Latest News

German Tobacco group launches world's first vitamin E cigarette- Sept, 07
German Tobacco Group AG, Frankfurt, will launch the world's first cigarette brand enhanced with natural vitamin E at Europe's leading tobacco trade show, Inter-tabac 2007, at Westfalenhallen in Dortmund (September 21-23, 2007). The international tobacco brand, S.A.L.E.-Vitamin-E, aims to revolutionize the cigarette market....

Thomas Schumann, co-founder and chairman of the board of German Tobacco Group AG cautions, "This does not mean that S.A.L.E. with vitamin E is a safer cigarette . . .

With its brand S.A.L.E.-Vitamin-E, German Tobacco Group AG is creating a new, unique product category in the global tobacco market . . .

S.A.L.E. with vitamin E addresses the international trend of consumers becoming increasingly aware and more responsible when using tobacco products.

Asia - Smoking in Asia - Can't Kick the Habit. Sept , 07
AROUND 700m Asians, mostly men, cannot get through the day without puffing on a cigarette. The habit is thought to kill around 2.3m Asians every year . . .

Thailand, which banned it in most public buildings in 2003, is holding hearings on a plan to extend the ban to all places of entertainment. China's press said this month that cigarette makers would be told to put larger health warnings on their packets, including images of skulls, blackened teeth or diseased lungs. . . .

However, both nicotine-addled countries may be wrong. In each, tobacco taxes are unusually low by world standards. Studies by the World Bank and others suggest that, though raising tobacco taxes succeeds in cutting smoking, it still increases government revenues. Tougher curbs on cigarette smuggling can have the same effect. Tobacco farmers could switch to growing, say, oilseeds, for which demand is booming. And Asia's tobacco firms, in the short term, says Mr Fishburn, need fear neither higher taxes nor tougher advertising bans: they have so much scope to improve their efficiency that they could boost profits even in a shrinking market.

Cigarette sales are predicted to rise as ban on packs of 10 misfires - June, 07
CIGARETTE sales will rise instead of fall a result of the ban on packs of 10, according to the tobacco industry.

The aim of the Government ban - which means only packs of 20 cigarettes can be sold in Ireland - is to price teenagers out of the market, by pushing the cost over €7.

But it will only encourage moderate smokers to smoke more and ultimately increase overall consumption, according to a spokesperson for one of Ireland's biggest cigarette companies.

"Many adult smokers used to buy a 10-pack every day, in order to manage their consumption. If only 20s are available, the temptation is to smoke more."

Recent Articles

Hammond et al. (2007)
Text and Graphic Warnings on Cigarette Packages: Findings from the International Tobacco Control Four Country Study

Hammond et al. (2006)
Exposure to Tobacco Marketing and Support for Tobacco Control Policies

Hammond et al. (2006)
Tobacco Denormalization and Industry Beliefs Among Smokers from Four Country

Events

14-23 May 2007
Sixtieth World Health Assembly

8 June 2007
2nd WHO and Wellcome Trust workshop on cardiovascular disease

14 June 2007
World Blood Donor Day

About Dr. Fong

Geoffrey T. Fong, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Health Studies at the University of Waterloo. He also holds the position of Senior Investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research." Dr. Fong is Founder and Chief Principal Investigator of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project), a transdisciplinary collaboration of over 70 researchers across 20 countries—Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Mexico, Uruguay, New Zealand, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mauritius, Bhutan, and India.

The mission of the ITC Project is to conduct rigorous evaluation of the psychosocial and behavioural effects of national-level tobacco control policies of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the first-ever international treaty on health. In all, the ITC Project is conducting large-scale annual prospective cohort surveys of tobacco use to evaluate FCTC policies in countries inhabited by over 50% of the world's population, 60% of the world's smokers, and 70% of the world's tobacco users. The ITC Project is playing a role in establishing the evidence base for the FCTC.

Dr. Fong has also conducted research on the effects of alcohol intoxication on risky health behaviours (e.g., risky sex), and on the creation, implementation, and evaluation (using randomized controlled trials) of behavioural interventions to reduce HIV/STD risk among inner-city adolescents.

He received his BA in psychology from Stanford University and his PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan and has held faculty positions at Northwestern University and Princeton University. In 1999, Dr. Fong received the Distinguished Teaching Award of the University of Waterloo. In 2007, Dr. Fong was the first researcher to receive a Senior Investigator Award from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

Research Interests

1. Evaluation of Tobacco Control Policies

"Tobacco is the most effective agent of death ever developed and deployed on a worldwide scale."

Tobacco use is the most important preventable cause of death in the world, accounting for 10% of all deaths and 30% of all cancer deaths.Smoking causes more deaths in the world than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria COMBINED. Although 100 million tobacco-related deaths occurred in the 20th Century, it is estimated that one billion people will die of tobacco use in the 21st Century, and 80% will of the deaths will be in developing countries.

In 2003, the first-ever health treaty was adopted by all 192 member states of the World Health Organization: the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. [It is worth noting that the first-ever health treaty was not on HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis or influenza or malaria but on tobacco.] The FCTC specifies national-level tobacco control policies that the ratifying countries are obligated to implement, including larger and more prominent warning labels, prohibitions against the use of "light" or "mild" and other misleading brand descriptors, restrictions/prohibitions on advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products, increases in taxation, measures to limit exposure to tobacco smoke pollution (also known as second-hand smoke or environmental tobacco smoke), measures to eliminate illicit trade, and regulation of tobacco products.

