When California passed its law prohibiting the sale of flavored tobacco products in 2020, including menthol cigarettes, RJR and other tobacco interests forced a referendum to try and block the law. Voters upheld the law in 2022, and it went into effect. This law prohibited retail sales of tobacco products with a “characterizing flavor,” loosely ..read more

The UCSF Industry Documents Library just released 213,762 new Juul documents, bringing the total to 2,602,256 documents in the JUUL Labs collection and 102,511,387 pages in 17,624,874 documents in the Truth Tobacco Documents Library. This new batch of documents includes social media presence reports, marketing campaigns, focus group findings, product design, and more. In partnership ..read more

Registration is now open for the UCSF Annual Tobacco and Other Industry Documents Workshop. The workshop, which is a joint project of UCSF’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and the UCSF Library will again be held virtually on October 8th from 9am-12:15pm Pacific Time. Participants will gain comprehensive knowledge of UCSF’s Industry Documents ..read more

Douglas County Oregon Public Health recently released an hour long interview Mitchell Kilkenny conducted with me covering everything from how I got involved with tobacco control through secondhand smoke’s effects to our recent research showing that for for many diseases e-cigarettes have indistinguishable risks to smoking, why the tobacco free generation” is a bad idea ..read more

Last week the FDA and CDC released their analysis of the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey. The 2024 report moved beyond earlier FDA and CDC summaries of NYTS results by including details on how heavily youth were using e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches, as well as details on brand preferences and specific flavor preferences. These are ..read more

In the last few years the idea of a free generation in which tobacco sales would be prohibited to all people born after a certain date has gained some traction. Ever since the idea was first proposed by some Singapore researchers in 2010, I have thought it was a bad idea. Other than declining to endorse such proposals and privately expressing skepticism, I have not said much about it. Now, I want to add my voice to Ruth Malone and Tim McAfee’s cogent analysis of the shortcomings of the idea and Physicians for a Smokefree Canada’s public skepticism. Both were, however, still willing to consider ..read more

On June 27. 20-24 the UCSF Industry Documents Library added of 289,868 new JUUL Labs documents to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library, bringing the total number of publicly available previously secret Juul documents to 1,870,542. There are about 2 million Juul documents from the North Carolina settlement to be loaded plus another about 2 million documents from other state cases.  These documents have already lead to several publications, including two recent important news stories: Florko, NIcholas. NYU professors who defended vaping didn’t disclose ties to Juul, documents show ..read more

My colleagues at UCSF and I submitted this comment to the FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee opposing extension of PMI’s current authorization to make modified risk claims because its co-marketing with its ZYN nicotine pouch is fundamentally misleading. TPSAC is holding a meeting to discuss the modified risk request on June 26, 2024. A PDF of the comment is here. (We will be submitting it to the docket soon.) FDA should consider the significant public health issues, especially for youth, created by Philip Morris International’s co-marketing of its Swedish Match General Snus pro ..read more

On June 6, 2024, two years after the FDA issued, then suspended its Marketing Denial Order for Juul e-cigarettes based on narrow toxicology issues, FDA formally withdrew the MDO. This does not mean that the FDA has authorized Juul for sale in the US, it just lets FDA start over in its assessment of whether allowing marketing of Juul is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” FDA made the right decision. As I noted back in 2022 when FDA issued the MDO, “Basing its decision on a narrow (but undisclosed to the public) toxicological basis raises the question whether FDA is just delaying ..read more

While most countries, including the US FDA, regulate menthol as a “characterizing flavor” — at levels that impart a discernible taste — previously secret tobacco industry documents show that tobacco companies have long used menthol at subliminal levels — below levels that impart a discernible taste — to reduce smoke harshness, reduce dryness, increase smoke coolness, and convert non-menthol smokers to menthol. These documents are summarized in the new paper “MORE THAN A ‘CHARACTERIZING FLAVOR’: MENTHOL AT SUBLIMINAL LEVELS IN TOBACCO PRODUCTS” that Andre Luiz Oliveira da Silva, Lauren Lempert ..read more