Tobacco.org

VIDEO: Smoking Ban Picking Up Heat  

For the first time this legislative session, a Senate Committee discussed a potential statewide smoking ban.

For the past three years, Jim Green's sat in the same booth, in the same corner, at the same place.

George's Pizza and Steakhouse is located off the Lake of the Woods exit just outside Columbia's city limits. All of Columbia is non-smoking, but because George's is just outside, smokers can gather. Jim Green's smoked for 55 years, and he's completely fine with that.

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• Star Scientific seeks FDA approval for "safer" smokeless tobacco 

Star Scientific Inc. is seeking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval to market its smokeless tobacco lozenges as a reduced-risk product, setting up a key test for the federal agency's new regulatory powers over tobacco.

Star, a small Richmond-area company that makes two brands of smokeless products, said yesterday that it had filed an application with the FDA to market a new version of its Ariva smokeless tobacco as a "modified risk" product. If approved, the company could make advertising claims that the product has fewer toxins and health risks than conventional tobacco products.

A spokeswoman for the FDA said yesterday the agency could neither confirm nor deny that it had received an application.

Star has been selling Ariva . . .

"FDA has to start looking at this from a standpoint of what these products are, whether they reduce risk, what is the scientific evidence for that, and how should they be monitored, marketed and labeled," said Scott Ballin, a tobacco and health policy consultant in Washington.

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EDITORIAL: Tobacco Substitutes: Harm Reduction or Smokescreen? 

The editorial this month was triggered by a discussion among the editors at PLoS Medicine about whether or not we should, as a medical journal, be publishing papers on the use of smokeless tobacco (snus), the topic of the debate by Gartner, Chapman, and colleagues [1]). At one end of the spectrum of views expressed, one editor argued that we should not give the topic room in the journal at all, because even discussion of the use of snus simply plays into the hands of the tobacco industry, which has a notorious history of doing anything it can to addict people to tobacco. At the other end of the spectrum, another editor pointed out that since snus is associated with less risk to health than cigarettes, a discussion of its use as a harm reduction measure is an appropriate topic for a medical journal. On this topic, the editors simply could not come to an agreement. (Another such topic, incidentally, is that of qualitative research, on which more in future.)

Don't journals have a duty to give all sides of a debate? . . .

The issue is whether, in a world where many people die from their tobacco addiction without overcoming it, we should give room to the opinion that switching to snus, although not better than quitting, may be better in terms of short-term health outcomes than continuing to smoke.

In respect for honest differences of opinion, we are ending this editorial without a bottom line. Do papers on smokeless tobacco serve a legitimate public health interest? We'd like to seek the opinions of our readers: what do you think?

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• EDITORIAL: A New Policy on Tobacco Papers 

This past month PLoS Medicine published two original analyses on smoking, the single greatest preventable risk for poor health and death in the developed world, and an increasingly important risk factor in the developing world. The first study, using internal tobacco company documents unsealed through litigation, provides further evidence of the already well-documented strategy of deception used by the tobacco industry to further its commercial activities. The second study shows the ways in which the tobacco control agenda is distorted by the increasing medicalization of smoking cessation.

In the first paper, Katherine Smith and colleagues report how British American Tobacco (BAT), the world's second largest tobacco transnational, strategically influenced the European Union's framework for evaluating policy options, leading to the acceptance of an agenda that emphasizes business interests over public health . . .

In the second paper, Simon Chapman and Ross MacKenzie critique the dominant messages about smoking cessation contained in most tobacco control campaigns, which emphasize that serious attempts at quitting smoking must be pharmacologically or professionally mediated . . .

While we continue to be interested in analyses of ways of reducing tobacco use, we will no longer be considering papers where support, in whole or in part, for the study or the researchers comes from a tobacco company. As a medical journal we do this for two reasons. First, tobacco is indisputably bad for health. . . .

health research sponsored by tobacco companies is essentially advertising. Publication is part of tobacco company marketing, and we believe it would be irresponsible to act as part of the machinery that enhances the reputation of an industry producing health-harming products.

