Category: People

E-cigarettes are “fun”
Former smokers are nearly three times more likely to abstain from cigarette smoking if they puff on an electronic cigarette two out of every three days a month, according to a story by Dennis Thompson for HealthDay, citing a new study that analysed a US federal survey on smoking.
The study was published on August 31 in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
“E-cigarettes are an effective way to get cigarette smokers to quit, but you really need to use those e-cigarettes,” said lead researcher Professor David Levy.
“Using them a couple days a month isn’t going to be anywhere near as effective as if you use them most, if not all, days in a month.”
The odds of a smoker successfully quitting increases by 10 percent with each additional day of e-cigarette use, said Levy, a professor with Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, in Washington, D.C.
However, pulmonologist Dr. Louis De Palo was said to be concerned that e-cigarettes did too good a job replacing traditional tobacco cigarettes.
“People don’t get addicted to the other forms of nicotine replacement because they aren’t fun,” said De Palo, who’s an associate professor of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
“Gum doesn’t taste very good. The nose inhaler burns a little bit. The patches are irritating. And none of them give you the psychological satisfaction of holding something in your hand and smoking,” he explained.
“E-cigarettes are highly addictive, easy to use, and fun,” De Palo continued. “This study doesn’t address the strategy for eventually weaning people off e-cigarettes.”
For this study, Levy and his colleagues reviewed data from more than 24,000 participants in the 2014/2015 Tobacco Use Supplement-Current Population Survey, a regular survey on smoking administered by the US Census Bureau.
The full text of Thompson’s piece is at: https://consumer.healthday.com/cancer-information-5/electronic-cigarettes-970/e-cigs-may-help-smokers-quit-but-hellip-726072.html.
September 1, 2017
Vaping provides no gateway
A major study conducted across the UK has concluded that regular use of electronic cigarettes among people 11–16 years of age ‘remains very low, at three percent or less, and remains largely confined to regular smokers’.
The study, led by professor Linda Bauld of the University of Stirling and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, examined data from five large scale surveys with different designs and sampling strategies conducted between 2015 and 2017: The Youth Tobacco Policy Survey; the Schools Health Research Network Wales survey; two Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Smokefree Great Britain-Youth Surveys; and the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey. Cumulatively these surveys were said to have collected data from more than 60,000 young people.
In their conclusion, the researchers said that their paper highlighted the current rates of e-cigarette use among young people in the UK, where e-cigarettes formed a part of a tobacco harm reduction policy landscape.
While it was estimated that there were 2.9 million e-cigarette current users among adults in Great Britain, regular use among people 11–16 years of age remained at three percent or lower, and remained largely confined to regular smokers.
Regular e-cigarette use among never smokers was very rare.
These low rates of regular use suggested that youth experimentation was not currently leading to greater frequency of use; however, comparing youth e-cigarette data and trends across surveys and countries was crucial to better understand youth trends.
Survey measures had to be designed to assess frequency of use, rather than just ever- or past-30-day use.
The full study is available at: http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/9/973/htm.
August 31, 2017
Flavor ban harmful
If the US city of San Francisco ultimately implements its recently adopted ordinance to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products, it will do more harm than good, according to an op-ed by Dr. Joel Nitzkin published on the R Street website.
In fact, the ban would increase rates of tobacco-related addiction, illness and death across the city.
‘There are two major issues with this ordinance,’ Nitzkin said. ‘The first is the ease with which persons who want these products can simply get them in neighboring communities, or from a thriving black market sure to develop within the city.
‘The second, and more important, is the fact that this ban will virtually eliminate local on-site access to less addictive and remarkably low-risk nicotine vapor products.
‘While barring access to most e-cigarettes, the ordinance will do nothing to reduce access to non-menthol cigarettes, which remain the deadliest and most addictive tobacco products.’
The full text of Nitzkin’s piece is at: http://www.rstreet.org/op-ed/flavored-tobacco-ordinance-sure-to-backfire/.
August 31, 2017
Smoking costs unaffordable
China will be unable to bear the economic and social costs of tobacco smoking if it doesn’t speed up its tobacco-control efforts, according to a story by Sun Wenyu for the People’s Daily Online.
A recent report issued jointly by 37 organizations, including the Chinese Preventative Medicine Association and the Chinese Association of Tobacco Control, said that China’s tobacco consumption accounted for 44 percent of worldwide consumption.
China had added 15 million new smokers in five years and the country needed urgently to step up its efforts to control tobacco.
The results of a nationwide adult tobacco survey that was published in 2015 indicated that 27.7 percent of Chinese people above the age of 15 were smokers. It indicated, too, that the total number of smokers in the country had reached 315 million.
