April 2022 with Assistant Professor Alex Liber

In the April episode Jamie Hartmann-Boyce talks with Assistant Professor Alex Liber, Department of Oncology at Georgetown University's School of Medicine, Washington DC, USA. Alex Liber discusses his work at the intersection between markets, public policy, and public health. Alex Liber discusses global tobacco control policy research and tax and price policy. He talks about why different countries react differently to policies and to why tobacco control is seen as the battle of politics, business, and health. He discusses the need for comparative regulatory language. Alex discusses the different e-cigarette policies adopted around the world. Turning to flavours Alex tells us about his work with his colleagues at Georgetown and the University of Michigan on the potential effects of a ban on the sale of menthol cigarettes in the United States. He expanded this work to on menthol cigarettes to look at European sales data and to the effect of the European Union's menthol cigarette ban of menthol cigarette sales in Poland. He reports that although the share of menthol cigarettes sales was 30% in Poland, cigarette sales overall did not drop. He explains that tobacco companies were able to convert their menthol cigarette smokers into standard flavour cigarette smokers, via rebranding cigarettes and flavouring cards. Alex is interested in documenting industry responses. Alex also discusses work looking at e-cigarette flavour bans and temporary bans in the US.

Jamie and Nicola also bring us up to date with the literature search conducted on April 1st 2022. The April search found 4 new ongoing studies. We will include the studies we have found in future updates of the Cochrane review.

For more information on the full Cochrane review updated in September 2021 see: https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD010216.pub6 or our webpage