Editorial: Tobacco fix

Jump to full article: Waltham (MA) Daily News Tribune, 2008-08-19
Author: GateHouse News Service
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF

Intro:

Like the fact that household paints no longer contain toxic lead? Or that milk must be pasteurized? From antidepressants to breast implants to cosmetics to dog food, Uncle Sam already has the power to monitor products to protect public health.

As Harvard Medical School professor Allen Brandt writes in the most recent New England Journal of Medicine, “The regulatory status of cigarettes arguably represents one of the most paradoxical stories in American medicine. The single most dangerous legal product in U.S. consumer society has eluded virtually all federal regulation until now.”

It’s inexcusable to continue to give tobacco a pass.

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LETTER: BANZHAF: Regulating Big Tobacco

Jump to full article: The Washington Post, 2008-08-14
Author: JOHN F. BANZHAF III
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

Intro:
The best “alternative” to passing a bill to regulate Big Tobacco . . . is not to rush for passage now but to await the next Congress.

The bill would probably be supported rather than opposed by the new administration and would be likely to face a less pro-business and anti-regulatory Congress; the racist menthol exception could be removed; and the bill could be strengthened without the need for the devastating concessions in the current version that are necessary to ensure the support of cigarette maker Philip Morris.

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Syracuse policy prohibits smoking at 170 city parks

Jump to full article: AP, 2008-08-10
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

Intro:
Syracuse has become a partner in Tobacco-Free Onondaga County’s “Young Lungs at Play” initiative, adopting a policy that establishes tobacco-free zones at more than 170 parks across the city.

Six other municipalities in the county are doing it, too.

Officials will post “Young Lungs at Play” signs around targeted areas, concentrating on playgrounds, athletic fields and schools.

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LETTERS: MORE SMOKE BLOWING FROM BILLIONAIRE BOY$

Jump to full article: New York Post, 2008-07-31
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

 Intro:

·  Bravo to Mayor Bloomberg for stepping up his war on smoking by donating an extra $250 million in an effort to convince governments of developing nations to adopt “proven tobacco-control policies” (”Butt Kickers,” July 24).

I’m sure that the citizens there can’t wait for onerous cigarette-sales taxes, smoking bans on private property and 18.5 percent property-tax increases.

·  While Bloomberg’s anti-smoking crusade is honorable, it is also misguided.

Instead of attacking the individual smoker, he should simply encourage physical fitness. National statistics show that those who are fit are less inclined to smoke.

Investing in fitness centers provides an instant and ongoing return on investment in comparison to smoke-cessation programs and propaganda, which are always subject to fail.

·  Bill Gates and the mayor should donate their $375 million to the poor people in New Orleans who still have not returned home or who are living in trailers that are bad for their health.

Instead of worrying about smokers in other countries, they should help Americans first.

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Phillip Morris, Not Health

Jump to full article: Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, 2008-08-06
Author: Kim Buttery. Richmond.
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

 

Intro:

I am not surprised that Rep. Eric Cantor would support the tobacco bill. Philip Morris has been a good corporate citizen and has much to do with Richmond’s progress in the past.

However, your readers should not assume that this bill is a public-health bill. It is not. It is a support-Philip-Morris bill. Despite the support of the AMA, American Lung Association, and others, this bill has been set up to pull the wool over many people’s eyes.

The central theory of the bill, that oversight by the FDA would be beneficial, is malarkey. The FDA has much more to oversee than it has staff to carry out its programs, even when the new positions authorized by Congress are filled. . . .

All this bill would do is give a perception that cigarettes and other tobacco products are approved for sale by the FDA, but there are no scientific standards available, and there are no standards possible for the control of the various toxins in cigarettes. There is no research possible under the current experimental ethics standards in the U.S. research system.

For detailed analysis of the dangers of the bill please go to the Web site of the American Association of Public Health Physicians at www.aaphp.org and click on the Tobacco Issues link to review the analyses.

– * Editor’s note: The writer is a former state health commissioner

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A watchdog for big tobacco

Jump to full article: Boston (MA) Globe, 2008-08-01
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

Intro:

EVERY STEP that government, on any level, can take to make smoking less common and dangerous is a public-health gift that keeps on giving. . . .

Bush also offers the peculiar logic that the FDA should not be in the business of regulating a dangerous product, a fig leaf for the fact that even in its final months the administration is still doing the bidding of the tobacco industry, much of which opposes FDA oversight.

