Reframing social media discourse following the FDA's menthol ban announcement as industry agenda setting rather than public sentiment.

Background: The tobacco industry has spent millions of dollars promoting racialised narratives against the US Food and Drug Administration's recently announced ban on menthol as a characterising cigarette flavour. This research investigates racialised narratives in online discourse following the ban's announcement.

Methods: Tweets and users responding to the April 2022 menthol ban announcement were content analysed to examine the influence of tobacco industry affiliates and potentially organic African-American/Black (AA/B) users.

Improving Enforcement Measures and Establishing Clear Criteria: A Content Analysis of Tobacco-Brand-Owned Instagram Accounts.

Introduction: This study examines limitations of the current regulatory framework for tobacco advertising on Instagram. We first investigate compliance with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warning label requirements for posts by tobacco-owned accounts. Next, we examine the prevalence of content that has been restricted in broadcast or print for its youth appeal, followed by content meeting more expansive criteria for youth appeal set forth in the FDA's guidance document.

Bigger, stronger and cheaper: growth in e-cigarette market driven by disposable devices with more e-liquid, higher nicotine concentration and declining prices.

Objective: Given the evolving changes in the disposable e-cigarette market, we explore patterns of sales in the USA by e-liquid volume capacity, nicotine strength and real sales-weighted average prices by both e-cigarette unit and volume of e-liquid.

Methodology: We used NielsenIQ retail scanner data from January 2017 to September 2022 to examine changes over time for average product volume capacity in millilitres, nicotine strength (%) and both sales-weighted average price per disposable unit and per millilitre of e-liquid for each 4-week period.

Results: Among disposable e-cigarettes sold between January 2017 and September 2022, average volume capacity increased 518% from 1.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Tweets About Tobacco Regulation can Help Disseminate Anti-regulatory Messages.

Introduction: Twitter enables public organizations to engage the public in health policy discourse. However, documented hostility towards tobacco control proposals on Twitter suggests that a closer examination of the nature of interaction with such content is warranted.

Aims And Methods: We scraped tweets from government bodies with tobacco control interests between July and November of 2021 (N = 3889), 2 months before and after the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Premarket Tobacco Authorization Act's (PMTA) September deadline.

Examining influencer compliance with advertising regulations in branded vaping content on Instagram.

Background: Youth and young adults are exposed to vaping advertisements on social media sites, despite regulations and guidelines intended to reduce the prevalence of such content on these platforms. This research uses replicable criteria to identify vaping influencers who have worked with vaping brands to promote vaping products on Instagram and documents the extent to which posts by these users comply with existing advertising regulations.

Methodology: We conducted three google searches collecting eight different vaping influencer lists, with a total of 575 unique influencers.

Industry response to strengthened regulations: amount and themes of flavoured electronic cigarette promotion by product vendors and manufacturers on Instagram.

Background: Social media discussion tends to follow news about proposed or enacted government policies. Thus, digital discourse surveillance may be an effective and unobtrusive way of understanding industry and public response to policies and regulations, including in the domain of tobacco control. Recently, the US Food and Drug Administration restricted sales of flavoured cartridge and disposable vape products.

Analysis of e-cigarette warning letters issued by the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 and 2021.

Purpose: This study analyses the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warning letters sent to e-cigarette companies from 1 January 2020 to 9 September 2021. Study results can inform regulation of e-cigarettes.

Methodology: Warning letters retrieved from FDA's website were coded for company type (retailer, manufacturer or distributor), location (domestic or international), infractions listed (PMTA (premarket tobacco product application), selling to minors, advertising to youth or packaging violation/mislabelling), product type (e-liquid, device or both), flavour (fruit, candy, tobacco, menthol/mint, concept flavour) and consequence (civil money penalties, product seizure and injunction, product detention and refusal of entry to the USA, no-tobacco-sales order, criminal prosecution).

Charming e-cigarette users with distorted science: a survey examining social media platform use, nicotine-related misinformation and attitudes towards the tobacco industry.

Objective: To examine the role of social media in promoting recall and belief of distorted science about nicotine and COVID-19 and whether recall and belief predict tobacco industry beliefs.

Design: Young adults aged 18-34 years (N1225) were surveyed cross-sectionally via online Qualtrics panel. The survey assessed recall and belief in three claims about nicotine and COVID-19 and three about nicotine in general followed by assessments of industry beliefs and use of social media.