Classing e-cigarettes as quit smoking aids could help rebrand the tobacco industry as a legitimate player in health policy. Here’s why we should be concerned.
California, the nation’s single largest market for cigarettes, has one of the lowest taxes on them. A proposal to raise the tax by US$2 a pack could signal a sea change.
Improvements in education and vascular health are likely partly responsible for a sharp decline in dementia over the past few decades. The trend may continue, if we also address obesity and diabetes.
To discourage smoking, insurance companies charge higher premiums for smokers. This is having an unexpected consequence: rather than quit smoking, poor people are quitting insurance.
Smoking rates among the poor are almost double the rates for middle-class Americans. Yet we are not providing poor people with the medical help they need to stop. We will pay billions for that later.
The New Zealand government has decided to reorient its priorities in tobacco control. It has announced it will be pulling 73% of its previous funding support for tobacco control advocacy. The only money…
As smoking continues its inexorable southward journey toward single-digit percentages of populations being smokers, it’s common to hear people say the smokers who remain are all “hard core”, heavily dependent…
Monthly bouts of abstinence have become regular features of public health and charity campaigns, but there may be even more important milestones for giving up.
Every traveller forms impressions about patterns of frequently or seldom seen cultural differences when visiting other countries. You see far fewer women than men on the streets of more conservative Islamic…
It’s fair to say Victoria’s ban on smoking in prisons has had some teething issues, but there’s strong evidence to suggest the move is doing the right thing by inmates, staff and the health system.
Past tobacco control measures have changed the pack, while the cigarettes inside remain the same. A logical next step is to regulate how companies engineer cigarettes to promote their use.
While tobacco demand-reduction strategies have been widely implemented in Australia and internationally, comparatively little has been done to control the sale and supply of tobacco products.
I’m a regular drug user. Every morning I take a drug to manage blood pressure. I get my supplies from my neighbourhood dealer, but I can get the stuff almost anywhere.
Australia’s ban on e-cigarettes is ethically murky. It’s a paternalistic policy that denies adult smokers the right to use a less harmful form of nicotine.