States across the country are experiencing a marked decrease in their anti-smoking program budgets. In Massachusetts, for instance, funding for such initiatives dropped from $50.5 million in 2001 to $4.1 million in 2011 a decrease of more than 90 percent. Where has the rest of the money disappeared to? Predictably, the funds that were supposed to be allocated to anti-tobacco initiatives, as outlined by the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, are too often actually diverted to fill other budget holes as state governments find themselves in dire financial straits.
Harm Reduction
The adverse health effects associated with smoking have been well documented, but now a new study from The Lancet suggests that the outcomes could be even worse for women. Led by researchers from the Division of Epidemiolgy at the University of Minnesota and Johns Hopkins University, the results of a meta-analysis on a total of 2.4 million subjects reveals that the risk for coronary heart disease is 25 percent higher among female smokers than among male smokers. In fact, the longer a woman smokes, the higher her risk of coronary heart disease becomes, as compared to men who smoked for the same length of time.
On Monday, we reported that, while heavy smoking among teenagers has dropped from 18 percent to below 8 percent between 1991 and 2009, those who smoke occasionally now comprise close to 80 percent of the teenage population a significant increase. We ourselves were stunned by not to mention a bit skeptical of the latter figure, and it turns out that the report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) requires a bit of clarification. Fortunately, ACSH advisor and executive director of SmokeFree Pennsylvania William Godshall got in touch with us.
For those smokers who don t feel the need to light up first thing in the morning, a new study published in the journal Cancer provides some seemingly good news. Researchers from the Penn State College of Medicine compared the behavior of nearly 5,000 smokers with lung cancer to that of almost 3,000 smokers without cancer. Those who reported having usually smoked within the first 30 minutes of waking were found to have doubled their risk of lung cancer, compared to those smokers who waited an hour before having a cigarette.
Speaking of smokers, ACSH would like to applaud famed actress Catherine Zeta-Jones for her recent efforts to quit smoking by using electronic cigarettes. According to OK magazine, she s been using this method of clean nicotine delivery for three months now. Our only hope is that more smokers are made aware of the potential benefits of using e-cigarettes to quit their habit of deadly cigarettes. Far too few smokers are aware of other harm reduction products, including smokeless tobacco, that can be used to kick cigarettes to the curb for good.
Pack-a-day smokers are increasingly rare in the average U.S. high school; however, a study just published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has found that teenagers are more likely to be casual, or social, smokers. Using data from a large national survey of high school students, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that, while heavy smoking among teenagers has dropped from 18 percent to below 8 percent between 1991 and 2009, those who smoke occasionally now comprise close to 80 percent of the teenage population a significant increase.
As electronic cigarettes become a more popular means of quitting conventional cigarettes, studies pointing to their efficacy are accumulating. In an online survey of nearly 3,600 subjects who were recruited from either e-cigarette-related web sites or smoking cessation sites that have nothing to do with e-cigarettes, researchers from the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Geneva found that a large majority of the responders who had quit reported that e-cigarettes helped them get off cigarettes.
While the amount of money that tobacco companies spent on advertising and promotional expenditures fell by 18 percent between 2006 and 2008, nationwide advertising of smokeless tobacco products actually increased by 55 percent during the same time period, according to a new Federal Trade Commission report. In fact, more smokeless tobacco ads may be encouraging smokers to switch from cigarettes to smoke-free alternatives.
We’d like to note that ACSH’s newest publication on tobacco harm reduction will be published in the current issue of Harm Reduction Journal. Authored by Dr. Brad Rodu, an ACSH advisor and Endowed Chair in Tobacco Harm Reduction Research at the University of Louisville's James Graham Brown Cancer Center, the paper provides a review of the most recent scientific literature on tobacco harm reduction (THR) methods, such as smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes. Dr.
Two recent studies offer a strong incentive for patients at risk of a heart attack to quit smoking and keep taking their daily dose of aspirin. An Italian study, led by Dr. Furio Colivicchi of San Filippo Neri Hospital in Rome and just published in the American Journal of Cardiology, found that the resumption of smoking after a heart attack can raise a patient s risk of dying as much as five-fold.
A New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) perspective piece on electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) would have you believe that FDA-approved cessation methods like the patch are a superior means of quitting smoking compared to e-cigarettes and, therefore, smokers should not rely on these relatively new electronic devices to kick the habit. But as ACSH s Dr.
This week, ACSH s Jody Manley and Dr. Gilbert Ross sat in on the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee s (TPSAC) preliminary hearing on the safety of dissolvable tobacco products such as RJ Reynold s Camel Orbs lozenges and Altria s dissolvable tobacco sticks. While these products were pioneered by Star Scientific s Arriva and Stonewall about ten years ago, Star applied for FDA approval of their lozenges as reduced risk tobacco products earlier this year. However, the FDA does not currently have regulatory authority over dissolvable tobacco products. Ultimately, the TPSAC, an FDA advisory committee, will compile and evaluate data to advise the FDA on how to formulate a regulatory framework for these products. Dr.