Tobacco.org

Last Chance / Levitation and Smoking: Signature Images in Video Works 

Few things say serious art like a darkened gallery and multiple video screens, which makes Marian Goodman one of the most serious galleries in town. In side-by-side solo shows through Wednesday, it is screening new work by two prominent artists in the cinematic medium, Chantal Akerman and Eija-Liisa Ahtila. . . .

Ms. Akerman bites off less and chews it more thoroughly. If anything, she is underreaching with “Women From Antwerp in November, 2007,” which appears on a band of five relatively small screens. Each shows one woman — occasionally, two or three — smoking. At times they are in a bar, but more often they are outside, at night.

They walk along sidewalks, hang out on street corners, sit reading in parks, struggle with matches in the rain, weave home drunkenly, pass out or doze off. Smoke swirls. There are moments of tears and laughter. Best scene: in a bar one woman takes a cigarette from the mouth of another, uses it to light her own and puts it back.

That everyone is trim, great-looking and exceptionally stylish makes “Women of Antwerp” seem like a compilation of smoking moments from other movies; practice shots by a fashion photographer who wants to direct; or overproduced, Europeanized film versions of Cindy Sherman’s early work. . . .

Video art by Chantal Akerman and Eija Liisa Ahtila is on view through Wednesday at Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th Street, Manhattan; (212) 977-7160.

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• Dutch health minister says marijuana to be exempt from July 1 smoking ban  

Dutch health minister Ab Klink said visitors to coffee shops will be free to smoke marijuana as long as it is not mixed with tobacco, after a smoking ban affecting all restaurants and bars goes into effect on July 1.

The minister was replying to questions tabled by parliamentary colleagues on whether coffee shops will become completely smoke free when the ban goes into effect.

Current tobacco laws in the Netherlands do not cover the smoking of pure marijuana or cannabis in coffee shops, he said.

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• Electronic cigarette investigation called for 

Health organisations have urged health minister Ab Klink to launch an investigation into health risks associated with electronic cigarettes, which allow users to 'smoke' nicotine without tar and tobacco.

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EDITORIAL: Some strange health stats 

Perhaps this is your classic good news-bad news scenario. First the bad news - being an overweight smoker will likely kill you earlier than most. (Actually that's not really news).

Now the good news - you are not as big a drain on the health-care system as your healthy peers who live longer, a new study says.

A Dutch study concludes preventing obesity and getting people to stop smoking will indeed save lives, but it won't save money.

In what can only be viewed as obtuse irony, the study says it costs more to care for healthy people who live, on average, years longer. This, of course, counters the widely held perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars. . . .

Obviously it can cost less to care for unhealthy people simply because they die sooner. Seems like the ultimate irony - being alive costs more than being dead.

Still, it beats the alternative.

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Healthy people place biggest burden on state 

Healthy people cost taxpayers more in medical bills over their lifetimes than smokers or the obese, a new study has found.

Because they tend to live longer, the savings that they make the state in youth and middle age are wiped out by the high cost of dealing with lingering diseases of old age like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

By contrast smokers - who pour millions extra into government coffers by purchasing cigarettes - cost the state the least because they tend to die younger. . . .

It is estimated the situation is already costing the NHS £1 billion a year.

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Lifetime Medical Costs Of Obese People Actually Lower Than Costs For Healthy And Fit, Mathematical Model Shows 

A new research paper suggests that preventing obesity might result in increased public spending on medical care. Many countries are currently developing policies aimed at reducing obesity in the population. However, it is not currently clear whether successfully reducing obesity will also reduce national healthcare spending or not. Pieter van Baal and colleagues, from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, created a mathematical model to try to answer this question. . . .

The researchers found that the group of healthy, never-smoking individuals had the highest lifetime healthcare costs, because they lived the longest and developed diseases associated with aging; healthcare costs were lowest for the smokers, and intermediate for the group of obese never-smokers.

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• Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure 

Conclusions

Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.

Funding: This work was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports. The funder did not have any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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McPHERSON: Does Preventing Obesity Lead to Reduced Health-Care Costs 

Most people want to live a longer life, and they do not consider the consequences to society. But a major goal of life is to maximise one's total quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). Unfortunately, this new study provides little insight into the total QALYs associated with obesity and smoking. Certainly those who are obese and those who smoke will live fewer years on average, but will these people be compensated by enriched quality of their fewer years? Available evidence suggests strongly that quality of life, quite apart from increased illness rates, is considerably compromised by obesity [6].

We know already that health expenditure is high amongst the elderly, especially so amongst those who die of old age [7]. Van Baal and colleagues' study confirms the high medical costs of living to old age, but the results should not be interpreted as justifying the “cost savings” to society of dying younger. And, as the authors point out, it would be wrong to interpret the findings as meaning that public-health prevention (e.g., to prevent obesity) has no benefits. As the authors say, whilst prevention may not be “a cure for increasing expenditures—instead it may well be a cost-effective cure for much morbidity and mortality and, importantly, contribute to the health of nations” [1].

The balance of QALYs gained or lost, although not addressed in the van Baal study, could have been addressed—at least approximately. The subsequent analyses ought to tell us what this balance looks like for successful projects to contain the growth of obesity in populations. We need to know this balance both for lifetime gains and losses in quality of life and for comparisons of aggregated quality of life between more-obese societies and less-obese ones. Unlike the health expenditure comparison considered by van Baal and colleagues, the signs are that the overall balance will be entirely positive for obesity prevention—for individuals and populations.

