Australia’s smokers will be finding it even tougher to light up after a raft of tough new government legislation further tightened the country’s already stringent restrictions on smoking.

On April 29, the Australian government — virtually overnight — announced a 25 percent hike in cigarette tax.

And in a world first, Australia has set out plans to become the first country to have plain cigarette packaging as of July 1, 2012. Cigarette packs will carry no logos, color or font variation. Instead the pack will bear the brand name and a graphic photo depicting the gruesome consequences of smoking.

“The new branding for cigarettes will be the most hard-line regime in the world and cigarette companies will hate it,” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a press conference.

The measure has the backing of the World Health Organization. WHO claims that packets convey a brand image such as toughness, which appeals to teenagers who are still forming their identity.

As Rudd predicted, tobacco companies responded almost immediately.

Imperial Tobacco Australia was concerned about what would happen to its brand recognition: “Introducing plain packaging just takes away the ability of a consumer to identify our brand from another brand and that’s of value to us,” Cathie Keogh, the brand’s spokesperson told ABC News. Keogh said Imperial Tobacco were considering its legal options. “It really affects the value of our business as a commercial enterprise and we will fight to support protecting our international property rights.”

British American Tobacco Australia said it would also fight the plain-package ruling. “It commodifies our brand,” said spokesperson Louise Warburton. “It will mean that the only differentiation between types of cigarettes is price, and it will drive down prices.” Warburton believes the move will also inspire counterfeit products. “Our industry is already losing 12 percent of the market share to knock-off products,” said Warburton. “It costs taxpayers AU $600 million ($532 million) annually.”

Australian Health Minister Nicola Roxon told ABC News the legislation would be written to withstand a lawsuit by the tobacco industry. “We won’t be put off by the fact that tobacco companies won’t like this action.”

Smoking is the most preventable cause of death and disease in Australia, according to the federal government. Every year, 15,000 Australians die as a result of the habit. In 2007, 16.6 percent of Australians over the age of 14 were smokers and the government wants the rate to drop to 10 percent by 2018. Rudd plans to generate 5 billion Australian dollars ($4.4 billion) in the next four years from cigarette taxes and wants to use this money to fund overhauls of hospitals and the health system.

Health advocates welcomed the new anti-smoking laws. “It eradicates the last vestiges of advertising,” said Ian Olver the CEO of the Australian Cancer Council. “The color of the pack attracts young, new smokers, and clashes with the photos of health warnings.”

Olver said raising cigarette taxes had traditionally been very effective in reducing smoking rates. “For every 10 percent increase in price, the amount of smokers in the country drops by 3 percent,” he said. “Most Australian smokers want the prices to go up because it will encourage them to quit.”

Before the price of cigarettes went up by 2.16 Australian dollars ($1.99) at midnight on April 29, smokers crowded supermarkets and newsagents in order to stockpile.

Smoking has been virtually banned from enclosed spaces in Australia since 2007. Sydney’s most famous beach, Bondi, has had a smoking ban since 2004, and smoking is routinely prohibited on sidewalks near outdoor eating areas.

Since 2006, cigarettes in Australia have been required to display a graphic photograph depicting the effects of smoking. The images must appear on 30 percent of the front of the packet, and 90 percent of the back. These have ranged from photos of fat oozing out of blocked aortas to photographs of gums barely able to adhere to their teeth. These images are likely to be the only color visible on the new packaging.

The proposed packaging is unlikely to prevent smoking, said Paul Harrison, a senior lecturer in advertising and consumer behavior at Deakin Business School. Instead it will break down the tie between the consumer and the brand. “The perception of flavor comes from the packaging, we have an emotional response to it, that isn’t rational,” he said. “It’s the same with the way we distinguish the similar types of soft drinks.

“Now it will take more cognitive effort to decide between Winfield and Marlboro when they both look exactly the same on the supermarket shelf. The effect will be small on current smokers, but it might alter their attachment to a particular brand.”

Harrison, however, said that as one of many anti-smoking policies it would work. “There is a big social shift occurring. It’s becoming harder and harder for people to smoke, and less people will tolerate smokers. It’s a hardcore habit to keep up now. Most smokers will have to be really committed to their cause.”

By Marina Kamenev – Special to GlobalPost

Prenatal smoking can lead to psychiatric problems in children and increase the need for psychotropic medications in childhood and young adulthood, claims a new study.

In the study, Finnish researchers found that adolescents who had been exposed to prenatal smoking were at increased risk for use of all psychiatric drugs especially those uses to treat depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and addiction compared to non-exposed youths.

