Tobacco.org

• Illegal cigarette trade has plenty of puff  

RIGHT in the middle of Australia's biggest city, you can walk into a shop and buy an illegal packet of under-the-counter cigarettes for $7.

Apart from being much cheaper than the mainstream brands, which sell for about $13 a packet, they don't have any of those confronting health warnings.

The ready availability of illegal cigarettes, which are understood to be in stock near many housing commission estates around the country, runs counter to a blizzard of government policies designed to discourage smoking. These include a NSW government ban on smoking in cars carrying children that started this week. . . .

Inner-Sydney resident Les Shearman has been trying for years to expose the illegal cigarette trade because of his concern about its impact on his friends' health. He believes the ready availability of cheap cigarettes is a major factor in their excessive smoking.

The Weekend Australian accompanied Mr Shearman while he purchased an illegal packet from Broadway Tobacco, located on one of the city's busiest thoroughfares. It took only seconds for him to purchase the pack from the woman behind the counter. No questions. No fuss.

"They are incredibly easy to get," he said. . . .

"If it is so easy for the likes of you and me to find a shop selling illegal cigarettes, why is it so difficult for the Australian Federal Police to find them?" Professor Chapman said.

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• ALLAN: Hardline smoking ban just isn't fit for purpose  

Psychiatric units in England are experiencing considerable difficulties implementing the smoking ban that came into force last July. A report published last month by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) says 85% of respondents to a survey it conducted said the ban had not been implemented "wholly effectively". Widespread practical problems reported included a rise in "secret smoking" - with associated safety concerns - and occasions where staff feel obliged to "turn a blind eye", especially when a patient is very unwell, thus placing them both in a position of breaking the law.

Two years ago, I wrote a piece expressing my concerns about the forthcoming ban. It seemed to me that the issue was a great deal more complex, both practically and morally, than a simple equation of "smoking is bad, therefore we must ban smoking". . . .

Policy-makers responded with a mixture of "guidance" and bullheadedness. "The 'smoking den' culture that has afflicted mental health wards for decades is over," said national director for mental health Louis Appleby, in a letter to this paper more than a year before the ban was even due to be brought in.

Some trusts have introduced the ban effectively, and their experience is informative. One trust quoted in the MHF report had introduced the ban in conjunction with "healthy lifestyle initiatives". It said that "every ward has stretch and movement to start the day, a gym, and staff trained to diploma level in physical healthcare".

If stopping smoking is to be seen as a positive choice, rather than the loss of yet another freedom, such initiatives would seem to be crucial, as would a healthy, nutrition-rich diet. I have never been on a ward that offered either.

My local mental health unit, which was purpose-built only a few years ago, does not have a gym at all. Nor, crucially, do wards have direct access to a safe outside space. . . .

If every ward could be provided with such facilities, most people would embrace the ban as a huge step forward. But that is not the reality most staff and patients face. . . .

The fact is that psychiatric wards contain people who are ill - some too ill to leave the ward and certainly too ill to appreciate the benefits of not smoking. In the interests of common humanity, staff are turning a blind eye and breaking the law. They shouldn't have to.

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• Using The Internet To Help Young Smokers Quit 

The University of Illinois at Chicago is leading a $2.9 million National Cancer Institute project to increase demand for evidence-based, Internet-based smoking cessation treatment among young adults.

"Even though many young adults think about quitting and actually want to stop smoking, they tend not to use what we know works - evidence-based approaches to quitting," said psychology professor Robin Mermelstein, director of UIC's Institute for Health Research and Policy and principal investigator of the five-year study.

Young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 have the highest rates of smoking compared to any other age group, but they have among the lowest rates of quitting, according to Mermelstein.

A multidisciplinary team of investigators from UIC, the University of Iowa and the American Legacy Foundation will work with GDS&M Idea City advertising agency to develop interactive, Internet-based ads and evaluate what messages motivate young smokers to use the evidence-based stop smoking program www.BecomeAnEx.org. . . .