Second, we remain concerned about the industry's long-standing attempts to distort the science of and deflect attention away from the harmful effects of smoking. . . .

Furthermore, the business model used to support our open access publishing (the research funder covers publication costs, unless the author requests a waiver) means we would essentially be accepting money from the tobacco industry by publishing their papers. This is unacceptable to the editorial team of PLoS Medicine.

Our new policy may be criticized as moralistic, unscientific, and against transparency. Indeed, the leading tobacco control journal (Tobacco Control) does not ban tobacco industry–funded research, for two reasons: it wishes to avoid being labeled as biased by the industry, and it does not think it sensible to single out tobacco when the food and drug industries also have deeply vested and conflicted interests in the research supporting their corporate agendas [5]. Journals such as BMJ have also rejected a ban on research papers from authors funded by the tobacco industry . . .

we feel that any potential criticisms and risks are preferable to supporting the tobacco industry's efforts to deflect attention from the harms of its products. It is the case that we do not receive many tobacco industry sponsored papers—PLoS Medicine has published none since our inception in 2004 and PLoS ONE only two—and we have made previous editorial judgments on papers that might be favorable to the tobacco industry agenda on a case-by-case basis [9]. We wish now to formalize our policy effective immediately.

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• Medical journal bars tobacco-backed research papers 

A leading scientific journal will no longer publish research papers that receive any funding from tobacco companies, its editorial board said on Tuesday.

"While we continue to be interested in analyses of ways of reducing tobacco use, we will no longer be considering papers where support, in whole or in part, for the study or the researchers come from a tobacco company," the PLoS Medicine (Public Library of Science) said in an editorial.

The magazine expressed concern at "the industry's longstanding attempts to distort the science of and deflect attention away from the harmful effects of smoking.

"That the tobacco industry has behaved disreputably - denying the harms of its products, campaigning against smoking bans, marketing to young people and hiring public relations firms, consultants and front groups to enhance the public credibility of their work -- is well documented."

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• Are non-smokers smarter than smokers? 

Cigarette smokers have lower IQs than non-smokers, and the more a person smokes, the lower their IQ, a study in over 20,000 Israeli military recruits suggests.

Young men who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day or more had IQ scores 7.5 points lower than non-smokers, Dr. Mark Weiser of Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and his colleagues found.

"Adolescents with poorer IQ scores might be targeted for programs designed to prevent smoking," they conclude in the journal Addiction. . . .

To better understand the smoking-IQ relationship, the researchers looked at 20,211 18-year-old men recruited into the Israeli military. The group did not include anyone with major mental health problems, because these individuals are disqualified from military service.

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Student group pushing for ASU smoking ban  

Courtney Roake, member of the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee, spoke last week at a town hall discussion at Arizona State University's Tempe campus about making all ASU campuses tobacco-free.

"We want to inform students that smoking is not the social norm," Roake said.

HCSAC has spoken to ASU President Michael Crow about the issue, and he recommended the group submit a referendum, Roake said. The students have collected more than 3,500 signatures from classmates, faculty and visitors to support the policy.

"I did have smokers sign the petition," Roake said. "Many, many smokers."

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• Eastday-City to smokers: Obey or pay 

the city's first tobacco control law will be taking effect on March 1.

People who smoke in banned areas can face fines from 50 yuan (US$7.32) to 200 yuan.

Under the Shanghai Public Places Smoking Control Law, a total smoking ban will be applied to 12 types of public areas, including schools, hospitals, supermarkets and elevators, among others.

The law also requires karaoke bars, dance balls and restaurants to set up designated smoking and nonsmoking areas.

Yesterday, the city set up its first smoking-control volunteer team with an initial batch of 20,000 people. Most of them are retired workers or work for neighborhood committees.

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Stop advertising, publicity of tobacco 

Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Alliance and Protyasha yesterday jointly staged a symbolic sit-in programme in the city demanding an end to advertising, publicity and promotional activities of the tobacco companies.