The study has been presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

“Recent studies show that maternal smoking during pregnancy may interfere with brain development of the growing fetus,” said Mikael Ekblad, lead author of the study and a pediatric researcher at Turku University Hospital in Finland. “By avoiding smoking during pregnancy, all the later psychiatric problems caused by smoking exposure could be prevented.”

Ekblad and his colleagues collected information from the Finnish Medical Birth Register on maternal smoking, gestational age, birthweight and 5-minute Apgar scores for all children born in Finland from 1987 through 1989. They also analyzed records on mothers’ psychiatric inpatient care from 1969-1989 and children’s use of psychiatric drugs.

Results showed that 12.3 per cent of the young adults had used psychiatric drugs, and of these, 19.2 per cent had been exposed to prenatal smoking.

The rate of psychotropic medication use was highest in young adults whose mothers smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant (16.9 per cent), followed by youths whose mothers smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes a day (14.7 per cent) and unexposed youths (11.7 per cent).

The risk for medication use was similar in males and females, and remained after adjusting for risk factors at birth, such as Apgar scores and birthweight, and the mother’s previous inpatient care for mental disorders.

Smoking exposure increased the risk for use of all psychotropic drugs, especially stimulants used to treat ADHD (unexposed: 0.2 per cent; less than 10 cigarettes/day: 0.4 per cent; and more than 10 cigarettes/day: 0.6 per cent) and drugs for addiction. An increased risk for use of drugs to treat depression also was seen (unexposed: 6 per cent; less than 10 cigarettes/day: 8.6 per cent; and more than 10 cigarettes/day: 10.3 per cent).

Lots of smokers, lots of racial overtones, lots of interest. There’s so much interest in menthol cigarettes and their regulation, in fact, that the Food and Drug Administration’s newly created scientific advisory committee on tobacco products will be webcasting its inaugural meeting — focusing entirely on menthol in tobacco — on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 30 and 31.

The panel is expected to tackle the question of whether and how mentholation of cigarettes should be regulated by the FDA. You can check the meeting out here.

First, a few facts from a comprehensive collection of research on menthol and tobacco produced by the National Cancer Institute: Menthol cigarettes account for 26% of all cigarettes sold in the United States. Among adult African Americans who smoke, nearly 7 in 10 smoke menthols. Smoking menthols is biggest among black women and 18- to 30-year-olds. Latinos also appear to be drawn to the frosty taste and sensation of menthols: Among Latinos who smoke almost 3 in 10 smoke menthols, compared with about 22% of non-Latino whites.

Those facts mean that any regulation of menthol in cigarettes will weigh more heavily in minority communities — a sensitive subject for public policy. African Americans have the highest rates of lung cancer of any racial or ethnic group, and black men are far more likely than males of any other ethnic group to die of it.

Beyond those glaring demographic facts, there’s a lot of uncertainty about the role of menthol in cigarettes. Does menthol induce young people, and especially young African Americans, to take up the habit? Does it make it harder for those who smoke them to quit? Does the frosty flavoring prompt those who smoke menthols to drag harder or inhale more deeply? And are menthols any more cancer-causing than unmentholated cigarettes? These questions — to which research has provided contradictory and incomplete answers — will be discussed by the FDA’s advisory committee, the membership of which is listed here.

Menthol is derived from the oil of peppermint, and it’s also known as mint camphor. As luck would have it, it’s a compound that in used in embalming, and in masking the smell of decomposition. The first brand of menthol cigarettes, Salem, was introduced by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. on the American market in 1956, just as researchers outside the tobacco industry were beginning to collect evidence of cigarettes’ dangers.

By Melissa Healy, Latimesblogs

Despite all the evidence out there, people are still smoking.
IN THE 1940s, smoking cigarettes was socially acceptable – even considered cool, if you believe some of the ads from way back then.

For example, one ad for Camel cigarettes read: “More doctors smoke CAMELS than any other cigarette!” Accompanying the claim was a picture of a handsome doctor (you can tell he’s a doctor because he’s wearing a white coat) holding a cigarette in his hand. The message? Beautiful, intelligent, successful people are smoking Camels, so why aren’t you?

Moreover, if your doctor smokes Camels, they can’t possibly be bad for you. I mean to say, this is the guy responsible for your health. And if he thinks a Camel is better than, say, a Marlboro, who can argue with that? A couple of Camels a day might even help that hacking cough you’ve had for a while, the one that causes you to bring up blood and pieces of lung tissue.

Even if such ads were still allowed today, no doctor would endorse such a product, simply because we all know better now. Seventy years later, we all know that smoking cigarettes is bad for your health. We all know that stinking hair, and nicotine-stained teeth and fingers are neither sexy nor as cool as some would have you think. We all know that most doctors don’t look like movie stars.

