The US public has become mostly unaware that smokeless tobacco is much less harmful than cigarettes, according to a story by David J. Hill for the University of Buffalo.
In 1986, Hill said, the US government passed legislation requiring a series of warnings for smokeless tobacco products, one of which advised “This product is not a safe alternative to cigarettes”.
That warning, however, obscured an important distinction – that cigarettes were much more harmful to health than were smokeless tobacco products.
And over the 30-plus years since, the US public had mostly been unaware that smokeless tobacco use is much less harmful than smoking cigarettes, Hill said, quoting one of the nation’s leading tobacco policy experts writing in a paper published recently in Harm Reduction Journal.
“It is important to distinguish between evidence that a product is ‘not safe’ and evidence that a product is ‘not safer’ than cigarettes or ‘just as harmful’ as cigarettes,” said the paper’s author Lynn Kozlowski, professor of community health and health behavior in the University at Buffalo’s School of Public Health and Health Professions.
“The process at the time of the establishment of official smokeless tobacco warnings in the 1980s paid no attention to this distinction,” Kozlowski adds. “The American public has become mostly unaware that smokeless tobacco is much less harmful than cigarettes.”
Kozlowski was quoted as saying that as long as cigarettes remained legal in the US, US consumers should be provided with proper information on the relative risks of tobacco/nicotine products that are ‘less lethal’ or otherwise less harmful than cigarettes. In addition, consumers should receive information on the ways in which a product causes harm, he said, adding that none should be viewed as harmless.
Tag: United States
US public misinformed
Time for urgent action
The US’ National Tobacco Reform Initiative (NTRI) is calling on the Food and Drug Administration actively and expeditiously to pursue the course of action the agency announced in July 2017 ‘with respect to its proposed tobacco and nicotine regulatory framework that would focus on nicotine and support innovations to promote tobacco harm reduction based on the continuum of risk for nicotine-containing products’.
On July 28, 2017, the NTRI said, the FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, and the director of the agency’s Center for Tobacco Products, Mitch Zeller, announced new policy directions on tobacco and nicotine that called for a ‘comprehensive regulatory plan’ that would accelerate efforts in winning the war against cigarette smoking.
In a letter to the commissioner on the one-year anniversary of his announcement, the public health leaders who are part of NTRI said that while they had seen progress during the past 50 plus years in respect of declining smoking prevalence, an estimated 32 million US adults still smoked cigarettes. ‘Cigarette smoking remains this nation’s leading cause of preventable disease and death, responsible for about 480,000 deaths each year and costing this country approximately $300 billion in health care costs and lost productivity,’ the NTRI said in a press note. ‘With so many lives on the line each year, there must be an urgency to take bold, visionary actions immediately to reduce the disease burden that smoking addiction inflicts on the health of Americans.
‘While the NTRI fully supports the FDA’s announced visionary initiatives, we are concerned that the FDA is/will become mired in overly bureaucratic processes that will delay taking necessary and obvious steps to protect the public’s health. While some attention is being focused on the priority to consider reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes, the other equally important priority to establish a more workable and flexible regulatory framework to regulate all tobacco and nicotine products based on their risks and relative risks (continuum of risk) is nowhere to be seen.’
“[I]f prudent product standards and reasonable guidelines for making truthful modified risk claims are not available before introducing a product standard for reducing nicotine’s addictiveness in combustible cigarettes, the opportunity to accelerate a mass-migration away from smoked tobacco products, relegating cigarettes to the ashtray of history, will be lost,” veteran tobacco and nicotine researcher and NTRI member, David B. Abrams, PhD, was quoted as saying. Abrams is a professor at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, NYU College of Global Health, New York University.Support for prohibition
A quarter of US citizens would support making smoking illegal, according to a piece in the Brevard Times based on the results of a new Gallup Poll and relayed by the TMA.
This support is one percent higher than has been measured previously by Gallup.
The proposal has garnered between 11 percent and 24 percent support during the nearly three decades that Gallup has been tracking it.
Meanwhile, the Gallop poll, from a July 1-11 polling, found that 59 percent of people supported banning smoking in public places.
The poll has particular significance now because the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is preparing to enforce a smoking ban in all public housing across the country.
