Do Tobacco Companies Have an Incentive to Promote "Harm Reduction" Products?: The Role of Competition.

INTRODUCTION: Some cigarette companies have started to talk about replacing cigarettes with less harmful alternatives, which might include nicotine vaping products (NVPs), heated tobacco products (HTPs), and oral nicotine delivery products. We consider market competition as a primary driver of whether cigarette companies follow through on their stated intentions. AIMS AND METHODS: We focus on the behavior of cigarette companies in the United States. We compare competition in the pre- and post-2012 time periods, analyze the impact of the growth in NVPs on smoking prevalence and cigarette company profits, and examine the potential future role of competition. RESULTS: Since 2006, consumers have broadened their use of non-combustible nicotine delivery products (NCNDPs) to include, inter alia, NVPs, HTPs, and oral nicotine pouches. U.S. cigarette companies have acquired major stakes in each of these product categories which corresponds to a period of rapidly declining adult smoking prevalence, especially among younger adults (ages 18-24 years). The shifting dynamics of the nicotine product marketplace are also reflected in cigarette company stock prices. While cigarette companies are likely to promote HTPs and nicotine delivery products over NVPs, their incentives will be directly related to competition from independent firms, which in turn will depend on government regulation. CONCLUSIONS: Although cigarette companies will back alternatives to combusted tobacco when threatened by competition, the prospects for their lasting conversion to NCNDPs will depend on the extent of such competition, which will be influenced by government regulation of tobacco products. IMPLICATIONS: Regulations that limit competition from independent firms while also protecting cigarette company profits risk slowing or even reversing recent declines in smoking, especially among youth and young adults. Regulations that reduce the appeal and addictiveness of combusted tobacco products, such as higher cigarette taxes or a reduced nicotine standard, will encourage smokers to quit and/or switch to less harmful non-combusted forms of tobacco. The regulation of non-combustible nicotine delivery products and cigarettes should be proportionate to their relative risks, so that smokers have incentives to switch from combustibles to safer alternatives, and cigarette companies have incentives to promote safer products.

Subculture wars: The struggle for the vape industry.

Drawing on a 2-year study, I argue that the UK vape industry is engaged in a classificatory struggle between a subcultural industry and its "other", the mainstream industry. I build on Thornton's analysis of club culture to characterize the subcultural vape industry as a community of taste built round a masculine aesthetic and a commitment to authenticity and DIY practice. Its attachment to complex systems and masculine spaces risked excluding customers without specialist knowledge or interest. The mainstream industry included tobacco companies which promoted vaping as a complementary category to smoking, linking their own vaping products to historic meanings of the cigarette as a lifestyle product. This task was hampered by the toxic legacy of combusted tobacco and its increasing reversion to a generic category rather than a branded product. Finally, the success of the price-focused vaping industry has been largely overlooked, but suggests that for most consumers, electronic cigarettes are still a contrasting category to combusted tobacco and are purchased largely on price. I conclude that the exclusion of a feminized, classed "other" is a defining element of subcultural formation, itself an overwhelmingly male mechanism of group identity construction.

HIV healthcare providers' perceptions on smoking behavior among PLHIV and smoking cessation service provision in HIV clinics in Uganda.

INTRODUCTION: Integration of smoking cessation interventions into HIV care can play a crucial role in reducing the growing burden of disease due to smoking among people living with HIV (PLHIV). However, there is a dearth of information on HIV care providers' perspectives towards integrating smoking cessation interventions into HIV care programs. We explored HIV healthcare providers' perceptions on the smoking behavior among PLHIV, and the provision of smoking cessation services to PLHIV who smoke within HIV care services in Uganda. METHODS: Semi-structured face-to-face qualitative interviews were conducted with 12 HIV care providers between October and November 2019. Data were collected on perceptions on smoking among HIV-positive patients enrolled in HIV care, support provided to PLHIV who smoke to quit and integrating smoking cessation services into HIV care programs. Data were analyzed deductively following a thematic framework approach. RESULTS: Findings show that: 1) HIV care providers in HIV clinics had low knowledge on the prevalence and magnitude of smoking among PLHIV who attended the clinics; 2) HIV care providers did not routinely screen HIV-positive patients for smoking and offered sub-optimal smoking cessation services; and 3) HIV care providers had a positive attitude towards integration of tobacco smoking cessation services into HIV care programs but called for support in form of guidelines, capacity building and strengthening of data collection and use as part of the integration process. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that HIV care providers did not routinely screen for tobacco use among PLHIV and offered suboptimal cessation support to smoking patients, but had a positive attitude towards the integration of tobacco smoking into HIV care programs. These findings suggest a favorable ground for integrating tobacco smoking cessation interventions into HIV care programs.

