The American Heart Association yesterday issued a strong statement against the use of smokeless tobacco as a means of harm reduction and smoking cessation. In a 26-pagepaper in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers argued that smokeless tobacco may increase the risk of a fatal heart attack and hasn’t been found to help smokers quit in the United States.
Harm Reduction
Even though alcohol has been denied to the 33 miners trapped underground for over a month in a mine near Chile, their request for cigarettes was finally granted, and the miners will now share a ration of two packs per day. Though they were provided with nicotine patches and gum previously, the miners said it did little to alleviate their tobacco cravings.
“Well then why don’t we send them smokeless tobacco or clean nicotine such as e-cigs?” wonders ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross.
After four decades of declines, the U.S. smoking rate appears to have plateaued, the CDC reports. Some 46 million Americans — about one in five adults — report puffing regularly, the CDC says in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Last year the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey and the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System indicated 20.6 percent of U.S.
Committed cigarette smokers demonstrate that where there’s a will, there’s a way. In order to continue smoking but also circumvent the recent tax hikes on cigarettes, people have come up with a novel solution: roll-your-own cigarette machines. Found in about 150 tobacco outlets in 20 states, these machines produce a carton of cigarettes in about eight minutes and cost about $21, which explains why people wait up to an hour on some days to use this service.
For seniors addicted to smoking — whether they got that way from a YouTube video or not — Medicare is expanding its coverage to include tobacco-cessation counseling for those who haven’t been diagnosed with a tobacco-related disease, the Obama administration announced Wednesday. Previously, Medicare only covered the counseling for patients suffering from a tobacco-related illness.
A recent HealthDay News headlined “Nicotine Can Fuel Breast Cancer, Study Suggests” may needlessly scare readers into wrongfully assuming breast cancer may be caused by smoking. The study, which analyzed 276 breast tumor samples in vitro for a specific nicotine receptor subunit (a9-nAChR), found an over-production of the subunit in advanced-stage breast cancer compared to early-stage cancer.
“This is just another case of a scary headline based on bizarre extrapolations from cellular studies to human cancer epidemiology,” explains ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross.
While electronic cigarettes are nothing new to Dispatch readers, they just today made the front page of The Wall Street Journal. The paper reports that e-cigarette companies argue they cannot afford the clinical trials the FDA wants to require for approval and warn that they will be forced to go out of business if the FDA gets its way.
ACSH staffers were excited with the overwhelming response we received over the weekend via e-mail and Twitter to our question asking readers whether they or someone they know used electronic cigarettes as an effective method to successfully quit smoking.
Numerous people wrote in testimonials describing how, thanks to e-cigs, they have kicked their cigarette habits for good:
I have been using e-cigarettes for 13 months. I smoked 2 packs a day for 35 years. I only bought my first e-cig to try it, but quickly learned that I liked it better than a regular cigarette and switched almost instantly. —Janet Andersen
ACSH staffers re-learned a valuable lesson in news reporting yesterday: the media isn t always right. Based on inaccurate news reports, in yesterday s Dispatch we stated that Oregon has banned all electronic cigarettes. Thanks to ACSH friend Bill Godshall (and co-author of our publication on tobacco harm reduction), we re able to bring you the right information:
ACSH Dispatch inaccurately stated that Oregon is banning the sale of e-cigarettes in the state (which was also inaccurately stated in various news stories).
Oregon Attorney General John Kroger announced Tuesday that in order to protect our teens from unsafe products, Smoking Everywhere, Inc s electronic cigarettes will be banned from the state. E-cigarettes are a recently developed alternative to cigarette smoking. These devices supply the addictive nicotine that smokers crave, while mimicking tobacco smoking, but without the inhalation or emission of the harmful tobacco combustion products that come from smoking cigarettes.
The Associated Press predicts that China s commitment to ban smoking in all public indoor facilities by January 2011 will go up in a puff of smoke. Unlike the U.S., China which suffers at least one million smoking-related deaths annually ratified a World Health Organization anti-tobacco treaty requiring public places to go smoke-free. Smoking is more deeply entrenched in Chinese culture than in the U.S., with tobacco companies sponsoring Chinese schools. World Lung Foundation senior advisor Dr. Judith Mackay tells the AP the tobacco industry has traditionally been central within [Chinese] government and really very important. It s a really serious problem.