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The country that gave us killer dog food, corrosive drywall, lead-based toys, and poisonous toothpaste. Now has a new surprise for you. It's a mystery chemical...completely unregulated. You buy it, vaporize it, and suck it into your lungs.
And it's right here in Tucson where some fear your kids could get hold of it. Nine on your side investigator Dan Spindle takes a look.
Smokers, lighting up in the middle of the Foothills Mall, it raises more than a few eyebrows...... But what looks like smoke, is actually a vapor ... Like the kind you might see coming out of a fog machine.
This vapor is from the latest electronic cigarette to hit the market which has the green light to be sold at malls all over Arizona. These e-cigarettes save smokers the smell and high prices of traditional smokes.
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COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)
This 10-week study is for people aged 40 to 80 who have been diagnosed with COPD.
The research site is in Phoenix, Ariz.
More information
Please see http://www.clinicalconnection.com/clinical_trials/condition/copd.aspx.
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Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)
This study is for people who have chronic stable heart failure and have an ejection fraction of less than 40 percent. Participants will have an echocardiogram and will be asked to stay overnight. Compensation for time and travel is available up to $2,750 if you qualify.
The research site is in Tustin, Calif.
Please see http://www.clinicalconnection.com/clinical_trials/condition/heart_failure.aspx.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) -- Navajo lawmakers will have a crowded agenda when they meet this week for their fall session, and many of the bills have been considered before.
Those include legislation to seek full control of Canyon de Chelly National Monument, to outlaw piracy, to ban the use of tobacco in public places . . .
During the same session, delegates failed to override a veto of a bill to ban smoking and chewing tobacco in public places on the reservation.
Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. rejected the measure because he feared it would inhibit gambling revenue.
The federal ban on flavored cigarettes that went into effect last week has forced Tempe smoke shops to remove certain stock from their shelves.
The Food and Drug Administration ban was passed to reduce the number of people who start smoking at an early age then transition into smoking more dangerous tobacco products, according to the FDA Web site. . . .
Glenn Gaesser, the director of exercise and wellness for the College of Nursing and Health Innovation, said he doesn’t think the ban will stop smokers because the banned flavorings make up less than 1 percent of products.
“Two of the largest cigarette manufacturers in the United States have no products that are affected by it,” he said. “This is absurd.”
Ted Kaercher, manager of Headquarters, a smoke shop located on University Drive near Mill Avenue that caters mainly to ASU students, called the ban pointless from a business perspective.
A pair of studies released this week show indoor smoking bans in public buildings lead to a 17-percent decrease in heart attack rates during the first year. After three years, one study showed smoking bans reduced heart attacks by up to 36 percent. Arizona's own voter-approved smoking ban has been in effect just over two years.
Harmony Duport, acting program manager for Smoke-Free Arizona, says compliance today is excellent.
"The first month, which was May of 2007, we received fourteen hundred complaints. But, this past month in August, we received 115. So, the complaint numbers have significantly dropped."
Though no studies linking the smoking ban to a reduction in heart attacks have yet been done in Arizona, Duport expects the state's results to be similar to others. A large number of the complaints received these days involve misunderstandings more than violations, she adds.
"The Smoke-Free Arizona Act does not cover exposure to second-hand smoke outside. So, we get complaints about somebody possibly walking past people smoking on a patio, when in fact smoking outside is not a violation of the Act."
Nevertheless, as of yesterday, smokers who crave cherries will no longer be able to purchase and light up their Cherry Dreams in front of the smoke shop. Many smoke shop patrons will have to find new outlets.
"We have regular customers once a day or twice a day or every other day and they will get one of (the flavored cigarettes) or a selection of those and they don't get anything else," Handley said.
Hippie Gypsy manager Lauren Adkisson takes the new rule in stride. "We live in a weird society right now. We have rules for everything," she said.
"We are at that point where it's like, 'Oh, another weird rule? Let's just take it under our belt and deal with it.'" . . .
Smoke shops are still preparing for the worst. Hippie Gypsy started putting the flavored tobaccos on super-sale long before the cutoff date, and plans on purging the rest or distributing it to their employees.
"There is so little factual information out that everyone just has their own idea of what's going on," Handley said. "I heard that they are going to (ban) flavors that aren't really associated with fruit like purple flavor as opposed to grape."
Adkisson speculated that cloves will be marketed as cigarillos (a shorter smaller version of a cigar), in order to escape the jurisdiction.
An ASU professor is challenging widely held conceptions about smoking, including challenging the view that nicotine is addictive.
Peter Killeen, emeritus professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, presented his research findings for the National Institute on Drug Abuse on the Tempe campus Wednesday afternoon.
The talk was called “Reefer Madness: There ain’t no such Thing as Addiction to Nicotine.”
NIDA initially invited Killeen to look into ways to improve scientific research on drug abuse, specifically nicotine addiction.
“I came up with a shocking discovery,” Killeen said. “There’s no such thing as nicotine addiction.”
“It’s time to get our heads straight,” Killeen said. “What causes the tremendously addicting power of cigarettes is the drug cocktail of nicotine,” he said, not nicotine itself.
Before he got into his findings, Killeen said he wanted to make clear that tobacco kills. . . .
“Studies have shown that none of the nicotine replacement therapies — chewing gum, inhalers, patches — none of those are addictive,” he said. “Nicotine is not addictive. So what’s going on?”
The cause of addiction is the release of monoamine oxidase inhibitors, or MAOIs, along with nicotine, Killeen said.
While nicotine affects the release of dopamine, or the “reward hormone” that affects emotions and movement, MAOIs help regulate dopamine levels, Killeen said.
