Societies with generous social security net systems may survive (and thrive) in this new AI world, whereas countries without them may sputter.
thehill.com/opinion/fina...
Excited for my co-author and @MizzouEcon graduate student Guthrie Scoblic to present exciting new work on cigar taxation. Hope you will be able to join us; registration is free.
Congratulations to Dr. Dana Mowls Carroll of
@umnsph.bsky.social for winning the 2025 Best Presentation Award (Top of the TOPS!) for her presentation on the public health implications of very low nicotine cigarettes.🥳 Missed her presentation? It's available here: tobaccopolicy.org/seminars.htm...
🚨TOMORROW🚨
➡️Friday, December 12 2pm ET
➡️"The effects of state-level flavored electronic cigarette restrictions on adult tobacco use using multilevel modeling: Findings from the PATH Study Waves 5 & 7"
➡️John Kingsbury from the National Institute of Drug Abuse
👉Register: bit.ly/TOPS-Winter2026
I am organizing a session on hearing healthcare for the @ashecon.bsky.social conference in Minneapolis this summer. RE: discussants, would anybody organizing a session on a related topic be interested in having our presenters discuss for each other's session? If so, DM me.
Check out the TOPS website for the video recording 📹from last week's presentation by Bingjin Xue on "The Impact of E-Cigarette Regulations on Birth Outcomes".
A way around this riddle is to always be contextually accurate in explaining the continuum of risks across tobacco products, especially when talking to kids. They have a sense when we are not being accurate and it risks rebellion.
Thought-provoking: “I would argue antismoking campaigns were too effective [...] that paved the way for vaping. When vaping became uncool, it paved the path for cigarettes.”
www.wsj.com/health/cigar...
For those in the early stages of their careers—who have not yet served on an NIH study section or held an R01-equivalent PI role—register as an Early Career Reviewer.
More information is available on the CSR website: public.csr.nih.gov/ForReviewers...
We obviously have many scientific disagreements, but fortunately sources of funding should not be one of them as I have kept my funding sources clean. American Cancer Society, for example, would not fund me if they had concerns.
TOPS has a strong policy protecting against tobacco industry conflicts of interest and requiring transparent disclosure of all funding. See here if you would like to read more:
www.tobaccopolicy.org/about.html
I began consulting with them prior to some individuals in the center receiving this funding, and I confirmed with the university my funding sources remained constant after they received this grant (which I had no input on) and were non-tobacco sources.
There is no hair splitting, the disclosure statement is the format the journal uses and I have no control over how that is formatted. None of my consulting revenue has been funded by the tobacco industry, it was paid by non-tobacco sources. Let's move on.
If you're referring to the JAMA: HF paper, you're reading the disclosure statement wrong. The KY group was listed as "outside the submitted work." Notice the placement of the semi-colon that separates funding for the paper and funding from outside work. NIH was the paper's only funder.
Yes I can. My work with them predates this new funding, and I confirmed with the university my funding source remains separate from this new funding. It's out of my control what other people do that are affiliated with a large center, except to make sure things are airtight on my end, which they are
I've reviewed your papers before. Free advise, interrupted time series with a control group you can call diff-in-diff to avoid confusion. Ask Lighthouse or somebody with an active academic affiliation to submit natural experiment work like that to TOPS.
Interrupted time series without a comparison group is not a methodology most social scientists nowadays would consider capable of producing causal interpretation. One does not need to understand and engage with every last detail to study net population health effects of something.
The sources supporting my consulting are unrelated to the tobacco industry. Sorry to disappoint you.
If you need to resort to personal attacks and trying to link me to the tobacco industry, you've clearly lost the scientific debate. I don't apologize for believing in causal study designs, and respect findings from these studies regardless of directionality.
There are about 20 pop-level natural experiment-style studies of e-cig regulation on smoking, most of which find e-cig regulation increases smoking.
Job opportunity - come and join our incredible research team led by Maria Steenland at UMD as a health data analyst - partial or full telework will be considered. Happy to answer any questions over email, info here: umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j... #healthpolicy
Would love to see other authors contribute to this literature using causal methods. E-cigs have been around for 25 years now so not too early in my opinion to work on tackling this big-picture question of the pop-level (net impact) effect e-cigs have on mortality.
There are two pop-level natural experiment studies (that I am aware of) that study the effect of e-cig regulation on mortality, finding increases. One is for infant mortality; the other adult smoking-attributable mortality. We cite those papers in our JAMA viewpoint. Disclaimer: I co-authored these.
There are about 20 pop-level natural experiment-style studies of e-cig regulation on smoking, most of which find e-cig regulation increases smoking.
Your disrespect isn't cool. There is no place in academia for that.
Like we told you at the time, have a qualifying co-author submit the work and it will be fairly considered based on its merits, just like any other submission.
Your disrespect isn't cool. There is no place in academia for that.
Like we told you at the time, have a qualifying co-author submit the work and it will be fairly considered based on its merits, just like any other submission.
#ASHEcon2026 I am organizing 2 sessions for conference in Minneapolis, MN June 7-10.
Looking for abstracts:
1) policy revolving around marijuana and alcohol use or co-use of illicit drugs
2) policy food/nutritional changes from drug decriminalization/legalization, or other impactful policy.
I looked at the position paper you referenced. I don't believe it engages a single quasi-experimental study for the conclusions reached. Systematic reviews of the quasi-experimental evidence show the opposite conclusion: e-cigarettes displace smoking.
I wish I could claim ownership of TOPS, but it isn't mine. I'm one of five on the Executive Board; everybody has equal say. We prioritize high-quality research and our program shows good balance across a variety of dimensions. We are happy to consider any work submitted by a qualifying researcher.