The Smoke-Free Public Housing Rule was finalized on December 5, 2016, and became effective on February 3, 2017.
All public housing associations must comply with the rule and implement smoke-free policies within 18 months of the effective date, no later than July 31, 2018.Tenants fight smoking ban
Tenants are challenging a Housing and Urban Development rule that requires local public housing authorities across the US to prohibit people from smoking in their homes, according to a story by Jacob Sullum for Reason magazine.
A policy that is scheduled to take effect on Monday prohibits smoking in and near public housing throughout the country, affecting 1.2 million households in units managed by about 3,300 local agencies.
Sullum quoted a 2016 Observer editorial, as saying the policy ‘may be the most far-reaching, intrusive and over-reaching executive order of the entire Obama administration’.
In a lawsuit filed yesterday, six smokers who live in public housing argue that the ban violates their rights, exceeds the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s statutory authority, cannot be justified as a regulation of interstate commerce, and unconstitutionally commandeers state and local officials by ordering them to carry out federal policy.
The smoking ban, which covers low-income housing that is federally subsidized but owned and operated by local public housing authorities, applies to living units as well as common areas and extends to a zone 25 feet around each building.Young drawn to abstinence
During the past four decades, an increasing number of US teenagers have decided to say no to drugs and alcohol, according to a story by Alan Mozes for medicalxpress.com citing a new report.
But the million-dollar question is why.
“There has been a steady increase in the proportion of students graduating high school who report never having tried alcohol, marijuana, tobacco or any other drugs,” said study author Dr. Sharon Levy, who directs the adolescent substance use and addiction program at Boston Children’s Hospital.
For example, while about five percent of high school seniors had embraced abstinence in 1976, that figure had risen to 25 percent in 2014, according to the most recent poll of nearly 12,000 students.
Surveys conducted among 8th and 10th graders between 1991 and 2014 unearthed a similar trend, with abstinence jumping from roughly 10 percent to almost 40 percent among the former, and from 25 percent to more than 60 percent among the latter.
Levy was quoted as saying that the downward trends didn’t catch her off-guard, even if “the findings may surprise people because we constantly hear bad news about drug use and the opioid epidemic”.
Levy said that both drinking and smoking – the number one and number three most common substance use habits – had been sliding in popularity across the board for a while now, even though pot use had held steady.
But why? That remains “the million-dollar question,” said Levy, “and for sure it doesn’t have one simple answer.”
Overall, she credited public health efforts for giving rise to a new cultural climate that encourages teens to shun substance use because it’s dangerous and unhealthy, rather than because it’s immoral or forbidden.
Meanwhile, Dr. Eric Sigel, an adolescent medicine specialist at the Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, who was not involved in the study, was quoted as saying that the good news was “quite precarious”.
For example, he said, “while fewer teens overall are using substances, those who do face a landscape of more dangerous substances [like opioids] compared to their parents’ generation”.US using child labor
In the US, where people under 18 are barred from buying tobacco and vapor products, children as young as seven are hired to work on tobacco farms, according to a National Public Radio story relayed by the TMA.
Melissa Bailey Castillo, outreach co-ordinator at the Kinston Community Health Center in North Carolina, was quoted as saying that during the tobacco harvest season, some small farms in the state hired children as young as seven because the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs child labor, made exceptions for small farms.
The Act allows big farms to hire children as young as 12.
According to a 2013 study conducted by Human Rights Watch, growers say they need the extra labor during the harvest season, while children from rural North Carolina say they must work to help support their families.
However, Castillo said loose federal regulations and tobacco industry policies had made the children vulnerable to the health risks from nicotine and pesticide exposure.
“Either your neighbor owns a farm, or a relative owns a farm,” Castillo was quoted as saying. “Tobacco obviously is part of that heritage, and kids have been working in it, farmers will tell you, for generations.”
The federal Government has acknowledged the health risks of tobacco farming, but it is still legal for children aged 12, with parental permission, to work on a tobacco farm of any size.
And there was no minimum age for children to work on small tobacco farms or family farms.
Tobacco is North Carolina’s most valuable crop, generating about $725 million in 2017.Century's best initiative
22nd Century says that it could supply within one growing season enough low-nicotine-tobacco seed to satisfy the needs of the US tobacco industry.