Tobacco use and cessation in the context of ART adherence: Insights from a qualitative study in HIV clinics in Uganda.

Sub-Saharan Africa carries a disproportionate burden of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Tobacco use amongst people living with HIV is higher than in the general population even though it increases the risk of life-threatening opportunistic infections including tuberculosis (TB). Research on tobacco use and cessation amongst people living with HIV in Africa is sparse and it is not clear what interventions might achieve lasting cessation. We carried out qualitative interviews in Uganda in 2019 with 12 current and 13 former tobacco users (19 men and 6 women) receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) in four contrasting locations. We also interviewed 13 HIV clinic staff. We found that tobacco use and cessation were tied into the wider moral framework of ART adherence, but that the therapeutic citizenship fashioned by ART regimes was experienced more as social control than empowerment. Patients were advised to stop using tobacco; those who did not concealed this from health workers, who associated both tobacco and alcohol use with ART adherence failure. Most of those who quit tobacco did so following the biographical disruption of serious TB rather than HIV diagnosis or ART treatment, but social support from family and friends was key to sustained cessation. We put forward a model of barriers and facilitators to smoking cessation and ART adherence based on engagement with either 'reputation' or 'respectability'. Reputation involved pressure to enjoy tobacco with friends whereas family-oriented respectability demanded cessation, but those excluded by isolation or precarity escaped anxiety and depression by smoking and drinking with their peers.

Tobacco Smoking and Associated Factors Among People Living With HIV in Uganda.

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence of smoking among people living with HIV (PLWH) in Uganda is high. AIMS AND METHODS: We assessed the smoking patterns, behaviors, and associated factors among PLWH in Uganda through a cross-sectional survey. Descriptive statistics were used to describe smoking patterns and behaviors. Logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with current smoking status. RESULTS: We recruited 777 participants between October and November 2019: 387 (49.8%) current smokers and 390 (50.2%) nonsmokers. 60.9% were males, and the mean age was 40.5 (SD 10.7) years. In multivariate logistic regression, the following increased the odds of being a current smoker: being male (odds ratio [OR] 6.60 [95% confidence interval, CI = 4.34-10.04]), having at least two smokers among five closest friends (OR 3.97 [95% CI = 2.08-7.59]), living in smoking-permitted households (OR 5.83 [95% CI = 3.32-10.23]), alcohol use (OR 3.96 [95% CI = 2.34-6.71]), a higher perceived stress score (OR 2.23 [95% CI = 1.50-3.34]), and higher health-related quality of life (OR 5.25 [95% CI = 1.18-23.35]). Among smokers, the mean Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence score was 3.0 (SD 1.9), and 52.5% were making plans to quit. Self-efficacy to resist smoking and knowledge of the impact of smoking on PLWH's health were low. CONCLUSIONS: Being male, having at least two smokers among five closest friends, living in smoking-permitted households, alcohol use, higher perceived stress scores, and higher health-related quality of life were associated with being a current smoker. Smokers had low to moderate nicotine dependence, high willingness to quit, and low self-efficacy. IMPLICATIONS: Future behavioral smoking cessation interventions for PLWH should address co-consumption with alcohol and comorbid mental health conditions that are common among PLWH such as stress. In addition, they should take into account the lack of knowledge among this population of the impact of smoking on their health, and low self-efficacy. Given the relatively low levels of nicotine dependency and high levels of willingness to quit in our sample, smoking cessation interventions, if offered, are likely to support this population in achieving long-term smoking abstinence.

Explaining the social gradient in smoking and cessation: the peril and promise of social mobility.