Much, but not all - Philip Morris USA has thrown its backing behind the bill. To build support, however, antismoking advocates had to make compromises. One is that the FDA cannot completely ban cigarettes or addictive nicotine. Another concession was removing menthol . . .

The FDA could reduce nicotine to a nonaddictive level if it decided that was necessary to protect public health.

Other measures, such as higher cigarette taxes, public education campaigns, and bans on smoking in public places, have reduced the incidence of smoking, but it still causes 400,000 deaths a year in the United States. That makes it the largest preventable cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Senator Edward M. Kennedy has been pushing an FDA regulation bill since the mid-1990s. Congress could take no better step to improve Americans’ health and reduce healthcare costs than to pass this legislation with margins that a Bush veto cannot stop.

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Nursing home cited, fined for patients’ smoking

Jump to full article: Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette, 2008-07-30
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

 

Intro:

The state has placed a nursing home in Larimer on a provisional license and slapped it with a $22,000 fine, accusing it of permitting unsafe smoking by patients around oxygen equipment.

The 134-bed Forbes Road Nursing and Rehabilitation Center is appealing the penalties, disputing an account by state inspectors that smoking they saw outside the building on May 20-21 posed an unusual risk.

The Department of Health imposed an “immediate jeopardy” citation on the facility May 21. The designation prevented any new admissions until two days later, when officials were satisfied that procedures were in place to ensure no smoking would take place in the presence of flammable oxygen equipment.

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Tobacco Ban Remains Elusive at U.N. Headquarters

Jump to full article: Asian Tribune, 2008-07-29
Author: Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

Intro:

Last week, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), comprising 54 member states, adopted a resolution recommending that the 192-member General Assembly, the highest policy-making body, “consider” taking steps towards a smoke-free United Nations.

Douglas Bettcher, director of the Tobacco Free Initiative at the World Health Organization (WHO), said an Ad Hoc Inter-agency Task Force on tobacco control, consisting of several U.N. agencies, has recommended that the United Nations as a whole take a strong stance on the issue.

Since the General Assembly had not taken any action on a previous ECOSOC resolution, he said the Council’s 54 members should re-state their recommendations at the next session of the Assembly, beginning September, for “a complete ban on smoking and on sales of tobacco in its premises.”

Some of the countries speaking in support of the resolution included Uruguay (”the first Latin American country to become totally tobacco-free”), Argentina, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. . . .

The study also faults the U.N.’s Global Compact, described as the world’s largest voluntary corporate citizenship initiative, for harboring tobacco companies under its umbrella.

“WHO believes that the tobacco industry and corporate social responsibility are an inherent contradiction,” it says.

“It is unfortunate that some tobacco companies have been able to join the Global Compact given that it is an important corporate citizenship initiative,” the study points out. . . .

However, so long as tobacco is a legal product, the GCO does not feel that it can introduce a blanket exclusion for tobacco companies that wish to join the initiative despite having been discouraged from doing so.

Nevertheless, the first requirement of all Global Compact participants is that they will comply with all applicable national and international law.

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The World’s Heaviest-Smoking Countries

Jump to full article: Forbes, 2007-12-04
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

Intro:

While the smoking population is half what it was a generation ago in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, with only one in five using tobacco, it’s different in Africa and East Asia, where time stands still when it comes to cigarettes. Smoking rates of 40% or more of the population are common in these regions, making for an extra-tough health hazard when medical services are as limited as filterless, hand rolled smokes are plentiful.

We assembled a list of the countries where the highest percentage of citizens smoke according to the most recent public health data available and ranked them based on that figure. But we also took it further, estimating the potential drain on each nation’s potential income opportunity due to smoking deaths as compared to the nation’s gross domestic product. . . .

Societal costs in those countries can’t be calculated the same way they would be in the U.S., where most studies measure how much smokers burden taxpayers with extra Medicare and Medicaid payments. For poor countries, there is no Medicare-like program to fund. Nor is there enough data about the economic impact of other diseases to make real comparisons.

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Tobacco Plants Help Researchers Make Cancer Vaccine, Study Says

Jump to full article: Bloomberg News, 2008-07-21
Author: Michelle Fay Cortez
Posted by CBM, CC, and CF.

Intro:

Tobacco plants can produce a therapy for patients with a chronic form of lymphoma, according to the first human study of the approach.

Researchers at Stanford University and Large Scale Biology Corp. coaxed the plants into making antibodies of the type found on the tumors of individual patients by infecting their leaves with a virus laced with a gene from the cancer. The investigators say the approach led to personalized vaccines that may spark the patients’ immune systems to attack the cancer.

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