I started smoking when I was 15. And no, I didn’t smoke Camels. I smoked a brand called Player’s. There was no sexy advertising, not that I can remember, but it was the cigarette that my father smoked – or at least one of them.

My father smoked three packets of cigarettes a day: two packets that guaranteed that his lungs were perpetually clogged with tar, and a packet of menthols. The menthols were for his health.

You see, way back then, we were slowly becoming aware that smoking could cause all sorts of nasty cancers, but most people chose to ignore the warnings.

My father did know better, but those menthols cigarettes were supposed to cancel out the ill-effects of the other cigarettes.

He didn’t know it at the time, but those menthol cigarettes were just as harmful as any other cigarette around. Still, that soothing menthol flavour had him fooled.

Even when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, he continued to smoke his menthol cigarettes. He would spend half an hour every morning coughing violently in an attempt to clear his lungs, followed by several menthols with his cup of coffee.

I didn’t start smoking because of my father’s influence. If anything, his habit disgusted me. During the winter months, when all the windows and doors in my house were firmly closed against the elements, the living room was often full of smoke, the result of one man and his 60 cigarettes. And even when he wasn’t at home, that room reeked of stale nicotine.

Every spring, my father would open the windows, don a pair of overalls, and paint the living room walls. I often watched as he applied the virgin white paint, which seemed all the whiter against the yellowing walls.

It probably never occurred to him that the inside of his lungs had suffered a much worse fate. And it certainly never crossed my mind that I would be yellowing walls of my own in years to come.

Long before my father’s cancer was diagnosed, peer pressure induced me to smoke for the first time. I’d just moved to a new school, where two of the most popular girls in my year had befriended me.

I was so grateful for the friendship and eager to be accepted, so when they offered me a cigarette one day after class, I accepted without even thinking about the consequences. The first inhalation almost caused me to throw up, but I persevered.

I smoked for almost 15 years before deciding to give it up. But to this day, I regret that first puff.

Despite all the evidence out there, people are still smoking. And it’s not just middle-aged people, people who didn’t know any better way back then, who are indulging. A lot of young people are taking up the habit. Like what the heck do we have to tell them about cigarettes to stop them from starting in the first place? Of course it doesn’t help that Malaysia has been dubbed the “indirect advertising capital” of the world.

Seventy years from now, we might look back on the indirect advertising campaigns that promote cigarettes today and find them equally as insidious as the Camel ad of the 1940s.

I sure hope so.

By MARY SCHNEIDER, Thestar

According to a new scientific study, it would appear that past histories of cigarette abuse may be linked to an impairment in mental functions later on in life. The researchers behind the investigation found that this is especially true for women, although men are not entirely spared from this effect.

Oddly enough, past histories of abuse in both men and women were not associated with such impairments later on in life. The work was conducted on about 287 participants, aged between 31 and 60. Both males and females were analyzed, PhysOrg reports.

The negative effects were recorded mostly in the flow of thinking processes, and also in remembering things. Participants with similar history of alcohol abuse performed very similarly in basic cognitive function tests, regardless of their genders. In addition, it was also revealed that the results of these tests were comparable to the ones obtained by individuals in a control group that had no history of alcohol abuse. Details of this investigation appear in the March issue of the respected scientific Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

The correlations changed dramatically when the same tests were performed on long-term smokers. According to the research team, women who had smoked a lot in the past were more likely than other females who had never smoked to perform worse on certain cognitive tests. The same relation was not found in men, the experts write. However, the study sample was fairly small, and so more work would be needed to validate these results. But the team still has no clue as to why such disparate results were obtained between alcohol and tobacco use. They expected the findings to be more in tune with each other, University of Iowa Department of Psychiatry assistant research scientist Dr. Kristin Caspers says.

She was the lead author of the new investigation, and also the leader of the group that made the study. The expert says that, in the case of smoking women, the cognitive abilities that had more to suffer included reasoning, planning and organizing. These are generally referred to “higher-order” brain functions, the investigators conclude.

By Tudor Vieru, Softpedia

A day after Muhammadiyah issued a fatwa banning its followers from lighting up, both the organization and antitobacco campaigners have targeted cigarette advertising as one of the main culprits behind a generation of new smokers.

“We issued the fatwa because we believed those advertisements were targeting children and teenagers. This could ruin the country’s future generations,” Ahmad Zaenuddin, who heads the Jakarta office of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-largest Islamic organization, said on Wednesday.

He added that it was common knowledge that tobacco companies used prominent celebrities in their advertising to convince young people across the nation that smoking was fashionable.