But as with every treaty, the text of the FCTC itself is not very specific about exactly what kinds of laws would constitute "effective" implementation of the FCTC. That is to be worked out by the "parties" (that is, those countries who have ratified the FCTC in their national governing bodies (e.g., parliament, congress)). What then could guide policymakers toward strong and effective laws under the FCTC who need to address questions such as "are graphic warning labels more effective than text-based warnings?" "Will advertising restrictions be sufficient to reduce demand for tobacco, or is a total ban necessary?" "Can ventilation be an 'effective' method for significantly reducing exposure to tobacco smoke?"

The answers to these and other important questions are to be found in evidence from rigorous research. Evidence from well-designed evaluation studies of FCTC policies that are now being implemented in leading-edge countries will be key in helping policymakers in choosing strong, evidence-based policies.

And yet, at the time of the adoption of the FCTC, there were few research studies that had evaluated national-level tobacco control policies. And this lack of international comparative studies of the impact of FCTC policies was what motivated me and my colleagues to create the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project, known as "the ITC Project."

The ITC Project is the collaborative effort of over 70 tobacco control researchers across 20 countries--Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Mexico, Uruguay, New Zealand, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mauritius, Bhutan, and India.

The central objective of the ITC Project is to conduct rigorous evaluation of the impact of FCTC policies throughout the world: to contribute to the evidence base for the FCTC and to disseminate our findings quickly and effectively to policymakers throughout the world.

The ITC Project consists of a collection of parallel prospective cohort surveys of probability samples of adult smokers in all 20 countries (with probability samples of youth in some countries, non-smokers in some countries, and smokeless tobacco users in some countries). The commonality of methods, design, protocols, and analytic approaches, all driven by a common conceptual model across all ITC countries, allows for possibilities for discovering commonalities as well as differences across the ITC countries in tobacco use patterns, the factors that influence them over time, and the impact of FCTC policies that are being implemented in these countries.

The ITC Project is the first-ever international cohort study of tobacco use of any kind, and its focus on evaluating multiple policies in multiple countries over multiple points in time make it a key source for evidence bearing on the effectiveness of FCTC policies. All ITC Surveys include measures of all of the demand reduction policies of the FCTC,

For additional information on the ITC Project, see this website:
http://www.itcproject.org

To download our July 2008 ITC Project Brochure, which focuses on the ITC Surveys, click here.

To see a collection of 12 research articles from the ITC Project, which was published in a special supplement of the journal Tobacco Control, see this website (and all articles are free for downloading!):
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/vol15/suppl_3/

To see the recent (Feb 2008) landmark report by the WHO on tobacco use--the MPOWER Report (which cites several of our ITC Project articles), click here:
http://www.who.int/tobacco/mpower/en/

Here is a recent (August 2008) presentation on the ITC Project I gave at a Plenary Panel of the UICC World Cancer Congress in Geneva:
2008 World Cancer Congress Presentation

2. Other research projects in tobacco use and tobacco control

1. Measuring and documenting the level of tobaco smoke pollution in key, leading edge venues such as in casinos, cars, and outdoor patios.
   • See the New York Times article (Nov 22, 2007) that documents the undercover work of one of my terrific grad students, Ryan Kennedy, who was sent to the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City to measure the levels of tobacco smoke pollution during the Cigar Aficionado magazine's "Big Smoke Event", in which several hundred people were given the chance to partake in smoking many cigars in the supposedly "100% smoke-free" Marriott hotel. The levels of tobacco smoke pollution were extraordinarily high, as would be expected, in the ballroom where the event was taking place, and non-trivial amounts of TSP were found in areas outside the event's ballroom.

     Here is the summary of the findings from the Big Smoke Monitoring Project

   • We have conducted a quasi-experimental evaluation of the impact of the Smoke-Free Ontario Act on casinos. We measured both tobacco smoke pollution (via air quality monitoring, as in the Big Smoke study) and biomarkers of exposure to tobacco smoke, including cotinine (the most prevalent metabolite of nicotine) and NNAL (a metabolite of a potent tobacco-specific carcinogen, NNK).

   • We have conducted careful air quality monitoring of the levels of tobacco smoke pollution inside of cars under 5 conditions of ventilation, demonstrating the extremely high levels of TSP under conditions of no ventilation, and even high levels of TSP under common ventilation conditions (air conditioning; driver's side window halfway down, with cigarette close to the open window).

   • Here is a keynote presentation I gave at the May 2007 Alberta Celebration of World No Tobacco Day, which summarizes much of the research we have conducted on air quality monitoring in these venues. It also presents research on smoke-free laws from the ITC Project (our evaluation of the 2004 comprehensive smoke-free law in Ireland, which was the first to go entirely smoke-free).

2. There are other lines of research that we are conducting on tobacco use and tobacco control, including the effect of portrayals of smoking in the movies on implicit measures. See our Psychological Science article, led by Sonya Dal Cin, former grad student, now a faculty member at the University of Michigan.
   This website is being revised. Descriptions of other active research areas will soon be added.

In addition to my research interests in social psychology and public health, I have expertise in conducting research studies relevant to trademark law in the United States. I have served as an expert witness in Federal trademark cases in which I have conducted trademark surveys to address questions of likelihood of confusion, secondary meaning, and genericness. I have represented a broad range of companies, including Volkswagen of America, Genessee Brewing Company, and Schick.

Here is the opinion in Volkswagen v. Uptown Motors a case tried in the Second Circuit, Southern District New York. I conducted a trademark survey on behalf of Volkswagen at locations in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. It was designed to measure the impact of the Volkswagen logo on consumers' perceptions. I used experimental methods to measure the strength of the VW logo. My survey was dispositive in this case, and the effect size was used by Judge Cote to award damages to Volkswagen.

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