New Haven, Conn. — In 2020, the federal minimum age for buying tobacco products was officially raised from 18 to 21 as an increasing number of states and localities across the country sought to raise the age for tobacco purchases to protect the health of young adults.

 

One of the driving factors behind the change was a 2015 report from the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) that found that a federal Tobacco 21 (T21) law could prevent as many as 249,000 deaths through the year 2100.

 

A new study led by Yale researchers with the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) Lung Working Group has now determined that the NAM report grossly underestimated the number of averted deaths. The findings significantly amplify the potential impact of the T21 law and provide important new information for future state and local policy discussions surrounding tobacco regulation and public health.

Effective January 1, John Howington, MD, MBA, FCCP, is the new President of the American College of Chest Physicians^® (CHEST). Neil S. Freedman, MD, FCCP, steps into the role of President-Elect; Lisa Moores, MD, FCCP, is the new President-Designate; and Jack D. Buckley, MD, MPH, FCCP, completes his term as President to become Immediate Past President of CHEST.

Conversational AI agents may become attuned to covertly influence your intentions, creating a new commercial frontier that researchers call the “intention economy”. They say that, left unchecked, this emerging marketplace raises concern about social manipulation on a massive scale.

President Biden earlier this week signed into law the bipartisan Cardiomyopathy Health Education, Awareness, Research and Training in Schools (HEARTS) Act, which will help ensure students and staff in schools nationwide are prepared to respond to a cardiac emergency. 

The transition to clean energy is hailed as a crucial step toward environmental and health benefits, but could it inadvertently widen the gap between the wealthy and the disadvantaged? This critical question is addressed by the research group led by Shen Guofeng, Assistant Professor at the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University. Their study, recently published in Nature Communications, delves into the disparities in household energy burdens during the global shift to modern clean energy. The paper, titled “Unclean but affordable solid fuels effectively sustained household energy equity” (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-54166-5), offers practical solutions to balance equity and sustainability in energy transitions.