Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
(Healingtalks) – Cornell University researchers made a discovery that those eating soup and using a refilling bowl tended to sip twice as much soup as those only given normal-size bowls. Apparently the portion size had a substantial influence.
Could this insight be applied to making smaller packs of cigarettes and to save lives?
The 10-cigarette pack
It’s time overdue for a different and smaller standard-size cigarette pack. Currently the government mandates a standard 20 cigarettes per pack. Cigarette packs with less could help smokers at least cut back – and that is what some 70% of smokers want to do. But if you buy a full pack and smoke one, the other 19 are there to entice you for quite a while.
Paying for the trade-off
Would changing the pack size make a difference and catch on? Smokers generally don’t purchase cartons but more expensive packs. So they might be willing to do the same for smaller packs. The limited access can help cut down or quit smoking.
Now is the time
Now is the time to consider this change as Congress gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to do so. Before the FDA could only regulate nicotine replacement therapies such (patch and gum) but not the tobacco products themselves. Now, the FDA has the broader authority to regulate cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco.
As the FDA is developing new tobacco regulations; it should therefore consider smaller size packs.
This meets smokers needs and wants
Most smokers actually want fewer cigarettes. The average number of cigarettes smoked per day declined from almost 19.6 in 1993 to about 16.8 in 2004. Non-daily smokers consume yet less cigarettes per day. A smaller pack might get smokers to smoke still less. Evidence suggests that those who cut back are then more likely to eventually quit.
Why larger packs
Part of the reason for larger 20-cigarette packs is to impede youths from smoking by keeping cigarette pack prices high. But according to the CDV, only about 14% of youths who smoke buy their cigarettes directly from a store. 84% get them from family and friends.
Impediments to smoking
Among the enacted impediments to smoking are:
Increased federal, state and even city excise taxes
FDA ban of flavored cigarettes that appeal to youths
Ban of all outdoor advertising within 1,000 feet of schools
Making it illegal to sell to those under 18
Let’s add another
Teen smoking is again on the rise so why not help them and the majority of smokers trying to quit or cut back by mandating smaller packs. Indeed if the size of the bowl can determine how much soup you eat, so can the size of the pack determine how many cigarettes we smoke.
Based on a NYT article by Jody Sindelar, a health economist and professor at the Yale School of Public Health. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where she combines economics and psychology to study addictions using the new approaches of behavioral economics. This article was written in association with The Op-Ed Project, an organization seeking to expand the range of opinion voices to include more women.
Videos
Another option: Video on slim cigarettes or making cigarettes thinner
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Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
(Healingtalks) We know that smoking can cause some major illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, and certainly respiratory disease that all lead to untimely or premature death. It is reported that nearly half a million people in the USA die prematurely (about 1/5th of annual deaths) and 100,000 in the UK due to smoking. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), nearly a 100 billion dollars are also wasted annually because of lost productivity.
Smoking is the single largest preventable global cause of death. In addition, second-hand smoke exposure is a major health hazard.
Smoking causes cancer
A stunning 90% of lung cancer victims developed their condition due to smoking. Smokers also have a significantly higher risk of many other forms of cancer, including kidney, esophagus, nose, mouth, cervical, bowel, pancreas, liver and so on.
Why does smoking raise cancer risk?
The answer is simple. There are over 4,000 different and often toxic ingredients in cigarette smoke that can harm us. Tobacco smoke, however, consists mainly of three ingredients:
Nicotine is not known as a carcinogenic. Rather it is addictive. Nicotine gets smoker’s quickly hooked. It reaches the brain in just 15 seconds after inhalation. Nicotine is used also a controlled insecticide where its use leads to vomiting, seizures, and an overall depression of the central nervous system, as well as growth retardation. It impairs a fetus’ development.
Carbon Monoxide is a tasteless poisonous gas. The body finds it hard to differentiate carbon monoxide from oxygen and absorbs it readily into the bloodstream. Carbon monoxide causes fatigue, weakness, and dizziness. It is also a cardiovascular depressant. It is especially toxic for babies in the womb, infants and smokers with impaired immune systems.
Taris carcinogenic. Worse yet, when a smoker inhales, about 70% of the tar remains in their lungs. If you try a smoker’s handkerchief test (fill the mouth with smoke but don’t inhale, and rather blow the smoke through the handkerchief) and you will see the sticky dark brown stains. Do this again, but this time inhale and the handkerchief only has a faint light brown stain. The rest rains in your lungs and other respiratory channels.
Smoking and heart/cardiovascular disease
Smoking is a known cause of atherosclerosis, thus contributing to coronary heart disease. People with coronary heart disease are much more likely to have a heart attack.
Smoking worsens a major heart disease risk factor. It does so by raising blood pressure. This makes it harder to exercise and to function overall. A much higher percentage of smokers have strokes compared to others of the same age. Those who smoke run a higher risk of developing aortic aneurysm and arterial disease. When we inhale smoke regularly, the cerebrovascular system is damaged. Additionally female smokers who use contraceptives has a still higher risk of developing coronary heart disease and stroke. Also if you smoke your levels of HDL or good cholesterol will drop. If you have a history of heart disease and smoke, forget it.You are literally playing with fire to snuff out your life premaurely.
Sources:
American Heart Association, Cancer Research UK, Medical News Today archives.
Keywords: Why people smoke, anti-smoking, smoking health, cause of smoking, smoking damage, why is smoking bad, how is smoking bad, smoking bad for you,smoking health, ways to quit smoking, health smoking, you tobacco, how bad is smoking, what is bad about smoking, smoking is bad for you, why is smoking bad, smoking is bad, bad about smoking, why bad smoking
Picture of Sana, a Smoker Child Who Needed a Tracheotomy (Surgical Removal of Trachea)
What are Cigarettes?
Straight Up
By Oliver Sparks, Staff Writer
(Healingtalks) Cigarettes are something that will mess up our minds. Straight up!
The PrimaryMind Twister in Cigarettes
The primary psychoactive, or “mind twisting” chemical in cigarettes, is obviously nicotine.
“Mind twisting” means changing your thought process unnaturally and harmfully.
We fall for this because sometimes we get stressed and need a quick fix. When that first warm inhaling feel of sweet carbon monoxide and fiberglass fills your chest, in just 10 seconds, it appears all stress is gone. Now it’s up to you to finish the cigarette, slowly rotting your lungs.
So there is a catch. Yes you get immediate gratification for a price. In a decade or two you mess up your lungs – what filters and brings in oxygen, the carrier of life, to all of your cells.
What’s Else Is In Cigarettes
And that’s not all. Over 4,300 more separate chemicals can be found in a single cigarette. But when these all are burned together, they cause even more toxic chemical compounds to form. This is why, in 1970, Nixon passed a bill requiring a warning label on all packs of cigarettes, now commonly known as the Surgeon General’s Warning. Additionally the bill outlawed TV cigarette ads in commercials. Yet cigarette smoking recently is on an upswing, especially among teens.
As it turns out, approximately one quarter of the youth alive in the Western Pacific Region (East Asia and the Pacific) today will die from tobacco use. Cigarette smoking is the second major cause of premature death, worldwide.
So what are cigarettes?
A ticking time bomb in tiny tubes that should all have skull and bones marked on the them by law.
A smoking cylindrical death and a cause of dismemberment.
IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IT….ASK SANA, PICTURED ABOVE…AFTER HIS TRACHEOTOMY
Keywords
What is in a cigarette, how cigarettes harm us, deaths from cigarette smoking
(Healingtalks) Tobacco and smoking have a number of negative effects:
Tobacco smoking kills
Tobacco exacerbates poverty
Tobacco contributes to world hunger by diverting prime land away from food production
Tobacco production damages the environment
Tobacco reduces economic productivity
While the Tobacco industry may employ people, this can be considered an example of “wasted labor”, capital and resources.
When governments and organizations have attempted to control tobacco (for example, where it is used, or how it is advertised), the tobacco industry uses its enormous resources to derail or weaken laws and agreements.
Mild, light, low tar, full flavor, fruit flavored, chocolate flavored, natural, additive-free, organic cigarettes, PREPS (Potentially Reduced-Exposure Products), harm-reduced
An estimated 200,000 workers die every year due to exposure to smoke at work; The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that second-hand smoke is responsible for about 3000 lung cancer deaths annually among non-smokers in the country.