Speakers at the programme in front of the National Museum at Shahbagh in the city stated the tobacco companies attract the youth generation to the tobacco applying various promotional activities in favour of tobacco use like advertising and publicity.

The tobacco companies display tobacco signboards and posters and award gifts and arrange different types of competition, though these are completely unlawful.

They also demanded punishment to law violating tobacco companies through driving mobile court. . . .

General Secretary of Partyasha Helal Ahmed, Rafiqul Islam, Kazi Anyet Hossain, Ibnul Sayeed Rana, Bidhan Chandra Pal and Shamsul Alam, among others, addressed the function.

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LETTER: A puzzling place 

have people considered the ramifications if the proposal were to pass? San Angelo is a tourist attraction. Tourists like to be comfortable.

What are you going to do when half of the town ignores this ban? Put them all in jail? Give them a criminal record that goes everywhere they go?

How about taxes the city receives from tobacco sales? Don’t we need those anymore?

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End draws near for city smokers  

From March 1, he'll be among Shanghai's smokers facing fines of 50 yuan (US$7.30) to 200 yuan for smoking in banned areas as the city enacts its first anti-tobacco law.

Today the city enrolled the first of 20,000 volunteers to police the law, mostly from retired workers and neighborhood committees.

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Using breath carbon monoxide to validate self-reported tobacco smoking in remote Australian Indigenous communities  

This paper examines the specificity and sensitivity of a breath carbon monoxide (BCO) test and optimum BCO cutoff level for validating self-reported tobacco smoking in Indigenous Australians in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory (NT). . . .

Conclusion: In these disadvantaged Indigenous populations, where data describing smoking are few, testing for BCO provides a practical, noninvasive, and immediate method to validate self-reported smoking.

In further studies of tobacco smoking in these populations, cannabis use should be considered where self-reported nonsmokers show high BCO.

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Woodland's tobacco retailers shrug off key opportunity  

There isn't enough money in law enforcement to allow for policing of the sale of cigarettes to minors. Yolo County, West Sacramento and Davis have all adopted a tobacco retailer licensing ordinance help collected the money needed to enforce illegal tobacco sales.

Woodland, however, has yet to do anything.

The Woodland City Council heard this proposal last year and the initial response was positive. Mayor Skip Davies wanted to run the idea by the Chamber of Commerce to get responses from businesses. They didn't like the idea of another fee and offered to get together to find some more solutions.

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Ex-smoker hopefuls plug in to 'e-cigs'  

In the era of e-everything, it's no great surprise there is now an e-cigarette. . . .

Aspiring nonsmokers seem to be embracing the e-cig.

At Aardvarx, at 17 N. Tenth St., sales of an e-cig brand called "Nova Smoke" have been pretty steady. Stefanie Sigrist, who works at the smoking supply and gift shop, said Aardvarx has sold one to three of the electronic cigarette starter kits each week since the store began stocking them in December 2009.

"We've been placing orders every week," she said.

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Where There’s Smoke, There’s Ire 

New laws are in the works in San Francisco to make smoking more difficult. To thwart secondhand fumes, the city is now considering a ban on smoking in many outside areas. A vote on the measure is schedule for Feb. 22.

Under the new law, businesses would be required to shoo smokers to at least 15 feet from their entrances. With buildings so close together, that would leave little space to puff. The squeeze is on.

My column on Friday explores how this is part of a trend in the battle against smoking that goes beyond concentrating on those who profit from cigarette sales. Now smokers themselves face greater harassment, as do those indirectly associated with smoking.

Hollywood is one of the focuses, and it is feeling the wrath of Dr. Stanton A. Glantz, the firebrand director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. He’s calling for most movies that include smoking to be slapped with an R rating, which would hurt their box office potential. . . .

Dr. Glantz has tangled with Hollywood before. While visiting his offices, I asked about an earlier campaign directed at one of the world’s most successful movie stars: Julia Roberts. Here’s a video of that conversation.

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