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.

Smoking During Pregnancy Increases Asthma Chances Among Great-Grandchildren

Smoking during pregnancy increases asthma risk in great-grandchildren, a latest study reveals.
Researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor - UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) Medical Center (LA BioMed) conducted a study on mice to find out the side effects of smoking on great-grandchildren.
The pregnant rats were divided into two groups. The first group was injected with a dose of nicotine every day by researchers starting on the sixth day of pregnancy and continued for 21 days post-birth. The babies were breastfed until they were weaned at three weeks. The second group was given a placebo drug injection and the same routine was followed.
The researchers studied the third generation of the rats, the great-grandchildren of the original set of mice. They tested their lungs and found that rats whose great-grandmothers were given daily doses of nicotine had asthma indications.
The study results concluded that smoking can have long-term side effects. Although the study was done on mice; the results showed that smoking carries genetic risk of disease among smokers.
The study was published in the 'American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology.'
In the U.S. smoking and tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable diseases and deaths. Nearly 40,000 deaths due to tobacco abuse are reported every year in the country. The government spends $97 billion in lost productivity and $96 billion in health care expenditures every year due smoking and tobacco use.
Another study stated that quitting smoking can help people get a good night's sleep.

Anti-smoking campaign surpasses expectations

Graphic ads depicting the ravages of smoking have generated a bigger than expected response, federal health officials said Thursday.
The Tips From Former Smokers campaign -- which includes TV ads in which ex-smokers tell of their smoking-related health problems, such as amputations and cancer -- resulted in even more calls to the campaign's toll-free quit line than anticipated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We saw 150,000 people call 1-800-QUIT-NOW over and above what we would have expected," said Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health.
In total there were 353,000 calls, and "we had about 2.8 million unique visitors to the TIPS website," McAfee said. "We know that the number of people who seek help is the tip of the iceberg of people who make quit attempts, so we are very excited by these results."
During the campaign, there was a 75 percent increase in calls and a nearly a 38-fold increase in unique website visits compared to the month before the campaign began. In the month after the campaign ended, weekly calls dropped by 41 percent and website visits fell 96 percent, according to the report.
Terrie Hall, one of the people featured in the ads, lost her 13-year battle with smoking-related cancer this week, McAfee said. "Terrie's desire to share her story in effort to help others know the dangers of smoking is truly a public-health inspiration," he said.
Hall was diagnosed with oral and throat cancer and had her voice box removed years ago. The cancer, which spread to her brain this summer, was caused by the cigarette smoking she began in high school, according to CDC officials.
In her first ad, Hall was shown putting on a wig, inserting false teeth and using a scarf to cover a hole in her throat. It was the campaign's most popular ad.
Another ad featured Hall speaking with her artificial voice box and advising smokers to make a video of themselves singing or reading out loud. "I wish I had," she said. "The only voice my grandson's ever heard is this one."
The new report was published Sept. 20 in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
These ads work because they show the horrendous effects of smoking that young smokers rarely consider, McAfee said.
"People start smoking in their teens and then they smoke in their 20s and 30s, and then people start really suffering the serious consequences," he said. "We as human beings are not really very good at making decisions in the present based on risks that are decades away, and when people see statistics they just blow them off."
The people who appeared in the ads wanted to show others the real consequences of smoking, McAfee said. "Basically, they are saying, 'The reason I quit is because I got my leg cut off,' or 'I had fingers cut off,' or 'I got lung cancer or throat cancer,'" he said. "They said, 'Gee, I wish somebody had told me this, in a way that I would understand.'"
The Tips From Former Smokers campaign was designed to counter the more than $8.3 billion spent by the tobacco industry each year to make cigarettes more attractive and more available, particularly to teens and young adults, according to a CDC news release.
"The 2013 campaign cost $48 million to develop and implement -- less than the amount the tobacco industry spends on promoting and marketing cigarettes in just three days," the agency noted.
An anti-smoking advocate praised the federal government campaign and said its success needs to be followed up and sustained.
"Imagine what such campaigns could accomplish if they were better funded and lasted year-round," said Danny McGoldrick, vice president for research at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "It is encouraging that the CDC plans to conduct a third round of the campaign next year."
McGoldrick said state programs also are important. "The states must also do their part by using more of the nearly $26 billion a year they collect from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes to fund tobacco-prevention programs, including media campaigns," he said.

City officials consider smoking ban

How would you like your favorite park to be smoke-free? City officials want to make that happen.
News10NBC has learned about a proposal to ban smoking in all city parks and outdoor recreation areas. The goal is to keep secondhand smoke and litter out of parks and away from children. Officials hope it will also encourage smokers to quit.
In July, a statewide ban on smoking at playgrounds was passed by state lawmakers. Officials hope to bring this proposal to city council by November.