Thinking 'bout THR News and Views
January 28-30, 2025
This is my brain on curiosity.
Right now, I’m visualizing the old anti-drug commercials. The ones with eggs in a frying pan. “This is your brain. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”
For most of my waking hours, my brain is on drugs - caffeine and nicotine. I am blessed with a very active brain, constantly a tornado of thoughts. Some people call it ADHD. My drugs help slow my brain down so I can concentrate on fewer thoughts at one time.
My natural curiosity is like my “drug of choice,” which makes slowing my brain down even more challenging! I always wonder about things and often can’t let them go until I know. I derive immense pleasure from the countless hours I spend looking for information on whatever my brain has decided to be curious about. This is more rewarding to me than any substance I have ever tried!
What some call “rabbit holes” is my road trip to happiness. I am famous for having multiple tabs open on my laptop because the internet is wide open for exploration, and I can’t know enough!
I get lost on these field trips to information land and depend on my phone's alarms to remind me to “adult.” When to go to work, go to bed, pay the bills, get groceries, prepare supper, pick up the hubby’s meds, and feed the dog… I have no concept of time without the alarms to remind me to stop reading and do the essential things.
This leads me to my latest rabbit hole. In a recent newsletter, I listed my fears about the proposed rule to lower the nicotine content in most combustible tobacco products in the US. One of the things I am worried about is what happens to tobacco farmers once the demand for tobacco is drastically reduced.
Conversations with people in the nicotine space made me wonder if the tobacco plant has any uses other than for sacred purposes and commercial tobacco (nicotine) products. What did I learn? The answer is on the Safer Nicotine Wiki's newest page. Thank you to my friends on X, who found a few things I did not find. Please let me know if you know of uses that Google didn’t lead me to.
Until next time…
PS: Several of you appreciated the reactions list, which logged statements about the proposed VLN rule and the marketing-granted orders for ZYN. I have edited that entry and added reactions to the withdrawal of the proposed menthol rule and the US withdrawal from the WHO.
UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION. “NOTICE OF FINAL DETERMINATION FINDING A VIOLATION OF SECTION 337; ISSUANCE OF A LIMITED EXCLUSION ORDER AND CEASE AND DESIST ORDERS; TERMINATION OF INVESTIGATION”
Juul wins order banning US imports of Altria vaping devices. “The U.S. International Trade Commission found that NJOY's ACE devices violated Juul's patent rights in vaporizer innovations. As a result, an import ban will take effect in 60 days unless the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in President Donald Trump's new administration overturns it for public policy reasons.”
You!
Joe Gitchell - “Anybody else game to get braver?”
Harry Shapiro - “I am interested in any studies, articles or insights about the degree to which drug treatment services discuss smoking with clients. Thanks”
Arielle Selya - Thread on recent literature showing the importance of flavored e-cigs.
Let's Talk E-Cigarettes: Ep 38. January 2025. “Jamie Hartmann-Boyce and Nicola Lindson discuss emerging evidence in e-cigarette research and talk about the findings of their newly published Cochrane review of interventions for quitting vaping.”
Using Artificial Intelligence to improve Behavioural Research. With speakers: Dr Janna Hastings (Universities of St. Gallen and Zurich), Professor Susan Michie and Professor Robert West (University College London).
Deadly Industry: Challenging Big Tobacco New podcast - out now. From the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath. The first three episodes of a new series are now available.
At-a-glance – Use of nicotine vaping products during an attempt to quit smoking by Canadian adults who smoke or recently quit: findings from the 2022 Canada International Tobacco Control Four Country Smoking and Vaping Survey. “68% of Canadian adults who attempted to quit smoking used flavours that would be prohibited under Health Canada’s flavour restrictions proposal.”
Lack of Smoking Prevalence Data for Indigenous Peoples Worldwide Contributes to Epidemiological Invisibility. “The lack of data found in this study highlights the way in which the health of Indigenous People is sidelined through their general epidemiological invisibility.”
It continues to travel:
Flavored e-cigarettes pose dire threat to youth and public health. (By Bruce A. Scott, MD, President, AMA.) “I’ve seen up close the devastating damage that cigarettes and e-cigarettes cause—mouth and throat cancers that too often change lives forever or end lives prematurely.”
Putting on the brakes:
E-Cigarette Falsehoods from the President of the American Medical Association. (Rodu) “Conflation of tobacco and smoking is a common practice among prohibitionists, as I have noted before…, but it is beyond the pale for the president of the AMA to treat “tobacco use” as a synonym for “smoking”, and worse, to unequivocally claim that he has “seen up close” that e-cigarettes cause mouth and throat cancer.”
RE: Sociodemographic characteristics and vaping motives as potential correlates of early vaping initiation [EVI]. “E-cigarettes became available only ~20 years ago, but the survey included people up to age 60. Accordingly, participants over approximately age 40 could not possibly have had EVI. In other words, the fact that EVI can only occur in younger participants – and there must logically be zero cases among older participants – is likely sufficient to explain the inverse association between age and EVI.”
Update - Tweet(s) now displaying a community note:
Durham Region Health Department. “Vaping harms your lungs. Short-term effects of vaping include coughing and shortness of breath. Long-term effects include lung damage and lung disease. It’s never too late to quit.”
AMA. Links to the article mentioned above in the Misinformation Highway section.
FDA Deregulation of E-Cigarettes Saved Lives and Spurred Innovation. “Pesko and Saenz show that FDA deregulation led to a boom in e-cigarette research and development which improved e-cigarettes and led to many lives saved as people switched from smoking to vaping.”
Belgium’s Disposable Vapes Ban Could Be First of Many. “Belgium also banned nicotine pouches in 2023, though they reportedly remain available in many shops. So it’s been a series of blows to safer nicotine products, despite repeated evidence of their importance for people looking to quit smoking.”
Pharmacists must not be ‘criminalised’ for promoting vapes as stop smoking aid, say UK MPs. “Dr Caroline Johnson, Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, called for amendments to the Bill – which passed its second reading in October – to protect pharmacists when promoting vaping as a smoking cessation tool.”
Smoking expert Karl Fagerström advocates nicotine pouches as a less harmful alternative to tobacco. “In an interview with Europa Press, Fagerström discussed some of the details of the draft Royal Decree regulating certain aspects of tobacco products and derivatives, sent by the Spanish Ministry of Health to the European Commission last Friday and whose text was made known yesterday.” (Google Translate)
Tobacco Industry Escalates Efforts to Block Proven Policies, Damaging Nation's Health. “Today, the American Lung Association released the 2025 "State of Tobacco Control" report…The 23rd annual "State of Tobacco Control" report evaluates state and federal efforts to eliminate tobacco use and save lives with proven-effective tobacco control laws and policies.”
More news: Vapers Digest Jan 29.
Not researched for this edition
Not researched for this edition
Notes:
I create these newsletters as a personal project. They are not affiliated with any current or past employers or groups I do volunteer work with. I receive no financial compensation for my efforts to create these newsletters.
My blog, Skip's Corner, has an X/Twitter account. My personal accounts are on BlueSky, LinkedIn, and X (Twitter).