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Wenatchee teens take part in state smoking study  

Wenatchee High School students were part of a teen smoking study by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The study, published in mid-October, was the first time researchers proved that one-on-one counseling makes a significant difference in teen smoking rates.

“When this study started, despite decades of research and dozens of intervention trials, there was no proven way to reach teens from the general population and recruit them into smoking cessation programs, and there was no proven way to help these teens quit,” said lead researcher Arthur Peterson in a prepared statement.

Statewide, more than 2,000 students at 50 high schools participated in the study.

Half of the schools, including Wenatchee High School, were control schools. With parental consent, students from the Class of 2005 took a survey about smoking habits and attitudes during their junior year, and again in their senior year. . . .

By the end of the study, about 22 percent of the smokers in counseling had stopped smoking for six continuous months, compared to nearly 18 percent of smokers at the control high schools, according to a news release from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Intervention also increased three-month, one-month and seven-day smoking abstinence rates compared to the control group.

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Medical, or small business?  

Michael Dresden holds high expectations for Washington’s marijuana trade. Dresden’s vision is to use local, sustainable and highly taxed micro-crops of marijuana to eliminate the state’s deficit and fight international terrorism. Despite Dresden’s lofty goals, many may view the twenty-something Vancouver resident as a simple drug dealer with delusions of grandeur.

Dresden, whose name and date of birth varied on each of the six Washington state ID cards he presented during a recent interview, uses a straight forward business model. Dresden collects what he describes as “surplus” marijuana from state licensed medical marijuana growers and distributes it to recreational cannabis users at a sizable mark up. . . .

Dresden’s greatest business fear is a tobacco industry take-over of the marijuana trade. “Sooner or later, the tobacco industry will get tired of its dwindling profits and will use its entire army of lobbyists to control the marijuana trade” Dresden stated. Dresden fears tobacco companies will lobby for laws and regulation that give exclusive marijuana grow rights to mega-corporations. “I think what will happen is that congress will place so-called ‘safe-guards’ in a future legalization [of marijuana] bill that really just give large international corporations a monopoly of marijuana.” Dresden’s concerns of a tobacco industry takeover have been around for decades and gained credibility when a 1976 document surfaced during a 1990’s lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

A 1976 confidential tobacco industry forecast prepared by Forecasting International, Ltd for Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation made direct references to national trends in recreational marijuana use and the tobacco industry’s ability to offer marijuana as a retail product. “[Marijuana] also has important implications for the tobacco industry in terms of an alternative product line. [Tobacco industries] have the land to grow it, the machines to roll it and package it [and] the distribution to market it… Estimates indicate that the market in legalized marijuana might be as high as $10 billion annually." the report stated. . . .

Dresden believes a tobacco industry changeover to marijuana would pose insurmountable competition for Northwest marijuana growers. “When the tobacco industry starts to switch over to marijuana, it will use the same locations, equipment and tactics that is has used for tobacco… Southern states will get the employment and tax benefits and the traditional Northwest trade will be destroyed.” Dresden stated. Dresden’s concerns also include product quality and environmental impact. “Look at what large corporations did to tobacco, the additives, the genetic modification, the use of environmentally harmful fertilizers and pesticides; do we really want them to be in charge of future marijuana farms?” Dresden asked rhetorically.

The idea of switching over tobacco farms to hemp or marijuana has gained momentum in the face of declining tobacco sales and the current economic recession.

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COLEMAN: The Long Nightmare Is Over: Tacoma Bans Smoking in Public Parks 

Councilwoman Connie Ladenburg noted that her 11-year-old grandson has such severe asthma, he cannot enjoy parks when any cigarette smoke is present. Without such a law, she said, her grandson and other nonsmokers will remain vulnerable to secondhand smoke effects imposed upon them by smokers.

"He doesn't have a choice to breathe, but smokers have a choice if they smoke or not," she said.

All due respect to Ms. Ladenburg's asthmatic grandson, but how exactly does that a justify infringing upon the right of smokers to partake of an otherwise legal product? . . .

Of course, earning cheap points among the constituents is half of all politics, and we won't begrudge anyone that. Still, it's not like the Tacoma City Council doesn't have a host of more important issues to attend to.

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• Tacoma bans smoking in public parks 

By a 6-3 vote, the Tacoma City Council approved late Tuesday an ordinance that makes smoking in any public park in the city illegal.

"To me, this is like the noise ordinance," said Councilman Jake Fey, who supported the measure. "There needs to be a balance."

The ordinance makes such public smoking a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $25 fine, although city officials have said police do not plan to actively enforce the law.

Supporters said the measure is a way to protect seniors, children and others from the dangers of second-hand smoke, as well as to promote overall healthy living.

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All smoke, no fire at meeting  

Less than a handful of interested residents came to Walla Walla City Council chambers to discuss smoking in and around play areas in city parks.

Three members of the Parks, Recreation and Urban Forestry volunteer advisory board showed up, meaning no quorum for the nine-member board.

And no decision.

This was the second opportunity people had to offer input on the subject at a public meeting. As well, the city has received e-mails and phone calls about the matter. The Walla Walla County Public Health Department has asked the board to consider the proposal and make a decision whether or not to bring it to City Council for a vote.

