In our nation’s capital today, hearings are taking place on whether the FDA should ban menthol flavoring in cigarettes. In an especially timely editorial on the subject in the The Daily Caller, ACSH Medical Director Dr. Gilbert Ross notes that “no toxicity is specifically attributed to menthol.” It’s not the smoking of menthol cigarettes, he says, that is the problem, but the smoking of cigarettes per se. He also points out that banning menthol would likely lead to a vast and unaccountable black market in illicit menthol smokes, without an attendant gain for public health.
Harm Reduction
ACSH takes great pride in the distinction won by our remarkable roster of friends and advisors. Their knowledge and insight informs our work. Today we take delight in offering the perspectives of two men who contacted us about recent subjects of our Dispatch. Bill Godshall, head of Smokefree Pennsylvania and co-author of ACSH’s publication on tobacco harm reduction, writes with regard to a controversy over Star Scientific’s new smokeless tobacco product:
Many people may find it surprising to learn that China s 300 million smokers consume a third of the world s cigarettes. But then 60 percent of Chinese men smoke an average of 15 cigarettes per day. The result, according to the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung disease, is that smoking-related diseases cause one million Chinese deaths each year, and this number is projected to double by the 2020. In our country, the comparable figure is only 400,000 plus preventable deaths also an entirely unacceptable and tragic toll.
Following up on a 2009 law which gave it the power to regulate tobacco products, the FDA announced yesterday that manufacturers must report to the agency by March 22 on whether their products are in any way more dangerous or more addictive than items which were on the market by February 15, 2007. ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross notes that the FDA action permits it to prevent the sale of any new tobacco products, including harm reduction tools like e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. ACSH hopes that the FDA will use its new powers judiciously.
ACSH’s comprehensive assessment, Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn’t Tell You, offered data showing that smoking increases infertility and rates of miscarriage among women. That book was first published in 1996. Recently, a study of 1,300 Japanese women reported in Human Reproduction confirmed and expanded upon our earlier analysis.
As many smokers are attempting to fulfill a New Year’s resolution to finally nip their cigarette habit in the bud, leading cigarette manufacturer R.J. Reynolds is launching its first campaign specifically aimed at encouraging smokers to switch to its Camel Snus brand of smokeless tobacco. Unlike many smokeless tobacco ads, which seem to suggest that consumers may wish to engage in dual use of smokeless tobacco with cigarettes in order to obtain a nicotine fix when or where smoking is forbidden, this “take the pleasure to switch” campaign marks the first attempt by a large U.S. tobacco company to convince smokers to substitute cigarettes with a smokeless alternative.
In order to expand upon research that shows smoking raises bad cholesterol (LDL) and lowers good cholesterol (HDL), a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health recruited 1,500 smokers. The investigators report that among the 36 percent of the smokers who had successfully quit a year later, an average increase of about 5 percent in HDL cholesterol was noted, even though the group that quit smoking gained an average of approximately 10 pounds. This led the researchers to believe that the additional weight gain might actually be masking even greater benefits in HDL-cholesterol levels.
While the EPA tries to remove harmless substances from its hazards list, public health officials in Washington’s King County are doing quite the opposite by proposing a ban on the use of e-cigarettes in public places. Their rationale includes a host of nonsensical excuses, such as e-cigarettes lead to secondhand smoke, they are so similar in appearance to regular cigarettes that they’ll just confuse other bar patrons and encourage them to light up the real thing, and they are known to possess such carcinogenic chemicals as nitrosamines and diethylene glycol. If there were any veracity to these claims, then these would be great reasons to ban e-cigarettes, but as William T.
An annual survey shows that for the first time, teen marijuana use may be higher than cigarette smoking, Reuters reports. Conducted by the National Institute for Drug Abuse, the survey of approximately 46,000 students from 396 schools found that 16 percent of eighth graders admitted to using marijuana compared to 14.5 percent last year, while 21 percent of high school seniors reported using marijuana in the past 30 days compared to 19.2 percent who admitted to smoking cigarettes. More startling is the finding that six percent of the high school seniors surveyed use marijuana every day, up from five percent last year.
Children who have no smokers in their families but who reside in apartment buildings have higher levels of cotinine, a by-product of tobacco smoke, in their blood than similar children who dwell in detached, single-family homes, a new study in the journal Pediatrics finds. After surveying and taking blood samples of children between the ages of 6 and 18 from 2001 to 2006 who live in smoke-free homes, study author Dr. Jonathan Winickoff of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston found that children living in apartments have higher blood levels of tobacco smoke contaminants.
Apparently even a whiff of tobacco smoke can threaten your health, according to a report released yesterday by U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. The report, “How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease,” insists upon a policy of zero-tolerance toward second-hand smoke and asserts that even low-level exposure to cigarette smoke, whether inhaled directly, or via second-hand exposure, can cause cardiovascular and inflammatory disease. To this end, the report uses a lot of frightening language and claims that any amount of smoke can damage your DNA and cause cancer, or provoke inflammatory vessel changes and heart attacks.
Yesterday marked another victory for e-cigarette manufacturer NJOY after a federal appellate court in Washington, D.C. unanimously upheld a lower court’s previous injunction against the FDA’s attempt to regulate the products as drugs or medical devices. The appeals court said that the e-cigarettes should instead be regulated under the less stringent 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which allows the FDA to control tobacco products’ packaging and marketing.