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• Fat people, smokers cheaper to treat than long-living healthy people, study says 

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday. It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

"It was a small surprise," said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. "But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more."

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers. . . .

Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.

The results counter the common perception that preventing obesity will save health systems worldwide millions of dollars.

"This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars," said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science. . . .

"Lung cancer is a cheap disease to treat because people don't survive very long," van Baal said. "But if they are old enough to get Alzheimer's one day, they may survive longer and cost more."

The study, paid for by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, did not take into account other potential costs of obesity and smoking, such as lost economic productivity or social costs.

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Lung cancer is a cheap disease to treat because people don't survive very long. But if they are old enough to get Alzheimer's one day, they may survive longer and cost more.
Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led a study on health care costs which did not take into account other potential costs of obesity and smoking, such as lost economic productivity or social costs.

• Painting the World  

VERMEER'S HAT

The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

By Timothy Brook

Bloomsbury. 272 pp. $27.95 . . .

China.

Vermeer's Hat thus aims "to capture a sense of the larger whole of which both Shanghai and Delft were parts: a world in which people were weaving a web of connections and exchanges as never before." To do this, Brook looks at seven works of art -- not all of them by Vermeer -- "for the hints of broader historical forces that lurk in their details." For instance, in the chapter titled "School for Smoking," he notices that 17th-century Dutch porcelain, representing Chinese scenes, often shows people smoking. Where did the painter get the idea that the Chinese smoked? This leads to an overview of tobacco commerce and consumption in Asia, building on accounts of the shipping routes, the trade laws and the movement of silver, as well as tobacco, to the East. But Brook also takes time to discuss the social impact of chi yan or "eating smoke."

Such interlacing of the economic with the social and ideological Brook labels "transculturation," . . .

Commercially, the 17th century was an age of silver, tobacco and slaves, and Brook shows how the three interconnect to form an intricate economic network. This new international economy is revealed in every aspect of life, not only in the account books of the VOC and the histories of the Jesuit missionaries in China and Latin America, but also in the items depicted in paintings by a Delft artist who died young. All our experience is global. As Brook writes in his final chapter, "If we can see that the history of any one place links us to all places, and ultimately to the history of the entire world, then there is no part of the past -- no holocaust and no achievement -- that is not our collective heritage." Vermeer's Hat shows how this is true of the 17th century and by so doing provides not only valuable historical insight but also enthralling intellectual entertainment.

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Europe's best indie music festival  

It's not just the abundance of beautiful bodies or the cheap beer that differentiates watching a gig in the Dutch city of Groningen from one in London. It's the trails of cigarette smoke drifting through the music venue I'm squeezed into.

UK band The Ting Tings are performing at Huize Maas, excited bodies press around me pushing for the front of the stage, and I have a familiar moment of checking that my dress has not caught the tip of someone's lit cigarette. I've been set on fire before this way. While the smoking seems oddly retro, the reason we're here is to celebrate the best in emerging new music. . . .

Within rolling distance of Huize Maas is its antithesis, a legendary venue called Vera at 44 Oosterstraat. . . .

In the basement bar, with its fairy lights and peeling paint, groups of rosy-cheeked drinkers hang out enjoying their last few months of smoking indoors. Groningen introduces the smoking ban from July 1, when patrons will experience the delight of waking up the next morning and not having their hair smell like ashtrays.

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New mayor gets private smoking room 

Former defence minister Cees van der Knaap, who is about to be sworn in as mayor of Ede, is having a special smoking room built next to his office, the Telegraaf reports.

The paper says chain-smoking Van der Knaap has also made sure that civil servants, who currently have to go outside to smoke, will also get an indoor smoking area.

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• Dutch hospitality sector accelerates smoking ban 

on July 1, 2008, smoking will be prohibited by Dutch law in the entire Dutch hospitality sector.

But a spokesman for the Royal Hospitality Association Netherlands (KHN) told reporters on Monday some 70 per cent of the Dutch hospitality sector will voluntarily implement the ban from Tuesday.

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The fashionable fake... cigarette? 

A Belgian manufacturer has been overwhelmed with orders for its new electronic cigarette, the SuperSmoker. Many Dutch smokers are flocking to the stores for this fake ciggie that doesn't stink or burn tar, and is just generally healthier than a real cigarette. The SuperSmoker could also soon provide a perfect solution to new Dutch laws prohibiting smoking in public places, which will come into effect in just over a year. But researchers wonder if this novel craze is here to stay. . . .

The SuperSmoker is made of synthetic material and works with nicotine capsules that are placed in the tube of the imitation cigarette. The user can regulate the strength of the nicotine, from light to heavy. As the smoker inhales, the end of the cigarette lights up and what appears to be a plume of smoke is released. It's actually condensation. Cees Schaap says this is one of the reasons why this 'cigarette' is so trendy.

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• Netherlands slow to ban smoking  

Dutch smokers are feeling put upon. A new law is due to come into effect next summer which will drastically restrict smoking in restaurants and bars. An estimated 30 percent of Dutch adults still smoke, and they're none too happy with the latest developments.� As the restrictions have increased, so have groups fighting for smokers rights. Groups such as Against the Smoking Ban, Forces Smokers Club, Smokers Revolution and The Party Against Nannyism.

The Party Against Nannyism's founder Kees Uitenbroek brought a petition to parliament this week with nearly 100,000 signatures calling for the new restrictions to be scrapped. . . .

Once considered a forerunner in smoking regulation, the Netherlands is now in danger of being left behind, even with the new smoking restrictions.

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