Tobacco.org

• AUDIO: The link between smoking and darker skin  

new research says just how addictive smoking is for you depends on the color of your skin. "Living on Earth's" Ike Sriskandarajah filed this report.

Dr. Gary King from Pennsylvania State University studied nicotine -- the highly addictive stimulant that makes people crave cigarettes -- and melanin, a compound your body makes that determines how dark you are. And he found a connection.

According to Dr. King, the melanin is strongly attracted to nicotine, and the way it works is when you light up a cigarette, the tobacco and all the chemicals created when it burns into your mouth, into your lungs and the rest of your organs, including your biggest organ ... skin.

"Skin does react like every other organ in the body unto nicotine and the other 4,000 chemicals that are consumed when one actually smokes," said Dr. King. "And that binding process in and of itself may lead to greater dependence."

Inhaling thousands of chemicals is not a good idea. But it is especially bad for people with dark, melanin-rich skin. That's because melanin grabs and hangs onto the nicotine.

Greater dependence means it's much harder for darker skinned people to kick the habit. In fact white smokers on average are 15 percent better at quitting than blacks. . . .

Which is why Dr. King's next step is to survey dark and light skinned people all over the world. His findings are based on a pretty small sample -- 150 subjects, all of whom are African American.

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• Address smoking, drinking as one health risk  

A new study conducted by Temple researchers has shown that children who engage in heavy drinking will more than likely also engage in heavy smoking, suggesting that health teachers can help combat the trend by addressing both topics as one health risk.

"These are important findings because they emphasize the need for education and intervention programs that target the co-occurrence of these two health risks," said Brian Daly, assistant professor of public health in the College of Health Professions and Social Work.

The researchers determined rates of smoking and binge drinking through the collection of anonymous survey data from 2,450 African-American, Hispanic and Caucasian students in grades 9-12 at Philadelphia public high schools.

They compiled the students’ responses from the 2007 Philadelphia Youth Behavioral Risk Survey (YRBS).

In their study report, they have revealed that the students were asked how many cigarettes they''d had per day over 30 days, and how many days over a 30 day period they''d had 5 or more drinks in a row. . . .

It was found that while Caucasian adolescents were more likely than African-Americans to engage in either binge drinking or smoking, both groups were equally likely to engage in both at the same time.

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• Home Smoking Rules Tend to Vary by Race 

Prohibiting tobacco use at home could reduce adolescent smoking rates, but the practice might be less common in black families than in white ones, a new study found.

“African-American homes have fewer full bans, and more people are allowed to smoke in those homes,” said Jessica Muilenburg, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the department of health promotion and behavior at the University of Georgia.

The study appears in the August issue of the journal Health Education & Behavior.

Researchers led by Muilenburg surveyed 4,296 Mississippi high school students about their smoking habits and home smoking rules. About three quarters of the teens surveyed were African-American; nearly one quarter were white.

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• U.S. tobacco bill puts focus on menthol cigarettes  

The future of menthol cigarettes, smoked by 12 million Americans and 75 percent of African American smokers, could be the next flashpoint in a decades-long campaign against smoking in the United States.

Last week, Congress passed a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products. President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law soon. . . .

Under the bill, the FDA must study the medical effects and marketing of menthol and its impact on blacks, Hispanics and other groups and report within 18 months. In theory, the FDA could then move to ban menthol cigarettes but some anti-smoking activists are skeptical the agency will do so.

"I am pessimistic that menthol will be banned," said Dr. Joel Nitzkin of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, who described the bill as a fraud.

Some anti-smoking groups wanted the ban on flavored cigarettes to include menthol but were told repeatedly that would kill the bill, said William Robinson of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network.

Tobacco industry lobbyists influenced some legislators, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, to accept what amounted to a soft compromise for menthol, he said.

"They buy influence when you have the deep pockets the tobacco industry has," Robinson said. Other anti-smoking groups denied lobbyists influenced legislators to gain a more favorable outcome for companies that produce menthol brands.

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• LINKINS: Menthol Fight Underreported In Landmark Cigarette Bill 

As it turns out, this would be one of those occasions when the New York Times might consider reading their own paper. Stephanie Saul, reporting last year, wrote a pair of articles that take on this matter head on.

