Focus
Smokers misunderstand risks of smokeless tobacco product snus
March 11th, 2019 American smokers mistakenly think that using snus – a moist snuff smokeless tobacco product popular in Scandinavia but newer to the United States – is as dangerous as smoking tobacco, according to a Rutgers University study published in the...
Truth telling about tobacco and nicotine in an e-cigarette era
March 11th, 2019 Debate among public health professionals over approaches to tobacco and nicotine regulation has intensified with the rise of vaping. Researchers at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation explore the contours of the debate and the need to...
How safe are e-cigarettes? The debate continues
March 11th, 2019 A clinical review from the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland recently summarised the latest evidence concerning the use of e-cigarettes, writes Dr Catharine Paddock for Medical News Today. But with research on e-cigarettes in its infancy, it...
Is marijuana as safe as we think?
February 11th, 2019 Permitting pot is one thing, promoting its use is another, writes Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker. Especially since a cloud of mystery surrounds cannabis – including its medicinal value, its possible relationship to mental illness and...
What a breakthrough e-cigarette study illustrates about addiction
February 11th, 2019 The first large, systematic study of whether e-cigarettes help people to quit smoking was published on 30 January in the New England Journal of Medicine, and covered by The New York Times, the BBC and many other major outlets, writes psychologist...
Constant cravings – Is addiction on the rise?
January 14th, 2019 Addiction was once viewed as an unsavoury fringe disease, tethered to substances with killer withdrawal symptoms, such as alcohol and opium. But now the scope of what humans can be addicted to seems to have snowballed, from sugar to shopping to...
Little international agreement over burning issue of vaping
January 14th, 2019 Despite much debate in the United Kingdom and United States there is little agreement over how safe e-cigarettes are, write University of Edinburgh public health Professor Linda Bauld and the University of Liverpool’s Dr Suzi Gagein The...
Nigeria isn’t doing enough to reduce tobacco use. Here’s why
January 14th, 2019 Tobacco remains the biggest public health threat, killing more than seven million people globally every year. The World Health Organization has recognised progress in Nigeria, but concerns remain about effective implementation, write researchers...
When common sense and sound judgment go up in smoke
December 5th, 2018 Government’s proposed anti-tobacco bill lacks any scientific assessment as an underlying principle of legislation, argues Tim Cohen, senior editor of Business Day. In a news story, Nick Hedley says tobacco company Philip Morris International sees...
Troublesome issues in e-cigarette policy in America
December 3rd, 2018 The Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) and e-cigarette policy scene continues to evolve in a direction that will result in substantially more tobacco-related addiction, illness and death, than what would likely occur with the skilled addition of a THR...
Reimagining addiction
December 3rd, 2018 Ill-informed opinion, rather than evidence, and an often misguided sense of what is moral shape attitudes to addiction and its treatment. In this fake news era it behoves addiction researchers to take evidence to the public and to governments more...
Public Health England: Stopping smoking – What works?
November 5th, 2018 Public Health England recently published Health Matters guidance focusing on the range of smoking quitting routes that are available and the evidence for their effectiveness. Two-thirds of smokers say they want to quit, however most try to do so...
US FDA warns companies of ‘illegal’ e-cigarettes in crackdown on youth vaping
November 5th, 2018 On 12 October the US Food and Drug Administration said it had sent letters to 21 e-cigarette companies questioning the legality of 41 of their products – the latest in a series of actions to thwart e-cigarette sales to youth. Earlier, the FDA sent...
Workplace and Recovery – How US employers and employees handle addiction
November 5th, 2018 Nearly three-quarters of US employers feel guilty about how they have handled employees’ drug or alcohol addiction-related problems, according to a survey of 737 employers and employees, writes Karen Higginbottom for Forbes. The Workplace and...
Expert opinion divided over health impacts as SA legalises dagga
October 8th, 2018 Following the legalisation of cannabis for personal use in South Africa, the SA Society of Psychiatrists and the SA Medical Association warned of its addictive nature and the need for support measures to deal with dagga’s negatives effects....