Thinking 'bout THR Newsletter
May 18 - 21, 2024
This edition will be more “chit-chatty” than normal. I’ll get back to the regular format next time.
It was a whirlwind week in Washington, DC!
On Monday, I attended the Global Action to End Smoking event. The panel discussion was interesting, and I loved the Q&A portion. My favorite part of the Q&A was the comments by Charles Gardner and Robin Mermelstein, which reminded everyone of the importance of including consumers.
I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend the E-Cigarette Summit on Tuesday. This was my second time attending in person instead of virtually. I thought this year’s event was the best so far, and that’s a high bar, as every year is impressive. I found the presentations and discussions informative and thought-provoking.
As an autistic person, these events can be overwhelming. So much to navigate! Lots of sensory input and that much social interaction can be challenging. I want to thank those of you who fill the role of my support team and help me work through the parts I struggle with and make each trip to DC a positive experience.
One of the best parts of attending these events (besides getting my nerd on and eating up all the scientific presentations) is seeing friends and being around people I admire, respect, and idolize. Someday, I will be brave enough to walk up to more of you, introduce myself, and personally thank you for the work you do. There are so many “rock stars” in this space.
This year, I met Martin Dockrell, one of the people I have always wanted to meet. Thank you for the warm greetings, Martin, and thank you for capturing the moment, Joe Gitchell. After meeting Martin, I said that I “felt like a teenager ready to faint because I met one of the Beatles!”
I live-tweet conferences because I know a couple of people who, due to disabilities they live with, are unable to sit for a whole day and watch a conference. They look forward to following the conference via my tweets. When I promise to do something, I take that promise to heart! And to my horror, I could not get on Twitter(X) from my computer using the conference internet.
I was in tears, knowing I was breaking a promise! Thank you, Dave Dobbins, who saw my tweet of despair and messaged me instructions on how to use my phone as a hotspot so I could keep a promise. I can’t tweet from my phone fast enough and must use my computer to cover an event.
The week was topped off by experiencing some of the amazing restaurants in the DC area. I went out to eat with friends each day. I tried lots of new foods, something I’m usually very resistant to doing (it’s an autism thing), and enjoyed all of them. I was spoiled rotten and not allowed to pay for any of my meals. Thank you to everyone for your kindness!!!! I very much enjoyed the great conversations.
Dobbins came to my rescue a second time when I was flying home and experienced a lot of turbulence on the plane. Much more than I’ve ever experienced, and it felt like it lasted forever. I was very close to a panic attack, which can be very embarrassing. Technology is a wonderful thing, and Dave was able to message me and reassure me that while it sucked, it wasn’t that big of a deal; my plane was not going to fall out of the sky.
Two recent articles grabbed my attention. They were “NYU professors who defended vaping didn’t disclose ties to Juul, documents show,” and “EXCLUSIVE: Former FDA Official Cozied Up To Activists Months Before Joining Them, Emails Show.”
I saw the NYU one first. It made me angry. I felt it was unfair. I thought it was making a “mountain out of a molehill.” It looked to me like an effort to discredit two people who don’t deserve to be treated that way.
I related to them. The best way to solve problems is to talk to other people and give them honest feedback. Heck, I’m trying to talk to anyone who will talk to me, and I don’t care which “side” they are on. I think we all should be doing that. And since when is someone buying someone else dinner a “bad” thing?
Then I read the second article. It did not elicit as emotional a response from me as the first one, so I had to think about why that was. My obvious answer is that I can’t deny that I am biased.
It was interesting watching the social media sharing of those two articles. I saw several people share one of the articles, but I didn’t run across many who shared both of the articles. It leaves me wondering, of those who read both and only shared one, why is that?
I choose not to share either of them. I find myself tired of finger-pointing. I’m tired of the human ability to look for a fight and the lack of looking to seek common ground. We all have biases. It’s human. But we are all capable of acknowledging them, being aware of them, and doing our best to look past them.
I hope everyone realizes that when we seek to fight instead of seeking common ground so we can solve our smoking problem, we are contributing to the thousands of people who die every day from smoking.
