No clue re herds, but as someone lucky enough to have visited a koala sanctuary and petted one I do know that their fur is as soft as you wished it was. Good for Oz!

How would that switch work re: the 2025 off-season? Would there be a mini season in spring 2026?

ScotusBlog argument summary is below (and can see some of my thoughts in my feed). Perhaps will get sent back to the FDA to review the marketing plan, but seems unlikely to be a broader win for the plaintiffs.
www.scotusblog.com/2024/12/just...

I look forward to hearing those thoughts!

Is there any liveblog that you'd recommend to help inform those who did not go to law school as to what is happening?

Smoking has become concentrated in low education working class men over time. I guess as the Republican Party took over that segment as their base it was only a matter of time before nicotine itself became politically sorted and coded.

We think so. 90%+ of menthol Camels are Crush varieties.

#tobregsky Thank you to our funders and institutions for supporting us and this work! If you have any questions, please ask them here or by email (see the paper!). 11/11

A provision that would have enacted similar manufacturer penalties for youth use called the "Lookback" was proposed in the original 1998 Master Settlement Agreement but was removed. We propose bringing it back! 10/x

Assessing penalties in the form of user fees that are high enough to dissuade selling products that are appealing to young people would directly change manufacturer incentives to sell tobacco products to young people. 9/x

Policy changes to FDA CTP User Fee Collections need to be made to 1) adjust for inflation (stuck at 2019 levels), 2) cover all CTP-deemed products (Cough! E-cigarettes), and 3) allow for charging fees that are disproportionate to market share. 8/x

Surveillance efforts (particularly NSDUH) should gather information on tobacco product brand, flavor, and intensity of use across all FDA-deemed tobacco products to enable brand-level underage usage analysis on an ongoing basis.

OK, so we find some brands are popular with young people... what does it mean? We draw one implication for surveillance and one for policy. 7/x

Four cigar brands had significantly higher underage shares than the rest of the market: Backwoods (27.0%), Al Capone (21.0%), Game (19.0%), and White Owl (14.4%). Together, these brands comprised 11.7% of total consumption but 41.5% of underage use. 5/x

Three cigarettes had significantly larger underage shares than the rest of the market: American Spirit menthol (4.6%), Camel menthol (3.7%), and Newport menthol (1.3%). These brands comprised 15.2% of total cigarette consumption but 36.6% of underage use. 4/x

AFTER Federal Tobacco 21, underage people reported consuming 0.6% of all cigarettes and 6.0% of all cigar days (Cigars per day aren't captured in NSDUH; this is a theme). That figure is lower than it used to be, but different products have different underage use levels! 3/x

We use NSDUH to calculate the share of total cigarette and cigar consumption belonging to each brand, the share of underage cons (<21) within each brand, and the share of total underage cons of each brand. 2/x