The American Heart Association said today that long-term use of smokeless tobacco increases odds of having a fatal heart attack or fatal stroke, and the products don’t help smokers quit. Smokeless tobacco products also increase risk of certain cancers.

“No tobacco product is safe to consume,” said Mariann Piano, Ph.D., lead writer of the statement from the American Heart Association. The group says that dry snuff, moist snuff and chewing tobacco shouldn’t be used for smoking cessation since the products carry a risk of addiction and may also lead people back to smoking cigarettes again. The American Heart Association is concerned that smoke-free air laws will lead more people to using smokeless tobacco products, which aren’t a safe alternative to cigarettes.

CHICOPEE, Mass. (Mass Appeal) – It’s an inevitable fact of life – your children will experience peer pressure at some point in their childhood. It’s is so important for them to know the negative consequences… that come with the decisions they choose to make. A warning for viewers – some of the pictures shown may be disturbing to some viewers.

Dr. Kelly Bouchard, member of Massachusetts Dental Society tells us more about this important topic.

Dangers of Oral Piercing

Fractured teeth
Sensitive teeth
Nerve damage
Infection (mouth has bateria)
Gum recession
Allergic reaction/choking hazard
Dangers of Chewing Tobacco

Oral cancer
Leads to teeth breaking down
Cavities on teeth
Addictive
Tips for quitting

Write a list of reasons
Pick a date to quit
Tell your family and friends
Find a hobby/activity to keep busy
Sugarless gum/candy, Nicotine gum

The Pentagon’s after a faster, more reliable way to fight pandemics and viral terror threats by mass producing vaccines. So far, plant-based approaches seem to be their top pick to replace old-school methods. Now, in a bid to hasten the development of vaccines that are ready for human use before the next H1N1 emerges, the military’s looking for a little help from our northern neighbors.

Darpa, the Pentagon’s blue-sky research arm, handed out $21 million to Canadian biotech firm Medicago Inc. The company, based in Quebec City, will use the money to build a 90,000-square-foot facility that’ll use tobacco plants to produce 10 million monthly doses of influenza vaccine.

The funding is a smaller part of Darpa’s burgeoning Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals, or AMP, program, which aims to revolutionize current, egg-based vaccine production models, and yield vaccines within three months of “emerging and novel biological threats.” In February, the agency gave $21 million to Texas A&M for the construction of a 145,000 square-foot “biotherapeutic production facility” that uses mobile “pods” to grow vaccine-infused tobacco plants.

Already, the method has yielded promising results. IBio Inc, another biotech firm that’s working on plant-based vaccines, plan to conduct human trials of an H5N1 vaccine this year. Medicago has similar plans, and also announced the successful development of a candidate H1N1 vaccine less than a month after the strain was identified last spring. Compare that to the six months it took for the egg-based, “fast tracked” H1N1 vaccine to be available for public use.

“In general terms, we’ve probably got several years ahead of most of the people that might be doing similar things,” company CEO Andy Sheldon told Reuters.

And before you give the Pentagon too much heat for outsourcing their vaccine greenhouses: Medicago is based in Canada, but the new facility will be built in Durham, North Carolina.
“It opens the door for other potential contracts with the U.S. government,” Medicago’s chief financial officer, Pierre Labbe, told Dow Jones. “Even if there’s no guarantee at this time, it’s a good way to start.”

Sure, a faster way to stop deadly global pandemics is one good way to get a foot into the American market. But given Canada’s renowned talents in other horticultural matters, Danger Room suggests that next time Medicago builds a mega-greenhouse, they opt to grow something a little more fragrant.

Christopher Skorus has bad dreams about pavements covered in cigarettes. The Polish street cleaner who patrols the streets of the City of London spends his days clearing up the discarded butts of workers and pub-goers.

“Offices are a problem,” he says, pausing to sweep up a small mountain of used cigarettes outside the front door of a five-storey office block. “I clean the street and half-an-hour later it’s full of cigarettes.”