It is worth citing the WHO again for a summary of how tobacco exacerbates poverty:
Tobacco and poverty are inextricably linked. Many studies have shown that in the poorest households in some low-income countries as much as 10% of total household expenditure is on tobacco [and therefore] less money to spend on basic items such as food, education and health care. In addition to its direct health effects, tobacco leads to malnutrition, increased health care costs and premature death. It also contributes to a higher illiteracy rate, since money that could have been used for education is spent on tobacco instead. Tobacco’s role in exacerbating poverty has been largely ignored by researchers in both fields.
John Madeley also notes in his book, Big Business Poor People (Zed Books, 1999), that heavy advertising of tobacco by Transnational Corporations (TNCs) can “convince the poor to smoke more, and to use money they might have spent on food or health care, to buy cigarettes instead.”
Tobacco contributes to world hunger, diverting prime land from food production
Smoking also contributes to world hunger as the tobacco industry diverts huge amounts of land from producing food to producing tobacco as John Madely also notes:
Dr Judith MacKay, Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control in Hong Kong, claims that tobacco’s “minor” use of land denies 10 to 20 million people of food. “Where food has to be imported because rich farmland is being diverted to tobacco production, the government will have to bear the cost of food imports,” she points out.
… The bottom line for governments of developing countries is that the net economic costs of tobacco are profoundly negative—the cost of treatment, disability and death exceeds the economic benefits to producers by at least US$200 billion annually “with one third of this loss being incurred by developing countries”.
— John Madeley, Big Business Poor Peoples; The Impact of Transnational Corporations on the World’s Poor, (Zed Books, 1999) pp. 53, 57
Tobacco production damages the environment
Madeley also describes in detail other impacts on land from tobacco use:
The land that has been destroyed or degraded to grow tobacco has affects on nearby farms. As forests, for example, are cleared to make way for tobacco plantations, then the soil protection it provides is lost and is more likely to be washed away in heavy rains. This can lead to soil degradation and failing yields.
A lot of wood is also needed to cure tobacco leaves.
Tobacco uses up more water, and has more pesticides applied to it, further affecting water supplies. These water supplies are further depleted by the tobacco industry recommending the planting of quick growing, but water-thirsty eucalyptus trees.
Child labor is often needed in tobacco farms.
For more detail, refer to Big Business Poor Peoples; The Impact of Transnational Corporations on the World’s Poor, by John Madeley, (Zed Books, 1999) ch. 4.
Tobacco smoking damages the environment
In The Tobacco Atlas; Costs to the Economy (last accessed July 2, 2008), the WHO noted the impact of fires caused by smoking (10% of all fire deaths, killing 300,000 people, costing $27 billion).
It also noted that 1987 saw the world’s worst forest fire caused by cigarettes happened in China in 1987, killing 300 people, making 5,000 homeless, and destroying 1.3 million hectares of land.
This hints at the side-effects of tobacco use; costly forest fires which often make for sensational headlines, especially in dry, hot conditions.
With increasing concern about climate change, the extra carbon dioxide released by such forest fires does not help.
There are also other less direct impacts to the environment. For example,
The resources required to make cigarette lighters and related products, to package and sell them
The resources required to box and package tobacco products
The resources required to employ people working in the industry, to advertise and market the products
etc.
(Many lighters are made from plastics and require a small amount of fuel. In the vast quanitities they are produced these small amounts of oil and related products that go into these can add up. As people are getting jittery about high oil prices, clean energy and so on, these kind of things add to those concerns, even if this is not seen as a priority concern.)
Given that tobacco use has no benefit for society, these costs further highlight wasted resources. While tobacco companies are somewhat held to account for the additional costs to people’s health, they are rarely held accountable for promoting products which have these additional consequences.
Tobacco Reduces Economic Productivity
Summarizing from the WHO again:
The economic costs of tobacco use are equally devastating. In addition to the high public health costs of treating tobacco-caused diseases, tobacco kills people at the height of their productivity, depriving families of breadwinners and nations of a healthy workforce. Tobacco users are also less productive while they are alive due to increased sickness. A 1994 report estimated that the use of tobacco resulted in an annual global net loss of US$ 200 thousand million, a third of this loss being in developing countries.
A report by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids says that from a socioeconomic and environmental perspective, there is little benefit in tobacco growing, and that “While a few large-scale tobacco growers have prospered, the vast majority of tobacco growers in the Global South barely eke out a living toiling for the companies.” Furthermore, “the cigarette companies continue to downplay or ignore the many serious economic and environmental costs associated with tobacco cultivation, such as chronic indebtedness among tobacco farmers (usually to the companies themselves), serious environmental destruction caused by tobacco farming, and pesticide-related health problems for farmers and their families.”
Amongst other things, the treaty requires countries to
Impose restrictions on tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion;
Establish new packaging and labeling of tobacco products (e.g. ban misleading descriptions such as “low tar” and “lights”;)
Establish clean indoor air controls; and
Strengthen legislation to clamp down on tobacco smuggling.
This treaty was adopted “despite a sustained campaign by the tobacco lobby via certain governments to dilute it—particularly the United States, Germany and Japan,” as the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reported (“Tobacco Lobby Threatens to Derail Global Antismoking Treaty”, February 12, 2005, Volume 330, p. 325.)
Furthermore, “pressure from the industry has not let up … the United States proposed a clear reference to global trade rules” potentially allowing companies and governments to attack the legally binding health treaty under trade laws, “even though the … treaty gives governments the right to prioritize health over trade issues.”
As the BMJ also noted, “poor countries are now more vulnerable to the powerful tobacco industry and need support in implementing tough anti-tobacco measures.”
In recent years, in wealthy countries, attempts have been made to introduce smoke-free legislation. In California for example, smoke-free laws were introduced in July 1998. As the Californian Medical Association’s president, Dr. Robert Hertza commented, “California’s lung cancer rates have fallen six times faster than in US states without smoke-free laws.” (“Smoke-free workplaces would hit tobacco profits”, BMJ, Vol. 330, p.325) This illustrates the potential of treaties such as this global tobacco treaty to save lives of millions.
The WHO has defined a policy approach summarized by the acronym, MPOWER, to
Monitor tobacco use and prevention policies
Protect people from tobacco smoke
Offer help to quit tobacco use
Warn about the dangers of tobacco
Enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and
Raise taxes on tobacco
As their report (see previous link) argues, these measures are shown to work and have a significant effect on reducing tobacco consumption, when applied.
Only 5% of the global population is protected by comprehensive national smoke-free legislation and 40% of countries still allow smoking in hospitals and schools;
Only 5% of the world’s population lives in countries with comprehensive national bans on tobacco advertising and promotion;
Just 15 countries, representing 6% of the global population, mandate pictorial warnings on tobacco packaging;
Services to treat tobacco dependence are fully available in only nine countries, covering 5% of the world’s people;
Tobacco tax revenues are more than 4000 times greater than spending on tobacco control in middle-income countries and more than 9000 times greater in lower-income countries. High- income countries collect about 340 times more money in tobacco taxes than they spend on tobacco control.
Tobacco Industry Hitting Back
The tobacco companies have tried various ways to minimize damage impact to their sales and reputation. They have sought to expand markets in other areas, especially the Third World as they find the First World slowly but increasingly hostile to their industry. Attempts at regulation are fought with various public relations attempts, and corruption.
Four companies now control 75 percent of global cigarette sales, as sophisticated strategies for supply, production and sales have produced increasingly popular global brands.
The onward march of Marlboro man epitomises this globalisation, exploiting the opportunities presented by trade liberalisation, regional organisations and the communications revolution. Control efforts are undermined by the industry’s success in developing favourable relationships with many governments, the magnitude of their foreign direct investments and the scale of advertising, marketing and sponsorship campaigns. In addition, large-scale cigarette smuggling, which comprises one-third of total exports, depletes tax revenues and further jeopardises public health.
In recent years, the damage caused to a person’s health by tobacco consumption has been confirmed, attracted particular scrutiny at tobacco firms because they knew this for years, but attempted to hide their research.
Some countries, such as the US have had the resources and political will to tackle the large tobacco corporations. However, combined with the resulting smaller and tougher markets in the rich countries, multinational tobacco firms have intensified their efforts in other regions of world such as Asia, to continue growing and selling cigarettes, as well as expanding advertising (to create demand, not meet). And they have been successful, too. 84% of the estimated 1.3 billion smokers live in developing and transitional economy countries as the WHO has noted.
