BIG anti-smoking messages on the front of cigarette packets

BIG anti-smoking messages on the front of cigarette packets do help deter youngsters tempted by tobacco - but only if they're on the front of the pack, research has found. Touching on a subject that has stirred controversy in countries where pro- and anti-tobacco lobbies are fighting over smoking controls, investigators looked at data from a large survey among British teenagers. More than a thousand 11- to 16-year-olds took part in the survey, which unfolded in two waves, in 2008 and a followup in 2011. In 2008, cigarette packets sold in Britain had large text warnings on the front and back. In 2011, these were joined by anti-smoking pictures on the back panel of the pack. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of respondents in the survey had never smoked. Between 17 and 22 percent had experimented with cigarettes. Around one in 10 were already "regular" smokers, defined as smoking at least one cigarette a week. All were asked if they recalled the text message or the picture, and say which warning was likely to discourage them from smoking. The most commonly recalled messages were the two types of general warnings on the packet front. "Smoking kills" was remembered by 58 percent in 2008, while "Smoking seriously harms you and others around you" by 41 percent. These rates fell to 47 percent and 25 percent respectively in 2011. In contrast, the more specific text messages on the back of the pack were recalled by less than one percent of participants both 2008 and 2011. Recall of the back-of-the-pack images was generally below 10 percent in both waves. The exception was three scary pictures of rotting teeth, diseased lungs and neck cancer, for which recall increased between 2008 and 2011, reaching a maximum of 33 percent for the diseased lung image. The research say the pictures had most effect on "never" or experimental smokers. But the impact was negligible on regular smokers -- except to prompt some of them to buy special "hiding packs" to mask the nasty images. "As warnings need to be salient to be effective, positioning pictorial warnings only on the less visible reverse panel limits their impact," says the study. "While recall was high at both waves for pack-front (text) warnings, it was low -- below 10 percent -- for the pictorial warnings on the pack reverse, fear-appeal pictures aside." The study, appearing in the specialist journal Tobacco Control published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), also points to the "wear-out" factor, of text and visual warnings that go unchanged for years and fail to make an impact on regular smokers. More than 60 countries now require pictorial health warnings on packs, according to the paper. In five countries - Australia, Brunei, Canada, Sri Lanka and Uruguay - the law stipulates that they cover 75 percent of the main surfaces. European Union (EU) countries must follow a 2001 directive that gives one of two general warnings covering 30-35 percent on the pack front, and 14 specific warnings, covering 40-50 percent of the reverse. There are also 42 possible images that member states can use on the reverse of packs. Less than half of the EU's member-states have adopted these pictorial warnings, and none has warnings covering 50 percent of the main pack surfaces overall, a guideline set by the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO).

NY parks are ordered to halt outdoor smoking ban

New York state parks officials must stop enforcing their recent ban on outdoor smoking, a state judge ordered, agreeing with a smokers' rights group that the state exceeded its authority.
The February rules establishing no-smoking areas at various parks, including popular beaches and all nine state parks within New York City, aren't supported by any policy set by the Legislature, state Supreme Court Justice George Ceresia said. The city has a separate outdoor smoking ban for its parks and beaches that wasn't challenged in this lawsuit.
The judge noted that while lawmakers enacted restrictions on indoor smoking, the Assembly and Senate have attempted but failed to target smoking in outdoor parks. "In the court's view, this is a strong indication that the Legislature is uncertain of how to address the issue," he wrote.
Officials from the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation said they enacted the rules to protect visitors from secondhand smoke.
The parks office said Friday it's considering an appeal and that officials believe they have authority to manage the often conflicting park use of patrons, extending to regulation of outdoor smoking on playgrounds, swimming pools, beaches, and other places children and visitors congregate.
Ceresia wrote that the broad language of the state parks law doesn't empower the office "to promulgate rules regulating conduct bearing any tenuous relationship to park patrons' health or welfare." He ordered parks officials to take down the no smoking signs related to the outdoor ban.
While acknowledging the state's position that you don't need to be an expert to understand that secondhand smoke is "deleterious to the health of nonsmokers, especially children," the judge wrote that he was expressing no opinion on the wisdom of outdoor smoking regulations should they be enacted with proper authority to do so.
The lawsuit was brought by NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment. "This ban was imposed by bureaucratic fiat, not legislated law, and on that basis, alone, it's unconstitutional," said Audrey Silk, the group's founder.
"It was certainly a vindication of individual rights in the face of government overreach," said attorney Edward Paltzik.
Brett Joshpe, his co-counsel, said the issue with the parks under New York City jurisdiction is different, since those restrictions have City Council backing, but there may be another avenue of legal attack there.