In his native Poland the police are watching – you get a £10 fine for dropping one on the street. Perhaps the same should happen here, he suggests. “People have no respect, it’s a mentality. In the morning the street is white with cigarettes.”

Workers puffing away nearby argue that since the smoking ban in England was introduced in July 2007, they have little choice but to huddle conspiratorially in doorways. The ban meant the end of office smoking rooms and the death of ash trays in the pub, forcing workers and drinkers on to the pavement to get their tobacco fix.

Now to their horror the government looks to be going further still.

Announcing a review of smoking legislation in England, Health Secretary Andy Burnham said the public ban could be extended to places such as the entrances of buildings to prevent the risk of second-hand smoke.

The effect would be to disperse those huddles of smokers who have become a common sight in recent years.

Britain would not be the first to try to control clouds of smoke near entrances to buildings. The US state of Illinois bans smokers from standing within 15ft of the entrance to a public building while in Moscow the limit is 20ft.

“Define entrance? It’s ridiculous,” says Ollie Barrett, an insurance broker outside his office, grinding a cigarette under the sole of his shoe.

His colleague and fellow smoker Richard Hancock puts it more vehemently.

“Whether it’s outside the office or the pub or restaurant we’re all lepers and persona non grata now. Where I live you have all the undesirables standing outside a Wetherspoons pub, smoking and drinking. It’s not something you want your kids to have to walk past. They’d be better off inside but that’s the smoking ban for you.”

But just a few feet away, another smoker is remarkably receptive – believing the ban could work where his willpower has failed.

“It’s a good idea,” says Tony Dempsey, who runs a building services company. “It’s not pleasant to see people outside entrance smoking. They should have a total ban – it might help me give up!”
Smoking graph

Eric Rams, an employee smoking outside his bank branch on Oxford Street, was initially outraged.

“Next they’ll stop us breathing!” before conceding that it was “disgusting” for non-smokers to have to walk through a haze of smoke to get into a building.

But he feared the practical impact of the crackdown would be be detrimental to staff relations.

“Where will we go to? We’ll have to walk further down the street and there are more doorways. And we only get five minutes for a cigarette so it may not be popular with the bosses upstairs.”

Act of naughtiness

Outside the Bank of England, a gaggle of colleagues stand, like bedraggled sentries, chatting and exhaling plumes of tobacco smoke. But none of them seem much concerned by the impending ban – they will just wander further away.

Although, it does help when you are working in a building as wide as a football pitch.

But if breaking up clusters of doorway smokers has a public health pay off, it could also spell the end of a particular camaraderie that has developed in the wake of the smoking backlash.

Judi James, a behavioural and workplace expert, believes there is more at stake for smokers than just a nicotine top up.

“Smokers’ workplace bonding has always given them a very unfair advantage,” she says.

“There’s something about the act of rebellion, it breaks down the hierarchy between people who wouldn’t normally speak to each other. It’s a shared act of naughtiness and when people have got a fag on, the normal rules of communication don’t apply.”

The default body language of smokers is gossipy and conspiratorial – even if they’re not gossiping she says – and this can create suspicion amongst non-smokers.

So would a mass dispersal bring a swift end to this ad hoc bonding? It could go one of two ways.

Ms James thinks if it leads to smokers taking a walk then this networking opportunity will be lost as humans don’t move in groups, especially across different social groups.

But if it forces smokers to gather in designated areas it could actually ramp up the bonding.

Rebel children

“If they congregate together it will make the relationship more bonded because now they’re going to feel alienated and rejected. It’s the rebel child syndrome.”

The only workplace space with a similar dynamic is the ladies’ toilet, Ms James says.

While smoking bans have made offices a cleaner place to work, they’ve also helped develop the bravado of the hardy smoker standing outside the office in shirtsleeves, she says.

The sight of a huddle of workers blocking a doorway as they suck on a nicotine stick and struggle to keep warm is one that many employers, at least, will be pleased to see the back of.

To Jeremy Baker, professor at the ESCP Europe Business School, it is “a very unsightly and low status start to how an organisation is viewed.