Targeting Children, Teenagers and Women
Almost understandably, tobacco companies are compelled to target the young and women.
Teenagers are future consumers often highly impressionable and in some societies with significant disposable income; for any company where brand and consumption of their products are important, attracting younger members of society increases the chances of longer term lock-in.
With the tobacco industry, ironically perhaps, as their products kill their customers (or as customers try to quit), they need to find newer consumers. Younger people will take a longer time to die or quit, thus increasingly the likelihood of continued sales.
Women generally smoke a lot less than men, everywhere. It can be deadly to unborn children, too. However, tobacco companies see women as an untapped market where there is more potential to increase consumption than with men.
So, unchecked and profit being the natural motive for the tobacco companies, children and women are natural target consumers.
For their 2008 World No Tobacco Day event, the WHO noted that “Most people start smoking before the age of 18, and almost a quarter of these individuals begin using tobacco before the age of 10.”
It noted how BAT’s own guidelines to stop selling to children in various ways were clearly ignored by itself in places such as Mauritius, Nigeria and Malawi. From selling single sticks (which is intended to target children), to advertising and promotions of the sort readily banned in most countries, to organizing events and popular concerts heavily branded with BAT’s logos and products, all pointed to BAT encouraging young people, as young as 8 or 10, to smoke.
A Committee of Experts had been set up in October 1999 to “inquire into the nature and extent of undue influence which the tobacco industry had exercised over UN organisations.”
This Committee produced the report that “found that the tobacco industry regarded the World Health Organization as one of their leading enemies, and that the industry had a planned strategy to ‘contain, neutralise, reorient’ WHO’s tobacco control initiatives.” They added that the tobacco industry documents show that they carried out their plan by:
Staging events to divert attention from the public health issues raised by tobacco use;
Attempting to reduce budgets for the scientific and policy activities carried out by WHO;
Pitting other UN agencies against WHO;
Seeking to convince developing countries that WHO’s tobacco control program was a “First World” agenda carried out at the expense of the developing world;
Distorting the results of important scientific studies on tobacco;
Discrediting the WHO as an institution.
Corruption
PAHO, the Pan American Health Organization (a regional office for the Americas for the WHO) issued a report titled Profits over People (17 December 2002). Looking at the Latin American and Caribbean countries and information from Philip Morris and British American Tobacco, the report details how the tobacco companies:
Were intensely competitive but collaborated in campaigns against common threats to the industry
Hired scientists throughout the region to misrepresent the science linking secondhand smoke to serious diseases, while cloaking in secrecy any connection of these scientists with the tobacco industry;
Designed “youth smoking prevention” campaigns and programs primarily as public relations exercises aimed at deterring meaningful regulation of tobacco marketing;
Had detailed knowledge of smuggling networks and markets and actively sought to increase their share of the illegal market by structuring marketing campaigns and distribution routes around it; and
Enjoyed access to key government officials and succeeded in weakening or killing tobacco control legislation in a number of countries.
They also added that “these tactics and strategies are not unique to the Americas region.”
Tobacco Companies Accused of Attempting to Undermine Tobacco Treaty
Thailand’s case stands out as an impressive example of a developing country successfully overcoming years of powerful tobacco industry interference in health policy [by putting in place effective tobacco advertising bans]. In Nigeria, Big Tobacco is using its economic muscle to try to keep treaty ratification off the table for discussion by manipulating media coverage and influencing government agencies. Guatemala’s current situation exemplifies the need for Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC—requiring parties to the treaty to protect public health policy from industry interference—and the importance of being vigilant to interference throughout the implementation process. The case of Guatemala also illustrates a new variation of old tobacco industry tricks, where Big Tobacco tries to pull the wool over policymakers’ eyes by advocating “regulation” while drafting legislation that actually weakens or conflicts with the tobacco treaty.
In Africa’s most populous nation (thus an attractive potential market for tobacco firms), Nigeria, the report was very critical of British American Tobacco (BAT):
In Nigeria BAT’s tactics to undermine health policies include attempting to bribe journalists with cash prizes for favorable media coverage and giving expensive gifts to regulatory agencies and government officials. The combination of a misinformed public and easily influenced government is a proven recipe for weak, corporate-friendly regulations.
Media is a top target in BAT’s efforts to misinform Nigerians. The corporation hosts expensive meals for media owners and editors, sponsors journalist association meetings, syndicates articles favoring corporate interests and tobacco products, and leverages its advertising power to stop the publication of critical articles.
But there is corruption at government levels, for they target government officials too, the report added. “Common BAT tactics to influence government officials include intense lobbying and expensive gifts.”
In Guatemala, the report accuses Philip Morris/Altria and BAT of “trying to stall or derail Guatemala’s treaty process” which goes against the tobacco Framework treaty which requires that the tobacco industry does not interfere with government policies.
For further information in this area, see also the following:
Reports such as those mentioned above show that there is a lot of political maneuvering by large tobacco companies to lower prices, to increase sales, etc. In addition, the poor and small farmers are the ones most affected by the impacts of tobacco companies. The hard cash earned from this “foreign investment” is offset by the costs in social and public health and the environment. In effect, profits are privatized; costs are socialized.
Wasted wealth, resources and labor
While the tobacco industry no doubt provides jobs for many people around the world, the total negative effects of the industry and of smoking tobacco suggests that this is “wasted wealth” and “wasted labor.”
Talented scientists and business people currently employed by this industry could potentially be working in other areas contributing to society in a more positive way, while agricultural workers could potentially be producing less damaging products, for example.
As noted earlier, wastage also occurs in the form of deaths from fires, the environmental damage caused by forest fires started by cigarettes, the resources needed to package, distribute, and employ people in the tobacco industry, the resources needed to create additional products such as cigarette lighters, promotional materials, etc.
In a way, there is also the extra cost of anti-tobacco campaigns! Arguably, without the excessive promotion by the tobacco industry, much time and resources would not have to be devoted by the World Health Organization and other campaigners on raising these issues; other concerns could then be given more attention.
While people have attempted to hold tobacco companies to account for the health burden they introduce, they are rarely held to account for these other forms of waste.
(Wasted wealth and wasted labor and wasted resources are discussed in more depth later in this site’s section on consumption and consumerism.)
Note that this does not have to be an authoritarian ban, as free choice is still a treasured value. Instead:
True costing of tobacco (factoring in health, environment and social costs, as well as additional economic costs that might be externalized) would increase the cost of tobacco products to a higher and more realistic value.
That could help pay for dealing with the various damages. It may potentially deter those whose “free” choice has been influenced by the numerous public relations, advertising and propaganda of the tobacco industry. (Some countries such as the UK do add taxes onto cigarettes, but largely to only cover health costs.)
Enormous PR related resources would be freed up for other needs, such as helping the tobacco industry clean up, diversifying into other areas, etc.
Heavily-burdened health services would additionally free up, thus leading to a potentially “snow-balling” series of positive effects.
A lot of this is perhaps wishful thinking, as the tobacco industry would lose out a lot, and no industry would like that. Their size, power and thus influence, means that they will (and have) hit back in many ways to dilute effective action.
Free choice?
It is often argued by those who prefer to smoke and not see more and more restrictions put in place that it is their free choice to smoke. Some will add that they do not smoke in front of children, etc and thus sound responsible.
Yet, on the one hand how free a choice is it to decide to smoke? Advertising, peer pressure, modern culture, stress all combine to give reasons for people to smoke.
A documentary about British American Tobacco pushing tobacco to children in Africa, produced by the BBC, tried to ask shareholders at an annual meeting what they thought: one smugly responded that he was for free choice and happy that the questioner lived in a society where he was free to ask such questions. In other words, the “free” choice to smoke was equated with the notion of freedom. This was just a regurgitation of marketing from tobacco companies that promoted similar messages decades earlier. The irony that this person “freely” commented this and had not possibly been influenced by such marketing, perhaps subconsciously, was not noted!
Furthermore, it may seem like a free choice to only harm oneself when deciding to smoke, but second hand smoking also kills.
And perhaps more remote than that is people half way around the world may be going hungry because land that could have been growing and sustaining local people is now diverted into environmentally damaging and wasteful tobacco production.
If one does not wish to give up smoking because it is considered free choice, how about quitting smoking so others may have a choice?
