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In the first head-to-head comparison between e-cigarettes and nicotine patches (NRT) for helping smokers quit, a significant win for e-cigarettes was found in every measured parameter. Led by Dr. Chris Bullen of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, the researchers recruited 657 smokers who said that they wanted to quit. They were randomized into 3 groups: 289 into an e-cigarette group, 295 in the NRT group, and 73 into what...

No Cigs for You!Yesterday, the New York City Council , in a late-night, pre-Halloween session, passed a measure raising the legal age to purchase tobacco products including e-cigarettes to 21. NYC thereby becomes the largest municipality by far to raise the smoking age that high.

While fiercely opposed by retailers who sell cigarettes as well as libertarians opposed to excessive government regulation and interference with personal habits...

The data comes from the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health a study of adults 18 years or older, living in the community, based on in-person, but computer-aided structured interviews. The current study looks at 152,000+ participants between 2009 and 2019, focusing on those who have smoked in the past month. Nicotine dependence was assessed, and the degree of dependence quantified. [1] The cohort include 54% males but was representative of the US population in most other ways. Overall, nicotine dependence among smokers dropped from 59% in 2006 to 56% in 2019, a percentage point difference of 3.52 and a percentage change of 5.91%. Here is the breakout of nicotine dependence by age.

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Cannabis use is rising, so it is logical to ask whether second-hand smoke from weed has the same harmful impact on asthma as tobacco. The research is an ecological study; it looks at large groups, not individuals, seeking patterns – it is an exploration. Apply grains of salt as you will. The study estimated the prevalence of pediatric asthma from 2011 to 2019 and then matched that data with each state's policy on marijuana, along with age, gender, and race/ethnicity.

The data came from 227, 451 non-institutionalized US children reported in the National Survey on Children’s Health (NSCH). The survey is weighted to reflect the US population. In this instance, the median age was 8.5, and roughly 20% of these children lived below the federal poverty guidelines.

  • The...

#This article is reprinted with permission of the author and the Cato Institute. The original blog post can be found here

A study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on an association between e-cigarette use and depression. The cross-sectional study of nearly 900,000 e-cigarette users who self-reported into the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from 2016 to 2017 found that users had a higher likelihood of reporting a history of depression, and that incrementally higher frequency e-cigarette use was associated with...

There is a green gold rush underway. Not the Green New Deal, but the growth of medicalized, then decriminalized and finally recreational marijuana. Pent-up previously illegal demand has been met with entrepreneurial farming co-opted and overwhelmed by traditional sources of sin, Big Alcohol and Tobacco. And then, of course, there are our politicians, the scent of monies to relatively painlessly increase government coffers at a time when their miscalculations about pensions are beginning to be realized is a Siren’s song.

Because of a self-inflicted ignorance, we know very little about the true positive and negatives of short and long term marijuana use. It is hard to study a drug that remains classified as a Schedule 1 drug – with a high potential for abuse and little safety data...

E-cigarettes remain controversial, but as a physician, I see them as a bridge from inhaling burning tobacco to being rid of the habit altogether. For those already smoking, it is a lesser evil, for those not smoking at all, and this applies mostly to adolescents and young adults, it is a greater evil. Context changes the equation. A new paper looks at the group actually using e-cigarettes and their intentions to quit and challenges some of my beliefs.

The study is drawn from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study a national effort looking at current smokers. The study group was about 1700 current e-cigarette users. In alignment with the mainstream media’s reporting, the group is slightly more male (56%), half are between 18 and 34, and the majority, 82%,...

The American Council on Science and Health has had plenty of problems with Tom Frieden, M.D., the former head of the CDC and New York City health commissioner (See Addition By Subtraction At CDC: Good Riddance, Tom Frieden). He's back in the news, for alleged sexual abuse of a Brooklyn woman, but if assaulting science and health was a crime he'd have been arrested numerous times in the last 16 years. We'll list just a few.

  • In the summer of 2014 workers at Frieden's CDC managed to stumble upon...

As a physician, I can unequivocally say that about 70 percent of the illnesses I have encountered has been either directly or indirectly related to cigarette smoking.  It is without a doubt an awful habit, and one whose psychological grip on the user is frighteningly powerful.   

At the American Council on Science and Health, we have always championed measures that improve public health outcomes – chief among them, advocating the use of electronic cigarettes.  We have written countless articles on the utility of e-cigarette use and its role in harm reduction.  This is why it was with great excitement when I read the new ...

Leading tobacco control experts say that when it comes to regulating vaporized nicotine products (e.g. e-cigarettes) the public needs a trusted guide, and that should be the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For that reason, they are calling on the FDA to stop predetermining that vapor nicotine products might act as a gateway to cigarette use, and instead look at the evidence to-date about their harm reduction benefits.

"We believe that the discussion to date has been slanted against e-cigarettes, which is unfortunate, because the big picture tells us that these products appear to be used mostly by people who already are or who are likely to become...