“The children will follow the lifestyle of their favorite public figures and TV stars,” he said. “This is one of the dangers of tobacco advertising, because they use actors who can capture the young people’s attention.”

Aside from issuing the fatwa on smoking, Muhammadiyah is also expected to lobby the government to immediately ratify the World Heath Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which mandates that signatories implement methods to reduce tobacco use.

Adam Aliyyi, 15, a senior high school student in the capital, told the Jakarta Globe that he started smoking when he was 11 years old.

“I was able to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day,” he said. “But I have cut down somewhat because I am not so healthy anymore. I only smoke on Saturday nights now.”

Adam said that he had started smoking because cigarettes were heavily advertised and promoted at concerts and events, which are often sponsored by tobacco companies.

“I love attending youth events. Some are even held at my school and they discreetly offer us free cigarettes there,” he said.

Dr. Kartono Muhammad, a leading antitobacco campaigner and former chairman of the Indonesian Medical Association (IDI), confirmed that cigarette advertising had a significant impact on children.

“Children are the best imitators and they want to be like their role models,” he said. “Children are exposed to these advertisements on the streets and at musical performances where their idols light up.”

Kartono also said smoking could act as a gateway to hard drugs. “Once children are addicted to cigarettes, they tend to try other, stronger addictive substances. They will want more.”

A survey by the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak) in 2007 revealed that almost half of teens polled had taken up smoking because of advertising. The study also found that tobacco companies had sponsored 1,350 youth-oriented events from January to October in 2007.

By Nurfika Osman, Thejakartaglobe

Sixteen years ago, Victor DeNoble testified before Congress about the addictive qualities of nicotine and how his research was suppressed by the tobacco industry.

These days, the scientist travels the country telling students about the harmful effects of cigarettes and other tobacco products. He delivered the message Monday to 400 students attending two assemblies at Pitman High School.

The former whistle-blower will speak at Turlock High School on Friday as well as schools in San Joaquin County this week as part of the Kaiser Permanente “Don’t Buy The Lie” anti-smoking program. Kaiser has run the program in Sacramento-area schools for 17 years and extended the campaign to the Northern San Joaquin Valley this year.
DeNoble, a former researcher for Philip Morris, said federal officials were holding him in protective custody in 1994, when seven tobacco industry executives told a congressional committee that cigarettes were not harmful to the millions of smokers in the United States.

“I would tell Congress that nicotine changes the structure of this,” DeNoble told the Pitman students, holding up a small jar containing the brain of a lab rat.

He made the students squirm by giving them a close-up look at the rat brain, a monkey brain and human brain, all of which showed the effects of repeated exposure to nicotine, he said.

As with all addictive drugs, nicotine changes the function of the brain’s dopamine system, DeNoble said. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that produces feelings of contentment and is associated with addiction.

DeNoble, a behavioral pharmacologist, was researching drug addiction at the University of Minnesota in 1979 when cigarette maker Philip Morris offered him a job. According to DeNoble, company officials told him their products killed 138,000 people a year, and they wanted him to develop a drug to replace nicotine in cigarettes.

Besides being addictive, nicotine has been shown to have adverse effects on the cardiovascular system.

Assigned to a research lab in Richmond, Va., DeNoble and a colleague conducted nicotine studies with lab animals and were involved in developing a safer cigarette for Philip Morris. However, DeNoble said, company officials declined to use the nicotine substitute because it would look like an admission tobacco products had harmed smokers for decades.

Philip Morris fired DeNoble in 1984 and prevented him from publishing his research. A secrecy agreement he had signed kept him quiet for 10 years, but he became the first tobacco- industry whistle-blower to testify before Congress in the 1990s.

These days, he travels to many states giving his “Inside the Dark Side” talks to students.

A Philip Morris spokesman said Monday that it had no comment on the content of DeNoble’s presentations.

DeNoble told the Pitman students that the developing brains of young people are sensitive to addictive drugs such as nicotine. Despite limits on tobacco advertising, the industry targets young people with colorful ads in magazines and has no way of excluding minors from Internet chat rooms for smokers, he said.

Caleb Porter, a Pitman sophomore, said Monday’s assembly was fascinating.

“He has a very interesting story, sort of like an epic movie,” he said, adding that smoking is not for him. “I have no desire to try it.”

The “Don’t Buy The Lie” program includes a contest in which high school students design posters with anti-smoking messages. The grand prize winner gets a $1,000 gift card and his or her anti-smoking message put on billboards in the Central Valley. Runners-up receive $50 gift cards.

