For many people who smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, abstinence seems impossible. Now doctors and public-health officials are debating whether it's even always necessary.
A number of medical researchers now believe that smokers and alcohol abusers can benefit from "harm reduction" meaning instead of kicking the habit, they can reduce health risks by merely drinking less or switching to a less-hazardous alternative, such as smokeless tobacco. With the success rate of abstinence programs abysmally low about 75% of those who go to 12-step anti-alcohol programs drop out, for example, and only about 20% of those who remain actually stop drinking -- the aim is for smokers or drinkers to "manage" their addictions at a potentially less-harmful level.
Harm Reduction
Testimony of Ms. Cassandra Coleman of Chicago, Illinois before the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring, and the District of Columbia, May 14 Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chairman.
Chairman Durbin and members of the committee, let me begin by thanking you for holding this hearing and for inviting me to testify today.
My story is also the story of two wonderful children: my thirteen year-old son, Nijell, and my ten year-old daughter, Nzingha, who is with me today.
In an unprecedented move, a cooperative apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan has voted to bar cigarette smokers from purchasing apartments. New co-owners will be permitted to purchase only if they accept the co-ops terms: no cigarette smoking, even in their own apartment. If new residents violate the no-smoking code, they will be subject to eviction. The new rules will not apply to current apartment owners who purchased their residences prior to the new non-smoking code.
Oh, some will call it juvenile, A vibrant red lollipop poised between adult lips, But the nicotine-pop fix lasts a while And compared to smoking, spells fewer hospital trips.
Nicotine doesn't kill, after all; It's smoking that tar and stuff that does one in. So I hope my next trip to the mall Reveals teens ditching smoking for sucking.
It'd look just as smashing As those baby pacifiers the club youth wear. (They're to prevent teeth-gnashing, When they're on ecstasy and beyond all cares.)
It's not a perfect future It sounds like some odd, infantile dream But far preferable to cancer Would be a world full of lollipops for teens.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently warned pharmacies selling "nicotine lollipops" and "nicotine lip balm" to stop, calling them illegal. According to the FDA, these products are being promoted as smoking cessation treatments or therapeutic drugs and therefore must gain FDA approval before public consumption. The lollipops and lip balm also contain a specific form of nicotine, nicotine salicylate, which has not been approved for smoking cessation. Current FDA-approved smoking cessation products, such as the patch, gum, inhaler, and nasal spray contain other forms of approved nicotine replacements. Further, the FDA worried that because this was a form of candy, and because the lollipops did not have adequate warning labels, children could be enticed to use them.
Hey, look! The secret to happy parenting has been known since the 1950s. Smoking may be very bad for Mom and Junior's lungs, but it can do wonders for alleviating stress in their relationship...
Responses:
April 5, 2002
In the 1950s and earlier the tobacco industry knew about the serious health risks of tobacco but for years used advertising such as this. How low can you go, using babies in such advertising?
envhealth
Last week, an upstate New York judge ordered Johnita DeMatteo to stop smoking in her home and in her car if she wanted to maintain her visitation rights with her thirteen year-old son, who lives with his father.
The judge said he made the decision to protect the health of the child.
This case has generated enormous discussion about individual rights. And it has raised some very provocative issues, particularly when the basic facts behind the judge's decision are sorted out.
Most of the coverage of this decision overlooked the obvious question: If judges are so concerned about protecting children from the health effects of second-hand smoke, why is a ruling like this issued only in the case of divorce?
"Many of the states that received billions of dollars in the national tobacco settlement have invested some of those funds in the stock market, benefiting the same tobacco firms that were meant to be punished by the settlement, according to a research group."
CNSNews.com, March 12, 2002, reporting the findings of the Investor Responsibility Research Center
Nobel laureate in medicine Sir Paul Nurse (Associated Press, Feb 25, 2002):
"We will always have cancer with us because of natural mistakes in the natural body, so it will never be eliminated, but I think we can do much better than we are doing now...The single most major hit we can get for short-term cancer rates is to eliminate the use of tobacco."
You have to admit: Law firms defending the behavior of cigarette companies, especially from 1950-1980, really have their work cut out for them. Their mission is to defend a client who for decades systematically misrepresented the truth about cigarette smoking and health.
Oh, no. As if smoking weren't dangerous enough, now comes tobacoo genetically-modified to entrap and sicken us more effectively.
New laws limit the amount of money that tobacco companies have to post as a bond while court judgments against the companies are being appealed (normally in most non-tobacco cases the defendant has to put up the entire amount of the damages awarded to the plaintiff while the appeal fight is going on). Such laws have been passed in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Wisconsin and introduced in other states. American Lung Association president John L. Kirkwood reacted:
"It's outrageous that state legislatures are passing laws whose only purpose is to provide special legal protection for tobacco companies."