comprehensive summary of a broad range of…

Despite Friday deadline, CDC is making it hard to request materials In response to my blog post notifying people that CDC was closing its Publication Warehouse on Friday August 15, a couple people emailed me saying that the CDC only allowed them to order one or two publications (image above) and…

Order free CDC Office on Smoking and Health publications by Friday Aug 12. After that they will be destroyed. As part of its campaign to keep the public in the dark, the Trump Administration is closing the CDC Publication Warehouse on Friday August 12.  You can still order these Office on Smoking…

Calif AG releases rules for creating “Unflavored Tobacco List” for quick public comment profglantz.com/2025/08/11/c...

What over 100 studies show is that ecigs are almost as dangerous as smoking (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38411454/). And the research showing benefits of smoking for Alzheimer's are funded by Big Tobacco; the independent studies show increased risks (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20110594/).

Support CDC plan to reinstate NYTS by Aug 15 deadline to submit supportive public comments In April 2025, the Trump Administration pulled the plug on the National Youth Tobacco Survey in the middle of collecting the 2025 sample, essentially blinding the federal government and the public from…

"U.S.-funded contraceptives worth nearly $10 million are being sent to France from Belgium to be incinerated, after Washington rejected offers from the United Nations and family planning organisations to buy or ship the supplies to poor nations, two sources told Reuters."

FDA ignores current science to give Juul a pass Not surprisingly, on July 17, 2025, FDA authorized the sale of Juul tobacco and menthol e-cigarettes. I wish I could say that I am “not surprised” because during the 2024 campaign President Trump announced that he would “save vaping,” but, on reading…

#tobaccodocument spotlight: 1982 memo from veteran #PhilipMorris scientist voicing concern over noticeable links btwn cigs & cancers: “Associating cigarette smoking with 30% of all cancer deaths should make someone sit up and take notice… Let’s face the facts...” #archives #CDoH bit.ly/40PyN8j

New WHO report details progress and problems in global tobacco control In June 2025 the WHO released its new comprehensive WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2025: Warning about the dangers of tobacco. The report contains detailed country-specific analysis and statistics about progress in…

1/California Legislature: Read editorial by the Sacramento Bee's pulitzer prize-winning journalist Tom Philp on #BigCannabis's $1.3B tax cut grab. While industry profits, kids & youth programs pay the price. Let’s honor #Prop64's promises. @senatorashby.bsky.social Read: bit.ly/4lIPBWL

Disposable ecigs expose users to much higher levels of toxic metals than earlier generations of ecigs or cigarettes Mark Salazar, and his colleagues at UC Davis new paper "Elevated Toxic Element Emissions from Popular Disposable E‑Cigarettes: Sources, Life Cycle, and Health Risks" provides a…

#WCTC2025 #TobRegSky #PedSky #MedSky #EpiSky #addictionsci #policysky #polisky #neuroskyence #neurosci 🧪🛟 Belgium has banned disposable e-cigarettes and all nicotine pouches, including products containing nicotine analogues such as 6-methyl nicotine.

Cass Wheeler, former CEO of American Heart Association and a wonderful mentor, died I was saddened to learn that on June 20, 2025, Cass Wheeler died, just short of his 85th birthday. Cass spent 35 years at the American Heart Association, serving as CEO from 1998 through 2008. I don't remember when…

Global Action to End Smoking (formerly Foundation for a Smoke Free World) lays off CEO Cliff Douglas In October 2023 Philip Morris International's Foundation for a Smoke Free World hired Cliff Douglas as its new CEO (Wikipedia entry). FSFW was the latest in a long string of "third party"…

E-cigarette use during pregnancy increases risk for material and newborn problems At a time when England is still encouraging pregnant women who smoke to switch to e-cigarettes, the evidence that e-cigarettes complicate pregnancy continues to grow. The recent meta-analysis "Associations between…

Cannabis use linked to doubling in risk of cardiovascular disease death Wilhelm Storck and colleagues new paper "Cardiovascular risk associated with the use of cannabis and cannabinoids: a systematic review and meta- analysis" published in Heart adds to the case that, far from being safe, cannabis…

New from PHI's @getitrightonmj.bsky.social and #Kaiser: analyzing data from nearly 96K insured adolescents in Northern CA, researchers found that youth living in cities or counties that banned #cannabis retail storefronts were less likely to have a recent diagnosis of a psychotic disorder.

ABC Day One story on tobacco industry documents available here I just found a video of the first national TV story about the Brown and Williamson documents I received on May 12, 1994. This ABC Day One story produced by Walt Bogdanich, ran on May 19, 1994: While I appear in the story, ABC did not…

“This is not the first time a sale of CBS caused problems for 60 Minutes” updated I just posted an updated version of my April 29, 2025 blog post "This is not the first time a sale of CBS caused problems for 60 Minutes" that now includes all the relevant videos, including the original 60 Minutes…

Congratulations vape & Big Tobacco industries! 76% of Irish teens who vape have never smoked. (All tobacco transnationals are heavily invested in vapes, but none have stopped making & promoting cigarettes). www.euractiv.com/section/heal...

Smoked and edible cannabis both inhibit normal blood vessel function in people Our earlier epidemiology study linked cannabis use to cardiovascular disease in people. Because most people smoked cannabis in US population at the time, we could not distinguish the effects of inhaled cannabis from…

This #WorldNoTobaccoDay, @who.int is highlighting the strategies #tobaccocompanies use to make their harmful products appealing. Our research has covered how methnol and other flavoured tobacco products are used to attract and hook young people, including in LMICs: doi.org/10.18332/tid....

It's disappointing that Bluesky requires the use of a Google form to apply for Trusted Verifier, given how aggressive Google is about tracking people. I don't have a Google account to apply. What can people like me do to apply?

Excellent story on how Trump budget cuts to CDC tobacco data collection are helping Big Tobacco globally www.theexamination.org/articles/tru...

Excellent NY Times story on Trump budget cuts to tobacco control. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/h...

The #cannabis industry has rolled out a series of misleading talking points justifying cutting taxes in CA. But the data doesn’t lie — so we’re setting the record straight. Cutting taxes WON'T fix the illicit market — but it WILL gut youth/environmental/#PublicHealth programs. More: bit.ly/4e3EAeV

Strong words from Ursula von der Leyen today: “Science belongs to humanity. We must protect it, prioritize it, and give it the freedom it needs to flourish.” At the launch of the EU’s “Choose Science - Choose Europe” initiative, she announced four key actions. 🧵1/3