'Cigarette Bill Treats Menthol With Leniency,' May 13, 2008:

Some public health experts are questioning why menthol, the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette choice of African-American smokers, is receiving special protection as Congress tries to regulate tobacco for the first time.

The legislation, which would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to oversee tobacco products, would try to reduce smoking's allure to young people by banning most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon.

But those new strictures would exempt menthol -- even though menthol masks the harsh taste of cigarettes for beginners and may make it harder for the addicted to kick the smoking habit. For years, public health authorities have worried that menthol might be a factor in high cancer rates in African-Americans.

The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. . . .

No matter the effect on public health, you wouldn't want to make Perfect the Enemy of Good, right? Despairingly, this is the attitude echoed by William Robinson, the head of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, who, in Saul's article, says: "The bottom line is we want the legislation...But we want to reserve the right to address this issue at some critical point because of the percentage of people of African descent who use mentholated products."

And it is a critical point, that Saul touched on in July's New York Times, in an article titled "Black Caucus Seeks Limits on Menthol Cigarettes": . . .

As Altria's competitors have repeatedly argued in opposing the legislation, Altria stands to retain more market share if the advertising crackdown makes it harder for other companies to improve their sales standing.

Oh, well. At least the black community can count on the Congress to revisit the issue, and perhaps decide at a later date that menthol should be treated like any other tobacco flavoring, right?

Actually, it's not even clear that the bill, as passed, will survive! Check out how Altria/Philip Morris -- good corporate citizen and risk reducer -- looms over a potential threat to the bill they so kindly helped to shepherd through.

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• SMALERA: Cool, Refreshing Legislation for Philip Morris  

"It is a dream come true for Philip Morris," Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, told me. "First, they make it look like they are a reformed company which really cares about reducing the toll of cigarettes and protecting the public's health; and second, they protect their domination of the market and make it impossible for potentially competitive products to enter the market." Other tobacco companies have taken to calling the bill the "Marlboro Monopoly Act of 2009."

It's hard to fathom where Congress is finding the political cover necessary to pass an industry-sponsored love letter like this one. But it's coming from Philip Morris' partner in crafting the legislation: a nonprofit anti-smoking organization called Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. . . .

So, as Roll Call recounts, Philip Morris executives made a huge shift in tactics. Rather than beat back every attempt at industry regulation, they initiated the secret Project Sunrise, an effort to help craft those regulations. Part of the strategy was to work with the very anti-smoking groups they had fought for years. Big Tobacco decided to sue for peace in order to win at the negotiating table.

Philip Morris found a willing partner in the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. . . .

In other words, the United States will have two choices in the above scenario, both hairy: protect the FDA's independence by admitting it banned cloves but not menthols only to protect Philip Morris' market share or let the FDA manufacture an explanation, contrary to recent studies, by which menthol cigarettes, which are used to lure children to smoke, are just as safe as unflavored cigarettes.

"The fact that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids negotiated this bill with Philip Morris has created a very strange situation," says Siegel. . . .

The marketing and advertising restrictions in the bill also seem targeted primarily at Philip Morris' competitors. But even so, Philip Morris, with either towering disingenuousness or a wicked sense of humor, has signaled it will fight those very restrictions, which it used as a chip with legislators and the Campaign to get the bill written. With nary a mention of its role in co-writing the bill, a statement from the company called it "imperfect."

Matthew Myers, the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids' director, continues to play the fool. He told ABC News, "Our hope is that the Senate HELP committee will resist all of those efforts to weaken the legislation." It's hard to even understand what Myers means—the doublespeak surrounding the bill is so great its passage will surely be hailed as a victory for anti-tobacco forces. And if Congress could find a way to make the bill any weaker, even the Marlboro Man himself couldn't help but crack a smile.

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• Black-market smokes threaten to snuff out ‘the dep'  

Quebec's iconic corner stores, sources of livelihood for many new immigrants, survived suburban sprawl and supermarket competition - but the rise of contraband cigarettes is rapidly driving them out of business

There was always a grim math to owning one of Quebec's iconic dépanneurs , the ubiquitous corner store that rewarded mom-and-pop owners with long hours and small profits.