“Companies have spent their money making the entrance hall the nicest place in the building but the whole effect is disfigured by these people standing outside trying to get cancer as quickly as possible – it’s ugly.”

It’s got to the stage where smoking at work is becoming as socially unacceptable as office drunkenness he believes.

“It looks poor – the staff are not focusing on the work they’ve got to do. It’s like arriving and finding people lolling around half drunk. Companies need to look attractive and alert but smoking is stupid and spoils the image you’re trying to project.”
NewsBBC
2 February 2010

KUALA LUMPUR: Contraband cigarettes have become a major problem in Malaysia because of high cigarette prices, low penalties and lax enforcement. The Government is losing approximately RM1.5bil in revenue annually, disclosed industry players.

Furthermore, the illegal market has spawned a major industry which gives syndicates operating smuggling networks up to RM1bil in profits yearly. It also defeats the Government’s move to raise prices to discourage smoking among the young.

A Star Probe shows that illegal cigarettes are quite easily obtained at outlets in Malaysia. Most of those who smoke them appear to come from the lower income bracket as these cigarettes are available for as low as RM2.50 for a pack of 20. Legitimate cigarettes retail for between RM6.40 and RM9.30 for a pack of 20.

The illicit market now accounts for more than one out of three cigarettes sold. Some 38.7% of the industry by volume is now illicit, up from 27.5% in 2008, according to The Illicit Cigarette Study conducted by Taylor Nelson Soffres commissioned by a major cigarette manufacturer.

This means that out of the 23.3 billion cigarettes consumed in 2009, approximately nine billion sticks were illicit. The legal market has also shrunk by 10% compared with 2008 to an estimated 13.8 billion.

In the region, Malaysia is one of the countries with the highest taxes for cigarettes after Singapore. Illicit syndicates are taking advantage of this and making a cool RM1bil a year from the Government’s stance to stamp out smoking.

Industry observers said the huge demand for exceptionally low-priced cigarettes was largely due to high taxes imposed by the Government over the last few years, as well as the minimal punishment for offenders and easy accessibility of illicit cigarettes.

“Excessively high taxation is a major contributor to the rise in the trade of illicit cigarettes in Malaysia,” said JT International Bhd director of corporate affairs and communications Shareen Rahmat.

She added that this was compounded by insufficient deterrence – penalties meted out for the sale and consumption of illicit cigarettes were very minimal in Malaysia.

“As this trade is so profitable, smugglers are willing to risk being caught just to get a share of the pie.

“Present enforcement is just not strict enough to deter the smugglers,” said British American Tobacco Malaysia Bhd (BAT) finance director Steve Rush.

BAT head of business development Azlan Ibrahim added that most of the smuggling was from neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and China.

The sophisticated network of the syndicates makes it very easy for smuggling to take place.

“Right now, these illicits enter Malaysia through overland routes via Thailand and Singapore, sea routes from Indonesia, and smuggling through ports,” said Azlan.

Royal Malaysian Customs Department deputy director-general (compliance and enforcement) Datuk Mohamed Khalid Yusuf said that Customs was doing its best to stop the sale of illicit cigarettes.

“We know who they are and where the hotspots are. Apart from having our own intelligence, we also have a network of informers whom we pay for undercover intelligence purposes,” he said.

While Customs continues to raid retailers, the focus is mainly on the ports and coastlines, which are the points of entry for the illicits.

“Nowadays it is more of fraud (disguising cigarettes as other merchandise) than direct smuggling of illicits.

“We have invested in high-tech tools and X-ray equipment to detect the illicits when they come in. Our officers too need more capacity building to match these sophisticated smugglers,” Khalid said, adding that there was no one best strategy that fitted all.

“Yes, I believe more can be done. We have to pool all our resources and be situational and versatile to outsmart the smugglers,” he added.

As of Dec 31, the Customs seized 490 million illegal cigarette sticks valued at RM64.55mil, a decrease compared with 2008 when 495 million sticks worth RM58.2mil were confiscated.

Unpaid duties amounted to RM233.29mil, almost the same as 2008’s RM233.7mil.

