Tobacco.org

• Danish nicotine case to go to Supreme Court  

A former smoker is to appeal against a Danish Eastern High Court ruling dismissing allegations that two tobacco companies manipulated nicotine contents, according to an Esmerk Danish News story.

Allan Lykken Jensen alleged that the Scandinavian Tobacco Group and British American Tobacco had manipulated the nicotine content of Prince cigarettes.

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25 year trends in first time hospitalisation for acute myocardial infarction, subsequent short and long term mortality, and the prognostic impact of sex and comorbidity: a Danish nationwide cohort study 

Conclusions The rate of first time hospitalisation for myocardial infarction and subsequent short term mortality both declined by nearly half between 1984 and 2008. The reduction in mortality occurred for all patients, independent of sex and comorbidity. However, comorbidity burden was a strong prognostic factor for short and long term mortality, while sex was not.

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• Local Nordic tobacco interests collaborated with multinational companies to maintain a united front and undermine tobacco control policies [FREE FULL TEXT] 

Implications for the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

Article 20 of WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control commits parties to promote and facilitate the exchange of information regarding practices of the tobacco industry.193 In implementing this requirement, it is essential for parties to focus on the operations of the multinational companies and on local tobacco companies and their organisations. Local companies may claim ignorance of multinational companies' strategies to undermine tobacco control while implementing those strategies secretly. . . .

Conclusions

Global tobacco control is contingent on diffusion of policy innovations and more comprehensive tobacco control policies. Local tobacco companies in the Nordic countries participated in the multinational companies' conspiracy to deny health dangers of smoking and oppose tobacco control measures because of the direct effects in Nordic countries and because of concern that such policies would spread to other countries. They worked individually and through NMAs with multinational companies to undermine tobacco control. As a result, tobacco control measures, particularly smoke-free laws, were delayed for several years. The local tobacco companies have publicly claimed ignorance of multinational tobacco company strategies while in fact they are implementing them vigorously. These experiences emphasise the importance for both sides of the debate of setting and defending precedents in tobacco control. They also demonstrate that in local debates over Framework Convention on Tobacco Control implementation, public health advocates and government officials cannot trust assertions by local tobacco companies that they are simply representing local interests, not those of the multinational tobacco companies.

What this paper adds

Tobacco companies and national manufacturer associations in Nordic countries have claimed that they have not been part of multinational tobacco companies' strategies to deny health hazards of smoking and undermine tobacco control as part of a successful effort to avoid liability for tobacco-induced disease and to oppose tobacco control policies.

Multinational tobacco companies engaged local tobacco companies in the Nordic countries to ensure a uniform position in denying health dangers of smoking and opposing tobacco control measures because of the direct effects in Nordic countries and because of concern that such policies would spread to other countries. The Nordic experience demonstrates the importance of setting and defending both good and bad precedents in tobacco control for both sides of the debate. It also demonstrates that in local debates over Framework Convention on Tobacco Control implementation, public health advocates and government officials cannot trust assertions by local tobacco companies that they are simply representing local interests, not those of the multinational tobacco companies.

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Local Nordic tobacco interests collaborated with multinational companies to maintain a united front and undermine tobacco control policies  

Objective

To analyse how local tobacco companies in the Nordic countries, individually and through National Manufacturers' Associations, cooperated with British American Tobacco and Philip Morris in denying the health hazards of smoking and undermining tobacco control.

Methods

Analysis of tobacco control policies in the Nordic countries and tobacco industry documents.

Results

Nordic countries were early adopters of tobacco control policies. The multinational tobacco companies recognised this fact and mobilised to oppose these policies, in part because of fear that they would set unfavourable precedents. Since at least 1972, the Nordic tobacco companies were well informed about and willing to participate in the multinational companies activities to obscure the health dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke and to oppose tobacco control policies. Cooperation between multinational companies, Nordic national manufacturer associations and local companies ensured a united front on smoking and health issues in the Nordic area that was consistent with the positions that the multinational companies were taking. This cooperation delayed smoke-free laws and undermined other tobacco control measures.

Conclusions

Local tobacco companies worked with multinational companies to undermine tobacco control in distant and small Nordic markets because of concern that pioneering policies initiated in Nordic countries would spread to bigger market areas. Claims by the local Nordic companies that they were not actively involved with the multinationals are not supported by the facts. These results also demonstrate that the industry appreciates the global importance of both positive and negative public health precedents in tobacco control.