But the dep, as the stores are often called in Quebec English, survived in the 1970s and '80s as customers fled to the suburbs and, in the 1990s, as mega-supermarkets and 24-hour chain stores mushroomed.

Dep owners say cut-rate illegal cigarettes from Mohawk reserves are driving them toward insolvency faster than Wal-Mart or Couche-Tard ever managed.

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• Parental Guidelines, Consequences May be Why Fewer Black Teens Smoke than Whites 

A new University of Washington study indicates that lower rates of smoking among black teens may be the result of black parents setting concrete guidelines about substance use and establishing clearly defined consequences for not following those guidelines.

The research also found that teens who associated with deviant peers – those who were in trouble at school, or who engaged in delinquent behavior or used alcohol or marijuana – were more likely to smoke, according to Martie Skinner, a research scientist with the Social Development Research Group, part of the UW’s School of Social Work and the study’s lead author.

“This study is important because we looked at how parental guidelines affected peer influences and smoking over a three-year period from the eighth to 10th grades,” she said. “Parents can have a strong influence on smoking behavior.

“In general, good parenting such as setting clear guidelines about drug use and forming strong relationships with your child reduces the likelihood of teens associating with deviant peers and has a significant impact on whether kids smoke or don’t smoke. Our findings are consistent with other research done here which shows parents are important influences on their teenagers including who they should hang out with.

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• Skin color clue to nicotine dependence 

d hair -- may be placing darker pigmented smokers at increased susceptibility to nicotine dependence and tobacco-related carcinogens than lighter skinned smokers, according to scientists.

"We have found that the concentration of melanin is directly related to the number of cigarettes smoked daily, levels of nicotine dependence, and nicotine exposure among African Americans," said Gary King, professor of biobehavioral health, Penn State.

King states that previous research shows that nicotine has a biochemical affinity for melanin. Conceivably, this association could result in an accumulation of the addictive agent in melanin-containing tissues of smokers with greater amounts of skin pigmentation.

"The point of the study is that, if in fact, nicotine does bind to melanin, populations with high levels of melanin could indicate certain types of smoking behavior, dependence, and health outcomes that will be different from those in less pigmented populations," explained King. "And the addiction process may very well be longer and more severe."

The team's findings appear in the June issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.

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• Smoking Everywhere at NAACP Image Awards Backstage Celebrity Experience 

Louis Gossett Jr. and Smoking Everywhere Co-Owner Ferdinand Bare at the Smoking Anywhere...

LisaRaye and Smoking Everywhere Co-Owner Ferdinand Bare at the Smoking Anywhere booth...

Vanessa A. Williams and Smoking Everywhere Co-Owner Ferdinand Bare at the Smoking Anywhere...

Yvette Obieful and Smoking Everywhere Co-Owner Ferdinand Bare visits the Smoking Anywhere...

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• Strike: When workers broke Camel City  

His sins were many, under the law of the land, and his penance, severe.

For organizing the Piedmont Leaf strike of 1946 at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a labor action that cast a long shadow on civil rights in the South, Philip Koritz was to be banished from North Carolina for life.

Still, just to be certain, the judge who set Koritz's penalty for a charge of resisting arrest on a picket line first sentenced the Local 22 director to six months' hard labor on a chain gang in Sparta, near the Virginia line. . . .

So when Koritz picked up his Unsung Hero award a month ago at the black-tie Sit-In Movement Inc. banquet in Greensboro, even an ageless Harry Belafonte confessed to doing a double-take: The erect, sturdy Koritz looks, and holds forth at 91, more like a man of 71. . . .

But it wasn't until Koritz beheld the downtown skyline and the headquarters of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. - a 20-story scale version of the Empire State Building, designed by the same architects - that the New York City-born union organizer understood what lay ahead.

"I knew this was formidable," Koritz recalls of what was then the world's largest tobacco company, booming at the height of World War II. "I knew we were in for a fight."

As did his parents, Russian-born Jewish sweatshop organizers and activists before him, and both his sons, union organizers in his footsteps, Philip Koritz arrived on the scene of a fight that had already started.