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Editorial > Smoking ban clearly was the right move 

Four years ago, a lopsided majority of Washington voters approved a ban on smoking in public places. While citizens may have the right to smoke, voters felt that right should not extend to subjecting others to their secondhand smoke. . . .

A number of tavern and restaurant owners in this and other states with smoking bans have complained anew in recent weeks, saying they need every advantage they can get to stay afloat in this deep recession.

We're not convinced easing the smoking ban would help. To the contrary, there's evidence that it might hurt business. The Washington Department of Revenue reported last year that tax data showed that the food and beverage industry's earnings rose by 20 percent from 2006 to 2007.

In any event, the health benefits from this ban would seem to far outweigh concerns raised by its opponents. Indeed, according to a new report by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Medicine, those benefits are greater than voters in this state knew in 2005. . . .

A University of California , San Francisco study concluded that exposure to secondhand smoke is about 80 percent as harmful as being a smoker.

Given these risks, there can be no justification for subjecting nonsmoking restaurant employees or patrons to secondhand smoke. This is not a question of personal freedom. It's a public health issue, pure and simple.

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More job pressure to quit smoking, shape up?  

Get in shape or pay a price.

That is a message more Americans could hear if the health-care legislation passed by the Senate finance and health committees becomes law. By more than doubling the maximum penalties that companies can apply to employees who flunk medical evaluations, the final bill could put workers under intense financial pressure to lose weight, stop smoking or lower their cholesterol.

The initiative, largely eclipsed in the health-care debate, builds on a trend that is in play among some corporations and that more workers will see in the benefits packages they bring home during open-enrollment periods. Some employers offer lower premiums to workers who complete personal health assessments; others offer limited benefit packages to smokers.

The current legislative effort would take the trend a step further. It is backed by major employer groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. It is opposed by labor unions and organizations devoted to battling serious illnesses, such as the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association. . . .

North Carolina has angered some state employees by introducing a wellness program that would limit the most generous benefits package to those who meet body mass targets and do not smoke. The state would allow workers to satisfy the requirement by enrolling in weight-management or quit-smoking programs.

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Smoking ban in city park playgrounds to be discussed  

People will have an opportunity to see what the smoke signals say at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Council chambers at City Hall, 15 N. Third Ave.

The Walla Walla Parks, Recreation and Urban Forestry advisory board has scheduled the meeting to gather public input on a proposal to ban smoking within 25 feet of children's playgrounds in city parks.

Tobacco prevention coordinator Katie Redar of the Walla Walla County Public Health Department has been working on the idea since last spring when she collected almost 400 cigarette butts from the wood chips at Pioneer Park's playground area.

Comments on the proposal -- and thoughts about banning smoking within 25 feet of sports fields and possibly banning smoking in all parts of city parks -- are sought.

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Teen smoking-cessation trial first to achieve significant quit rates 

For the first time, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have demonstrated that it is possible to successfully recruit and retain a large number of adolescent smokers from the general population into a smoking intervention study and, through personalized, proactive telephone counseling, significantly impact rates of six-month continuous quitting. These findings, by Arthur V. Peterson Jr., Ph.D., Kathleen A. Kealey and colleagues, are reported in a pair of papers in the Oct. 12 "Advance Access" online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"When this study started, despite decades of research and dozens of intervention trials, there was no proven way to reach teens from the general population and recruit them into smoking cessation programs, and there was no proven way to help these teens quit," said Peterson, a member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division and lead author of the paper that reported the results of the Hutchinson Study of High School Smoking, the largest randomized trial of teen smoking cessation ever conducted.

The trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health, involved 2,151 teenage smokers from 50 high schools in Washington.

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Some protest new smoking rules at college 

Some students are speaking out over new smoking restrictions at the Centralia College campus that limit lighting up to a few designated areas on the perimeter of the facility.

New "Non Smoking Area" signs are stenciled on the sidewalks and banners that read "Non Smoking Corridor" line walkways across campus.

Steve Ward, the college's vice president of finance and administration, said the plan was set forth years ago and was implemented at the beginning of this school year.

"The majority of our student body wanted to walk across campus just once without smoke in their face," Ward said last week. But some aren't so happy.

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EDITORIAL: Helping Adolescent Smokers Quit: Can Telephone Quitlines Lead the Way?  

This study is remarkable for multiple reasons, not least because it is the first to show substantial quit rates in adolescent smokers at 6 months after quitting. Indeed, for those scientists not familiar with behavioral research, this study and the accompanying article on study design and implementation provide an outstanding example of how theory driven and methodologically sound behavioral research can be.

This complex and elegant design brings together a rich variety of "ingredients" that blend together into a scientific study that is very likely to set the standard for many years and will be a benchmark to which other similar studies will be compared. . . .

What are the implications of this study? Despite a few limitations, this research team has conducted an outstanding study and has discovered a treatment for daily adolescent smoking that is the new standard. Typically, those in the role of making decisions on which treatments to implement would wait for a replication before implementing a treatment protocol like the one used by Peterson et al. However, we believe that the outcomes of this study, plus the lack of good alternatives, warrant a more aggressive implementation plan.