Perhaps it is time to look for goodness in others instead of looking for evil.
Australian Vaping News. “The proposed legislation reinforces Australia’s ‘de facto’ prohibition of vaping which has been a resounding failure on many levels. Here are five reasons to oppose the bill.”
Smoking, experts: "Global challenge but new perspectives with e-cigs and harm reduction." “Research highlights that the transition to reduced-risk products can lead to significant economic savings and improve the sustainability of healthcare systems.”
1,000 million health savings by changing traditional cigarettes for less harmful alternatives. “Educating the population to make informed decisions and implementing taxation according to risk facilitates the change to lower risk alternatives, such as tobacco heating devices or electric cigarettes, in the case of smokers, potentially achieving savings of more than of 1 billion euros a year , according to a study carried out in Italy by Francesco Moscone, professor of Economics specialized in Health Economics at Brunel University London.”
Addressing the Misconceptions in the AI Vaping Flavors Study. “The conditions modelled in the study do not demonstrate relevance to how e-cigarettes are actually used, which casts doubts on the conclusions drawn about the toxicity.”
New Zealand smoking success puts Australia to shame. “Since vaping was legalised and regulated in New Zealand in 2020, adult smoking rates declined by 43% over the next 3 years, more than twice as fast as in Australia.”
For global coverage of calls to action, please click here: Advocating For Tobacco Harm Reduction.
Call for Papers
Tobacco Online Policy Seminar (TOPS) Is Calling for Papers and Presenters. The submission deadline is May 28, 2024. NOTE: Certain individuals are not allowed to reply—see guidelines.
A 10-year Update on Nicotine and Tobacco Research Related to Sex/Gender. The submission deadline is July 31, 2024.
Service Opportunities…
Nomination Call for New SRNT-E Board Members (President-Elect and Secretary. Nominations are due by June 15, 2024.
Wanted: Conference Submissions…
Sep 16-17, 2024 - 7th Summit on Tobacco Harm Reduction by SCOHRE. Call for abstracts for short oral or poster presentations. The submission deadline for abstracts is July 12, 2024.
Oct 24-25, Washington DC? US - Tobacco and Nicotine Products Regulation and Policy Conference. The deadline for the call for proposals is May 24, 2024.
Call for speakers. The Society for the Study of Addiction is now accepting applications for speakers at the PhD Symposium. Application deadline is July 3, 2024
Nov 14-15, 2024, UK - SSA Annual Conference. Submissions for posters and oral presentations are due by July 3, 2024
Petitions…
Some are listed on this Safer Nicotine Wiki advocacy page.
Tobacco harm reduction means different things to different people. Some may wish to achieve a nicotine-free society. Others may wish to squash the tobacco industry. Some prefer that people who choose to use nicotine use it in a form that has less risk than smoking tobacco. What we all have in common is a desire to reduce/eliminate smoking-related diseases and premature deaths. The events listed below focus on nicotine. Some events may not be supportive of reduced-risk products. Some have covered nicotine in the past but may not cover that topic every year.
May 22, 2024 (Virtual) 8:00 AM - 12:45 PM - GTNF InFocus 2024 Nicotine
*NEW* May 23, 2024 (Virtual) 12:00 PM ET - ASH US - World No Tobacco Day: Protecting Children from Big Tobacco Using the Convention on the Rights of the Child. NOTE: Anyone with non-medicinal nicotine industry ties or who receives industry funding is banned from viewing this webinar.
May 24, 2024, 08:30 AM EST (Virtual) - The Integral Role of Economic Research on the ENDS Landscape.
May 24, 2024 (Virtual) - BR- UK: Using behavioural theory to inform quantitative models for policy decision making- With speakers Professor Jamie Brown, Professor Robin Purshouse, Dr Hazel Squires, Professor Robert West
May 25, 2024, (Virtual) 12:00 PM GMT (Virtual) - Global Youth Voices' Virtual Summit.
May 30, 2024 - (Virtual) 3:00-4:00 PM - CAsToR A Conversation about the Use of Computational Models in Tobacco Regulation.