Worldwide, illegal cigarettes make up some 5.5% or 303 billion sticks of global consumption.

The illicit cigarettes in Malaysia comprise kretek and white cigarettes.

The three biggest manufacturers in Malaysia are BAT, Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and Philip Morris International (PMI), which together control over 90% of the legal market share.
By TEE LIN SAY and EUGENE MAHALINGAM

It is well known that smokers damage their health by directly inhaling cigarette smoke. Now, research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Environmental Health has shown that they are at additional risk from breathing environmental tobacco smoke, contrary to the prevailing assumption that such risks would be negligible in comparison to those incurred by actually smoking.

Maria Teresa Piccardo worked with a team of researchers from the National cancer Research Institute, Genoa, Italy, to study the exposure of newsagents in the city to harmful cigarette smoke. She said, “Newsagents were chosen because they work alone in small newsstands, meaning that any tobacco smoke in the air they breathe is strictly correlated to the number of cigarettes smoked by that newsagent. We studied the contribution environmental tobacco smoke made to carcinogen exposure in 15 active smokers.”

The researchers found that environmental tobacco smoke may have a significant impact on smokers’ health. For someone who smokes 14 cigarettes a day, their own second hand smoke resulted in exposure the equivalent of smoking an extra 2.6 cigarettes. According to Piccardo, “Both active and passive smoking contributions should always be considered in studies about health of active smokers.”

ALBANY, – One experiment Albany Firefighters conducted tested new fire safe cigarettes now mandated in Georgia. Those cigarettes are designed to go out if you stop smoking them.

Cigarettes cause fires that kill 700 people and injure 3,000 every year in the United States. 74 year old Audrey Baty died in an Albany house fire January 7th, and Investigators determined the fire was caused by a cigarette. That tragedy influenced firefighters to check out how safe these new cigarettes really are.

The fire safe cigarettes are made of the same kind of tobacco and paper, but it has rings in the paper to stop the flame if not puffed. But the fire safe standards require them to burn out 75% of the time.

Firefighters say dumping cigarette ashes and butts in trash cans is one of the most frequent causes of house fires. Firefighters set up a chair and couch in a condemned house, and placed a fire safe cigarette in the trash can with newspapers, and then other trash types.

The cigarette smoldered for a couple of minutes, and then….. “I see smoke. Yea, we got a fire already,” said a firefighter.

Within five minutes the trash can was blazing in the trash can. And 12 minutes after putting the fire safe cigarette in the trash can, the fire had set both the chair and couch next to it ablaze. In two tries, each time the fire safe cigarette started a fire.

“It appears when it gets insulated on more than two sides, it continues to burn. We pulled the paper back and it was smoldering, burning inside the paper both times,” Investigator Sam Harris said.

Firefighters say they concluded from their experiment that the fire safe cigarette is a better system, but not a fail proof system.

“Can’t trust it. Anytime you have an open flame you have a risk of a fire. That’s exactly what we found out,” Harris said.

So Firefighters urge smokers to use extreme caution, and not get overly confident in fire safe cigarettes.

“Continue to be vigilant when they are smoking. To worry about putting them out good. And to not pour the ashes into trash cans, because it can cause a fire.”

Firefighters hope their experiment findings and warnings can prevent more cigarette fire deaths.

Fire safe cigarettes are the law in Georgia now, but stores can still sell the old style cigarettes they had in stock until they are all gone. So some of those are still available. The way you can know if you have a fire safe cigarette, it’s on the package marked “FSC” if they are fire safe.

Georgia was among the last states to require the fire safe cigarettes. The law mandating them went into effect January 1st. Most tobacco companies say they support the move to fire safe cigarettes.