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• Nicotine worsens processing ability 

The brain gets a kick-start - but after that its performance progressively deteriorates.

A non-smoker with only the natural amounts nicotine in the blood can process around 70 elements per second, while a non-smoker with nicotine in the blood can process only 55 elements, according to a new study.

"These are significant results because nicotine is often presented as a performance-enhancing substance in public debates. This can help us to refine the picture," says Signe Vangkilde, who has just defended her thesis, entitled 'Modulations of Visual Attention in Time and Space', at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen.

Faster and worse

The bar chart shows that non-smokers without nicotine in the blood were able to process more information than nicotine-affected non-smokers and smokers. (Illustration: Signe Vangkilde)

Previous studies focused on getting test subjects to answer as quickly as possible, she says. But that has only helped to distort the picture.

"Nicotine-affected subjects answer faster than non-nicotine affected subjects, so nicotine has long been regarded as a performance-enhancing substance," she says. "But I wanted to examine what happens when you omit motor skills - which relate only to how quickly test subjects answer and not how well."

In other words, she wanted to determine whether the performance of nicotine-affected subjects was faster and better, or faster and worse. Her findings indicate the latter.

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• Minister’s taxpayer-funded smoking box causes a stink – UPDATED  

The food, agriculture and fisheries minister, Mette Gjerskov, announced Monday evening that she had now decided to pay for a smoking booth she had installed in her office using taxpayer funds.

"It's never been a question of whether I was trying to get out of paying for the smoking booth – it was strictly about solving a practical problem," Gjerskov said in a statement.

"It's important for me not to expose others to second-hand smoke, and it goes without saying that I abide by smoking laws. But I've heard the criticism and will pay for the smoking booth myself."

The food, agriculture and fisheries minister, Mette Gjerskov of the Socialdemokraterne (S), is under fire for her decision to install a smoking booth in her office. It’s not the unhealthy habit that is causing a rift, however, but the fact that 33,744 kroner of taxpayers’ money went towards providing Gjerskov with her own private smoking area.

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• 50-year smoker loses cigarette company case  

A Danish man who encountered health problems after 50 years of smoking has lost his legal fight against the tobacco company he favoured.

Allan Lykke Jensen told the Copenhagen High Court that although he knew it was unhealthy to smoke, House of Prince cigarettes contained more nicotine than stated and additives that had a greater effect on him. He also said that the brand’s ventilation system, developed to reduce the intake or tar, was designed so it was unconsciously blocked by the smoker.

Due to its status as a test case, the matter was brought before the High Court in its first instance. . . .

“My lawyer received a letter from the health minister this morning in which she said that she intended to regulate the tobacco industry, so perhaps there is some victory there,” Jensen said.

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EDITORIAL: Variation in risk of second primary cancer  

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Associations between first and second primary cancers: a population-based study 

Interpretation: Excess risk of a second primary cancer was due mainly to a 2.2-fold risk of the second cancer being the same type as the first, whereas the risk of it being a different type was only 1.1-fold. However, heterogeneity among cancer types was substantial.

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Risk of second cancer in cancer survivors mainly confined to the same cancer type as the first 

Cancer survivors have more than double the risk of a second primary cancer of the same type, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), whereas the risk of a second primary cancer of another type was only slightly elevated.

Danish researchers looked at data for the entire population of Denmark . . .

"The striking contrast between the 2.2-fold increased risk of a second primary cancer being the same type as the first and the 1.1-fold increased risk of it being different from the first cancer suggests that characteristics of the individual patient were involved," writes Dr. Stig Bojesen of Herlev Hospital, Copenhagen University Hospital and the University of Copenhagen, with coauthors. "The risk of a second primary cancer seems to be specific to cancer type and is probably driven by the patient's genetic and lifestyle risk factors."

They also looked at the association of the first cancer to smoking because it is known to increase the risks of many types of cancer. "We were surprised to see that in our study, the risk of other smoking-related cancers in patients surviving a smoking-related cancer was only 1.2-fold," said Dr. Bojesen. "The good news is that in the individual cancer survivor, the increased risk of a new cancer is mainly confined to the same cancer as the first -- even in people with an unhealthy lifestyle such as smoking."

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No Link Between Selenium, Lower Lung Cancer Risk  

Despite some evidence tying the mineral selenium to a reduced risk of lung cancer, a new long-term study sees no connection between the two.