Malawi is reducing the production of tobacco following huge losses by smallholder tobacco farmers and commercial estates trading the crop on the country’s only official tobacco markets, the auction floors.
The world is facing a ‘global epidemic in need of a global effort’, according to a panel of experts on tobacco control, who met at the United Nations Tuesday to commemorate World No Tobacco Day.
Latin America and the Caribbean are taking firm steps against the use of tobacco with the adoption of no smoking laws, bans on advertising, and graphic pictorial warnings on cigarette packets.
Adventure motorcycle tours, and driving and racing events organised by tobacco firms. Canopies bearing cigarette brands in popular restaurants. Tobacco brands appearing beside the signages of convenience stores, whether along the Philippine capital’s urban alleys or provincial roads.
Tobacco multinational Philip Morris may have had good reason to send out victory smoke signals when Filipinos elected Benigno Aquino III to be president in May. After all, he is a regular smoker who has said he will not quit the habit.
Hoping for better opportunities than they can find at home, many families from Kyrgyzstan travel to find work. Neighbouring Kazakhstan has the strongest economy in Central Asia, and tobacco farms attract workers fleeing Kyrgyzstan’s high unemployment.
Thailand’s reputation as a South-east Asian country with strong anti-smoking laws is facing a direct challenge from the tobacco multinational companies, who are due to gather here in November for a major industry congress and exhibition.
When it comes to smoking, Indonesia remains the last paradise for a puff in Southeast Asia. Those addicted to cigarettes can openly light up in public places without worrying about tough anti-tobacco penalties found in the rest of the region.
(Healingtalks) Around 1.3 billion people smoke cigarettes worldwide. Statistically, the average smoker smokes around 30 cigarettes a day. A cigarette is made from cut up tobacco leaves that are rolled up and smoked. Cigarettes do not only cause health problems for the person smoking them, but also for the people that are around them. When a person smokes they breathe in the cigarette smoke, and then blow out the smoke. The smoke that is blown out by the smoker is called second hand smoke.
The areas where people are most commonly exposed to second hand smoke include the workplace and the home. In the United States roughly 126 million people who don’t smoke are exposed to second hand smoke. Second hand smoke has a number of effects on the non-smoker.
For people who have asthma, smoke can cause severe asthma attacks.
It can contribute to respiratory infections including bronchitis or pneumonia.
Secondhand smoke can also cause heart disease and cancer leading to death in people who do not smoke. Heart disease can lead to heart attacks in patients that otherwise may not have been pre-disposed to suffering one.
Prevention for Secondhand Smoke Exposure
Preventative measures should be taken to avoid secondhand smoke. If someone in the household smokes inside the home, one can ask them to smoke outside. For people who smoke in cars, drive separately, and do not drive with people who smoke while driving. Avoid areas where people are smoking, if at all possible walk as far around them as possible to avoid exposure. If someone you are with is smoking, it’s okay to say please don’t smoke that around me.
Smokers are more likely to get heart disease, have a heart attack, or get cancer.
There are many cancer risks involved with smoking, including lung cancer.
Not only does smoking pose the threat of health risks, it also can result in unwanted side effects. The cigarettes often leave the smokers’ teeth stained a very distinct yellow.
Another unwanted effect of smoking is the odor of the smoke. The smell of smoke attaches itself to everything. The smokers’ hair, clothing, and body will smell of smoke after smoking a cigarette. Wherever the person smokes, it will make everything there smell like smoke. People who smoke in their car are likely to have a car that will smell of smoke, and the same goes for homes.Over the years the government on a national and on a state level has had laws and regulations pertaining to cigarette smoking. In public buildings people are not allowed to smoke. Businesses have a right to allow or deny smoking on their premises. More and more places today are cracking down, trying to get smoke free places.
There are a variety of smoking cessation options available for people who smoke and want to quit. Some of the most common methods that have been around awhile now include nicotine patches, and nicotine gum. These allow the body to have some nicotine in the system, so the person isn’t quitting abruptly. Some people quit cold turkey, which means that they suddenly stop all cigarettes and no longer use nicotine. There are prescription drugs available for people to help stop smoking. Other options people can use to quit smoking include hypnosis, therapy, and health counseling.
Smoking contributes to around 400,000 deaths per year. People who smoke are risking serious health problems, and pose a threat to non-smokers health too. Laws and regulations have been placed over the years to help keep the public healthy. For people who do smoke, there are many cessation options available to choose from.
(Healingtalks) A study reported that American teenagers are becoming casual smokers, instead of heavy/regularly smokers.
In general young adults already had the highest smoking rates of any age group in the U.S., and thue new strategies to decrease young adult smoking are needed.
Researchers found that occasional smoking among teens rose from 1991 to 2009, while heavy smoking fell significantly.
We’re seeing a broad national phenomenon,” said Dr. Terry Pechachek, a study co-author from the Centers for Disease Control.
“With fewer cigarettes, the price effect, smoke-free policies and a change in the broad public awareness of risk, the heaviest patterns of use are becoming very rare,” Pechachek said.
But he warned against assuming that moderate smoking is safer in the long-run.
“It is important to note that light and intermittent smoking still has significant health risks,” Pechachek explained. “We think there may be an emerging pattern. We may be creating a new type of smoker that may be more durable, that are adapting to smoke-free environments and to changing social norms.”
Pechacek said that the high percentage of intermittent teenage smokers is unacceptable.
Teachers and parents should not downplay the risks of teen smoking
“It’s still a very risky behavior. We want to get across to people that although this is a positive trend, it’s very unacceptable to have so many children exposing themselves to something so addictive. The greatest danger is minimizing the risk.”
Here is more information on the study results
Major Rise in Teen Casual Smoking
Heavy smoking was defined by enjoying more than 11 cigarettes per day. Moderate smoking was defined as enjoying between six to 10 cigarettes per day. Light smoking was defined by having to five cigarettes per day. Between 1991 and 2009, heavy smoking among teenagers has decreased by 10 percent, from 18 to 8 percent.
During this time, casual teen smoking has increased from 67 percent to 79 percent.
No significant changes in smoking trends for African American teenagers was observed, but for Hispanic teenagers, the heavy smoking rate increased from 3.1 percent to 6.4 percent.
Risks of Teen Smoking
Smoking has different risks for people who smoke at all. By smoking, people have an increased risk for heart disease, heart attack, lung cancer, and other types of cancer. An estimated 90% of all lung cancer in males are caused by smoking. An estimated 80% of lung cancer in females is caused by smoking. Teenagers today are even more vulnerable because of the introduction of ever more adulterated GMO, and sugar-addictive fast foods that help create a teen obesity and diabetics epidemic.
Resulting Early Deaths From Smoking
According to the CDC, smoking cigarettes has contributed to an estimated 443,000 deaths annually.
Nearly one of every five deaths in the U.S. are related to smoking. Tobacco causes more deaths per year than Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders all combined.
This study was reported in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.
Keyword tags: American teen smoking, Hispanic teenagers smoking, teen smoking skyrockets,resulting early deaths from smoking, smoking causes death, smoking is death, rise in teen smoking
Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
Overview of Teen Smoking
(Healingtalks) Each day in the United States, 3,900 teens try smoking for the first time, estimates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Don’t allow your teen to become just another statistic. By talking with your teen in a frank and mature way, while setting a good example, you can help fight teen smoking and convince your teen to never start in the first place. Luckily, resources and parental support can help your teen to make the right choices when it comes to smoking.
Discussions with Children and Teens on Smoking
Start the discussion about smoking at a young age. The American Cancer Society recommends that the discussion begin with your child is only 5 or 6 years old. Talking about the health and social effects of smoking should be an ongoing dialogue in your home so that when your child grows into a teen, your opinion on cigarettes has been made clear. The ACS notes that many children take their first puff at age 11; it’s never too early to start talking about smoking.
Disclosure of the Dangers of Teen Smoking
Point out the health, social and economical dangers of smoking to your teen. Ask why he would want to participate in a habit that makes his clothes and hair smell, his body sick and his wallet empty. Ask your teen to make a list of the various pros and cons of smoking and to weigh the costs versus the gains to make the decision on smoking on his own.
Become an EX Smoker Re-learn life without cigarettes. Get a free EX® quit plan.