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address will completely ignore a huge and totally unnecessary expense which, if corrected, could fund health care reform without any cuts in Medicare or any additional taxes, with tens of billions left over to reduce the deficit, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

Smoking costs the American economy almost $200 billion a year for totally unnecessary medical care costs under Medicare, Medicaid, veteran’s benefits, Indian benefits, and many other welfare programs, as well as in the costs of premature disability, lost productivity, and other factors. Nonsmokers are now forced to bear most of this cost in the form of higher taxes, and in inflated premiums for medical insurance, says Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

But, despite Obama’s zeal to slash health care costs, including legislative proposals to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare for the elderly, Obama will reportedly propose no new approaches to curbing America’s number one cause of unnecessary health care costs — one which by any measure exceeds the costs of frivolous medical malpractice law suits, inefficiencies from a lack of digital medical records, outdated policies for treating diseases, etc.

One simple step, proposed by Action on Smoking and Health, would have been to impose, as part of health care reform, a modest surcharge on health insurance premiums for smokers — just as smokers now pay more for life insurance, and, in an increasing number of situations (including in many states), for health insurance.

ASH showed how such a surcharge would slash health care costs by reducing the incidence of diseases caused or exacerbated by smoking; obviously a much more efficient way than simply improving the care for these diseases once they have already occurred. It would in addition substantially reduce the need to cut life-saving Medicare funding, or to tax comprehensive health plans, and is one of the few funding proposals favored by a majority of Americans.

Obama could also help to reduce this totally unnecessary subsidy nonsmokers are now forced to pay by other steps which likewise could be done at no cost and which could be implemented immediately. One would be to direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use the power Congress just gave it to substantially reduce the level of nicotine in cigarettes to the point where the product could not easily sustain an addiction and prevent millions from quitting smoking.

Another useful step, says Prof. Banzhaf, would be for Obama to ask the U.S. Senate to ratify the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control — a world antismoking and nonsmokers’ rights treaty which the U.S. supported and signed, but has yet to ratify. A third measure might be to require, as a condition of receiving federal grants, that recipient institutions ban all tobacco use on their property, and provide effective smoking cessation assistance to employees.

“Smoking is the 800 pound gorilla in the health care debate which everyone is afraid of and unwilling to confront. Halving smoking — by making it much more expensive as well as very inconvenient — would pay for all health care reform without any need to cut Medicare or increase any taxes. It would go a long way towards insuring that the nonsmokers would not have to continue to subsidize this activity which many so strongly oppose.”

“A surcharge on smokers would, for the first time, force them to accept some personal responsibility for their choice, rather than requiring others to absorb these huge costs,” says Banzhaf, noting that President Obama, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and many conservative as well as liberal groups have argued that personal responsibility must become a major component of health care reform.”

Those who by their own choices impose huge and totally unnecessary expenses on the American public should bear at least some of those costs, argues ASH. For many of them, including the overwhelming majority who already wish to quit, it would be the first time that continuing to smoke would have real, direct, and immediate consequences — thereby providing the additional incentive many need to be successful, says ASH.

PROFESSOR JOHN F. BANZHAF III
Executive Director and Chief Counsel
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
America’s First Antismoking Organization
2013 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006, USA
(202) 659-4310 ** http://ash.org

The Florida State basketball teams hit the road for Tobacco Road this week, and a match up with perennial conference powerhouse Duke. With both the men and the women trailing the Blue Devils in the ACC standings, they’ll be hoping for a similar performance as they had on their latest homestand, where they combined to win five of their six games played.

Men’s Coach Leonard Hamilton said, “I think anything is capable of happening when two ACC teams show up, regardless of whether they’re in the top spot or the bottom. You can take the words “ACC upset” out of your vocabulary this season, because every game is what you call a “white knuckler,” one of those ball room balls. Very physical, very aggressive.”

For the women, their run through the Tar Heel State also includes a stop in Chapel Hill, to face 12th ranked North Carolina. Being able to check off both stops on one trip Coach Semrau believes will play to her team’s advantage..

Coach Semrau said, “You know, we get to kind of be Duke and Carolina for a weekend. We can drive 10 minutes to get to a game. You’re not going to have to come home and go back and forth. We always feel like being a team in Florida and we have to travel so far, and for us, to go up there and be able to play them in one weekend, be in one hotel, have our mind on our business, we’re looking forward to it.”

With the conference wide open for both the men and the women, a solid run on the road this week will do a lot for the Noles positioning in the ACC.