The four-part study will develop Internet-based ads, evaluate if the ads are reaching young adults and driving them to Internet-based cessation programs, determine if the approaches are effective, and find out if those who used the Internet-based program were successful in stopping smoking.

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• Rising tobacco output flies in the face of WHO commitment 

India’s tobacco production rose by 25 per cent to 314 million kg in 2008-09, making it even more difficult for the country to meet its commitment to the World Health Organization (WHO) to reduce production by 50 per cent within the next decade.

“The country’s tobacco production reached 314 million kg in 2008-09, as against 252 million kg in the previous year. The rise in output has been massive,” state-owned Tobacco Board Chairman J Suresh Babu said.

The output from Andhra Pradesh, the largest producer, rose to 200 million kg in 2008-09 from 165 million kg in the previous year. Production in Karnataka surged to 114 million kg as against 87 million kg during the review period,Babu said.

The rise in production may spell bad news for the country. India, the third-largest exporter of tobacco in the world, became a signatory to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2003, whereby it is mandatory to reduce tobacco supply by 50 per cent within 10-15 years of signing the pact.

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• Non compliance with smoking ban implies fines 

Luanda - The non compliance with the smoking prohibition in public places, which was approved last Wednesday by the Angolan government, will imply fines that vary from 5 to 10 minimum salaries.

This measure covers institutions of central and local administration, hotels, restaurants, airports, night clubs, telephone booths, train stations and public toilets, said to the press the director of the legal department of the Ministry of Public Administration, Employment and Social Security (MAPESS), Jesus Maiato, on the fringes of the meeting of the Cabinet Council.

According to the decree of the government, it will only be allowed to smoke in places where the smoker is alone and therefore he/she will not harm the health of other people.

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• VIDEO: Up in Smoke: How the Tobacco Industry Shaped the New Smoking Bill 

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dr. Nitzkin. Would you say this bill was written by Philip Morris?

DR. JOEL NITZKIN: I would say so. The bill was negotiated between Philip Morris and Tobacco-Free Kids, and it appears from the actual text of the bill that the Philip Morris people did their homework very well and knew exactly what they wanted, while those appointed from Tobacco-Free Kids to negotiate on behalf of the public health community really had no understanding of tobacco-related science, of how and why kids initiate tobacco use, or the steps that could be taken to stop them. So it resulted in a bill that gives the appearance of effective regulation, but not the substance. And with the exception of the graphic warnings, which were added in the Senate, not in the original House bill, every provision having to do with restriction of marketing of tobacco products falls into one of two categories: either it’s already in place as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement, or it has already been thrown out by the US Supreme Court.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And why this alliance between the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and Altria?

DR. JOEL NITZKIN: Well, it appears that a political decision was made that the only way they could get tobacco regulation through the Congress is if they could get Philip Morris, our nation's largest and most dominant cigarette company, to endorse the bill. And they felt that without that endorsement, they could not get a bill through Congress. . . .

DR. JOEL NITZKIN: There were strong objections from the African American community about the menthol exclusion. To satisfy those requests, Representative Waxman wrote in a provision saying that the Science Advisory Committee to the FDA would have to consider the menthol issue and issue a ruling on it.

The problem is, the guidelines that the committee is mandated to go by, written into the law, says they can only ban things on the basis that they increase the risk of cancer or some other serious disease, or they increase the addictiveness of the tobacco product. There is nothing in the law that would allow them to ban any ingredient that’s there for the purpose of attracting people to cigarettes who otherwise would not smoke. . . .

To make things even worse, if I could continue for a moment, if somebody with a smokeless product wants to prove that their product is of lesser risk than cigarettes, they have to undergo basically impossible-to-do scientific studies. But if a cigarette company wants to market its cigarette as lower exposure, all they have to do is change the chemical composition by that small amount, and then they can advertise it as lower exposure without any scientific proof that it’s safer or less risky.

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• State vote no longer certain on smoking ban for bars, cafés 

Opponents of South Dakota’s new state law banning smoking in bars, casinos and restaurants that serve alcohol might not get the chance to put the issue to a statewide vote after all.

