- UM study: E-cigarettes should be recommended more for smoking cessation
- POSTED: Thu Feb 23, 2023
Electronic cigarettes should be recommended more widely for helping some adults stop smoking tobacco, according to a new University of Michigan study. “Far too many adults who want to quit smoking are unable to do so,” said (TCORS 2.0 Co-Investigator) Kenneth Warner, dean emeritus of the School of Public Health. “E-cigarettes constitute the first new tool to help them in decades. Yet relatively few smokers and indeed health care professionals appreciate their potential value.”
- Read the full story at the Detroit News
- Read “Nicotine e-cigarettes as a tool for smoking cessation” at Nature Medicine
- New Zealand Bans Cigarette Sales for Everyone Born After 2008
- POSTED: Mon Dec 19, 2022
New Zealand is “engaged in an extraordinarily important natural experiment to see if these significant policy approaches, which have not been implemented elsewhere, succeed in driving down cigarette smoking, as many experts think they’re likely to do,” said Clifford Douglas, director of the Tobacco Research Network at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives as a result of the legislation, New Zealand’s Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said. She added that the country’s health system would save billions of dollars from the treatment of smoking-related illnesses.
- Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal
- CAsToR e-Announcements (November 2022)
- POSTED: Fri Nov 18, 2022
- A bi-monthly e-newsletter of CAsToR highlights, events and more. Headlines: CAsToR is pleased to host former Director of the Center for Tobacco Products under the Food and Drug Administration, Mr. Mitch Zeller, Thursday, September 29, 2022; Dr. David Mendez was featured in USA TODAY, August 3, 2022, discussing the impact of menthol cigarettes on the Black population.; Longitudinal Associations Between Exclusive and Dual Use of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems and Cigarettes and Self-Reported Incident Diagnosed Cardiovascular Disease Among Adults
- Read the CAsToR e-Announcements (November 2022)
- CAsToR e-Announcements (September 2022)
- POSTED: Fri Sep 09, 2022
- A bi-monthly e-newsletter of CAsToR highlights, events and more. Headlines: CAsToR is pleased to host former Director of the Center for Tobacco Products under the Food and Drug Administration, Mr. Mitch Zeller, Thursday, September 29, 2022; Dr. David Mendez was featured in USA TODAY, August 3, 2022, discussing the impact of menthol cigarettes on the Black population.; Longitudinal Associations Between Exclusive and Dual Use of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems and Cigarettes and Self-Reported Incident Diagnosed Cardiovascular Disease Among Adults
- Read the CAsToR e-Announcements (September 2022)
- “Targeted menthol cigarette ads helped lead to high Black usage. Should they be banned?”
- POSTED: Mon Aug 08, 2022
David Mendez, a lead author of the Michigan study and a health management and policy professor at the university, said menthol cigarettes reduce the irritation and harshness of smoking through their smooth, minty flavor profile. Because the cigarette user does not cough or feel the less healthy aspects of smoking, they are less inclined to quit, he said. Menthol also works with nicotine to enhance nicotine's addictive effects. Banning menthol will save thousands of lives, Mendez said. “This is the closest we have been,“ Mendez said of the proposed prohibition.
- Read the full story at Yahoo! News
- CAsToR investigators Meza and Mendez write for the Conversation about the reasons for FDA to pursue a cigarette menthol ban
- POSTED: Wed May 18, 2022
The FDA has opened the public comment period for the agency’s proposed ban on menthol cigarettes. Epidemiology and global health professor Rafael Meza studies data modeling in disease prevention and cancer risk. David Mendez, who studies smoking cessation and tobacco control policies, is an associate professor of health management and policy. These University of Michigan researchers found that, in a 38-year period, African Americans suffered most of the harmful effects of menthol cigarettes. Now the researchers have developed a model to simulate the possible benefits of the menthol ban, based on studies of population trends in tobacco use. As experts on the behavioral and public health aspects of smoking, they explain the role of menthol in smoking-related illness and death.
- Read the full story at The Conversation
- CAsToR investigator Cliff Douglas discusses the proposed FDA menthol ban in MedPage
- POSTED: Tue May 03, 2022
“The premature demand that menthol be banned in all tobacco products, if implemented, risks handing almost the entire tobacco marketplace over to cigarettes, which kill half of long-term users. Science has demonstrated that a variety of noncombustible products offer reduced-risk alternatives for adult smokers who are either unable or unwilling to quit using nicotine completely. These range from e-cigarettes and oral nicotine lozenges and pouches to such products as a very low-nitrosamine smokeless tobacco called snus. Research to date suggests that retaining menthol in some or perhaps all of them could help adults quit smoking.” — Clifford E. Douglas, JD (Director, Tobacco Research Network; Faculty, University of Michigan School of Public Health)
- Read the full story at MedPage Today
- CAsToR e-Announcements (April 2022)
- POSTED: Mon May 02, 2022
- A bi-monthly e-newsletter of CAsToR highlights, events and more. Headlines: Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Annual Meeting; Dr. Le promoted to Assistant Research Scientist; Delvon Mattingly receives the 2022 Harburg Student Award for Excellence in Social Epidemiology; Dr. Nancy Fleischer and researchers created a new interactive tool housing US data on Tobacco 21 (T21) laws; Recent publications, events and opportunities.
- Read the CAsToR e-Announcements (April 2021)
- Congratulations! CaSToR Trainee Delvon Mattingly awarded Harburg Student Award for Excellence in Social Epidemiology
- POSTED: Wed Apr 20, 2022
- University of Michigan Doctoral Student and CaSToR Trainee Delvon Mattingly has been awarded the Harburg Student Award for Excellence in Social Epidemiology by the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health (CSEPH) at the University of Michigan. The award is in recognition of his paper “Change in Distress About Police Brutality and Substance Use Among Young People, 2017-2020.” Each year the Harburg Award recognizes one MPH student and one PhD student who displays outstanding promise in the study of the social and psychosocial determinants of health. The award recognizes student work that seeks to integrate and understand the links between social determinants, psychological processes, behaviors and biology in health research.
- Read Delvon’s paper
- Michigan Public Health database serves as resource for researchers on Tobacco 21 laws
- POSTED: Fri Apr 15, 2022
- Researchers can now utilize a new interactive tool housing US data on Tobacco 21 (T21) laws—regulations that raise the minimum age of the sale of tobacco products to 21. Nancy Fleischer, associate professor of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, worked on the database and highlights that data collected for this tool can be used by researchers to further study the effects and public health impact of T21 policies.
We created this database to estimate the proportion of the US population covered by T21 laws over time. Other researchers can now link these data to other data sources, as we did recently in a paper examining the impact of T21 laws on youth smoking initiation.
- Read the full story at Michigan Public Health News Center

Kenneth E. Warner, PhD

Clifford E. Douglas, JD


Selected news

David Mendez, PhD

Rafael Meza, PhD and David Mendez, PhD

Clifford E. Douglas, JD


Delvon Mattingly

Nancy Fleischer, PhD, MPH