In fact, researchers found that among heavy smokers, those with the highest selenium levels had a greater risk of dying from lung cancer than those with the lowest levels.

The reason for that finding is not known, and it may have nothing to do with selenium itself. But the researchers say they cannot rule out the possibility that heavy smoking and high selenium somehow act together to promote lung cancer.

The bottom line for smokers is that the best way to curb your lung cancer risk is still to kick the habit.

"The best advice regarding smoking is: Stop," lead researcher Poul Suadicani, of Bispebjerg University Hospital in Copenhagen, told Reuters Health in an email.

The study, reported in the European Respiratory Journal, included more than 3,300 older Danish men followed for 16 years. At the start, all had their blood selenium levels measured.

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Hospital team significantly reduced risk of further vascular events after 'mini strokes' 

Patients who had a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), sometimes referred to as a "mini stroke", were much less likely to experience further vascular events in the first year if their care was co-ordinated by a special hospital team. That is the key finding from a study published in the November issue of the European Journal of Neurology.

Researchers from the Department of Neurology at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark studied 306 patients admitted to the hospital with a TIA. They found that when the patients were treated by an acute TIA team their cumulated risk of having a stroke in the first seven days was 65% lower than expected. The cumulated risk in the first 90 days fell by 74%.

"The aim of our study was to see if patients had better clinical outcomes if they were under the care of a special team, which integrated outpatient care and stroke unit facilities and provided on-going nurse-led counselling" says lead author Dr Paul von Weitzel-Mudersbach. . . .

* The majority of the patients (95%) fulfilled at least one secondary prevention measure: reduced blood pressure, reduced cholesterol, no smoking and self-reported adherence to antithrombotic treatment. 48% achieved three out of the four targets. . . .

* More than 60% of the patients who smoked at the time of their TIA changed their smoking habits - 31% quit and 29.5% reduced their smoking by at least 50%. Most of the changes happened in the first seven days.

"Our study shows that urgent treatment of patients with TIA is feasible and associated with a substantial reduction in stroke risk during the first three months, which is consistent with previous studies from the UK and France" says Dr von Weitzel-Mudersbach.

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• Kids buck no-smoking trend 

While the number of adults who smoke is gradually dropping, the rate of teenage smoking is holding steady.

Since 2006, the number of 15-year-olds who smoke every day has remained at eleven percent for boys and ten percent for girls, according to a new study by the National Institute of Public Health (SIF). Three percent of all 13-year-olds smoke every day, the study found.

“We ought to be seeing a drop in the number of 15-year-old smokers, but it doesn’t surprise me that it’s not happening because there hasn’t been any particular effort to make it happen,” Pernille Due, head of research for the SIF, told Politiken newspaper. “The prices are still relatively low, and in the schools they talk about alcohol and drugs and only very rarely about smoking. More should be done to decrease the number of young smokers.”

At the beginning of 2008, the Danish Cancer Society presented the government and parliament with eleven recommendations for how to reduce the number of young smokers by half.

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• Smoking laws too lax, health experts warn 

Seven years after signing the World Health Organisation’s landmark treaty to reduce smoking globally, health professionals say the government is not taking its promise seriously.

In March 2004 the government and an overwhelming majority of MPs ratified Denmark’s support of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The countries that signed the convention promised to “develop, implement and regularly update and revise widespread, cross-sector national strategies, plans and programmes for tobacco control”.

Norway and Great Britain are just two countries who took those requirements seriously and subsequently saw dramatic decreases in smoking.

But health experts in Denmark, where smoking is still allowed in bars smaller than 40 sq. m, and where an estimated 25 percent of people over the age of 13 smoke every day, say the government has not lived up to its promise.

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Associations of Unhealthy Lifestyle Factors with Sexual Inactivity and Sexual Dysfunctions in Denmark 

Conclusion.  In both sexes, several unhealthy lifestyle factors were associated with sexual inactivity with a partner in the last year. Additionally, among sexually active participants, men with unhealthy lifestyles were significantly more likely to experience sexual dysfunctions. Considering the importance of a good sex life, our findings may be useful in attempts to promote healthier lifestyles. Christensen BS, Grønbæk M, Pedersen BV, Graugaard C, and Frisch M. Associations of unhealthy lifestyle factors with sexual inactivity and sexual dysfunctions in Denmark.

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