May 30-31, 2024 - Brisbane, AU - 2024 SRNT-Oceania Chapter Conference (30th) and Tobacco Endgame Centre of Research Excellence Annual Symposium (31st) Online Registration Link (for both)
Jun 4-5, 2024, Portland, ME, US - Tobacco Treatment and Prevention Conference
Jun 13-15, 2024, Warsaw, Poland - GFN - Global Forum on Nicotine - Registration open! (Pre-Conference activities Jun 12)
Jun 15, 2024, CASAA fundraiser - details coming soon!
Jun 16-19, 2024, San Diego, CA, US - 2024 ASHEcon Conference (Health Economists).
Jun 19-20, 2024, Miami, FL, US - Next Generation Nicotine Delivery USA
Jun 26, 2024, Silver Spring, MD, US (Virtual and In-person) 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM EST - The Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee meeting (TPSAC). Topic MRTP
Jun 27-28, 2024, Minneapolis, MN, US - National Tribal Tobacco Conference
Jul 4-5, 2024, Opatija, Croatia - 13th Workshop on the Economics of Risky Behavior. Program here.
Jul 21-23, 2024, San Marcos, TX, US - Texas Tobacco-Free Conference
Aug 18-21, 2024, Mobile, AL, US - Federation of Tax Administrators - 2024 Tobacco Annual Meeting
Sep 7-10, 2024, San Diego, CA, US (In-person & Virtual) World Conference on Lung Cancer. Early Bird registration ends June 7, 2024
Sep 8-11, 2024, Atlanta, GA, US - 77TH TOBACCO SCIENCE RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Sep 16-17, 2024 (Virtual) - 7th Summit on Tobacco Harm Reduction by SCOHRE
Sep 23, 2024, NYC, NY, US - New Approaches Conference
Sep 24-25, 2024, Athens, Greece - GTNF (Event link not yet available)
Oct 13-17, 2024, Edinburgh, Scotland - CORESTA Congress 2024
Oct 23-25, 2024, Lisbon, Portugal - LISBON ADDICTIONS European Conference on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies.
Oct 23-25, 2024, Broadbeach, Australia - Oceania Tobacco Control Conference 2024. Early bird registration ends June 30, 2024. Note: not THR-friendly. See list of Conflict of Interest Principles
Oct 24-25, Washington DC? US (In-person and Virtual) - FDLI Tobacco and Nicotine Products Regulation and Policy Conference. (Registration opening soon)
Oct 27-30, 2024, Minneapolis, MN, US - 2024 APHA Annual Meeting and Expo (Public Health). Registration opens in June.
Oct 28-29, 2024, Charleston, SC, US (Virtual and In-Person) 2024 NICOTINE AND TOBACCO SCIENCE CONFERENCE
Nov 14-15, 2024, UK - SSA Annual Conference. Early bird discounts until September 9, 2024
Nov 14-16, 2024, Chicago, IL, US—AMERSA Conference—Registration opens in June. Note: We won't know until the agenda is announced if nicotine will be part of this year's conference.
December 5, 2024, UK (Virtual and In-person), E-Cigarette Summit UK
Check out the public Google calendar of THR-related events created and maintained by Clive Bates. Also, check out the event calendar from Ecig Intelligence. Their listings include consumer/trade shows and expos that I don't include in this newsletter.
Jan 15-19, 2025 Seattle, WA, US - Society for Social Work and Research.
Mar 12-15, 2025 New Orleans, LA, US - SRNT 31st Annual Meeting
Aug 26-28, 2025 Chicago, IL, US - The National Conference on Tobacco or Health (NCTOH) (Link is to the announcement, not event info)
Sep 10-12, 2025 Romania - SRNT-E Conference
Mar 4-6, 2026 Baltimore, MD, US - SRNT 32nd Annual Meeting
Notes:
Deadlines are in bold type. Additions to the seeking participants and events sections since the last edition will be denoted by "*NEW*"
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 believe that everyone deserves a seat at the table. If you’re interested in nicotine with a focus on THR, this newsletter is for you.
Until next time,
Skip “#BeKind” Murray
