Haters of the e-cigarette are quick to chastise actress Kathryn Heigl for continuing to vape nine months after switching from traditional cigarettes. A Daily Mail article, which chooses to nickname the nicotine delivery device a “smokestick,” voices the views of the strongest opponents of harm reduction with a tone that implies “see, e-cigarettes are so addictive, Ms. Heigl can’t quit them, either.” ACSH’s response: Why criticize her?
Harm Reduction
While speaking to over 30 University of North Carolina Wilmington students, Paul Turner Jr., director of the N.C. Spit Tobacco Education Program and former director of the CDC’s oral health division, haphazardly groups various smokeless nicotine products, including dip, snuff and snus, into one category — harmful to human health — despite each having its own risk profile.
The Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) believes mentholated cigarettes do not pose a greater health threat than unflavored cigarettes. The U.S. Draft Report on mentholated cigarettes, released yesterday, echoes very closely ACSH’s own menthol paper, released one year ago, which ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross presented to TPSAC last year.
Two of the largest manufacturers of mentholated cigarettes initiated a lawsuit against the FDA Friday to prevent the consideration of an upcoming FDA panel report recommending expanding the current flavored cigarette ban to include menthol varieties. Lorillard and R.J. Reynolds — makers of the Newport and Kool cigarette brands, respectively — argue that three members of the advisory panel have “severe financial and appearance conflicts of interest and associated biases,” including receipt of funding for research or consultation work from manufacturers of smoking-cessation products.
Yesterday brought word from two continents of extraordinary government action — and absurd lies — regarding tobacco.In the U.S., Judge Gladys Kessler announced a decision requiring tobacco companies to run advertisements and put notices on their product packages acknowledging that they deliberately misled the public about the health effects of so-called light cigarettes and the addictiveness of nicotine.
If two Senators have their way, baseball fans will no longer have to watch their favorite ball players spit in the dugout or field — at least not tobacco, that is. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) want the Major Leagues to ban smokeless tobacco based on a survey showing that the use of smokeless tobacco among high school boys has increased by 36 percent since 2003. "We now know conclusively that smokeless tobacco endangers the health of baseball players who use it, but it also affects millions of young people who watch baseball," the Senators wrote to baseball commissioner Bud Selig earlier this week. While ACSH's Dr.
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals refused to reevaluate an appellate court’s December 2010 decision to not grant the FDA the authority to regulate e-cigarettes as medical devices. The FDA has lost another battle in the effort to require e-cigarette manufacturers to conduct expensive clinical trials to prove their devices are safe. These regulations are required of other smoking cessation products such as nicotine patches. But so far e-cigarette manufacturers have convinced the courts that their devices are intended for smoking pleasure and not cessation. Currently, the FDA can only regulate e-cigarettes as “tobacco products.” The FDA still has one last resort, though: it can take its case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Today’s New York Times contains a Page One story on a strange and disquieting trend: U.S. businesses — especially those involved in health care — are increasingly banning not only smoking by employees, but employees who smoke. Among the first of the leading medical institutions to implement the policy was the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio in 2007.To put the policy into effect, hospitals and clinics have demanded urine tests of workers. In many cases, those who were found to have elevated levels of nicotine byproducts were then dismissed. Laws in 29 states and the District of Columbia prohibit employment discrimination against smokers.
ACSH scientific advisor and Professor of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, Dr. Michael Siegel points to a troubling misrepresentation by advocates of smoking bans. University of Iowa researchers claimed that a state ban on smoking in public places had lowered rates of heart disease by, as an NBC TV affiliate put it, “staggering numbers.” But Dr. Siegel notes that if anything, the data show just the opposite.
Despite receiving even an A-list celebrity testimonial on their efficacy, e-cigarettes have gotten a lot of flack from public health opponents who argue that the clean nicotine delivery device is harmful and contains “toxic” chemicals. Well, thanks to a study co-authored by ACSH advisor Michael Siegel, M.D., M.P.H., and published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, it was found that out of 222 first-time e-cigarette users who “vaped” more than 20 times daily for six months, 70 percent quit smoking.
First Lady Michelle Obama announced that President Obama has been cigarette-free for a year now. We here at ACSH wish to congratulate him, as we are aware of the great difficulty smokers face while trying to quit. “However, many smokers fall back to smoking even after a year of being smoke-free,” says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. So keep up the good work, Mr. President. If the urge returns, he should consider trying smokeless tobacco for a nicotine hit with minimal health risk involved, adds Dr. Ross.
There is no such thing as a safe form of tobacco, says Joseph Lee, a social research specialist for the Department of Family Medicine at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in an op-ed last week for Raleigh’s NewsObserver.com.
Mr. Lee specifically goes on to condemn the recent R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s Camel Snus ads as misleading and claims that “smokers who try tobacco snus products are at high risk of becoming addicted to both cigarettes and snus, thus continuing or even adding to their risk for lung, bladder, breast, cervical, oral and pancreatic cancer.”