la liberté avant tout
In every gas station and convenience store, a new category of addictive products is flying off shelves. This new thorn in the side of public health advocates is tobacco nicotine pouches. These pouches are made of wood pulp and salt, filled with nicotine, and flavors placed under the upper lip to give the user a…
Is vaping safer than smoking? Obviously YES. Nicotine is not your enemy. But watch me debate those who think differently: Prof. Stanton Glantz, Stanford and Sheila Duffy of Action on Smoking and Health, Scotland. It’s Consumer Choice vs. neoprohibitionism. Who wins? YouTube: X:
Banning products will not make them go away. It will only create incentives for illicit markets to offer them to adult or high school students alike. In 2013, Vermont became a New England leader by loosening its laws on cannabis possession, making it the first to do so by a legislative vote. Reporting on these…
Fun Police Episode 2: The Billionaire Every prohibitionist movement needs its funders. Its moneymen. Usually, there are powerful industrialists who’ve made it big and are “giving back” by restricting choices of the little people. For popular movements against alcohol in the 1900s, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford were the principal philanthropists. Neoprohibitionists…
For years, we’ve covered the extent of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s multi-million dollar campaigns to try to shape the lives of ordinary consumers. What began as an erstwhile nanny state campaign on Big Gulps in New York City has ballooned into a massively funded operation that uses grants and NGO funding on…
This week I was invited on the podcast and live YouTube show “Wednesday Night Live,” talking all things vaping, harm reduction, innovation, and advocacy. It was a fun, live chat that lasted 2 hours! Oh boy. Enjoy below:
In a move that sent waves across South and Southeast Asia last week, Thailand’s Public Health Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul iterated that the importation and production ban on vaping products will continue, depriving Thai smokers of provable alternatives to quit. Harm-reducing alternatives to combustible cigarettes, including vaping devices, heated tobacco, and oral…
Public health officials and those with significant sway in setting health policy were joyous last month when the Food and Drug Administration denied the ability of Juul Labs to continue selling its vaping device. Handed down as a Marketing Denial Order, the decision forces gas stations, retailers and vape shops to pull Juul devices off the shelves, depriving…
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration handed down a consequential decision affecting millions of consumers: a marketing denial order for the pod-based Juul vaping company. This forced gas stations, convenience stores, and vape shops to immediately stop selling them to customers. Now, the FDA’s actions have been temporarily halted by the D.C. Appeals Court,…
By Yaël Ossowski | Parliament Magazine While most popular attention this month has been on the vital discussions at the United Nation’s COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, there is an equally important UN conference happening in Geneva that also contemplates the fate of millions of lives. There are also questions on the importance of…