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• Environmental Tobacco Smoke Avoidance Among Pregnant African-American Nonsmokers 

Conclusions

Social contextual factors were the strongest determinants of ETS avoidance during pregnancy. Results highlight the importance of prenatal screening to identify pregnant nonsmokers at risk, encouraging household smoking bans, gaining support from significant others, and fully understanding the interpersonal context of a woman's pregnancy before providing behavioral counseling and advice to prevent ETS exposure.

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• Tobacco use among sexual minorities, USA, 1987-2007 (May): A Systematic Review 

CONCLUSION

Increased attention to smoking among sexual minority populations is warranted in clinical practice and in the creation of prevention and treatment programs. In examining the ample evidence of disparities in suicidal ideation among sexual minority adolescents, Morrison and L'Heureux noted that the “[p]revention of GLBQ [gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer] adolescent suicide thus could entail treating the environments that interface with GLBQ youth in addition to treating the adolescents themselves.”[87] The same may well be true for elevated prevalence of smoking among sexual minorities. Moreover, there are specific evidence-based steps that can be taken to reduce the impact of smoking on sexual minority communities.

Prevalence could be assessed and monitored through Youth Risk Behaviour Surveillance Surveys, Youth Tobacco Surveys, Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance Surveys, and Adult Tobacco Surveys. Many states, however, do not include sexual orientation, thus hindering monitoring efforts despite the fact that sampling methodology has been crucial in researchers’ understanding of gay and lesbian health and wellbeing.[88] Population-based interventions like increasing taxes on tobacco products and banning advertising should be combined with approaches that seek to reduce disparities in vulnerable populations.[9] These might include social marketing efforts, mass media campaigns in the gay and lesbian press, community recognition of tobacco as a problem,[89, 90] extra efforts for smoke-free gay and lesbian venues, targeted cessation services,[91] community rejection of tobacco industry sponsorship of events, and ongoing collaboration with the National LGBT Tobacco Control Network (http://www.lgbttobacco.org/). Given the leitmotiv of smoking as a health inequality in sexual minorities’ lives, local, state, and federal tobacco programs should target LGBT populations in tobacco prevention and cessation interventions and include priority population indicators in the evaluation of program outcomes.

. . .

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS?

• There is compelling evidence that an elevated prevalence of tobacco use among lesbian, gay, and bisexual men and women exists.

• National and state surveillance systems should incorporate sexual minority status to monitor the elevated use of tobacco by gays and lesbians.

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• Lorillard Tobacco Company Donates $1 Million to International Civil Rights Center and Museum 

Lorillard Tobacco Company has agreed to donate $1 million to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum to commemorate the unique role that Greensboro played in advancing the civil rights movement. The Center will be located in the original F.W. Woolworth building on downtown Greensboro's Elm Street and will honor the sit-in of February 1, 1960 that took place there, and other civil rights accomplishments. The donation is part of an additional $10 million in funding for the site that was announced during the Center's 49th annual awards gala on Saturday night.

According to Lorillard Chairman, CEO and President Martin L. Orlowsky, the opening of the museum will bring recognition to the role the city of Greensboro and its citizens played, and continue to play, in the civil rights movement. "As a company that has based its operations in Greensboro for more than 50 years, Lorillard has witnessed this community embrace, support and nurture the rights of individuals. We believe that the Civil Rights Center will have a profoundly positive impact on our city and county. We look forward to celebrating the historic importance of Greensboro and its brave young activists in launching the national civil rights movement 50 years ago."

Museum Executive Director Amelia Parker says that the financial generosity of Lorillard and other donors were the final pieces of the puzzle in bringing the project to life. "We are extremely grateful to Lorillard for this significant contribution that will help us in our efforts to open the Civil Rights Center in time to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro Sit-Ins," noted Parker.

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• Smoking ban hits language barrier 

PANCHKULA: What can be the biggest excuse in not following no-smoking orders in public places? Language?

Yes, at least in Panchkula, where happily puffing away babus and residents when caught, take the plea of having failed to fathom what is written on no-smoking boards as the language is English.

This also in a way explains why Panchkula administration has failed to launch a steady campaign against offenders and no challan has been issued ever since the nationwide ban came into force on October 2 last year. But not any more.

Panchkula deputy commissioner Rajinder Kataria has come up with a plan of placing warning boards in Hindi language mentioning the offence of smoking at the public place.

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