Why Is The FDA Shielding Smokers From The Good News About E-Cigarettes?

Any clear-thinking health professional would agree that cigarette smoking is without question the most devastating and preventable public health risk that we need to address in this country. And now, four-plus years after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was given legal authority over tobacco products, the regulatory agency faces arguably its most important public health decision in its history. The time has come to confront their responsibility to smokers trying to quit and their families.

The worldwide death-toll of cigarette smoking is reliably predicted to hit one billion this century. Despite this depressing fact, the measures implemented by the FDA thus far, ostensibly to reduce the toll of smoking, have been almost entirely lip service, without making any real impact. A relatively new method of helping addicted smokers quit has been adopted by millions of smokers – many of whom are now ex-smokers — over the past few years. I refer of course to electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). Concurrent with the dramatic spike in sales of this device comes word of historic declines in the sale of real cigarettes.
E-cigarettes work by delivering a potent “hit” of nicotine in water vapor, with flavorings and propellants of no significant health concerns — neither to the “vaper” (as they call themselves), nor to bystanders. Most of them resemble cigarettes — which is both their blessing, and their curse.
Astoundingly, this nascent public-health miracle has been met with something between derision and hysteria by anti-tobacco groups worldwide: globally, the WHO, health-oriented NGOs, the British regulator MHRA, and many nations are sparing no effort to discourage smokers from trying them, employing misleading (even false) alerts and dire website warnings, phony surveys, and exaggerated concerns about youth being led astray. Unfortunately, and embarrassingly for science-based public health policy, our FDA and CDC have been willingly complicit in this widespread disinformation campaign. Meanwhile they purposely ignore studies that indicate the benefit of e-cigarettes for helping smokers quit. I ask, “How could this be?”
The possible explanations are not pretty: willful ignorance, dogma based on experiences garnered in the 20^th century, or greed.
I accuse those responsible for impeding truthful communication about the real risks of e-cigarettes of collaborating in a “cigarette-protection campaign,” whose effects will be to discourage smokers from quitting, leading to more dead smokers. Consider this: those who stand in the way of acceptance of e-cigarettes are acting from motivations that are far removed from public health. The nonprofit groups in the forefront of anti-e-cigarette activism are also heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies in the business of selling near-useless cessation drugs — a fact which they conveniently neglect to disclose. If tobacco companies carried on the same way, they would be hauled into court by the FDA in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, the net result of the official campaigns: cigarette markets protected, worthless cessation aids promoted. Who profits? Not addicted smokers.
Despite the pervasive anti-smoking campaigns, a handful of marginally successful cessation drugs and the “denormalization” measures, the addictive drumbeat goes on.  In our country alone, cigarettes exact an annual sacrifice of about 450,000 prematurely dead. Another 8 1/2 million people and their families suffer lingering ills thanks to smoking. And still, near twenty percent of our population continues to smoke, with little change over the century’s first decade.

New study finds smoking even more deadly than thought

It didn't seem possible for there to be any more bad news about the health effects of smoking.

There is.

An Australian study suggests that smoking is even more dangerous than previously thought, with cigarettes linked to the cause of death of more than 60% of smokers and shortening the life of an average smoker by 10 years.

The previous estimate for cigarettes causing the deaths of smokers was 50%

The study required a four-year analysis of the health records of more than 200,000 Australians. The Sax Institute's report suggests that even those who are moderate smokers are jeopardizing their health.

Finding that there is no such thing as a safe level of smoking, the study found that the risk of death is doubled among those who smoke an average of 10 cigarettes a day.

The more a person smokes, the greater the health risks, the report concluded.