Role Play Teen Pressure to Smoke
Try role-playing exercises with your teen to ensure that she knows what to do in a situation where a cigarette is offered to her, suggests the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Pretend to be a peer and offer your child a cigarette. Remember to be as convincing as another teen might be, trying to entice your teen by saying smoking is fun, lots of people do it and it’s not like he’ll become addicted. Coach your teen through the things he can say to politely say “no” and leave the situation.
Offer a Good Example By Not Smoking in a Teen Household
Offer a good example for your teen. MayoClinic.com notes that smoking is more prevalent among teens whose parents also smoke. To set a good example, make sure that you show respect for your body and health by exercising and eating well, not only by abstaining from smoking. This shows your teen that you respect your body and want to maintain good health, ideals and values that can be passed on to your teen.
Direct Your Teen to Online Resources
Show your teen online resources that she can read on her own time. These resources, like the ones found at Kids Health, a division of the Nemours Foundation, and the American Academy of Family Physician’s Web site, give the health risks of smoking in plain terms that your teen can understand. It may help her to see that you’re not the only adult who disapproves of smoking. See also the further articles on smoking below.
Based on an article by Jae Ireland, posted on Livestrong.com. Jae got her start with a small Internet marketing firm in 2005 and has since designed and written for more than 20 commercial and informational websites. Her areas of interest and expertise include fashion, parenting, home improvement and health and fitness.
Means to display masculinity or femininity (e.g. the Marlboro Man, Ms Virginia Slim)
Ways to truly relax and feel at ease
Gateway to an addiction-free life
Road to avoid cancer, suffering, early death
Great way to make friends and not harm their lungs
An organic, poison-less puff
Something to impress your grandchildren with
Vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients and anti-oxidants
Something made with great love by a manufacture who
really cares for you and that you live a well and wholesome life
Pure clean oxygen puffs, good for deep breathing as in yoga exercises
Means to fight cancer and chronic disease rather than fall prey, and at
a younger age.
Of course, we all know the above…. don’t we?
If only we were all so rational about smoking.
Addictions by-pass the rational mind. Thus smokers need to be reminded, especially in the midst of a half century or more of sophisticated advertising featuring healthy-looking role models with huge smiles on their faces rather than pictures of the devil, sculls and bones, of death, disease, or the true outcome.
According to K. H. Ginzel, M.D., Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Arkansas, this deceptive imagery “captivates and seduces a growing youngster. The youngster, indispensable for being recruited into the future army of smokers, does not start to smoke cigarettes for the nicotine, but for the false promises they hold. Hence, deceit is in a cigarette.”
What’s not in a cigarette, an honest message or promise of benefits.
What’s not in a cigarette – the means to a better life vs early suffering and death.
Keyword tags: what is not in a cigarette, whats not in a cigarette, what’s not in a cigarette, what is really in a cigarette, whats really in a cigarette
(Healingtalks) For those who still don’t know — let me emphatically state that cigarette smoking is a true addiction! To grasp this well-documented fact, one really doesn’t have to study all the supporting scientific evidence. One simply needs to consider that no other drug is self-administered with the persistence, regularity and frequency of a cigarette. At an average rate of ten puffs per cigarette, a one to three pack-a-day smoker inhales 70,000 to 200,000 individual doses of mainstream smoke during a single year. Ever since its large scale industrial production early in this century, the popularity of the modern cigarette has been spreading like wildfire. Here is the first, and perhaps the most significant answer to the title question: Addiction is in a cigarette. Probing into what makes a cigarette so irresistible, we find that much of the recent research corroborates earlier claims: It is for the nicotine in tobacco that the smoker smokes, the chewer chews, and the dipper dips. Hence, nicotine is in a cigarette.
Nicotine and Much More in What’s in a Cigarette
In contrast to other drugs, nicotine delivery from tobacco carries an ominous burden of chemical poisons and cancer-producing substances that boggle the mind. Many toxic agents are in a cigarette. However, additional toxicants are manufactured during the smoking process by the chemical reactions occurring in the glowing tip of the cigarette. The number is staggering: more than 4,000 hazardous compounds are present in the smoke that smokers draw into their lungs and which escapes into the environment between puffs.
Cigarette’s Concentrated Pollution of Lungs
The burning of tobacco generates more than 150 billion tar particles per cubic inch, constituting the visible portion of cigarette smoke. According to chemists at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, cigarette smoke is 10,000 times more concentrated than the automobile pollution at rush hour on a freeway. The lungs of smokers, puffing a daily ration of 20 to 60 low to high tar cigarettes, collect an annual deposit of one-quarter to one and one-half pounds of the gooey black material, amounting to a total of 15 to 90 million pounds of carcinogen-packed tar for the aggregate of current American smokers. Hence, tar is in a cigarette.
Cigarette’s Air Pollution
But visible smoke contributes only 5-8% to the total output of a cigarette. The remaining bulk that cannot be seen makes up the so-called vapor or gas phase of cigarette “smoke.” It contains, besides nitrogen and oxygen, a bewildering assortment of toxic gases, such as carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, acrolein, hydrogen cyanide, and nitrogen oxides, to name just a few. Smokers efficiently extract almost 90% of the particulate as well as gaseous constituents (about 50% in the case of carbon monoxide) from the mainstream smoke of the 600 billion cigarettes consumed annually in the U.S. In addition, 2.25 million metric tons of sidestream smoke chemicals pollute the enclosed air spaces of homes, offices, conference rooms, bars, restaurants, and automobiles in this country. Hence,pollution is in a cigarette.
In addition, there is the chemical burden from sidestream smoke, afflicting smokers and non-smokers alike. Based on the reported concentrations in enclosed, cigarette smoke-polluted areas, the estimated intakes of nicotine, acrolein, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde peak at 200, 130, 75, 7, and 3 times the ADI, respectively. The high exposure to acrolein is especially unsettling. This compound is not only a potent respiratory irritant, but qualifies, according to current studies, as a carcinogen.
Illnesses That Follow Smoking
The witch’s brew of poisons invades the organs and tissues of smokers and nonsmokers, adults and children, born as well as unborn, and causes cancer, emphysema, heart disease, fetal growth retardation and other problems during pregnancy. The harm inflicted by all other addictions combined pales in comparison. Smoking-related illness, for example, claims in a few days as many victims as cocaine does in a whole year. Hence, disease is in a cigarette.
Limited Regulation of Cigarette Toxins and Carcinogens
The irony is that many of the poisons found in cigarette smoke are subject to strict regulation by federal laws which, on the other hand, specifically exempt tobacco products. “Acceptable Daily Intake,” ADI, is the amount of a chemical an individual can be exposed to for an extended period without apparent detriment to health.
Regulatory policy aims at restricting exposure to carcinogens to a level where the lifetime risk of cancer would not exceed 1 in 100,000 to 1,000,000. Due to a limited database, approximate upper lifetime risk values could be calculated for only 7 representative cigarette smoke carcinogens. The risk values were extraordinarily high, ranging from 1 in 6,000 to 1 in 16. Because of the awesome amount of carcinogens found in cigarette smoke and the fact that carcinogens combine their individual actions in an additive or even multiplicative fashion, it is not surprising that the actual risk for lung cancer is as high as one in ten. Hence, cancer is in a cigarette.
Among the worst offenders are the nitrosamines. Strictly regulated by federal agencies, their concentrations in beer, bacon, and baby bottle nipples must not exceed 5 to 10 parts per billion. A typical person ingests about one microgram a day, while the smokers’ intake tops this by 17 times for each pack of cigarette smoked. In 1976, a rocket fuel manufacturer in the Baltimore area was emitting dimethylnitrosamine into the surrounding air, exposing the local inhabitants to an estimated 14 micrograms of the carcinogen per day. The plant was promptly shut down. However eagerly the government tries to protect us from outdoor pollution and the carcinogenic risk of consumer products, it blatantly suspends control if the offending chemical is in, or comes from, a cigarette. Hence, hypocrisy is in a cigarette.
But there is still more in a cigarette than addiction, poison, pollution, disease, and hypocrisy. A half century of aggressive promotion and sophisticated advertising that featured alluring role models from theater, film and sport, has invested the cigarette with an enticing imagery.
Deceit and Death in Cigarettes
Imagery which captivates and seduces a growing youngster. The youngster, indispensable for being recruited into the future army of smokers, does not start to smoke cigarettes for the nicotine, but for the false promises they hold. Hence, deceit is in a cigarette.
