As the nation works to curb smoking, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) presented some statistics on lung cancer rates that serve as inspiration for all who work in the trenches of public health: National lung cancer rates have declined, particularly among women, who witnessed a 2 percent decrease between 2006 and 2008. That decline in lung cancer incidence was even greater in the West, which experienced a 4 percent decline. In fact, the decrease in the rate of new lung cancer cases was largest among Western states, including California and Texas, which saw the greatest improvements.
Harm Reduction
Unfortunately, not all the news is good news: A recently proposed measure in the Russian Federation, much to our (and all others devoted to reducing the toll of smoking) chagrin, aims to ban the manufacture, sale, and importation of smokeless tobacco products.
ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross is urging the Russian government, in website comments and letters to several ministers, to reconsider enacting such a ban. The Russian health authorities are probably not well-versed in the data on harm reduction, and don't know that these products could help the over 40 million Russian smokers quit and reduce their health risk by over 90 percent.
In his TobaccoAnalysis blog, ACSH advisor Dr. Mike Siegel, professor at Boston University s School of Public Health, reports on the FDA s Center for Tobacco Products latest initiative to compile a list of the ingredients found in cigarettes and cigarette smoke. This endeavor, he says, is a pointless waste of time and resources, since there is nothing the agency can actually do with the list that would benefit public health.
Dr. Siegel points out that of the 10,000 to 100,000 chemicals present in cigarette smoke, only about 4,000 to 6,000 have actually been identified. Furthermore, it is unknown which constituents, at what levels, and in what combinations are responsible for the wide spectrum of diseases caused by smoking.
About 40 percent of cigarettes in New Jersey are smuggled into the state, according to a recent state Treasury Department report. And the figure hardly seems surprising, given that New Jersey levels a $2.70 tax on each pack of cigarettes sold. The high tax has created not only a significant black market for cigarettes in the state, but has also resulted in smokers purchasing their cigarettes out of state either via the Internet or by driving across state lines.
The number of adults smoking 10 or more cigarettes a day has declined slightly, but more adults now smoke one to nine cigarettes daily, according to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While the FDA is in the process of assessing how it will regulate modified risk tobacco products, a new study in Harm Reduction Journal reports that smokers remain largely misinformed about the relative safety of these products compared to cigarettes. The study draws from data collected between 2002 and 2009 from over 21,000 smokers in Canada, the U.S, the U.K., and Australia, where public education and access to smokeless products is varied.
An FDA-authored analysis of electronic cigarette contents has just appeared in the Journal of Liquid Chromatography and Related Technologies. The agency has, in the past, gone out of its way to find hypothetical dangers of e-cigarettes even going so far as to try to bar their importation (a Federal judge stopped that attempt). This most recent article s slant is in keeping with the FDA s enduring prejudice against this clean nicotine delivery device.
ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross and Jody Manley have just returned from an FDA workshop on modified risk tobacco products (MRTP), which was convened as directed in the 2009 law granting regulatory authority over tobacco products to the FDA. The goal is to assess the form that such regulation will take over MRTPs such as smokeless and dissolvable tobacco, as well as electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). Fourteen speakers with varying degrees of expertise on MRTPs briefly presented their opinions, prior to a variety of panel discussions designed to provide the FDA with the input they need to approve marketing tobacco products that make modified risk claims.
An article in the current issue of TIME magazine poses the question, How Safe is Tobacco that Melts in Your Mouth? They are referring, of course, to new dissolvable tobacco products currently being assessed by the FDA. Since R.J. Reynolds, America's second largest tobacco company, has begun selling new products, such as Camel Sticks, Orbs and Strips, in Colorado, public health officials are worrying that these dissolvable tobacco products may have a candy-like appeal for children and teenagers. But Richard Smith, spokesman for R.J.
A story in yesterday s New York Postturns attention to the increasingly popular electronic cigarette. These clean nicotine delivery devices are designed to mimic the look and feel of conventional cigarettes without delivering any of the carcinogenic by-products of combustion and they re catching on with smokers who would like to quit.
Most people are aware that smoking is associated with various cancers, including cancer of the lung and mouth, yet many may be surprised to learn that the risk of bladder cancer in current smokers is more than three times greater than it is for non-smokers. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by researchers from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services confirms this association.
The FDA regulates tobacco products, but it s still determining how to categorize what are known as dissolvable tobacco products. Three different forms of these are currently manufactured by R.J. Reynolds under the Camel brand name, all made from finely ground, flavored tobacco and delivering less nicotine than a cigarette. Camel Orbs are roughly the shape and size of a breath mint, Camel Sticks resemble a toothpick, and Camel Strips fit in a strip over the tongue. The marketing and health effects of all of these products first tested in Columbus, OH; Indianapolis, IN; and Portland, OR, and now in Denver, CO and Charlotte, NC are being studied by the FDA, which will report to Congress in March of 2012.