...Whelan argues that what Philip Morris really is seeking through regulation is a government seal of approval for a dangerous product. "Philip Morris wants FDA regulation because they want to get the blessing from the FDA when they come up with what they're saying is a safer cigarette," she says...
ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, Reason's Jacob Sullum, and others appear in John Berlau's Insight magazine article on the current battle over subjecting tobacco to FDA regulation:
http://www.insightmag.com/news/552374.html
Harm Reduction
New York's mayor Mike Bloomberg has joined the list of public officials seeking to import drugs from Canada where even American-made pharmaceuticals are subject to price controls in a quest to provide cheaper drugs for New Yorkers. And not just for government employees, as other civic leaders have planned, but potentially for the millions treated within the huge NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation system.
While at first glance this move might seem to make fiscal sense, in the long run it will squelch drug innovation and have devastating consequences for the future availability of life-saving and life-enhancing pharmaceuticals.
Should cigarettes be made illegal and currently-illegal drugs be made legal?
Defenders of cigarettes used to joke about such a scenario coming to pass, but with smoking bans becoming more popular and the idea of medical marijuana gaining some ground, it doesn't seem like such a far-fetched, mirror-universe idea anymore. And much as I hate to sound like my own thinking is on the cutting edge of absurdity, that outcome doesn't sound as unreasonable to me as it once did.
Information Tobacco Companies Don't Want Teens to Know About the Dangers of Smoking
Prepared by the American Council on Science and Health
Foreword by Justin Guarini
Editor-in-Chief: Kathleen Meister, M.A.
Editors: Kimberly C. Bowman, Gilbert L. Ross, M.D. Karen L. Schneider, Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H.
"We always hear that motherhood and apple pie was something we respected...But any speech about apple pie would be punished by a tax penalty because I'm sure they feel it is too high in sugar."
Dan Jaffe, a v.p. of the Association of National Advertisers, reacting in an October 15 Adweek article to a proposal by the American Obesity Association that would end business tax deductions for the advertising of foods low in nutritional value.
"No. 1, smoking is a major factor in developing bladder cancer and was the first thing I changed."
former Houston Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich, announcing he had been successfully treated for bladder cancer, as noted by ESPN.com on October 14.
Robert Palmer died suddenly of a heart attack last week at the age of fifty-four, which is a bit young to die of a heart attack -- at least for non-smokers. But Palmer, who performed "Addicted to Love" and other hit songs of the 1980s, was a smoker.
We cannot be certain what caused his heart attack, of course, but we know that smokers are two to four times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and are 70% more likely to die from it than non-smokers. Smokers also tend to die from heart disease about a decade earlier than non-smokers (it is only their tendency to get heart attacks at a younger age that accounts for the statistic, which would otherwise be puzzling, suggesting that smokers are more likely to survive individual heart attacks than non-smokers).
Last month, a company called Freedom Tobacco International, Inc. offered celebrities lifetime supplies of their cigarettes and paid women to smoke the brand in hip Manhattan bars and nightclubs in an effort to draw attention to the brand.
Editor's note: We just received this letter, a reminder that weighing long-term risks and benefits is often hardest for the young, which is what makes them such an important market for cigarette manufacturers. To help kids get a better handle on the risks, we'll soon publish a teen version of our book Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You, and for smokers of all ages interested in knowing some of the quit-assist options, there's our book Kicking Butts in the Twenty-First Century. We'd also recommend that the letter writer talk to her parents about her problem, despite her stated reluctance to do so, and that other kids in the same situation talk to their parents and doctors as well. TS
During scenes from the movie The Secret Lives of Dentists, Dana and David Hurst are seen undergoing an unholy combination of adultery and viral gastroenteritis. While Dana (Hope Davis) and their three kids are all feverish and vomiting, David (Campbell Scott) responds to the illness and betrayal in his family by . . . pulling out a pack of smokes.
Editor's note: People sometimes think of smoking as little more dangerous than countless other bad habits, so the idea of quitting through nicotine replacement therapy or pharmaceuticals that combat nicotine cravings may strike some as counterintuitive as though it were a mere switching from one substance to another. But smoking kills about a third of users and has many other negative health effects (see ACSH's book about Cigarettes), while drugs to aid smoking cessation just might save your life. The most common such drugs are described in this excerpt from ACSH's book Kicking Butts in the Twenty-First Century: What Modern Science Has Learned About Smoking Cessation. TS
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"No Smoking," the ubiquitous sign in public buildings, should also be present in another building your home. According to the August issue of the British Medical Journal, University of Warwick researchers recommend banning all smoking in parents' homes in order to decrease the potential harm of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) to babies.
Smokers shorten their lives by an average of seven years, according to insurance actuarial tables (one of humanity's greatest inventions and a model for rational calculation that the rest of the culture would do well to imitate). At least, seven years is what studies suggest is the handicap insurance companies are putting on smoking. Insurance companies normally don't officially open their actuarial tables to outside inspection, since those numbers are the basis of all the gambling-like choices the companies make about who to charge how much, the odds of having to pay out, and so forth.