Today’s New York Times contains a Page One story on a strange and disquieting trend: U.S. businesses — especially those involved in health care — are increasingly banning not only smoking by employees, but employees who smoke. Among the first of the leading medical institutions to implement the policy was the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio in 2007.To put the policy into effect, hospitals and clinics have demanded urine tests of workers. In many cases, those who were found to have elevated levels of nicotine byproducts were then dismissed. Laws in 29 states and the District of Columbia prohibit employment discrimination against smokers.
Harm Reduction
ACSH scientific advisor and Professor of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, Dr. Michael Siegel points to a troubling misrepresentation by advocates of smoking bans. University of Iowa researchers claimed that a state ban on smoking in public places had lowered rates of heart disease by, as an NBC TV affiliate put it, “staggering numbers.” But Dr. Siegel notes that if anything, the data show just the opposite.
Despite receiving even an A-list celebrity testimonial on their efficacy, e-cigarettes have gotten a lot of flack from public health opponents who argue that the clean nicotine delivery device is harmful and contains “toxic” chemicals. Well, thanks to a study co-authored by ACSH advisor Michael Siegel, M.D., M.P.H., and published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, it was found that out of 222 first-time e-cigarette users who “vaped” more than 20 times daily for six months, 70 percent quit smoking.
First Lady Michelle Obama announced that President Obama has been cigarette-free for a year now. We here at ACSH wish to congratulate him, as we are aware of the great difficulty smokers face while trying to quit. “However, many smokers fall back to smoking even after a year of being smoke-free,” says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. So keep up the good work, Mr. President. If the urge returns, he should consider trying smokeless tobacco for a nicotine hit with minimal health risk involved, adds Dr. Ross.
There is no such thing as a safe form of tobacco, says Joseph Lee, a social research specialist for the Department of Family Medicine at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in an op-ed last week for Raleigh’s NewsObserver.com.
Mr. Lee specifically goes on to condemn the recent R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s Camel Snus ads as misleading and claims that “smokers who try tobacco snus products are at high risk of becoming addicted to both cigarettes and snus, thus continuing or even adding to their risk for lung, bladder, breast, cervical, oral and pancreatic cancer.”
The New York City Council approved a bill Wednesday expanding the City’s public smoking ban to beaches and parks after a study showed 57 percent of New Yorkers had cotinine, a nicotine byproduct, in their blood compared with a 45 percent national average. Proponents of the measure argue that it was passed in the name of public health. ACSH’s Cheryl Martin points out that these smoking bans have become a very emotional issue because they pit individual rights against quality of life concerns. “This bill won't necessarily improve public health.
The state of Tennessee, one of the largest growers of dark tobacco used in smokeless products such as Swedish snus, is seeing a comeback in smokeless tobacco use and is reaping the benefits. Beyond the financial gains, the increased use of smokeless alternatives to cigarettes offers great potential in terms of harm reduction. Many modern smokeless tobacco products, like snus, come in small packets that are placed between the cheek and gum line. The old types of “spit” and “chaw” may have more adverse health effects and are often viewed as aesthetically problematic. ACSH's Dr.
ACSH has long been a leader in the fight against cigarettes, and we take pride in the work we have done to inform the public about the vast (and little-known) spectrum of real risks posed by cigarettes.At the same time, we firmly believe that educating the public on this important issue requires truth-telling and not appealing to hysteria. Yet we re afraid that this may be what s behind a recent report released by the American Lung Association entitled State of Tobacco Control 2010.The report states, [T]here is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke and that smoke causes damage immediately to the cardiovascular system.
On average Americans live several years fewer than people in a number of other developed countries like France and Japan. This may seem puzzling as Americans spend more on health care, and American patients do, in fact, live longer following diagnosis of cancer and a number of other serious diseases. Well, a report from the National Research Council released yesterday presents a theory why this might be. According to the study authors, Americans live shorter lives because of our greater propensity for obesity and our higher previous rates of smoking. The researchers predict that if U.S.
For women looking for another reason to quit smoking, a new study strongly supports the notion that smoking increases the risk of breast cancer. In a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers followed over 111,000 active smokers from the Nurses’ Health Study from 1976 to 2006 and approximately 36,000 passive smokers from the same cohort between 1982 and 2006.
The New York State Assembly health committee is about to vote on a bill to outlaw e-cigarettes. Yet both the proposed legislation and the hearings on it appear to be founded on a series of fallacies, reports ACSH advisor Dr. Michael Siegel. He writes:
Pregnant women who smoke are ashamed to admit it. That’s the conclusion of a study using data from a recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which was conducted from 1999 to 2006. According to the results, 23 percent of pregnant women claimed they don’t smoke even though they had high blood levels of cotinine, a tobacco metabolite and biomarker of tobacco exposure. Secondhand smoke may also increase cotinine levels, but since pregnant women metabolize the chemical more quickly than nonpregnant women, the rate of smoking during pregnancy may actually have been underestimated, researchers of the study published in The American Journal of Epidemiology say.