The Conference Blog - Basel

Theres a loose snus aboot this hoose.

Its a bit unfortunate that I do alot of talks on Swedish snus. In the presentations I  have to distinguish between snus portion-packed in little tea-bags and "loose" (like ground coffee). With my Scottish accent the words loose snus seems to provoke laughter from the audience even though Im trying to be serious. Oh well.
Todays session on snus/harm reduction was well attended but didnt produce the usual fireworks elicited by this topic.

Does the nicotine vaccine work?

At todays session on "The future of Smoking Cessation" (chaired by Jaques Cornuz) there was a fascinating presentation of new data from a Swiss trial of a new nicotine vaccine. The results were consistent with the few previous vaccine trials in demonstrating a significant effect of the vaccine in helping smokers quit (versus placebo vaccine). However, the effect was no better than existing medicines (eg NRT).

Just arrived from Madrid

For many folks in tobacco control, October is an exceptionally busy month. I was just at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) in Madrid last week, popped back to New Jersey for a few days and have just arrived in Basel (via Zurich) for the 4th European Conference on Tobacco or Health. Then later in the month its the US National Conference on Tobacco or Health. Anyone ever think of spacing these things out?

Introducing blogger Jonathan Foulds

Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D. is a professor at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey – School of Public Health, and is the Director of the Tobacco Dependence Program at UMDNJ-School of Public Health.