Kelsey Romeo-Stuppy The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is being sued over their inaction on menthol cigarettes. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and our colleagues at The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC) are calling on the court to require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fulfill their mandate and stop […]
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India’s regulatory struggle to rein in smokeless tobacco use: is Covid-19 a game changer?
Deepak Mishra, Riddhi D’souza, Adhip Amin, Pranay Lal and Dr. Kaushal Kishore India has introduced laws for some of the most stringent physical distancing measures in the world. In addition to these measures, which started on 25 March 2020, there have been a range of restrictions introduced to contain the potential for smokeless tobacco use […]
Tribute to Anne Charlton: “A cure for crying”
Judith Mackay Dr Anne Charlton was Professor Emerita of Cancer Health Education at the University of Manchester in England. In April this year she became one of the thousands of coronavirus victims in the UK. At the venerable age of 84 years, she died from contracting the virus in hospital while undergoing orthopaedic surgery. Many heart-warming […]
China’s e-cigarette manufacturers facing uncertain future
Ross MacKenzie, Jennifer Fang and Julia Smith China’s electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) industry accounts for close to 90% of global production. Based in Shenzhen in Guangdong province, an estimated 3,900 manufacturers employed some 2 million people in 2018 and reported sales of 33.7bn yuan (US$ 4.8bn) and exports worth 28.7bn yuan (US$ 4bn). Figures for […]
Tobacco Control and Human Rights Before, During, and After COVID-19
Neil Sircar and Stella Aguinaga Bialous The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought about significant disruption and trauma, and with it a rise in threats to human rights. UN Secretary-General Guterres remarked on April 23rd, 2020 that the pandemic was “fast becoming a human rights crisis” as nations grapple with detecting, preventing, and responding to overlapping […]
An urgent call to address tobacco-related health disparities among sexual and gender minority populations in the COVID-19 pandemic
Andy S.L. Tan, Priscilla K. Gazarian, Elaine Hanby, Sabreen Darwish, Bethany C. Farnham, Jennifer Potter, Suha Ballout Tobacco-related health disparities are defined as “differences in the patterns, prevention, and treatment of tobacco use; the risk, incidence, morbidity, mortality, and burden of tobacco-related illness that exist among specific population groups in the United States; and related […]
The two faces of the tobacco industry during the COVID-19 pandemic
Mateusz Zatoński, Anna B. Gilmore, Thomas R. Hird Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020, the world’s major tobacco companies have geared their CSR efforts to present themselves as allies of public health in the fight against the virus. For example, in Georgia on 23-26 March […]
Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control & the COVID19 Pandemic
Stella Aguinaga Bialous & Becky Freeman Article 5.3 implementation guidelines of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) remind all parties to protect public health against the “commercial or other vested interests” of the tobacco industry. The guidelines recognize a “fundamental and irreconcilable” conflict of interest between tobacco industry ambitions and public health policy […]
Smoking history is an important risk factor for severe COVID-19
Giuseppe Gorini, Luke Clancy, Esteve Fernandez and Silvano Gallus Current evidence suggests that an association exists between smoking and COVID-19 severity, in line with recent research which has shown that smoking is associated with increased risk of acute respiratory distress syndrome. Moreover, a study based on 1099 COVID-19 patients showed that 31.7% of patients […]
Smokeless tobacco use and the COVID-19 pandemic
The use of tobacco products is of particular concern during the COVID-19 pandemic. Head and neck surgeons Dr Arjun Singh and Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi argue that smokeless tobacco use requires attention to help stop the spread of the disease. Since late 2019, the world has witnessed the spread of a pandemic affecting the respiratory […]