Smoking in high-income countries is now concentrated in poor communities whose relatively high smoking prevalence is explained by greater uptake but above all by lower quit rates. Whilst a number of barriers to smoking cessation have been identified, this is the first paper to situate cessation itself as a classed and cultural practice. Drawing on ethnographic research carried out in a working-class community in the North of England between 2012 and 2015, I theorise smoking cessation as a symbolic practice in relation to the affective experience of class and social mobility. I show that ambivalence about upward mobility as separation and loss translated into ambivalence about smoking cessation. The reason for this was that the social gradient in smoking operated dynamically at the level of the individual life course, i.e. smoking cessation followed upward mobility. A serious health problem was an appropriate reason to quit but older women continued to smoke despite serious health problems. This was linked to historical gender roles leading to women placing a low priority on their own health as well as the intergenerational reproduction of smoking through close affective links with smoking parents.

Nicotine addiction as a moral problem: Barriers to e-cigarette use for smoking cessation in two working-class areas in Northern England.

Tobacco use in high-income countries correlates with socio-economic disadvantage, but although switching to electronic cigarettes could be a safer alternative, little is known about barriers to use. Drawing on eighteen months of data collection in two areas of Northern England in 2017/18 including ethnography and interviews with 59 smokers and e-cigarette users, I show that concern about continued nicotine addiction either deterred working-class smokers from switching to e-cigarettes or dictated the conditions of their use. Research participants were unhappy about addiction both as loss of control experienced as moral failure and as neglect of financial responsibilities i.e. role performance failure in relation to family responsibilities, or what I call 'thrift as care'. They reduced the moral burden of addiction by lowering nicotine content, rejecting pleasure and minimising expenditure. They chose the cheapest possible tobacco, switched from combusted tobacco to cheaper e-cigarettes and bought cheap e-cigarettes and liquids. For working-class smokers, minimising spend on what they perceive negatively as addiction may be a greater moral concern than reducing health risk. I conclude that ensuring that vaping is significantly cheaper than smoking may be key to addressing health inequalities linked to tobacco use.

How will e-cigarettes affect health inequalities? Applying Bourdieu to smoking and cessation.

This paper uses the work of Bourdieu to theorise smoking and cessation through a class lens, showing that the struggle for distinction created the social gradient in smoking, with smoking stigma operating as a proxy for class stigma. This led to increased policy focus on the health of bystanders and children and later also to concerns about electronic cigarettes. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is deployed to argue that the e-cigarette helps middle-class smokers resolve smoking as a symptom of cleft habitus associated with social mobility or particular subcultures. E-cigarette use is also compatible with family responsibility and sociable hedonism; aspects of working-class habitus which map to the 'practical family quitter' and the 'recreational user' respectively. The effectiveness of class stigma in changing health behaviours is contested, as is the usefulness of youth as a category of analysis and hence the relevance of concerns about young people's e-cigarette use outside a class framework of smoking and cessation. With regard to health inequalities, whilst middle-class smokers have in class disgust a stronger incentive to quit than working-class smokers, there is potential for tobacco control to tap into a working-class ethos of family care and responsibility.

Everyday tactics in local moral worlds: E-cigarette practices in a working-class area of the UK.

Research into e-cigarette use has largely focused on their health effects and efficacy for smoking cessation, with little attention given to their potential effect on health inequalities. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research between 2012 and 2015, I investigate the emerging e-cigarette practices of adult smokers and quitters in a working-class area of the UK. I first use de Certeau's notion of 'tactics' to describe the informal economy of local e-cigarette use. Low-priced products were purchased through personal networks and informal sources for financial reasons, but also as a solution to the moral problems of addiction and expenditure on the self, particularly for older smokers. E-cigarette practices were produced in local moral worlds where smoking and cessation had a complex status mediated through norms of age and gender. For younger men, smoking cessation conflicted with an ethic of working-class hedonism but e-cigarette use allowed cessation to be incorporated into male sociality. Continued addiction had moral implications which older men addressed by constructing e-cigarette use as functional rather than pleasurable, drawing on a narrative of family responsibility. The low priority which older women with a relational sense of identity gave to their own health led to a lower tolerance for e-cigarette unreliability. I draw on Kleinman's local moral worlds to make sense of these findings, arguing that smoking cessation can be a risk to moral identity in violating local norms of age and gender performance. I conclude that e-cigarettes did have some potential to overcome normative barriers to smoking cessation and therefore to reduce health inequalities, at least in relation to male smoking. Further research which attends to local meanings of cessation in relation to age and gender will establish whether e-cigarettes have similar potential elsewhere.