That’s because the leader of South Dakota’s anti-tobacco movement filed a lasthour challenge to their referendum petitions Thursday.

The referendum petitions had prevented the ban from taking effect July 1 at the same time as most other new South Dakota laws passed by the Legislature last session.

If the petitions survive the challenge, a statewide vote would be held as part of the November 2010 general election.

But if Jennifer Stalley of the American Cancer Society is right, there won’t be a vote at all and the ban would kick in when the legal dust settles.

Stalley delivered a thick binder to the office of Secretary of State Chris Nelson, whose staff oversees election compliance, challenging the petitions at about 4 p.m. Thursday. . . .

Stalley is challenging the signatures rather than the sampling method. Nelson wasn’t at the office when Stalley’s challenge documents arrived with just an hour to spare. Bray said the next step is to begin looking at each one of the 9,891 challenges. That work will begin Monday. “We will have to go line by line,” Bray said. If enough of the challenged signatures are found to be invalid, Bray said Nelson then would consult with state Attorney General Larry Long regarding how to proceed.

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• 10,000 Signatures Challenged On Smoking Ban Petition 

Thousands of South Dakota establishments were to have gone smoke free July 1st but didn't because of a petition filed to block it.

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South Dakota's Secretary of State's office tells Action News this is the first time the validity of a state-certified public petition has been challenged. . . .

Today anti-tobacco groups, including the American Heart Association, say nearly 10,000 petition signatures are not valid and they are challenging its validity.

This afternoon, we spoke with the American Heart Association's Darrin Smith. He tells us the challenge was filed with the Secretary of State's office in Pierre at 4 o'clock Thursday afternoon. He said, "Several thousand people who signed the petition sheet are not registered voters. That was a very common mistake, in fact, the most common mistake made. Next, would probably be notary irregularities. There were several thousand signatures that we feel are invalid as a result of that." . . .

We asked Deputy Secretary of State Teresa Bray this afternoon how they will validate the 10,000 signatures in question. "It is quite involved. Just doing the random sampling took us about 3 days to check and that was about 1,300 signatures so you can imagine how long it will take to do 10,000 signatures."

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• GUS: Romancing The Smoke 

GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or even thinking of quitting, please -- join us! . . .

most of us grew up in a world where smoking was much more common than it is today. In my earliest childhood memories (I'm a Kennedy Administration baby, a child of the Mad Men era) it seemed that everyone smoked (in reality, it was around 45% back in the day) - just something grown-ups did.

But when some people did it - movie stars, artists, writers, and musicians, those creative rebels with or without a cause - smoking took on a certain aura of glamour. Smoking was cool. We saw images of smoking everywhere, and internalized it all like the good consumers of popular culture we are.

Even now, in a country where only about 20% of the adult population still smokes, smokers are disproportionately represented on TV and films. A lot of actors and musicians smoke; virtually every model does. I can't even tell you how many journalists, artists and writers smoke as if their next deadline, commission, or typed word depended upon it. I know I sure used to! . . .

Musicians like Fred "Sonic" Smith (died at 45) and Joe Strummer (died at 50), whose smoking aggravated underlying heart conditions. Lots of wonderful voices silenced: Mary Wells, Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys, the incomparable Sarah Vaughn, Duke Ellington and Eddie Kendrick (the sweetest voice in The Temptations lineup).

Creatives like choreographer Bob Fosse, who smoked 4 packs a day until he dropped dead of a heart attack, and band leader Spike Jones, whose famous 5-pack-a-day habit led to the Emphysema that killed him at 53. Writers like T.S. Eliot, Ian Fleming and Lillian Hellman. Chain-smoking Twilight Zone writer and host Rod Sterling and Director John Houston. Journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Chet Huntley, Peter Jennings and Harry Reasoner. A gazillion actors and actresses and icons of the stage and screen.

Even non-smokers weren't spared: Dana Reeve (a cabaret performer) and Andy Kaufman (a comedian) both died of lung cancer most likely caused by second-hand smoke from the clubs they played, a reminder that smokers don't only hurt themselves.