“When you put together something that directly releases dopamine and another thing that helps the brain clean up excess dopamine, you’ve got a one-two punch,” he said. “It is my hypothesis that it’s a combination of nicotine with some of these other chemicals that causes the powerful addiction.”
Though many smokers believe electronic cigarettes are designed to help them quit, such an assumption may be untrue, federal officials said.
Art senior Adam Pezen said he learned about e-cigarettes from online blogs and first tried them out of curiosity.
“My mom bought them because she had been a hardcore smoker for about 30 years,” Pezen said. “She passed [the habit] on to me.”
Pezen said he and his mother both still smoke tobacco cigarettes on a regular basis.
Smoking an e-cigarette is completely different than smoking the real thing and doesn’t satisfy the feeling smokers want when they have a cigarette, he said.
“You can feel a nicotine rush that is quite stronger than a real cigarette,” Pezen said.
The e-cigarettes are designed for only one long drag, which is different from traditional puffing.
The blogs Pezen read advocated e-cigarettes as the safe way to quit, but he said he doesn’t think they help people kick the habit.
He later tried e-cigarettes in an attempt to quit smoking but was unsuccessful.
The Arizona Republican party is in hot water this week for publishing a photo of President Obama smoking a cigarette. . . .
The photo of Obama with the cigarette dangling from his mouth is a classic Photoshop disaster, culled from an original taken by one Kwame Ross at a University of Illinois campus visit during Obama's 2003 Senate campaign.
The widespread availability of the doctored photo likely deceived the Arziona Republican Party officials into assuming it was real, as this digital hoax has been circulating online long enough -- almost two years -- to make it seem like a stock photo.
Obama has been forthright about the difficulty of weaning himself off cigarettes, but the photo on the cover of AZGOP newsmagazine is not evidentiary of the President's personal battle with nicotine addiction.
Investigators believe Saturday's fire on a woman's balcony was started when a neighbor tossed a lit cigarette from another balcony.
It happened Saturday at Landmark Towers near Central Ave and Camelback. About 50 people had to be evacuated.
Fire investigators say medical oxygen and a lit cigarette ignited a mobile home fire claiming the lives of a 94 year old mother and her disabled daughter.
The fire broke out just before midnight Friday at the Swan Lakes Estates mobile home park on Flowing Wells Rd near Wetmore Road.
Firefighters say the fire started while 66-year-old Susan Weiner was smoking in bed and using an oxygen tank.
When crews got there they pulled 94-year-old Edna Mayer from the home. Mayor died at the scene from smoke inhalation. . . .
Neighbor Peggy Oltman says Weiner could not be swayed to be safe even though others were in danger. "She always smoked and used oxygen. Susan wasn't going to give up smoking. I don't care if she was in bed, in the bath tub, in a car. She'll be walking in a store and try to take a cigarette in with her."
The oxygen induced blast was just ten feet from Ruby McCurdy's bedroom. "I'm so lucky. I've been thanking the good Lord all day. It was a foolish thing for her to be doing because she took her mother along with her."
An elderly woman and her 66-year-old daughter died in a trailer park fire in northwest Tucson late Friday after a lighted cigarette and medical oxygen combined to spark the blaze.
Edna Mayer, 94, and her daughter, Susan R. Weiner, were pronounced dead at the scene after the fire consumed the rear master bedroom of their double-wide mobile home, said Northwest Fire Capt. Adam Goldberg. . . .
Goldberg speculated that Weiner could have tried to light a cigarette while using the oxygen tank, starting the fire. It also could have started by Weiner smoking in bed, or by the improper disposal of a cigarette, Goldberg said.
A Scottsdale-based seller of electronic cigarettes has fired back against the federal government's claims that its products could expose smokers to harmful tobacco impurities.
NJOY, one of the world's most-recognized brands of e-cigarettes, hired a third party to analyze a report by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA found traces of toxic chemicals in NJOY cigarettes and another brand.
NJOY's counter study, prepared by Houston-based Exponent Health Sciences, claimed the FDA report had "several limitations" and failed to adequately compare the electronic devices to other nicotine products.
"What you'll find is the levels of 'carcinogenic' materials is not quantifiable, and . . . can be classified as not harmful," said NJOY spokeswoman Amy Linert. "You'll also find that the levels of carcinogens and nicotine in electronic cigarettes are far less than already FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapies."
NJOY, the electronic cigarette brand based in Scottsdale, will continue to market the tobacco-less devices despite a warning from the Food and Drug Administration that it could pose health risks.
Public health officials said last week that electronic cigarettes, or "e-cigarettes," may not be such a healthy alternative to traditional cigarettes.
The FDA tested NJOY and another brand. Results showed some of the samples in both brands contained human carcinogens and tobacco impurities suspected of being harmful to humans.
NJOY, manufactured and distributed by Sottera, Inc., in the Scottsdale Airpark, has argued that e-cigarettes contain impurities at much lower levels than traditional cigarettes. In a statement, the company said the FDA's study does "not confirm a risk to health from using NJOY's products."
State legislators and the governor acted illegally in taking $7 million from a 2006 tobacco-tax initiative to balance the state budget, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The justices rejected arguments that lawmakers are free to reallocate investment and interest income from the money raised by the tax as long as they do not touch the tax revenues themselves.
Justice Michael Ryan, writing for the unanimous court, said the legislators, and the governor who signed the measure taking the money, are wrong.
He said voters, in approving the 80-cent-a-pack hike in tobacco taxes for the First Things First program, specifically wanted all the proceeds earmarked to improve early childhood development. Ryan said the measure specifically gives the board charged with handing out the cash authority over any interest on funds received but not yet allocated.