In summary, no drug ever ingested by humans can rival the long-term debilitating effects of tobacco; the carnage perpetuated by its purveyors; the merciless irreversibility of destiny once the victim contracts lung cancer or emphysema; the militant denial on the part of those who, with the support of stockholders and the sanction of governments, legally push their lethal merchandise across borders and continents killing every year two and one-half to three million people worldwide. All things added together: death is in a cigarette.
K. H. Ginzel, M.D., is Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Arkansas. His work is concentrated in the area of nicotine and its effects.
Keyword Tags: What is really in a cigarette, whats really in a cigarette, what’s really in a cigarette, what is not in a cigarette, what’s in a cigarette
Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
(Healingtalks) Federal health officials released on Tuesday their final selection of nine graphic warning labels to cover the top half of cigarette packages beginning next year, over the opposition of tobacco manufacturers.
First Major Change in Cigarette Warning Labels
In the first major change to warning labels in more than a quarter-century, the graphic images will include photos of horribly damaged teeth and lungs and a man exhaling smoke through a tracheotomy opening in his neck. The Department of Health and Human Services selected nine color images among 36 proposed to accompany larger text warnings.
Health advocacy groups praised the government plan in the hope that images would shock and deter new smokers and motivate existing smokers to quit. The images are to cover the upper half of the front and back of cigarette packages produced after September 2012, as well as 20 percent of the space in cigarette advertisements.
“These labels are frank, honest and powerful depictions of the health risks of smoking, and they will help encourage smokers to quit, and prevent children from smoking,” Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said Tuesday in a statement.
Tobacco Companies’ Reactions
The four leading tobacco companies were all threatening legal action, saying the images would unfairly hurt their property and free-speech rights by obscuring their brand names in retail displays, demonizing the companies and stigmatizing smokers.
The government won one case last year in a federal court in Kentucky on its overall ability to require larger warning labels with images; the specific images released Tuesday are likely to stir further legal action. The Kentucky case is before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Mandate for Change
The new labels were required under landmark antismoking legislation giving the Food and Drug Administration power to regulate, but not ban, tobacco products. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act required F.D.A. action on the graphic warning labels by Wednesday, two years after President Obama signed it into law.
The United States was the first nation to require a health warning on cigarette packages 45 years ago. Since then, at least 39 other nations, including Canada and many in Europe, have imposed more eye-catching warnings, including graphic photos.
“This is a critical moment for the United States to move forward in this area,” the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, said in an interview. “The trends in smoking really support the need for more action now. For four decades, there was a steady decline in smoking, but five to seven years ago we leveled off at about the 20 percent level of adult and youth smoking in this country.”
Will Save Lives
Dr. Lawrence R. Deyton, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Tobacco Products, said the government estimates, based on other countries’ experience, that the new warning labels will prompt an additional 213,000 Americans to quit smoking in 2013, the first full year with the graphic labels.
“We are pleased with the images they picked,” said Nancy Brown, chief executive of the American Heart Association. “They strongly depict the adverse consequences of smoking. They will get people’s attention. And they will certainly be much more memorable than the current warning labels.”
Gregory N. Connolly, a professor and tobacco expert at the Harvard School of Public Health, also praised the strength of the warnings, but said the F.D.A. needed to take tougher action against cigarettes. “What’s on the pack is important, but if you really want to cut smoking rates, you’ve got to get inside the pack and deal with ingredients like menthol and nicotine,” he said.
Images Chosen
The nine images chosen in the United States include some that are among the most graphic of the 36 draft images. But they also include some of the less vivid, including a cartoon depiction of a baby rather than a photo in the draft set that showed a mother blowing smoke at a baby. The images, which are to appear on cigarette packs on a rotating basis, also include one of a man proudly wearing a T-shirt that says: “I QUIT.” All of the packs will also display a toll-free telephone number for smoking cessation services.
New Text Warnings
The F.D.A. has already proposed nine text warnings to be paired with the images, including: “Warning: Cigarettes cause cancer” and “Warning: Quitting smoking now greatly reduces serious risks to your health.”
Survey Testing
The government surveyed 18,000 Americans of all ages to determine which of the 36 proposed labels would be most effective to deter smoking. The F.D.A. can revise the selection of images in the future. A few smokers surveyed on New York sidewalks were unswayed by the images. Khariton Popilevsky, 46, a pawnbroker, shrugged and said: “Telling me things we already know. I’ll still be smoking.”
Hayley Sapp, 28, a paralegal, said: “There are lots of other high risks out there, you know. Obesity is huge.”
Saiful Islam, 34, a convenience store clerk, said higher prices would cut sales a lot more than the images on cigarette packs.
More Industry Reactions
A submission to the F.D.A. by R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard and Commonwealth Brands, the second, third and fourth largest United States cigarette makers, said the “nonfactual and controversial images” were “intended to elicit loathing, disgust and repulsion” about a legal product.
Gregg Perry, a spokesman for Lorillard Tobacco, said on Tuesday that the company was reviewing the graphics and would not comment at this time. A spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds repeated its earlier opposition to the graphic labels. The Altria Group, the largest tobacco company in the United States, said it would not comment.
Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, the only major tobacco company to support the overall F.D.A. legislation, said in a letter this year that the graphic warning provision was an unconstitutional part of the law “added in a last-minute amendment.”
Smoking Statistics
The rate of smoking in America has been cut roughly in half, to about 19 percent, from 42 percent in 1965. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death, killing 443,000 Americans a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each day, the government says, an estimated 4,000 youths try their first cigarette, and 1,000 a day become regular smokers.
Based on an article by By DUFF WILSON Originally published in the NY Times June 21, 2011
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(Healingtalks) A federal advisory panel on Friday said removing menthol cigarettes from the market would benefit public health in the United States but did not make any specific recommendation for action by the Food and Drug Administration.
FDA Authority and Review of Cigarettes
The F.D.A will review the findings of its Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee and perform its own research and policy study, Lawrence R. Deyton, director of the F.D.A. Center for Tobacco Products, said Friday after the advisory group wrapped up a year of study.
The advisory panel’s chairman, Dr. Jonathan M. Samet, a professor of medicine at U.C.L.A., said the committee had found a scientific basis for the added harm caused by menthol in cigarettes, a decision that could provide a legal basis for the F.D.A. to try to limit, phase out or even ban menthol in cigarettes.
The F.D.A., given the authority to regulate the contents of cigarettes by a 2009 law, will make a progress report in about 90 days, Dr. Deyton said. “Now it’s up to us to do our job,” he said.
Industry analysts said they believed the F.D.A. might take a moderate final action.
Any action, however, would pose a host of extremely difficult social and political issues and face a protracted legal challenge by the tobacco industry, which said a ban would have no public health benefit and would open up a criminal black market.
Menthol Cigarette Statistics
Menthol accounts for an estimated 27 percent of the $80 billion cigarette market in the United States and 19 million smokers — a disproportionate number of whom are African-Americans, younger and lower income. Menthol is preferred by more than 80 percent of black smokers, about 22 percent of white smokers, and nearly half of 12- to 17-year-old smokers.
Adverse Impact of Menthol Cigarettes
The panel, in recommendations made public on Friday morning, said evidence showed that menthol led to more youth smoking, made it easier to start smoking and harder to quit.
“Menthol cigarettes have an adverse impact on the public health in the United States,” Dr. Mark Stuart Clanton, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, High Plains Division, in Austin, Tex., said in summarizing the scientific findings.
Panel and Industry Response
The public health finding is the strongest statement yet by any government group in the world involving menthol flavors.
Congress had banned candy, fruit and spice flavorants in tobacco but deferred the politically difficult issue of menthol to the F.D.A.
Under the law, the panel was required to consider the impact of menthol on public health and the likelihood it made it easier to start or harder to quit smoking.
Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco -Free Kids, said, “They’ve shown menthol increases youth usage significantly, which is a trigger for action.”
Any government action would be preceded by a proposed rule and another round of public comments and no doubt, lawsuits. Two tobacco companies filed a lawsuit last month to try to block the advisory committee action or force the F.D.A. to disregard its advice, saying panel members were biased and had financial conflicts of interest from legal and consulting work against tobacco companies, a claim the F.D.A. denied.