By Ken Carlson, Modbee

A subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc. has agreed to alter its marketing to specify that organic tobacco does not provide safer tobacco or cigarettes for smokers.
The settlement agreement involving Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. and the attorneys general of 33 states, including North Carolina, took effect Monday.

Santa Fe sells Natural American Spirit cigarettes and organic tobacco for roll-your-own tobacco users. Two cigarette styles — “light mellow taste” and “regular full-bodied taste” are listed on the pack as being made with 100 percent organic tobacco.

On its Web site, Santa Fe already has a disclaimer similar in size to the surgeon general’s warning. The disclaimer reads “no additives in our tobacco does not mean a safer cigarette.”

The disclaimers substitute “organic tobacco” in the place of “no additives.”

Edmund Brown Jr., the attorney general for California, said that the states were concerned that Santa Fe’s advertising may have been misleading consumers into believing that its organic products were less harmful than other tobacco products.

“There is currently no competent or reliable scientific evidence to support this conclusion,” the attorneys general said in the agreement.

The attorneys general had considered taking legal action because they felt the advertising may have been in violation of the Master Settlement Agreement.

“Stamping an organic label on tobacco products is ultimately a distinction without a difference,” Brown said. “Organic or not, cigarettes are bad for your health.”

Santa Fe said it agreed to make the changes even though “we believe our advertising is, and has been, truthful and not misleading.” The agreement states that the settlement is not an admission by Santa Fe that it has violated the MSA.

Santa Fe said that its organic tobacco is certified through the National Organic Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Certified organic tobacco is grown without the use of pesticides and fertilizers prohibited under the program. The agreement allows it to continue to advertise its tobacco as organic or 100 percent organic.

“We came to an amicable agreement, and there was no fine involved,” said Alexandra Pratt, a spokeswoman for Santa Fe. “It made sense to make the agreement, which adds more clarity, which is what the California attorney general wanted.”

Santa Fe said it is sending new marketing materials to distributors and retailers. They have to be in place by March 23.

By Richard Craver, Journalnow

Cigarettes host a bacterial bonanza of hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, a new genetics study reports.

The data support findings described last September by scientists at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. They extracted tobacco particles sitting atop filters or inside cigarette packaging and placed the particles in a sterile culture medium that simulated human lungs. In most cases, the team was able to grow bacteria that had been present on the near-microscopic flakes.

Scientists have long known that smokers and people exposed to secondhand smoke experience high rates of respiratory infections, notes Amy Sapkota of the University of Maryland in College Park. The presumption has been that smoking impairs lung function or immunity — which it may, she acknowledges.

“But nobody talks about cigarettes as a source of those infections,” she says. So she and her colleagues screened leafy bits of cigarettes for bacterial DNA.

The scientists probed for ribosomal material, protein-building elements that read and execute instructions encoded within a cell’s DNA. Sapkota’s team homed in on long, species-specific regions of this material known as 16S markers and compared them with those of known bacteria.

Checking 16S markers for close to 800 known bacteria revealed matches to many hundreds of markers in the four brands of cigarettes screened: Marlboro Red, Camel, Kool Filter Kings and Lucky Strike Original Red. All were purchased in Lyon, France, where Sapkota was completing postdoctoral studies.

In a paper published online in Environmental Health Perspectives, Sapkota’s team lists many of the most prevalent bacteria present, including Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning; Clostridium, Corynebacterium, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia — all of which are associated with pneumonia and other infections; E. coli; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie serious hospital-associated infections.

Such genomic analyses can’t prove whether the DNA in unlit cigarettes came from live germs. But Alejandro Rooney of the Agricultural Research Service in Peoria, Ill., says that, based on data he published five years ago, at least some could have.

In seeking the source of severe respiratory disease in some U.S. troops in Iraq, most of whom were new smokers, “We looked at the microbes that you could culture from cigarettes and that were alive,” Rooney says. Most bacteria belonged to families that form spores. “And that makes sense,” he says, because tobacco in cigarettes is dry.

And spore-forming bacteria like Bacillus subtilis can survive in a state akin to suspended animation until they reach a suitable environment.

Clearly, he says, “it would be worthwhile to investigate further whether it [bacterial contamination of tobacco] is a health problem” and whether it extends to microbes beyond those his team was able to culture.

Roswell Park immunologist John Pauly agrees.

Several years ago, he began exploratory “surgery” on cigarettes, looking for microbes. Eighteen months ago, his group published data showing that randomly selected flakes extracted from cigarette filters and packages grew in a solution mimicking blood.