According to the ‘Healthy China 2030’ blueprint issued by the State Council, China aims to lower the proportion of smokers to 20 percent by 2030.
The story said that ‘experts’ believed that tobacco consumption had become a global issue that threatened public health and led to serious consequences. Smoking caused major chronic non-infectious diseases, and these diseases accounted for 85 percent of the total deaths in China.
Though progress had been made, China had a long way to go before it could reach the goals set in the Healthy China 2030 blueprint.
It would be unaffordable for the country to pay for the economic and social losses if it didn’t speed up the process of tobacco control.
The story said that experts had called on the country to pass legislation ‘to establish a smoke-free country and comprehensively ban public smoking’.
‘In addition, the experts believe that China should reduce tobacco advertisements, increase tobacco tax, and make smoking cessation a basic public health service,’ the story said.
August 31, 2017
Management board changes
Kingsley Wheaton (pictured), MD, Next Generation Products (NGP) at British American Tobacco is to manage the integration of NGP into the wider business.
‘Now that we have built a successful NGP business which is poised for substantial growth, we will be fully integrating NGP into our existing business infrastructure across the Group – both within the functions and the regions – to leverage the scale and expertise of the whole group to drive growth in an area that is fast becoming a key part of our mainstream business,’ BAT said in a note posed on its website. ‘Kingsley Wheaton, managing director, Next Generation Products, will manage this integration process.’
The future of the NGP business was spelled out in a note posed on BAT’s website today saying that, following the acquisition of Reynolds American Inc, BAT was simplifying its regional structure.
The company’s organizational structure would in future be based on three regions:
- Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa (including East and Central Africa; West Africa and South Africa), whose regional director will be Ricardo Oberlander, formerly regional director, Americas.
- Europe and North Africa (including Russia, Ukraine, Caucasus, Central Asia, Belarus, and Turkey), whose regional director will be Tadeu Marroco, formerly regional director, Western Europe.
- Asia-Pacific and Middle East, whose regional direct will be Johan Vandermeulen, formerly regional director, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Jack Bowles, currently regional director, Asia-Pacific, will be appointed to the newly-created role of COO for the international business, excluding the US, where Debra Crew, who as president and CEO of Reynolds American, joined the management board with effect from July 27.
Andrew Gray, currently director, marketing, will be appointed chief marketing officer; while David O’Reilly, group scientific and R&D director, will remain a member of the management board, and will report to the chief marketing officer.
August 31, 2017
A positive role for nicotine
Lung experts at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center are testing whether nicotine can help people with a chronic inflammatory lung disease called sarcoidosis, according to a story on news-medical.net.
Why nicotine? “Around 2000, we learned two things,” said Dr. Elliott Crouser, a pulmonologist specializing in sarcoidosis.
“There was new evidence that nicotine is an anti-inflammatory, and from other studies we discovered smokers were less likely to get sarcoidosis.
“So we’re testing whether nicotine can be a solution. We hope people will actually get a secondary benefit – not only will their lung disease get better, but they’ll feel more energized and have better quality of life.”
Crouser described sarcoidosis as “tricky” because it mimicked other diseases. “It’s frequently misdiagnosed,” he said. “Sarcoidosis can look like lung nodules, pneumonia, scar tissue, even lung cancer. It can involve other vital organs, and it differs from one person to the next.”
Left untreated, sarcoidosis can cause severe lung damage and even death. And unlike in the case of most lung diseases, the main symptom isn’t shortness of breath, but debilitating fatigue.
Current treatments such as steroids often have side effects harsher than the symptoms of the disease itself. “We can’t use the medications for very long before these side effects occur,” said Crouser. “They can be severe, such as the development of osteoporosis, cataracts, diabetes or high blood pressure and complications related to those.
“We need better, more tolerable options.”
So Crouser is leading a clinical trial at the Wexner Medical Center to test nicotine patches as a potential treatment for sarcoidosis.
The full story is at: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20170828/Lung-experts-test-nicotine-patches-as-potential-treatment-for-sarcoidosis.aspx.
August 30, 2017
Risk continuum quantified
The use of electronic cigarettes carries much less cancer risk than does tobacco smoking, though the use of some types of e-cigarettes is more-risky than the use of others, according to a story by Iqra Mumal on lungdiseasenews.com quoting a new study.
The research, entitled, Comparing the cancer potencies of emissions from vaporized nicotine products including e-cigarettes with those of tobacco smoke, was published in the journal Tobacco Control.
