Want to know if your kids have been exposed to cigarette smoke? Well, there s a test for that. In a study just published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, researchers analyzed nearly 500 blood samples from children ages one to four for cotinine, a chemical present in the body after exposure to nicotine. Study author Dr. Neal Benowitz and his colleagues discovered that 55 percent of the samples tested positive for cotinine, indicating that those children were exposed to smoke or its chemical remnants within the previous three to four days.
Harm Reduction
ACSH would like to applaud Dr. John Pierce and his colleagues from the University of California San Diego Cancer Center for their latest article, featured in the Annual Review of Public Health. The review article points out the discrepancy between science and public policy as it relates to smoking cessation strategies.
In their article, the researchers question the efficacy of pharmaceutical aids used to help smokers kick the habit for good. In fact, as the researchers point out, most smokers have successfully quit without the help of any aids:
When we think about the health consequences of smoking, lung cancer is typically the first that comes to mind. But a new study confirms that many people globally are unaware of the other adverse effects associated with smoking specifically, the more common and especially dangerous effects of smoking on cardiovascular health.
As recently as December 2011, it seemed that the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, might be coming to its senses with regard to its senseless ban on the export of Swedish snus to other EU countries. No such luck.
"Quit or die. That's the message cigarette smokers get from the public health community," writes ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. "But in fact, smokers who have trouble quitting have some rarely mentioned alternatives to total abstinence from tobacco: it s a method of intervention called 'tobacco harm reduction.' In Dr. Whelan's most recent op-ed, she discusses the need for greater public education about harm reduction for smokers, especially for those who repeatedly try to quit but fail. Increasing public awareness is particularly crucial now, as the FDA has just issued new guidelines that will make make marketing modified-risk tobacco products even tougher.
Quit or die.
That's the message cigarette smokers get from the public health community.
But in fact, smokers who have trouble quitting have some rarely mentioned alternatives to total abstinence from tobacco: it s a method of intervention called tobacco harm reduction.
Some 450,000 Americans die prematurely each year because they smoke. Yet if cigarette smokers would just switch to safer products, we could cut the yearly number of tobacco-related deaths to 10,000 or less.
The FDA has just issued new guidelines dealing with chemicals in tobacco and how tobacco companies will be able to market potentially less risky products. While spokesmen for the agency, along with a variety of other organizations, are trumpeting these new strictures as a triumph for public health, the sad truth is that it s more of the same meaningless regulations being portrayed as beneficial. And the hurdles placed for reduced risk products bode ill for these products ever gaining access to the tobacco marketplace, which spells bad news for addicted cigarette smokers.
A major research trial in the UK has just underscored the inadequacy of standard nicotine replacement therapy as a means of helping smokers quit. The study, which was published in BMJ and funded by the Department of Health and the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, aimed to determine whether intensive counseling via telephone could improve smoking cessation rates among those who used nicotine patches. The randomized controlled trial, which involved nearly 2,600 smokers, ultimately found that the telephone counseling made no difference.
[E]xclusive use of DTPs [dissolvable tobacco products] would greatly reduce risk for smoking caused disease compared with regular use of cigarettes. While we at ACSH make this point on a regular basis, this time, this statement actually comes from an FDA advisory panel.
In its tenth anniversary edition, the latest Tobacco Atlas report by the World Lung Foundation (WLF) had some bad news to share: Tobacco-related deaths have nearly tripled in the past decade. If current trends continue, tobacco use and exposure will be responsible for the death of one person every six seconds which adds up to a billion deaths this century.
Further evidence that, even if you can t quit smoking, you should try your damnedest not to smoke around your kids: A new study has found that children exposed to second-hand smoke had almost double the risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as adults, compared to those who were not exposed. The findings come from a Norwegian study just published in the journal Respirology. At a university hospital in Bergen, Norway, researchers examined 433 adult patients with COPD and 325 adult patients without the disease.
Over half a million middle school students and three million high school students smoke, announced U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin while presenting the office s first report on youth smoking since 1994. Nine in 10 smokers pick up the habit before their 18th birthday, thus prompting Dr. Benjamin to declare youth smoking an epidemic that requires a renewed effort to prevent teens from smoking.