In the September 18, 2009 issue of Immunological Research, Pauly and his colleagues reviewed data showing that not only cigarettes but also cigars and smokeless tobacco (such as chewing tobacco and snuff) host live germs, although in most cases, few to none of the microbes have been identified by species.
In the paper, Pauly’s group also summarized followup tests at Roswell Park. They showed that roughly 60 percent of filters — representing 11 brands of sampled cigarettes and five companies — contained tobacco particles. The tobacco also hosted bacterial toxins. And as a general rule, they reported, “bacteria grew from greater than 90 percent of the randomly selected flakes.”

When cultured with blood, Pauly’s team demonstrated, “those tobacco-derived bacteria frequently destroyed the red blood cells.”

Ironically, he says, “You’ll see very few bacteria on freshly harvested, green tobacco.” Most microbial contamination occurs later. “When you place it in a curing situation, for example — a barn with high temperatures, high humidity, poor ventilation and blocked-out sunlight — you get a near-perfect environment for growing bacteria and fungi,” Pauly says.

Pauly notes that the tobacco industry is well aware of microbial contamination in their products, and when it occurs, even though they have yet to report it in the peer-reviewed literature. His source: a host of U.S. patents awarded to cigarette companies in recent years for killing microbes.

They include patent no. 6,755,200 B1, issued on June 29, 2004, to three Virginia scientists on behalf of Phillip Morris Inc. It covers the use of an antibacterial wash on fresh or partially cured tobacco as a cost-effective method “of reducing both the numbers and activity of bacterial and fungal populations.” The patent points out that these microbes are responsible for producing endotoxins and tobacco-specific chemicals called nitrosamines.

Preventing nitrosamine formation is the real impetus for those patents, says Pauly, because those contaminants represent “the number one carcinogens found in both smoking and smokeless tobacco products.” And they don’t arise from the burning of tobacco, he notes, “but due to microbial degradation of components in the tobacco.”
However, endotoxins are not benign. Healthy lungs are sterile, Pauly notes, so seeding the airways with microbes and these toxins could promote dangerous inflammation and “constitute a previously unrecognized health risk from smoking.”

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed into law last June 22, gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to compel companies to turn over all data on constituents of tobacco products that may be harmful. This would include germs, Pauly contends. The law also instructs the FDA to publicly display and annually publish a list of potentially harmful constituents in each tobacco product, by brand and by quantity. And it directs the FDA to report to Congress on innovations and treatments that would, among other things, reduce the harm associated with tobacco use.

Pauly says that he and other tobacco researchers “are hoping FDA uses the law to start asking tobacco companies: ‘Why have you withheld this information from us for so long, and when will you start using the [antimicrobial] technologies you’re patenting to reduce the harm associated with tobacco products?’ ”

By Janet Raloff, Sciencenews

The 2008 WI Youth Tobacco Survey found that 7 percent of high school students and 3 percent of middle school students use chewing tobacco. Its use is more common among boys than girls.
With the numbers doubling in the years from middle school to high school, it is very important that our youths are educated about chewing tobacco, its effects on their bodies, and the products and advertising aimed at them by the tobacco companies.

Many people have the incorrect assumption that because chewing tobacco is smokeless, it is also harmless, since the poisons and chemicals are not released into the air. However, that is not the case. Chewing tobacco contains 28 cancer-causing agents, all of which are absorbed into the bloodstream during its use. In fact, chewing tobacco is more addictive and harder to quit than cigarettes. Using spit tobacco eight to 10 times a day can put as much nicotine into the body as smoking 30 to 40 cigarettes, since the nicotine content of spit tobacco is two to three times greater than a single cigarette. Nicotine is more addictive than cocaine or heroin (“About Spit Tobacco,” ETR Associates, 2007).

With the smoking bans that are being implemented around the nation, tobacco companies are changing the focus of their advertising — turning more to promotion of smokeless products as discreet alternatives to cigarettes in places where smoking is not allowed (www.cancer.org). This is creating a new tobacco user — one who smokes in their home, and uses smokeless products in public, posing even more serious health threats to their bodies.

Additionally, the smokeless products that the tobacco companies are advertising have an increasing appeal to teenagers, due to the variety of candy flavors that are available. A recent study by Portland State University Chemistry Professor James Pankow found that smokeless tobacco products have up to 700 percent more flavor additives than candy! The high levels of flavorings are used to cover the taste of the tobacco, luring kids into using it because of the good taste, and not forcing them to think about the health risks associated with its use.
Anti-tobacco advocates state that parents who don’t smoke are not aware about the new threat coming from smokeless flavored tobacco, as they simply have no idea that such products exist. The landmark Tobacco Control act adopted last June, and put into effect in November, prohibits the sales of cigarettes with any flavoring besides menthol; however, the ban doesn’t cover other flavored tobacco products.