Lorillard Tobacco of Greensboro, N.C., which is more than 90 percent reliant on revenue from menthol products and makes the top brand, Newport, is leading the opposition to F.D.A. action and one of its scientists is a nonvoting member of the F.D.A. panel. Jonathan Daniel Heck, Lorillard’s principal scientist, issued the industry view Thursday saying there was no evidence that menthol promoted youth smoking or made it harder to quit.
What Menthol Does and Its Marketing
Menthol provides a cooling sensation that masks the harsh taste of tobacco. Menthol levels have been manipulated to be lower for starter products like Newport, according to findings of the panel based partly on industry documents. Industry research shows younger smokers prefer some but not too much menthol.
Dr. Dorothy K. Hatsukami, a panel member and professor from the Tobacco Use Research Center at the University of Minnesota, said scientific literatures showed smokers who started younger were more likely to have trouble quitting and to die from smoking. “This is the population that’s particularly vulnerable to the effects of menthol cigarette smoking,” Mr. Hatsukami said.
Menthol has also been advertised over the years for claimed health benefits and it has been heavily advertised in African-American communities and magazines. Dr. Melanie Wakefield, an advisory panel member and director of an Australian research center, said menthol cigarettes continued to be marketed with images including the color green that falsely suggested they were healthier.
But Lorillard said the smoking rate of African-American youth was half that of white youth. The company also says there was “no difference in quit-smoking rates between menthol and non-menthol smokers.” Dr. Heck of Lorillard dismissed the false marketing claims as artifacts of decades past — although Dr. Wakefield said their effect persists.
Testing the FDA on the Menthol Issue
More broadly, health groups say the menthol issue poses the first real test of the advisory committee and F.D.A. toughness against cigarettes. The recommendation may signal a willingness to crack down on nicotine, the addictive ingredient in tobacco products. Levels of nicotine, like menthol, have been manipulated by companies to fulfill marketing aims.
The law allows the F.D.A. to regulate tobacco product ingredients but not to ban cigarettes or nicotine entirely.
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Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
(Healingtalks) An American tobacco company now, for the first time, lists some long-secret ingredients in its cigarettes and directly on the label.
Which Company/Brand of Cigarettes?
Liggett Group provided a list of its L&M cigarette brand ingredients, to be put on the cigarette packs.
What Tobacco Ingredients?
The 26-item L&M list includes blended tobacco and water, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, natural and artificial licorice flavor, menthol, artificial milk chocolate and natural chocolate flavor, valerian root extract, molasses and vanilla extracts, and cedarwood oil. molasses, phenylacetic acid and the oil of the East Indian mint called patchouli. Less familiar additives include glycerol, propylene glycol, isovaleric acid, hexanoic acid and 3-methylpentanoic acid.
Why L&M lists Its Cigarette Ingredients
The move comes as the state of Massachusetts is trying to compel disclosure of all tobacco ingredients by all cigarette makers, an effort other major tobacco companies are fighting fiercely.
Liggett, which broke with the industry by signing the first settlements with states, supports the Massachusetts effort as well. “Liggett believes that its adult consumers have a right to full disclosure,” Liggett head Bennett S. LeBow said in a statement. Activists have long pushed for disclosure of the ingredients, in part because consumers tend to be more wary of risks imposed upon them by others than of the risks they knowingly choose.
Exhaustive Public List of Ingredients?
Though at least 600 ingredients are used in American cigarettes (a composite list of 599 additives was privately given to congressional investigators in 1994) , Liggett claims it is giving the public an exhaustive list of every cigarette ingredient used in its brand. Previously tobacco companies also provided cigarette ingredients to the federal Department of Health and Human Services and for more than a decade, but HHS officials are legally not allowed to release that information.
Protecting Tobacco Companies’ Trade Secrets
David Remes, an attorney who represents the four other tobacco companies challenging the state of Massachusetts, said the case comes down to the tobacco industry’s right to protect its trade secrets – or profits over our health!
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(Healingtalks ) Cigarette flavors have gone through many changes since cigarettes were first made. Initially, cigarettes were unfiltered, allowing the full “flavor” of the tar to come through. As the public became concerned about the health effects of smoking, filters were added. While this helped alleviate the public’s fears, the result was a cigarette that tasted too bitter.
CIGARETTE FILTERS DON’T WORK
Filters do not remove enough tar to make cigarettes less dangerous. They are just a marketing ploy to trick you into thinking you are smoking a safer cigarette.
A TOBACCO INDUSTRY “SOLUTION”
The solution to the bitter-tasting cigarette was easy — have some chemists add taste-improving chemicals to the tobacco. Unfortunately, some of these chemicals also cause cancer. But not all of the chemicals in your cigarettes are there for taste enhancement.
OTHER CHEMICAL “ENHANCEMENTS” OF CIGARETTES
A chemical very similar to rocket fuel helps keep the tip of the cigarette burning at an extremely hot temperature. This allows the nicotine in tobacco to turn into a vapor so your lungs can absorb it more easily.
Toilet Bowl Cleaner? Most people prefer to use ammonia for things such as cleaning windows and toilet bowls. You may be surprised to learn that the tobacco industry has found some additional uses for this household product. By adding ammonia to your cigarettes, nicotine in its vapor form can be absorbed through your lungs more quickly. This, in turn, means your brain can get a higher dose of nicotine with each puff.
Fungicides and pesticides — Cause many types of cancers and birth defects.
Cadmium — Linked to lung and prostate cancer.
Benzene — Linked to leukemia.
Formaldehyde — Linked to lung cancer.
Nickel — Causes increased susceptibility to lung infections.
IF YOU ARE ANGRY
If you are angry that so many things have been added to the cigarettes you enjoy so much, you should be. Many of these chemicals were added to make you better able to tolerate toxic amounts of cigarette smoke. They were added without regard to your health and with the intent to keep you addicted. As the tobacco industry saying goes, “An addicted customer is a customer for life, no matter how short that life is.” Make sure that you have the last laugh. Regardless of the countless chemicals in your cigarettes, quitting is always your option. Perhaps this list of ingredients that are found in cigarettes is enough to make you want to quit smoking for good!
There are more than 4,000 potential ingredients in a cigarette other than tobacco.
Common additives include yeast, wine, caffeine, beeswax and chocolate. Here are some more interesting ones.
Ammonia – Household cleaner Angelica root extract – Known to cause cancer in animals Arsenic – Used in rat poisons Butane Gas – Used in lighter fluid Carbon monoxide: -Poisonous gas Cyanide – Deadly poison DDT – A banned insecticide Ethyl Furoate - Causes liver damage in animals Lead - Poisonous in high doses Methoprene – Insecticide Megastigmatrienone – Chemical naturally found in grapefruit juice Maltitol - Sweetener for diabetics Napthalene – Ingredient in mothballs Methyl isocyanate - Its accidental release killed 2000 people in Bhopal, India in 1984 Polonium – Cancer-causing radioactive element
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Based on an article by Lowell Kleinman, M.D., and Deborah Messina-Kleinman, M.P.H. drkoop.com Health Columnists
This serves as another article warning of the risks of smoking, and in long series of articles we have written or listed. The article below was originally published in the NY Times.
Smokers Found More Prone to Dementia
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Middle-aged smokers are far more likely than nonsmokers to develop dementia later in life, and heavy smokers — those who go through more than two packs a day — are at more than double the risk, a new study reports.
Researchers analyzed the data of 23,123 health plan members who participated in a voluntary exam and health behavior survey from 1978 to 1985, when they were 50 to 60 years old.
Twenty-three years later, about one-quarter of the group, or 5,367, had dementia, including 1,136 with Alzheimer’s disease and 416 with vascular dementia.
After adjusting for other factors, the researchers concluded that pack-a-day smokers were 37 percent more likely than nonsmokers to develop dementia, and the risks went up sharply with increased smoking; 44 percent for one to two packs a day; and twice the risk for more than two packs.
Former smokers and those who smoked less than half a pack a day were no more likely to develop dementia than nonsmokers. The study was published online on Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine.
To its lead author, Dr. Rachel A. Whitmer, an epidemiologist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif., the study offered a silver lining: unlike age and family history, she said, “this is one risk factor for dementia that can be changed.”
Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
(Healingtalks) There have been many illusions and deceptions promoted by the tobacco industry. Once upon a time my dad used to sell cigarettes in his grocery store. Both my parents smoked and we had little idea of how harmful this really was. The Marlboro Man looked very sexy and that lady on the Virginia Slims packaging. It took us time to learn the real story, past all the deceptions. Thanks goes here to our primary source of information from the Q & A’s of the local NY State Quit site
Q. Does nicotine cause cancer?
A: NO, Tar in cigarette smoke causes cancer. But nicotine is an addictive drug. It is NOT the nicotine
in cigarette smoke that causes cancer. Nicotine may keep you smoking,
but it is the other bad chemicals in cigarettes that make smoking so dangerous.
Q: If nicotine does not cause cancer, what does?
A: The tar and chemicals in the cigarette smoke vapor cause cancer,
not the nicotine.
Q: Why don’t the cigarette companies just take the tar out of the tobacco?
A: Tar provides most of the cigarette flavor. Less tar, less flavor!
Tar from a year’s worth of cigarettes
Q: Why don’t the cigarette companies just take the nicotine out of the tobacco?
A: You’d stop smoking and they wouldn’t get your money!
Q: Isn’t it better to switch to a low tar, low nicotine cigarettes?
A: No, even though it they may feel better on your chest, chances are you will puff harder and smoke more of each cigarette to get the nicotine.
Q: I have a hard time quitting smoking. Is there a safer way to get nicotine?
A: Yes, you can get clean nicotine in a nicotine patch, gum, Nasal spray, lozenge, or inhaler; these products don’t have tar.
In a 1994 Hearing before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, tobacco company executives swore that nicotine is not addictive. They lied.
Q: Won’t I get hooked on nicotine in the patch, gum, nasal spray, lozenge, or inhaler?
A: Most people find it easy to get off nicotine medicines after a few months. Cigarettes get you addicted by delivering nicotine quickly to your brain. Nicotine in smoke enters your lungs as a vapor and reaches your brain in 7 to 10 seconds. That is why most smokers feel satisfied after one or two drags on a cigarette. Products like the nicotine patch, gum, nasal spray, lozenge, or inhaler deliver nicotine slowly. Nicotine gets absorbed through the skin or through the lining of the nose or mouth.
Q: Does nicotine replacement really work, or is it just another way to get money out of smokers?
A: Nothing will work unless you want it to. Nicotine medications can help by dulling your cravings for a cigarette and are proven to increase your chances of quitting smoking.
Keywords
What’s up in smoke, what’s in a cigarette, nicotine and tar, nicotine addiction
(Healingtalks) For those who still don’t know — let me emphatically state that cigarette smoking is a true addiction!
To grasp this well-documented fact, one really doesn’t have to study all the supporting scientific evidence. One simply needs to consider that no other drug is self-administered with the persistence, regularity and frequency of a cigarette. At an average rate of ten puffs per cigarette, a one to three pack-a-day smoker inhales 70,000 to 200,000 individual doses of mainstream smoke during a single year. Ever since its large scale industrial production early in this century, the popularity of the modern cigarette has been spreading like wildfire. Here is the first, and perhaps the most significant answer to the title question: Addiction is in a cigarette.
Nicotine in a Cigarette
Probing into what makes a cigarette so irresistible, we find that much of the recent research corroborates earlier claims: It is for the nicotine in tobacco that the smoker smokes, the chewer chews, and the dipper dips. Hence, nicotine is in a cigarette.
In contrast to other drugs, nicotine delivery from tobacco carries an ominous burden of chemical poisons and cancer-producing substances that boggle the mind. Many toxic agents are in a cigarette. However, additional toxicants are manufactured during the smoking process by the chemical reactions occurring in the glowing tip of the cigarette. The number is staggering: more than 4,000 hazardous compounds are present in the smoke that smokers draw into their lungs and which escapes into the environment between puffs.
Tar in a Cigarette
The burning of tobacco generates more than 150 billion tar particles per cubic inch, constituting the visible portion of cigarette smoke. According to chemists at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, cigarette smoke is 10,000 times more concentrated than the automobile pollution at rush hour on a freeway. The lungs of smokers, puffing a daily ration of 20 to 60 low to high tar cigarettes, collect an annual deposit of one-quarter to one and one-half pounds of the gooey black material, amounting to a total of 15 to 90 million pounds of carcinogen-packed tar for the aggregate of current American smokers. Hence, tar is in a cigarette.
Pollution in a Cigarette
But visible smoke contributes only 5-8% to the total output of a cigarette. The remaining bulk that cannot be seen makes up the so-called vapor or gas phase of cigarette “smoke.” It contains, besides nitrogen and oxygen, a bewildering assortment of toxic gases, such as carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, acrolein, hydrogen cyanide, and nitrogen oxides, to name just a few. Smokers efficiently extract almost 90% of the particulate as well as gaseous constituents (about 50% in the case of carbon monoxide) from the mainstream smoke of the 600 billion cigarettes consumed annually in the U.S. In addition, 2.25 million metric tons of sidestream smoke chemicals pollute the enclosed air spaces of homes, offices, conference rooms, bars, restaurants, and automobiles in this country. Hence, pollution is in a cigarette.
Disease in a Cigarette
The witch’s brew of poisons invades the organs and tissues of smokers and nonsmokers, adults and children, born as well as unborn, and causes cancer, emphysema, heart disease, fetal growth retardation and other problems during pregnancy. The harm inflicted by all other addictions combined pales in comparison. Smoking-related illness, for example, claims in a few days as many victims as cocaine does in a whole year. Hence, disease is in a cigarette.
Cancer in a Cigarette
The irony is that many of the poisons found in cigarette smoke are subject to strict regulation by federal laws which, on the other hand, specifically exempt tobacco products. “Acceptable Daily Intake,” ADI, is the amount of a chemical an individual can be exposed to for an extended period without apparent detriment to health.
In addition, there is the chemical burden from side stream smoke, afflicting smokers and non-smokers alike. Based on the reported concentrations in enclosed, cigarette smoke-polluted areas, the estimated intakes of nicotine, acrolein, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde peak at 200, 130, 75, 7, and 3 times the ADI, respectively. The high exposure to acrolein is especially unsettling. This compound is not only a potent respiratory irritant, but qualifies, according to current studies, as a carcinogen.
Regulatory policy aims at restricting exposure to carcinogens to a level where the lifetime risk of cancer would not exceed 1 in 100,000 to 1,000,000. Due to a limited database, approximate upper lifetime risk values could be calculated for only 7 representative cigarette smoke carcinogens. The risk values were extraordinarily high, ranging from 1 in 6,000 to 1 in 16. Because of the awesome amount of carcinogens found in cigarette smoke and the fact that carcinogens combine their individual actions in an additive or even multiplicative fashion, it is not surprising that the actual risk for lung cancer is as high as one in ten. Hence, cancer is in a cigarette.
Hypocrisy in a Cigarette
Among the worst offenders are the nitrosamines. Strictly regulated by federal agencies, their concentrations in beer, bacon, and baby bottle nipples must not exceed 5 to 10 parts per billion. A typical person ingests about one microgram a day, while the smokers’ intake tops this by 17 times for each pack of cigarette smoked. In 1976, a rocket fuel manufacturer in the Baltimore area was emitting dimethylnitrosamine into the surrounding air, exposing the local inhabitants to an estimated 14 micrograms of the carcinogen per day. The plant was promptly shut down. However eagerly the government tries to protect us from outdoor pollution and the carcinogenic risk of consumer products, it blatantly suspends control if the offending chemical is in, or comes from, a cigarette. Hence, hypocrisy is in a cigarette.
Death in a Cigarette
But there is still more in a cigarette than addiction, poison, pollution, disease, and hypocrisy. A half century of aggressive promotion and sophisticated advertising that featured alluring role models from theater, film and sport, has invested the cigarette with an enticing imagery.
It is imagery which captivates and seduces a growing youngster. The youngster, indispensable for being recruited into the future army of smokers, does not start to smoke cigarettes for the nicotine, but for the false promises they hold. Hence, deceit is in a cigarette. In summary, no drug ever ingested by humans can rival the long-term debilitating effects of tobacco; the carnage perpetuated by its purveyors; the merciless irreversibility of destiny once the victim contracts lung cancer or emphysema; the militant denial on the part of those who, with the support of stockholders and the sanction of governments, legally push their lethal merchandise across borders and continents killing every year two and one-half to three million people worldwide. All things added together: death is in a cigarette.
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K. H. Ginzel, M.D., is Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Arkansas. His work is concentrated in the area of nicotine and its effects.
, WHO, last accessed July 2, 2008
