Give it another nine years or so and every state will have implemented an indoor smoking ban. At least that s what the CDC predicts will occur based on the current pattern of anti-smoking laws. Currently, 26 states have adopted comprehensive indoor smoking bans, while another ten have banned the practice either from workplaces, bars or restaurants but not all three. Only seven states have no indoor smoking restrictions, something Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC s Office on Smoking and Health is bullish about changing come 2020.
Harm Reduction
Two new studies should give you two more reasons to quit smoking or even better, never to start in the first place. Published in Tobacco Control, researchers from the University of Queensland School of Population Health in Australia compared all-cause death (mortality) rates between male and female smokers in a 10-year follow-up study using the Australian National Death Index. A total of 12,154 men and 11,707 women were compared, and it was found that the hazard ratio for death from all causes for smokers was the same regardless of gender, and the risk continued to increase as the amount smoked increased.
The results of two recent surveys conclude the same thing: people have many misconceptions about the risks associated with smoking.
Don’t let the Lexington-Herald Leader headline, “Madison County health board bans electronic cigarettes,” fool you. The Madison County Board of Health has actually added electronic cigarettes to their list of indoor smoking restrictions, perhaps due to an FDA warning in 2009 cautioning that the nicotine-delivery devices supposedly contain “toxic” ingredients. The amendment will go into effect in 60 days. “Their health board clearly does not understand what e-cigarettes really are,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan.
Unemployed and looking for a lucrative job in New York City? Don’t mind long walks and occasional arrests? This may be a job for you: According to an article in The New York Times, smuggling and reselling cigarettes on the streets is a profitable practice. The Times reporter Joseph Goldstein followed a successful street vendor nicknamed Lonnie Loosie by law enforcement officials because of his repeated arrests for selling individual cigarettes (“loosies”). Lonnie purchases cigarettes for slightly more than $50 per carton from smugglers in other states where taxes are less than a dollar a pack.
While U.S. tobacco regulations prevent marketers from truthfully informing smokers about lower-risk products, the U.K. appears to be fostering more harm reduction-oriented tobacco laws. The Wall Street Journal reports that tobacco giant British American Tobacco is establishing a new unit — Nicoventures — devoted to the manufacture of “innovative, regulatory-approved” smokeless products.
The 22nd International Harm Reduction Conference is underway this week in Beirut, Lebanon, and an article published yesterday in The Lancet underscores the goals of the “Beirut Declaration on HIV and Injecting Drug Use: A Global Call for Action,” a new document released at the annual meeting. In the paper, the International Harm Reduction Association is asking world leaders to scale up global efforts for evidence-based HIV harm reduction programs among injection drug users.
In a survey asking approximately 250,000 people about their current and past smoking habits, researchers learned that smoking causes half a million deaths annually in the U.S. — an increase from the prior estimates of about 450,000 deaths. To put this in perspective, about 2.5 million Americans die each year from all-cause mortality, indicating that smoking-related deaths account for approximately 20 percent of all fatalities. Published in the journal Epidemiology, researchers from the Center for Global Health Research at St.
In a surprise ruling, the FDA determined last week that tobacco product maker Star Scientific Inc. is free to market and sell its Ariva-BDL and Stonewall-BDL dissolvable tobacco lozenges independent of FDA regulation since the products do not fall under the jurisdiction of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.
Explaining the FDA’s decision, Dr. Lawrence Deyton, the director of the FDA’s new Center for Tobacco Products, stated, “At this time, only cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco are subject” to the law, and these particular Star Scientific products are not currently subject to regulation.
Following a report issued by the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) last week claiming that a menthol cigarette ban would be beneficial to public health, journalist Denise Mann revisits the issue in her article for WebMD, “Are Menthol Cigarettes Riskier Than Non-Menthol?” Ms. Mann cites a study published in yesterday's Journal of the National Cancer Institute, co-authored by ACSH friend Dr. Joseph K.
In March 23 article for WebMD, Denise Mann quotes ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross in his response to the proposed ban on menthol cigarettes:
In Friday’s Dispatch, we reported that the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) called for a ban on menthol cigarettes, but the committee didn’t actually go quite that far. The TPSAC report, without making any specific recommendations to ban or restrict the flavoring, simply stated that removing menthol cigarettes from the market would, in their opinion, benefit public health.