The story said that both the scientific community and the public had been divided over the health risks associated with vaporized nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn devices.
Studies had shown that vaporized nicotine products, or VNPs, could expose people to cancer-causing agents, but the question was how much cancer risk they posed.
Dr. William E. Stephens of the University of St. Andrews, the UK, led a team that sought to determine the cancer risk of the individual compounds in VNPs, and then calculate an overall VNP cancer risk.
They looked at published analyses of emissions to generate cancer-risk figures for a number of nicotine-delivering products, including cigarettes, e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn devices, and medicinal nicotine inhalers.
Each of the products were found to have different cancer potencies. Cigarette smoke had the highest. potency, while most e-cigarettes had cancer potencies that were less than one percent of cigarette smoke, though a small minority had much higher potencies than did others.
This minority of e-cigarettes was associated with high levels of carbonyls – or carbon compounds – that the products generated when a lot of power was applied to their atomizer coils.
Another finding was that heat-not-burn devices had lower cancer potency than did cigarette smoke but much higher potency than most e-cigarettes had.
The team concluded that cigarettes posed the highest lifetime cancer risk, and that they were followed on the cancer-risk scale by heat-not-burn devices, then e-cigarettes and medicinal nicotine inhalers.
Mumal’s story is at: https://lungdiseasenews.com/2017/08/25/study-finds-that-cancer-risk-of-e-cigarettes-is-much-lower-than-that-of-cigarette-smoke/
August 29, 2017
Ban needs clarification
The Czech Republic’s Ministry of Health is planning an information campaign this autumn to clarify questions surrounding a ban on tobacco smoking in pubs and restaurants, according to a Radio Prague story quoting a Czech News Agency report.
The ban came into effect at the end of May and a three-month period in which establishments were given time to adapt to the new legislation was due to end today.
One problem that remains unresolved concerns the interpretation of the ban as it applies to beer gardens and outdoor covered areas.
But observers say that the winter months – when going outside to smoke might become unpleasant – will be the real test of the ban.
August 29, 2017
No urgency to health plans
The proceeds of a health development surcharge on tobacco companies in Bangladesh, Tk 9 billion, has been unused during the past three fiscal years due to a lack of a specific guidelines for spending the revenue, according to a story in The Financial Express.
In that time, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17, the government failed to use the money for campaigning against tobacco consumption.
This was said to be due to the slow pace of approval and implementation of the Health Ministry’s Health Development Surcharge Management Policy.
A draft of the policy was approved at an inter-ministerial meeting on February 15 and it is scheduled to go before the cabinet this month.
An official at the Health Ministry was quoted as saying that the surcharge revenue could be used by the ministry’s National Tobacco Control Cell to execute a national tobacco control program that would ‘rehabilitate’ tobacco-users, create alternative jobs for tobacco farmers and ensure overall health development.
It has taken a long time to get to this point. The government imposed the surcharge in the budget for the financial year 2014-15.
But it wasn’t until January 2016, and then only at the South Asian Speakers’ conference, that the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina instructed the authorities to adopt a national tobacco control program with the revenue from the surcharge.
Following the instruction, the ministry of health framed the draft surcharge policy and sought the opinions of nine relevant ministries including those of finance, agriculture and industries.
The health ministry published the draft on its website in December 2016 for public opinion.
August 29, 2017
Tax hikes recommended
Steep increases in cigarette excise taxes, instead of incremental ones, would do a better job of reducing poverty and improving health, according to a story in The Jakarta Globe quoting the director of the University of Indonesia’s Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies (Cheps).
Cigarettes were said to constitute the second largest expenditure after food among the country’s poor, consuming nearly a quarter of their monthly incomes.
The head of Cheps, Budi Hidayat, was quoted as saying that a threefold increase in current cigarette prices would dissuade many from continuing to smoke and would [thereby] allow greater flexibility in the face of fluctuating food prices.
Increasing cigarette prices initially led to a rise in poverty, but after a certain point, the poverty rate started to drop, he said.
A study conducted by the research center found that an increase of more than 112 percent [presumably in cigarette prices] would be sufficient to reduce the poverty level in the country.
However, if the government imposed a 150 percent tax on tobacco, which would increase the average price of a pack of cigarettes to Rp25,000 (US$1.90), two million people would be lifted out of poverty, the study was said to have found.
And, of course, there would be a payback for government revenues. A 150 percent excise tax would add Rp200 trillion to the state coffers over five years.
Budi said that, conversely, the 10.54 percent increase in tobacco excise that the government planned to impose this year would increase the number of people living in poverty by 0.16 percent to 29 million people.
August 29, 2017