Chewing tobacco users face a multitude of health risks, including cancers of the lip, tongue, cheeks, gums and floor and roof of the mouth, nicotine addiction, oral leukoplakia, gum disease and gum recession, heart attack and stroke . According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, oral cancer is the sixth-leading cancer in men, and almost 75 percent of people diagnosed with oral and pharyngeal cancer use tobacco. Additionally, only 56 percent of people diagnosed with mouth or throat cancers live longer than five years.

Feb. 14 to 20 was Through With Chew Week. Established in 1989 by the American Academy of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery Inc., the week serves as an educational campaign to decrease spit tobacco use and increase awareness of the negative health effects of using these products . Locally, our Youth Initiatives group organized a number of events to increase awareness of the dangers associated with chewing tobacco. These kids have taken a stand to not use tobacco products, to educate their peers about the risks associated with the use of tobacco and to fight against the tobacco companies and their deceptive marketing practices. Join the kids in their efforts: Educate yourself about the dangers of chewing tobacco, and consider developing an action plan to quit if you are a current user.

Wendy Young is a Marshfield Clinic AmeriCorps Member serving the Inner Wisconsin Coalition for Youth (IWCFY), working on prevention activities with students in the local schools, including Wisconsin Rapids public and parochial, Immanuel Lutheran, Nekoosa, Pittsville and Auburndale. IWCFY is a network of community members promoting and facilitating healthy lifestyles.

Asthma is the most common chronic illness affecting Latino children in the United States, and secondhand smoke is a serious contributing factor. Now a new study from The Miriam Hospital’s Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine and Brown University suggests that clinically-based smoking cessation programs may not be enough to help Latino smokers with asthmatic children kick the habit.

In the study, Latino parents with an asthmatic child were more likely to quit smoking when they received a culturally-tailored intervention that provides feedback about how much secondhand smoke their children were exposed to, compared to parents who followed existing smoking cessation clinical guidelines. Researchers say these findings reinforce the importance of educating parents about how their own smoking can affect their children with asthma.

The study appears in the February issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in a special edition focused on smoking cessation in underserved populations and innovative treatments. It is the first study to target smoking cessation in Latino caregivers of asthmatic children.

“Caregivers who continue to smoke despite their child’s asthma need an intervention that not only provides feedback about the harmful effects of cigarette smoke on themselves and their child, but also factors in their cultural values and readiness to quit,” said the study’s lead author, Belinda Borrelli, PhD, of The Miriam Hospital’s Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine. “Our findings suggest that standard smoking cessation clinical guidelines alone may only have limited success with this population.”

Borrelli, who is also a professor of psychiatry/human behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, adds that they targeted Latinos specifically for the study, given that 16.5 percent of Latinos smoke yet few smoking cessation programs have been developed specifically for the country’s largest minority group. Meanwhile, asthma – which is exacerbated by secondhand smoke – is much higher among Latinos than other racial or ethnic groups.

Overall, asthma has now become the most common pediatric chronic illness in the United States, affecting an estimated 4.8 million children. More than half of American children under the age of 5 live in homes with at least one adult smoker, placing them at greater risk for a variety of illnesses, including asthma. Research has shown that these children take more asthma medications and use emergency services more frequently than asthmatic children who are not exposed to secondhand smoke.

Investigators identified 133 Latino smokers who were caregivers of a child with asthma. These caregivers were randomly assigned to receive one of the two smoking cessation interventions delivered in the home by a bilingual Latina health educator: a behavioral action model (BAM) and a precaution adoption model (PAM).

The BAM followed clinical guidelines that focus on problem-solving and building coping skills to help smokers who are ready to quit. Meanwhile, the PAM was intended to help parents better connect their smoking to their child’s health by providing physiological feedback about cigarette smoke exposure. It was also designed to be consistent with the values of Latino culture, including the importance of family, communication and intimate relationships.

In addition to measuring carbon monoxide levels of parents in the PAM group, the research team also assessed children’s secondhand smoke exposure by placing two nicotine monitors in the home for one week. They then mathematically converted these smoke levels into “cigarette equivalents,” telling parents, “Your child was exposed to as much smoke as if she/he smoked “x” number of cigarettes him/herself the week that the sampler was placed.”

Overall, secondhand smoke levels in the homes of both groups were measured at the beginning of the study and after three months, and parents’ smoking status was assessed at the end of the study as well as at two-months and three-months post-study. According to investigators, approximately 28 percent of participants in the PAM intervention had quit smoking three months after treatment, compared to about 18 percent of those receiving the BAM intervention. Significant decreases in asthma-related illness were only observed in the children of participants in the PAM intervention.

