Oct. 23 William J. Bicknell Lectureship in Public Health: Is There Such a Thing as a Safe(r) Cigarette?
In June, President Obama signed a law that gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products.
The law does not allow the FDA to ban nicotine or tobacco outright, but allows the agency to lower the amount of nicotine in tobacco products as well as to ban candy flavorings and to control certain aspects of advertising.
So what does this new FDA power mean for smokers, for the public’s health and for the future of the tobacco industry? These and other questions surrounding the FDA’s still developing tobacco regulation program will be discussed and debated at the 2009 William J. Bicknell Lectureship in Public Health to be held at Boston University School of Public Health.
The event will be held on Friday, Oct. 23, from 9 a.m. to noon, in the first-floor auditorium of 670 Albany Street, on the Boston University Medical Campus. A continental breakfast will be available from 8:30 a.m. The event is free and open to the public.
The event will feature a lecture by 2009 Bicknell Lecturer Gregory Connolly, DMD, MPH, Professor of the Practice of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Connolly teaches and conducts research at Harvard School of Public Health on tobacco and health issues. He has published more than 100 scientific articles on tobacco product design, marketing and tobacco control interventions. He is the former director of Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Tobacco Control Program and over the ten years he directed the program cigarette consumption fell 50 percent in Massachusetts, three times the U.S. average. He was the second American to be awarded the Surgeon General’s Medallion by Dr. C. Everett Koop for his leadership in passing the federal Comprehensive Smokeless Tobacco Health Education Act. He is recognized as an international expert on smoking and health and is credited with ending the U.S. use of trade threats to compel foreign nations to import U.S. cigarettes. He has testified before Congress on more than a dozen occasions and appears regularly on U.S. national news networks. Connolly is a graduate of Holy Cross College, Tufts Dental School, and Harvard School of Public Health.
Connolly’s lecture will be followed by a panel discussion and a question and answer session with the audience. The panel discussion features
Patrick Basham, Director, Democracy Institute; adjunct scholar, Cato Institute;
Cheryl Healton, DrPH, President and CEO, American Legacy Foundation, and;
Michael Siegel, MD, MPH, Professor, Community Health Sciences, BUSPH
For more information visit sph.bu.edu/bicknell2009