It’s often said if cigarettes were invented tomorrow, and we knew now what we didn’t know then, they would be banned outright. But vaping is showing us we’re repeating the same mistakes.
Big Tobacco is still alive and well, despite colossal worldwide efforts for tobacco control measures.
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Big Tobacco’s efforts to rehabilitate its image should not go unchallenged because the tobacco industry’s goal remains advancing corporate profit at the expense of public health.
It’s estimated that tobacco use kills half of it’s consumers.
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In places around the world that lack restrictions to combat the problem, tobacco companies are using marketing strategies aimed at children, like displaying tobacco products at kids’ eye level.
You might like both, but guess which has addictive properties.
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Ultra-processed foods meet the same criteria for addictiveness that tobacco products do – and they’ve even been marketed in similar ways.
Teens and young adults spend several hours a day looking at their phones and watching videos, many of which might contain product placements for vaping.
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Product placement in music videos totals $15 million to $20 million a year and is rising. E-cigarette makers are discovering it’s a great way to lure young adults into vaping.
Australia has won a decisive victory against tobacco interests using trade deals to challenge plain packaging laws. But don’t expect that to deter similar threats against other nations.
The World Trade Organisation has thrown out the final legal challenge to Australia’s tobacco plain packaging laws. Now countries across the world can implement this game-changing public health policy.
Concerns about e-cigarettes are growing, with the AMA calling for a ban. With the Great American Smokeout on Nov. 21, it’s worth asking: What do smokers think?
Lobbyists try to water down policies that could restrict the public’s access to their harmful products.
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The steady flow of politicians and government staffers switching sides to lobby for powerful food, alcohol and gambling companies is a threat to public health.
Lung MRI of an ex-smoker of cannabis and tobacco, showing poor lung function and truncated airway tree. In vaping patients, oily substances have also been found inside their lung tissue and airways.
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Vaping devices cause deadly lung toxicity. Their marketing to children must be banned.
Cigarettes have been known for years to cause many diseases. Tobacco companies now have to pay $9 billion each year to help states pay for the costs of treatment to people they sickened.
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Charles Betley, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
April 15 is not only a day to pay individual taxes to the IRS. It is also the day that tobacco companies must pay a penalty to help offset states’ costs for the treatment of tobacco-related diseases.
Smoking is a major public health threat.
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