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Massachusetts studies smoking bans 

A new Massachusetts study says teens who live in towns with strict smoking bans in restaurants are 40 percent less likely to become regular smokers. . . .

In Berkshire County, a new Massachusetts study on restaurant smoking bans suggests a role in persuading teens not to pick up the habit. Our Ryan Burgess explains.

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Senate’s cigarette price hike has smokers fuming  

The state Senate's move to raise the cigarette tax by $1-a-pack, making Massachusetts one of the most expensive states to buy cigarettes, has smoker's rights groups puffing mad and health advocates applauding.

"This is a very cowardly way to balance the state's budget on the backs of a vilified minority," said Stephen Helfer, founder of the defunct Cambridge Citizens for Smoker's Rights, and a staunch opponent of increasing the tax. "Smokers are disproportionately more likely to be poor and low-income than well-off."

The $1-a-pack tax was included in a nearly $500 million tax package that the Senate approved yesterday. The Senate also voted to lift the state-mandated minimum price for a pack of cigarettes.

The Senate and House, which also approved a $1-a-pack cigarette tax hike, still need to agree on the tax bill

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Senate approves $1 per pack cigarette tax increase; part of $472M revenue package  

The Senate approved a $1 per pack cigarette tax increase yesterday, part of a $472 million tax hike that would be the largest in the last six years.

The Senate voted 31-6 for the tax bill, which would raise $175 million through higher cigarette taxes and $297 million from closing so-called corporate tax loopholes.

Sens. Steven A. Baddour, D-Methuen, and Susan C. Tucker, D-Andover, voted for the bill, which passed the Senate while Sen. Bruce E. Tarr, R-Gloucester, voted against it.

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Senate debates nearly $500 million tax package 

The Massachusetts Senate is debating a nearly $500 million tax package, including a dollar-a-pack hike on cigarettes.

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Arson Awareness Week aims to extinguish toy-like cigarette lighters 

LYNN - One day last June, 6-year-old Shane St. Pierre was browsing with his mother in a Livermore, Maine grocery store, while waiting for their sandwich order. The boy was naturally drawn to what he thought was a stack of miniature baseball bats near the cash register. Unaware that the devices were actually novelty cigarette lighters, the boy flicked the trigger and in a second his eyebrows were singed, his face burned.

The boy's father, Norm St. Pierre, a fire chief in nearby West Paris, was so disturbed by the incident he joined other advocates to ensure that toy-like lighters were banned in Maine, effective March 14, 2008. Tennessee officials followed suit in April, and bans are under consideration in Alabama, Connecticut, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon and Vermont.

Fire safety officials say the frequency of such incidents is on the rise, which is why toy-like lighters are the focus of this year's Arson Awareness Week in Massachusetts. State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan is urging parents, guardians and caregivers to protect themselves and their children from the dangers posed by these devices.

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LETTER: YOUR OPINION: Clear differences between tobacco and drug paraphernalia  

According to information from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, hardcore drug paraphernalia, outlawed in Massachusetts, has distinct characteristics that indicate that its sole, or at least dominant use, is with illicit drugs.

For example, bongs are always made of non-porous materials, such as metal or glass, because marijuana gives off a sticky, smelly residue.

To avoid the buildup of pot residue, the bongs must be made of materials which can be scrubbed.

Tobacco gives off pleasant less sticky resins, and tobacco users prefer to let these resins build up in wooden pipe bowls and stems.

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Truthenize 

It's critical that teens take the lead fighting tobacco - first, because we've got the most to lose. The younger you are when you start smoking, the more likely that you'll grow up to be a regular smoker. Young smokers think they'll be able to quit when they want, but most are still smoking years later. And we can't forget - the youngest kids don't have much say in how much smoke they're exposed to at home, in the car - just about anywhere.

Here's the deal:

In Massachusetts, 7400 young people become daily smokers every year. 117,000 young people who are under 18 and living in MA right now will eventually die early from smoking. (1)

Almost 9 in 10 adult smokers became addicted to tobacco before age 19. (2)

More than half of high-school smokers have tried to quit. (3)

Second, because we are a major target market for Big Tobacco, and we're huge consumers of popular media like magazines and movies . . .

But most important - we've got the skills to be aware and critical of Big Tobacco. We've got the power and ability to share that knowledge with other young people - and rob Big Tobacco of their future customers. We're into a lot of things that beat smoking. We're The 84 and growing.

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The Scene 

Ever thought you could build a movement by not doing something?

That's because you're doing something with your head, your time, and your cash instead of smoking or chewing tobacco.

That's what makes you The 84.

Here's the lowdown. The 84 is the huge number of young people in Massachusetts who choose not to use tobacco.(83.6% of 7th to 12th-graders who aren't current smokers, to be exact!)*. Some of us are outraged and outspoken about Big Tobacco's deadly products. Some of us fight tobacco on the DL. Some of us want our parents and friends to quit.

Some of us aren't even trying to make a statement by not smoking... we're too busy doing other things that make us part of the 84.