As Gussack dangoch pointed out, it's dangerous to "romance the smoke" - to remember it as something wonderful, transcendent, a panacea for all the things that stress you out, or the only friend who never lets you down.

Fact is, it DOES let you down, a lot, in a whole lot of ways. . . .

things in the rear-view mirror are not as wonderful as they seem, and sometimes, they bite you in the ass.

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• POLITICS: Moustache of Justice  

Henry Waxman is to Congress what Ted Williams was to baseball -- a natural. As you read this nicely proportioned, fast- paced book, you realize that Waxman was born to be a member of the House, ideally the chairman of an important committee. He's just five-feet-five, he's woefully short of hair, he's neither charming nor funny, but none of that has mattered. Waxman has been one of the most effective members of Congress for 35 years.

Part of being a natural in Congress is owning a healthy ego. Ego can be the fuel on which the legislative branch runs, and Waxman is in no danger of running out of gas. He makes this clear in the first pages of his book, ably co-authored by Joshua Green, a senior editor of the Atlantic Monthly: "Nearly every worthwhile fight in my career began with my being badly outmatched," Waxman confides. "The other guys always have more money. That's why Congress is so important. Run as it should be, it ensures that no special interest can ever be powerful enough to eclipse the public interest." . . .

In these pages Waxman teaches the importance of good staff work, patience and the willingness to make unexpected alliances to advance your causes. He believes in oversight hearings, Congress's most basic tool, but one that has fallen into disrepair through disuse. He begins and almost ends the book with what must have been his favorite hearing of all time, one he held on April 14, 1994, just months before he and his Democratic colleagues would pass into the minority in the House, a kind of purgatory for an activist like Waxman.

On that occasion Waxman presided over the self-immolation of the seven chief executives of America's biggest tobacco companies, who, despite mountains of compelling evidence to the contrary, testified clumsily and unpersuasively, under oath, that they never believed smoking cigarettes was addictive. This hearing generated no immediate legislation, but it helped destroy the reputation of American tobacco companies and surely contributed to the environment that produced any number of new controls on smoking and the mammoth tobacco settlement with the states in the years that followed. . . .

"The Waxman Report" explains, at least, how Congress can work, and it is fun to read. You finish it with gratitude to the voters of Beverly Hills and nearby areas who keep returning this ornery fellow to the House to challenge entrenched special interests. More Henry Waxmans on both sides of the aisle would give us a much better Congress than the one we've got.

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• E-cigs look, act and feel like real ones - but no tobacco smoke 

Although the battery-powered cigs don't produce tobacco smoke, should users be banned from "vaping" in restaurants and airplanes? Just where can you vape, as the lingo calls vapor inhaling?

That's a sticky point, and the etiquette is far from settled.

For anyone buying e-cigs, consider yourself a bit illicit. E-cigarettes inhabit a legal gray area. The Food and Drug Administration recently blocked some e-cig imports, and officials want to halt sales. At least three makers sell them online, and one maker sells in Tampa malls. . . .

Jason Healy, president of the e-cigarette company Blu, said he regularly uses his product on airlines, including Quantas, American Airlines and Southwest.

"I just show it to the flight attendants, explain it, and they're usually fine," Healy said.

Since launching online sales in April, Blu, based in Charlotte, N.C., has sold more than 22,000 starter kits.

That kind of success bothers anti-smoking advocates.

"They're just another way the tobacco industry has found to target addicts for a profit," said Gary Stein, tobacco programs coordinator for the Hillsborough County Health Department. . . .

Southwest Airlines officials toyed with allowing e-cigarettes on planes and listened to presentations two years ago by at least one e-cigarette maker hoping the airline would allow them.

Southwest decided on a policy against them, said spokeswoman Marlee McInnis.

"We have made it clear we do not accept them," she said. "We definitely don't want people concerned about them."

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• Debate swirls over smoking in Air Force homes  

Some Air Force base housing residents in the Pacific say they wish their commands would offer them the option of smoke-free housing.

Others — smokers and nonsmokers alike — believe the military shouldn’t have any say in whether people can smoke in the privacy of their personal, albeit government-provided, home.