“Theory-based treatments that have been effective in other areas of behavior change can be successfully applied to smoking cessation interventions,” said Borrelli. “In addition, the integration of smoking cessation into well-accepted interventions like asthma education can help us proactively reach smokers who might not spontaneously seek help to quit smoking or who do not have ready access to primary care or preventive health services.”

Overall, the study group was mostly female and included a range of Latino ethnicities, including Puerto Rican, Dominican, Central American, South American, Mexican and Cuban. More than half of the children of participants had been to the emergency department in the previous year and/or had been hospitalized for asthma. Although parents did not have to want to quit smoking in order to participate in the study, they all received a quit smoking self-help manual and an optional eight weeks of nicotine replacement therapy, along with the home visits and phone calls from the health educator.

Defining special populations of smokers

Borrelli, who served as editor of this special issue of the journal, also authored a lead introductory article about next steps for special populations research and innovative treatments for smoking cessation. In it, she offers the first definition of “special populations” of smokers, classified as those who have at least a 10 percent higher smoking prevalence than the general population, have disproportionate tobacco-related health disparities, lack access to effective treatments, and are understudied in terms of longitudinal treatment trials. In addition to racial and ethnic minorities, this includes young adults with cancer, people with psychiatric disorders, and homeless individuals.

The article breaks new ground by providing eight criteria to determine whether evidence-based cultural adaptations are justified for smoking cessation treatment. For example, if the target population differs from the general public in terms of rates and patterns of smoking, burden of tobacco-related diseases, predictors of smoking behavior, or treatment engagement, then it may be necessary to tailor the intervention for that particular group. Borrelli also outlines the four phases of cultural adaptation – data collection, treatment modification, pilot test and outcomes – in order to standardize the process.

The current study was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Co-authors included Elizabeth L. McQuaid, PhD, and Bruce Becker, MD, both of Rhode Island Hospital and Alpert Medical School; Scott P. Novak, PhD, of RTI International; and S. Katharine Hammond, PhD, of the University of California at Berkeley.

Medicalnewstoday

Tobacco, once a multi-million dollar crop in Richmond County, is on a serious decline based on participation in a referendum taken earlier this month.

“We actually did not have any participants in the program,” said Paige Burns, interim county extension director. “Did that surprise me?”

Taylor Williams, agricultural extension agent from Moore County and former director of the Richmond County extension office, said that a little over 10 years ago Richmond County had more than 50 tobacco farmers.

“As recently as 1997, tobacco was a $6 million or $7 million crop in Richmond County,” Williams said. “It’s still raised, but by very, very few people.”

“There’s less than a handful for sure (tobacco farmers),” Burns said. “Definitely a decline from when I started.”

According to Burns, the issue isn’t that tobacco farms across the state are on the decline, but rather that farmers have moved from out of the county.

Tobacco production in North Carolina has actually risen over the past five years, although the majority is grown east of I-95, Williams said.

Since the tobacco buyouts this past decade, producers began selling product through larger companies which in turn devalued the tobacco from $1.93 a pound, to $1.50. Likewise, on average it costs a farmer approximately $3,600 to care for and farm an acre of tobacco, according to Williams.

The return for the farmer is around $3,700.

Farming tobacco in Richmond County is not as cheap as it once was and nearby counties can farm the same crop, but for much less because aquifers are closer to the surface and there is a better market.

Flue-cured tobacco is traditionally what local farmers grew.

With the rate of tobacco exports on the rise, the referendum put to a vote the continuation of an assessment of one-fifth of one cent per pound to pay for export promotion programs.

“This is a way to provide funding historically to help Tobacco Associates move product in a foreign market,” Burns said. “There’s a higher exportation outside the United States (than domestically).”

Two-thirds of the eligible voters participating in the referendum needed to mark their ballot in favor of the program to continue.

The statewide numbers were not available.

Flue-cured tobacco is what sells overseas, primarily in a Japanese market, Williams said, but flue-curing is what makes it so expensive for Richmond County farmers.

Burley tobacco has been toyed with locally. It is cheaper and easier to grow, but the burley market is still small.

“It’s every bit as traumatic to tell a tobacco farmer to start a new crop,” Williams said about farmers turning to alternative crops like soybeans or peaches.

For a farmer to begin a new crop, it generally takes three years to turn around a profit after supplies are purchased and the plants are grown.

A press release from Tobacco Associates, Inc. says the reason for the referendum is that U.S. domestic consumption continues to decline so the future of tobacco production in the country will depend on growth opportunities in the export market.

By Bryan Stewart