The company’s claim is contained in a press note outlining its response to the US Food and Drug Administration’s proposed rule that would require all cigarettes sold in the US to contain minimally or non-addictive levels of nicotine.
‘In preparation for the prompt implementation of the new FDA rule, 22nd Century is already growing increased amounts of the company’s VLN™ tobacco in order to be able to supply a sufficient quantity of the company’s proprietary VLN™ tobacco seeds to grow enough VLN™ tobacco for the entire US tobacco industry in just one growing season,’ the press note said.
22nd contrasted its position with that of Reynolds American, which, 22nd said, believed the industry was 20 years away from being able to comply with the FDA’s proposed rule.
22nd Century said in the press note that it was willing to license the use of its VLN™ technology and VLN™ tobacco seeds/plants to all interested companies.
‘The availability of this licensing opportunity from 22nd Century negates any argument by other tobacco companies that contend it is somehow not possible to comply with the planned FDA nicotine reduction mandate,’ the note added.
“Big tobacco companies now have a choice: Combat, obfuscate and attempt to delay the most important public health initiative of the last 100 years… or demonstrate a genuine commitment to improving the health of their customers,” said Henry Sicignano, III, president and CEO of the 22nd Century Group. “Now that 22nd Century’s VLN™ technology is proven and readily available for licensing, it will be interesting to see which big tobacco companies genuinely care about smokers… and which are determined to keep their customers addicted to the deadliest consumer product available on the market.”Nicotine down, job losses up
Altria says that making it mandatory that all cigarettes sold in the US deliver very low levels of nicotine could cost up to 951,000 jobs, according to a story by Uliana Pavlova for Bloomberg News.
A rule proposed by the US Food and Drug Administration would require all cigarettes sold in the US to contain minimally or non-addictive levels of nicotine.
The proposal has been the subject of an FDA Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, to which comments have been sought.
Altria reportedly said that, if implemented, the proposal would cause a net loss, directly or indirectly, of up to 951,000 jobs, and that the nation’s unemployment rate could rise from 3.9 percent to 4.5 percent.
The company, which employed 8,300 employees at the end of 2017, estimates that tobacco growers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and distributors would all feel the impact.
ITG Brands said that the proposed changes would create a robust black market.Altria to webcast results
The Altria Group is due to host a live audio webcast from 09.00 Eastern Time on July 26 to discuss its 2018 second-quarter business results. The company will issue a press release containing its results about 07.00 on the same day.
The webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, can be accessed at altria.com or through the Altria Investor App.
During the webcast, chairman and CEO Howard Willard and vice chairman and CFO Billy Gifford will discuss the results and answer questions from the investment community and news media.
Pre-event registration is necessary through www.altria.com/webcasts.
An archived copy of the webcast will be available on altria.com or through the Altria Investor App.
The free app is available for download at www.altria.com/irapp or through the Apple App Store or Google Play.Nicotine focus flawed
Three US health activists have told the Food and Drug Administration that while nicotine in cigarettes should be lowered to non-addictive levels, the agency should not expect that this reduction alone will solve the smoking problem.
Jesse Elias, MA, Yogi Hale Hendlin, PhD, and Pamela M. Ling, MD, MPH, of the University of California, San Francisco, recently submitted a public comment to the FDA on its proposed Nicotine Product Standard.
‘The FDA is considering its proposed nicotine product standard as part of its “comprehensive nicotine policy”,’ the comment said. ‘The FDA’s description of this proposal to date appears to focus narrowly on the pharmacological properties of nicotine. By reducing nicotine delivery in cigarettes, this standard would encourage smokers to switch to other nicotine delivery systems, including those made by tobacco companies, so as to reduce the harm caused by tobacco products. In the best-case scenario, reduced-nicotine cigarettes will prompt smokers to quit smoking altogether, and cease use of all tobacco products. Second best, smokers will switch to non-combustible tobacco products yet maintain their nicotine addiction.’
The comment, of more than 800 words, ended by saying that to improve addiction outcomes and public health, the FDA should both reduce the nicotine levels permitted in cigarettes and other combustible tobacco products, while also expanding and strengthening social and environmental restrictions on cigarette smoking.