The issue came up at a Yokota Air Base town hall meeting earlier this year after residents there learned that Misawa Air Base would ban smoking in its family housing apartment towers starting May 1. During the meeting, several residents said they have neighbors’ cigarette smoke flowing into their homes and asked if the base could ban smoking in the towers.

Misawa officials said they instituted the ban because they weren’t in compliance with an Air Force instruction that states "the rights of the nonsmokers will prevail." They’ve since added other types of housing units to the ban and set the goal of making the majority of housing smoke-free as units undergo renovations.

The instruction, titled "Tobacco Use in the Air Force," gives commanders the authority to "designate areas or buildings in dormitories or family housing smoke-free when there is a common air-handling unit for multiple individuals or families ... to ensure a healthy and safe environment for all residents."

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• QUICK: Smoke Rings in the Oval Office  

When questioned at a press conference, Barack Obama admitted that he smokes cigarettes despite spirited efforts to quit.

The latter is awful news for several reasons.

First, the President apparently promised his wife he would quit smoking if she let him run for President. While far more momentous spousal vows have probably been broken by at least a billon or so married men, it would be nice if the President would honor his non-smoking pledge to his wife.

Second, it is estimated that every day 1,100 American kids take up smoking. If ever there were a President who is a role model for youth, it is Barack Obama. . . .

Barack's dirty little habit compromises the anti-smoking campaigns that seek to keep teens from trying tobacco. Do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do simply doesn't work with youth.

Next, smoking steals lifespan. . . .

Obama in the role of "Smoker One" has got to stop. Maybe the "stimulus package" passed by Congress could fund a "shovel-ready" cessation program and move our beloved President into the ranks of the ex-smokers. His family needs it. Our nation's children need it. The world needs it.

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• Cigarette smoking normalizes deficits in sensorimotor gating in schizophrenia 

Study results show that cigarette smoking has a positive effect on sensorimotor gating in patients with schizophrenia, improving the prepulse inhibition (PPI) deficit of the startle response to levels comparable to those seen in healthy individuals.

“These findings have significant implications for understanding vulnerability to tobacco dependence in schizophrenia, which may lead to the development of more effective treatments for PPI deficits and tobacco dependence in this population,” write Tony George (University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and co-authors in the journal Schizophrenia Research.

The authors studied PPI of the startle response as a function of smoking status and schizophrenia diagnosis in smokers with schizophrenia (n=14), non-smokers with schizophrenia (n=15), control smokers (n=11), and control non-smokers (n=10).

The authors found the smokers with schizophrenia had comparable levels of PPI – as seen by significant differences in the peak onset – to control smokers and non-smokers (33.0, 28.5, and 39.1 ms, respectively). Significantly higher levels of PPI were seen in smokers with schizophrenia than schizophrenia nonsmokers (peak onset = 33.0 vs 14.3 ms).

Furthermore, at all prepulse to pulse intervals (30, 60, and 120 ms), non-smokers with schizophrenia had an approximate 50% reduction in PPI compared with control non-smokers.

The study results therefore suggest that acute smoking to produce smoking satiation is associated with apparent normalization of PPI deficits in patients with schizophrenia.

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• Cigarette companies kicked out of tobacco meeting 

A U.N.-backed meeting on tobacco smuggling has barred cigarette companies from attending for fear they will try to influence delegates, participants said Thursday.

More than 130 countries agreed late Wednesday to expel the tobacco industry from the rest of the weeklong meeting of parties to the 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which the U.S. has signed but yet to ratify.

Governments are considering a range of measures to crack down on contraband cigarettes, including a ban on Internet sale of tobacco products and a crackdown on smuggling through duty free zones.

"We (the governments) decided not to permit the tobacco industry to enter the meeting because they could interfere in the negotiations," said Justino Regalado Pineda, the head of Mexico's National Office for Tobacco Control.

"We have to protect people from their commercial interest to poison the population." . . .

"This action sends a clear message from customs, health and law enforcement officials that it's not business as usual for the tobacco companies," the group's international policy director Kathy Mulvey said.

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