“Can Vaping Help You Quit Cigarettes? What Are The Risks?“ on NPR’s Science Friday

The harms of smoking cigarettes are pretty clear. Smoking causes cancer as well as heart and lung diseases, and it's the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. When it comes to vaping, or electronic cigarettes, the risks are a bit more tricky to parse, especially if you read media reports about them. The founders of Juul, the company that mainstreamed vaping in the early aughts, said they wanted to help people kick their smoking habits. But can vapes really help people quit? And how bad are they for you, really? And if you're addicted to vaping, what's the best way to stop? To answer those questions and more, Host Ira Flatow talks with one of the top researchers in the field, Dr. Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

POSTED: Feb 10, 2025

Smoking cessation, prevention and screening result in considerable mortality decreases from five major cancers

Improvements in cancer prevention and screening have averted more deaths from five cancer types combined over the past 45 years than treatment advances, according to a modeling study led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the CISNET consortium, including CAsToR members Meza, Jeon and Holford.

POSTED: Dec 9, 2024

“Seniors, You're Never Too Old to Quit Smoking, Study Finds“ in U.S. News

“We have seen a remarkable decline in young adult smoking over the past decade. However, rates among older adults who smoke have remained stagnant,” said Thuy Le, assistant research scientist of health management and policy, who along with David Mendez, professor of health management and policy, and Ken Warner, professor emeritus, of health management and policy, found that quitting smoking after age 65 will add at least eight years of life for nearly 10% of people.

POSTED: Oct 22, 2024

CAsToR’s PI Rafael Meza comments on FDA’s approval of menthol-flavored e-cigarettes on JAMA Medical News and Perspectives

At one time, the FDA’s thinking about menthol e-cigarettes seemed to be “if they’re going to ban menthol in cigarettes, it might be reasonable to have an alternative for those who want to quit smoking.” — CAsToR Principal Investigator Rafael Meza, PhD

TAGS: #MentholBan

POSTED: Aug 13, 2024

“Oral nicotine pouches deliver lower levels of toxic substances than smoking - but that doesn’t mean they’re safe”

Oral nicotine pouches - like Zyn and Velo in the U.S. - appear to be less toxic than cigarettes and deliver comparable levels of nicotine. This makes them an alternative for people who smoke. However, people who’ve never smoked are using them, too, and youth are open to trying them. These are key findings of our recent systematic review, published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

POSTED: Mon Jun 17, 2024

“Most Americans Are Quitting Smoking—Except For Those Over 65” in Time magazine

Public health campaigns and programs outlining the dangers of smoking aren’t really aimed at older adults, says Rafael Meza, an integrative oncologist at the BC Cancer Research Institute in Vancouver and the lead author of a new study on adult smoking. “In the U.S., smoking really has a generational pattern,” he says. Meza’s new analysis, published Dec. 1 in JAMA Health Forum, shows that while people ages 40 through 64 smoke the most, Americans 65 and above are picking up the habit in a way nobody else is. While the prevalence of regular smokers dropped to 15.2% down from 21.2% in a little over a decade for that middle-aged group, older adults saw an increase from 8.7% to 9.4% in the same time frame.

POSTED: Dec 7, 2023