More specifically, because smoking cessation quitlines in the United States receive core funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and there is the potential for substantial increases in that funding via economic stimulus funds, we have two strong recommendations. First, all state quitlines should be encouraged in the strongest possible way to implement the intervention investigated by Peterson et al. (3) to the extent feasible (recognizing that their intervention was quite complex), with the goal of increasing on a national scale the number of adolescents who quit smoking. Second, funding should be provided to both replicate the existing design and also investigate modifications of the protocol that would tease out the relative impact of specific components of the protocol.

At last, we have a new and promising foundation for youth tobacco cessation intervention that can serve both as a catalyst for future research as well as a community resource to address the immediate need of young daily smokers who wish to quit.

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Group-Randomized Trial of a Proactive, Personalized Telephone Counseling Intervention for Adolescent Smoking Cessation  

Results: The intervention increased the percentage who achieved 6-month prolonged smoking abstinence among all smokers (21.8% in the experimental condition vs 17.7% in the control condition, difference = 4.0%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.2 to 8.1, P = .06) and in particular among daily smokers (10.1% vs 5.9%, difference = 4.1%, 95% CI = 0.8 to 7.1, P = .02). There was also generally strong evidence of intervention impact for 3-month, 1-month, and 7-day abstinence and duration since last cigarette (P = .09, .015, .01, and .03, respectively). The intervention effect was strongest among male daily smokers and among female less-than-daily smokers.

Conclusions: Proactive identification and recruitment of adolescents via public high schools can produce a high level of intervention reach; a personalized motivational interviewing plus cognitive behavioral skills training counseling intervention delivered by counselor-initiated telephone calls is effective in increasing teen smoking cessation; and both daily and less-than-daily teen smokers participate in and benefit from telephone-based smoking cessation intervention. . . .

Contribution

The intervention increased 6-month abstinence from smoking from 18% to 22%, and more than 88% of students who were followed-up were still participating 1 year after random assignment.

Implications

Smoking cessation intervention using personalized telephone counseling using proactive identification of participants can increase abstinence from smoking among adolescents.

Limitations

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Proactive, personalized telephone counseling can help teen smokers to quit 

Personalized, proactive telephone counseling centered on motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral skills training has been found to favorably impact quit rates among teen smokers, according to a pair of studies published online October 12 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Arthur V. Peterson, Ph.D., and colleagues at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and colleagues designed the Hutchinson Study of High School Smoking trial to evaluate to what extent telephone counseling could help teenagers quit smoking. The researchers proactively identified more than 2,000 smokers via classroom surveys of juniors in 50 high schools in Washington state. In 25 of the high schools, after parental approval teen smokers received personalized smoking cessation counseling that combined motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral skills training. These included using the smoker's own words and values to increase importance of quitting, anticipating and coping with stress and other triggers to smoke, and making plans for stopping. The study also included more than 700 nonsmokers to ensure that contacting students for participation in the trial would not reveal a participant's smoking status.

More than a year after the intervention began, nearly 89% of the students completed a follow-up survey in which 22% of intervened smokers reported 6-month prolonged abstinence from smoking, compared to 18% among students in the no-intervention control arm. There was also strong evidence that the intervention had made a difference for 3-month, 1-month, and 7-day abstinence and for the length of time since last cigarette.

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• Statewide Teen Smoking-Cessation Trial is the First to Achieve Significant Increase in Prolonged Quit Rates  

For the first time, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have demonstrated that it is possible to successfully recruit and retain a large number of adolescent smokers from the general population into a smoking intervention study and, through personalized, proactive telephone counseling, significantly impact rates of six-month continuous quitting. These findings, by Arthur V. Peterson Jr., Ph.D., Kathleen A. Kealey and colleagues, are reported in a pair of papers in the Oct. 12 "Advance Access" online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"When this study started, despite decades of research and dozens of intervention trials, there was no proven way to reach teens from the general population and recruit them into smoking cessation programs, and there was no proven way to help these teens quit," said Peterson, a member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division and lead author of the paper that reported the results of the Hutchinson Study of High School Smoking, the largest randomized trial of teen smoking cessation ever conducted.

The trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health, involved 2,151 teenage smokers from 50 high schools in Washington.

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• Study: Teen smoking curbed by phone counseling 

A Seattle-based study has found an improved way to trim teen smoking.

That improvement is small, but significant.

A type of phone counseling posted a 4 percentage point higher success rate than a control group to get teens to quit smoking, a Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute study concluded.

The results were published Monday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Acknowledging that a 4 percent improvement is small, Arthur Peterson Jr., one of the researchers, said this is the first time that such an experiment to get teens to quit smoking has shown a solid increase in positive results.

The bottom line is that the new approach being tested showed a 21.8 percent success rate in getting high school seniors to quit smoking for six months, compared with a control group's success rate of 17.7 percent.

"This shows there is still a lot to do. ... There is clearly a need to take the next step to see how the smoking intervention can be improved," Peterson said.

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