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Restaurant smoking bans credited with deterring teens  

Restaurant smoking bans may be as powerful as peers or parents in the battle to keep teenagers from becoming smokers, a new study suggests.

Teenagers who lived in towns that adopted early bans on smoking in restaurants were 40 percent less likely to become smokers than their counterparts in towns with weaker restaurant smoking laws, Boston researchers report.

The study did not address how smoking bans discourage teenage smoking. But Dr. Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health said the findings bear out his hypothesis that if teens see fewer people smoking and conclude that smoking isn't socially acceptable, then they may be less likely to pick up the habit.

Writing in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, Siegel reported results from three waves of phone surveys in 301 Massachusetts towns starting in 2001. . . .

Since 2006, counseling and medications to help smokers quit have been covered by MassHealth, the state's Medicaid plan, and the benefit has been used by more than 10 percent of members, she said.

Public health efforts aimed at adolescents have been reinvigorated, including the launch of the84.org, a website with antismoking ads created by teenagers and named for the 84 percent of their peers who don't smoke.

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Local Restaurant Smoking Regulations and the Adolescent Smoking Initiation Process:  

Results Youths living in towns with a strong restaurant smoking regulation at baseline had significantly lower odds of progressing to established smoking (odds ratio, 0.60; 95% confidence interval, 0.42-0.85) compared with those living in towns with weak regulations. The observed association between strong restaurant smoking regulations and impeded progression to established smoking was entirely due to an effect on the transition from experimentation to established smoking (odds ratio, 0.53; 95% confidence interval, 0.33-0.86).

Conclusion Local smoke-free restaurant laws may significantly lower youth smoking initiation by impeding the progression from cigarette experimentation to established smoking.

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• Study: Restaurant tobacco bans influence teen smoking  

A Massachusetts study suggests that restaurant smoking bans may play a big role in persuading teens not to become smokers. Youths who lived in towns with strict bans were 40 percent less likely to become regular smokers than those in communities with no bans or weak ones, the researchers reported in the May issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The findings back up the idea that smoking bans discourage tobacco use in teens by sending the message that smoking is frowned upon in the community, as well as simply by reducing their exposure to smokers in public places, said Dr. Michael Siegel, of Boston University School of Public Health, and the study's lead author.

"When kids grow up in an environment where they don't see smoking, they are going to think it's not socially acceptable," he said. "If they perceive a lot of other people are smoking, they think it's the norm."

Siegel and his colleagues tracked 2,791 children between ages 12 and 17 who lived throughout Massachusetts.

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Worcester smokers may get an extra boost from the state to help them kick the habit 

State public health surveys show many Bay Staters have quit smoking since the 1980s. From 1986 to 2000, smoking rates fell from 28 percent to 20 percent.

But over the last eight years, rates of decline have slowed significantly, lowering the rate only to about 18 percent, despite major hikes in cigarette taxes, new laws to ban smoking in public places and workplaces, and continual warnings about the health dangers of tobacco.

Cigarette sales mirror the trend. . . .

Beth M. Ewi, program director for the University of Massachusetts Medical School Tobacco Treatment and Research Center in Worcester, has been working on quit-assistance programs for 10 years and oversees the program that has trained hundreds of health workers to counsel smokers in their efforts.

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Low-Level Radon Exposure May Reduce Lung Cancer Risk 

Exposure to levels of radon gas typically found in 90 percent of American homes appears to reduce the risk of developing lung cancer by as much as 60 percent, according to a study published in the March issue of the journal Health Physics.

The finding differs significantly from the results of previous case-control studies of the effects of low-level radon exposure, which have detected a slightly elevated lung cancer risk (but without statistical significance) or no risk at all.

The study, undertaken jointly by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Fallon Clinic, and Fallon Community Health Plan, is the first to observe a statistically significant hormetic effect of low-level radon exposure.

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Low radon levels may reduce lung cancer risk 

Radon levels typically found in homes in the United States do not raise the risk of lung cancer, according to findings of a decade-long study. In fact, at low levels, radon may actually reduce the risk.

These results represent a substantial departure from the risk model upon which regulatory policy for low-dose radon exposure is based, Dr. Richard E. Thompson, from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and colleagues report in the journal Health Physics.

Their study included 200 patients with lung cancer and 397 similar subjects without cancer.

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Northampton fire blamed on cigarette igniting mulch  

A fire in a two-family home on Wright Avenue yesterday afternoon was started by improper disposal of a cigarette, acting Deputy Fire Chief Christopher W. Norris said today.

It appears a resident of the building threw a cigarette off the back deck of 3-5 Wright Ave., a side street between Pleasant and Conz streets not far from downtown, and it ignited a pile of bark mulch and wood chips which spread quickly to the two-story deck and into the house, Norris said.

"This goes hand and hand with us issuing a press release on Monday about the dry conditions and not to have any open burning," Norris said. "Improperly disposing of a cigarette like that is the same thing."

Two cats were apparently killed in the fire and the building is expected to be torn down.

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