“Conflicts between individual choice and collective action underlie many of the most contested and challenging debates relating to health and health care, from the very existence of Obamacare to government responses to the obesity and tobacco epidemics,” according to promotional materials for an April 15, 2016, conference on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston. The event will include sessions titled “The Politics of Public Health”; “Commercial Speech, Individual Responsibility & Health”; and “Addiction.” The “Obesity and Chronic Diseases” roundtable will be moderated by Northeastern Law Professor Richard Daynard, founder of the Public Health Advocacy Institute’s Center for Public Health Litigation, which “uses the civil justice system to improve public health by focusing on litigation targeting tobacco industry products, unhealthy foods, deceptive health marketing, and deceptive gambling practices.” Issue 596
Tag Archives tobacco
New research reportedly suggests that belief in food addiction translates into support for obesity-related policies, “even when accounting for the significant associations of age, gender and political party.” Erica Schulte, et al., “Belief in Food Addiction and Obesity-Related Policy Support,” PLoS One, January 2016. Relying on the responses of 200 individuals recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk to answer questions about belief in food addiction and support for 13 obesity-related initiatives, researchers reported that “belief in food addiction and political party both had moderate effect sizes for predicting support for obesity-related policy.” “Historically, the identification of a substance as addictive shifts public perceptions in a manner that increases support for public policies that aim to reduce the negative impact of the substance (e.g., restrictions on marketing, taxation),” the study’s authors noted. “For example, the identification of nicotine as addictive, rather than habit forming, was one of the defining moments that shifted…
Former New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, who now leads The Public Good Projects, has authored a viewpoint in JAMA Internal Medicine that encourages the use of mass media advertising to promote healthy behaviors. Titled “Mass Diseases, Mass Exposures, and Mass Media,” the article highlights the success of mass media campaigns aimed at smoking cessation, noting that some of these advertisements were more valuable and cost-effective than routine one-on-one counseling, and calls for further research into the dose-response curve for advertising. As Farley explains, “[S]tudies suggest that smoking cessation or smoking prevalence rates can be changed populationwide by television ads shown at a dose of approximately 10,000 Gross Ratings Points (GRPs) per year,” meaning that “the average person is exposed to 100 ads.” The editorial also suggests that similar large-scale campaigns can be used to effectively counter sugar-sweetened beverage marketing. “Mass media messages, seen repeatedly by high percentages of…
“Food is not tobacco… But the public health community is concerned about both diet and tobacco use for a very good reason,” writes Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Executive Director Michael Jacobson in a June 2, 2015, Huffington Post blog post claiming that both industries “share some common bloodlines.” Jacobson claims that both industries not only market to children, but purportedly “blame their customers for the harm caused by their products.” In addition, he argues that these companies emphasize personal responsibility while overlooking “the extent to which companies persuade, lure, and manipulate customers—including children—into making the very decisions that companies say should be up to them.” “Like Big Tobacco, Big Food goes to great lengths to muddy the waters and obscure the connections between soda and disease,” the article concludes. “Big Tobacco and Big Food are now separate industries, but the playbook is much the same. How…
A divided D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that the graphic antismoking images which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) selected for placement on cigarette packages for the purpose of reducing smoking rates in the United States fail the intermediate scrutiny standard for compelled commercial speech. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. FDA, No. 11-5332 (D.C. Cir., decided August 24, 2012). According to the court, which vacated the graphic warning requirements and remanded to the agency, “FDA failed to present any data much less substantial evidence required under the [Administrative Procedure Act]—showing that enacting their proposed graphic warnings will accomplish the agency’s stated objective of reducing smoking rates.” The court discusses the different standards applied when deciding whether government efforts to regulate speech are permissible under the First Amendment. A strict scrutiny standard, for example, gives government little leeway to compel or proscribe speech and imposes a heavy burden on…
In the wake of an Australian High Court ruling validating regulations requiring cigarettes to be sold in plain packages, some commentators are speculating whether other products, such as alcoholic beverages and fast food, will be subject to the same types of restrictions. The opinion, penned by Patrick Carlyton, suggests that because alcoholism and obesity also purportedly have deleterious effects, government may consider imposing taxing and packaging rules on the other industries. While he questions whether these types of restrictions actually affect consumption—“will plain packaging work in reducing smoking rates? No one knows. It hasn’t been tried before”—he concludes, “One thing is certain. Plain packaging for unhealthy foods in supermarket aisles would certainly constitute a relief for every parent, and this would have nothing to do with the health benefits.” See News Limited Network, August 16, 2012.
The journal PLoS Medicine has published two articles and an editorial in a “major new series” on “Big Food” in this week’s issue, and will publish five additional related articles over the next two weeks. The editorial notes that the articles, focusing on “the role in health of Big Food, which we define as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power,” were selected under the guidance of guest editors Marion Nestle of New York University and David Stuckler of Cambridge University. Contending that Big Food has “an undeniably influential presence on the global health stage,” the editorial introduces the other articles and observes, “We decided not to provide a forum for the industry to offer a perspective on their role in global health, since this point of view has been covered many times before and fails to acknowledge their role in subverting the public health agenda,…
A March 27, 2012, “Great Speculations” column on Forbes.com draws parallels between carbonated soft drink (CSD) companies and the tobacco industry, claiming that a recent decline in CSD consumption in the United States has created a competitive market environment similar to that faced by cigarette manufacturers. Authored by contributors from Trefis.com, an investment and market research tool, the article notes that decreased CSD sales volume has prompted soft drink manufacturers to adopt strategies allegedly used by tobacco companies, such as raising product prices, promoting alternatives like energy drinks and juices, and arguing against taxation. “Part of the reason why these industries attract high taxation is because the fiscal deficit of the government is in a mess and imposing taxes n hese industries ensures higher revenue collection in the name of political mileage,” concludes the article. “Cola companies won’t hesitate to ncrease the prices periodically (although certainly not as aggressively as…
The Public Health Law Center at William Mitchell College of Law has announced the launch of a series of free webinars that will address issues relating to tobacco control, obesity prevention, worksite wellness, active living, and public health legislation. Scheduled for October 5, 2011, the first webinar will feature staff attorneys presenting on “Drafting Effective Public Health Policies.” A number of the health center’s staff attorneys focus on tobacco-control issues and projects; listed as a consulting attorney is Mark Perstchuk, who is the past president and executive director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.
The National Research Council (NRC) recently issued a report suggesting that past smoking and current obesity levels are major reasons why U.S. life expectancy at age 50, though still rising, has not kept pace with that of other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. Sponsored by the National Institute on Aging’s Division of Behavioral and Social Research, the report explained that the health consequences of smoking, which 30 to 50 years ago was “much more widespread in the U.S. than in Europe or Japan,” continue to influence today’s mortality rates. It anticipated, however, that “life expectancy for men in the U.S. is likely to improve relatively rapidly in coming decades because of reductions in smoking in the last 20 years,” while women’s mortality rates “are apt to remain slow for the next decade.” The report also concluded that current obesity rates “may account for a fifth to a third of…
12
