Smoking Is Over If You Want It

Happy World No Tobacco Day

It’s one of the annual days of note concocted by the World Health Organization (WHO). The motive is undeniably noble, and the goofy negative title makes it a favorite of mine: Saturday, May 31, is the annual World No Tobacco Day.

This year, WHO and its partner organizations around the world are focusing on the economics of the global tobacco trade by urging nations to raise taxes on tobacco products. Raising taxes has two potential effects: It drives down consumption and it provides revenue for government health spending on tobacco-related illness and prevention. This latter concern will only grow in the U.S., as the aging boomer cohort reaches the decade of maximum ravagement from smoking-related diseases.

A tax increase that boosts the price of tobacco by 10% “decreases tobacco consumption by about 4% in high-income countries and by up to 8% in most low- and middle-income countries,” according to the organization. And this sweetener: “The World Health Report 2010 indicated that a 50% increase in tobacco excise taxes would generate a little more than US$ 1.4 billion in additional funds in 22 low-income countries. If allocated to health, government health spending in these countries could increase by up to 50%.”

What is the alternative? A bleak epidemic that will be killing more than 8 million people every year by 2030. “More than 80% of these preventable deaths will be among people living in low-and middle-income countries,” says WHO. The tax hammer is not as widely used for tobacco control as common sense might suggest. WHO says that “only 32 countries, less than 8% of the world's population, have tobacco tax rates greater than 75% of the retail price.” Even so, tobacco tax revenues are on average 175 times higher than spending on tobacco control, WHO data shows.

WHO also urges continued ad bans as a means of lowering consumption. “Only 24 countries, representing 10% of the world’s population, have completely banned all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. Around one country in three has minimal or no restrictions at all on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.”

For more info, write the WHO Media Centre at mediainquiries@who.int.

Bio Firm Working on New Technology for E-Cigarettes

Key tobacco scientist endorses “going vape.”

Cypress Bioscience of San Diego hopes to enter the controversial and potentially lucrative market for so-called e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine by heating it to produce an inhalable, smoke-free vapor. The company announced last week that it had acquired a $5 million license for Staccato nicotine technology—“A novel electronic multidose delivery technology designed to help people stop smoking.”

The company claims that the “the electronics embedded within the Staccato delivery system could allow for the programmed, over-time reduction in the overall daily dose of nicotine, and ultimately may lead to the better management of nicotine cravings and eventual sustained smoking cessation”

Critics of e-cigarettes have maintained that the devices were not meant to curb smoking but to enable it, by allowing smokers to circumvent no-smoking regulations. Fears have also been voiced that children might be tempted to make use of them. Makers of electronic cigarettes, primarily in Asia, have maintained that the devices are perfect for the management of nicotine cravings when smokers quit, and may have significant advantages over nicotine gums and patches.

The press release from Cypress Bioscience makes the claim explicitly: “The Staccato technology may be capable of mimicking the pharmacokinetics of smoking cigarettes through the delivery of optimally-sized nicotine particles to the deep lung. Staccato nicotine may also provide some of the psychological aspects of smoking (e.g., hand-to-mouth movement, oral inhalation) and could allow smokers to self-administer and possibly titrate to the dose to treat cravings.”

Up until now, electronic cigarettes have been opposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the grounds that e-cigarettes were novel and untested drug delivery systems. Signaling a possible change in official attitudes, Dr. Neal Benowitz, professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco--and a prominent nicotine researcher for many years--said in the Cypress Bioscience press release that a delivery device like Staccato nicotine “may be useful in addressing a pressing pharmacological problem in overcoming nicotine addiction; namely, that acute cravings during quit attempts are inadequately treated by current nicotine replacement therapies.” Dr. Benowitz called the nicotine delivery device “an advancement that the field has been waiting for.”

Cypress Bioscience said it plans to take the technology into Phase 1 clinical trials next year. The company reported a net loss of 5 cents per share in the second quarter, compared to a loss of 23 cents per share during the same period a year ago.

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that almost 450,000 people die annually in the U.S. from smoking. One in five deaths in the U.S. are due to smoking-related illness, according to the CDC.

Earlier posts:

Leave Cigarettes Along, Judge Tells FDA

E-Cigarettes: Another Look

Graphics Credit: http://www.ecigarettebuyer.co.uk/

Tobacco Industry Loses Crucial Court Case

Jury awards $8 million to widow of addicted smoker.

In a court decision that attorneys for Philip Morris called “profoundly flawed,” a Florida jury last week awarded $8 million to the widow of a man who died of lung cancer, ruling that nicotine addiction was the cause of his death.

Attorneys for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, argued in Hess v. Philip Morris USA that the deceased man had been fully aware of the dangers of smoking, and had been fully capable of quitting, had he chosen to do so.

Philip Morris will most certainly lodge an appeal, given that the closely-watched “Hess case” is the first of an estimated 8,000 similar cases filed in Florida in the wake of a class-action suit against cigarette makers in 1994. In 2006, the class-action suit was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled that smokers had to prove in individual court cases that cigarettes were the immediate cause of their health problems.

Attorneys for the widow, Elaine Hess, argued that Philip Morris sold cigarettes that were “defective and unreasonably dangerous,” according to a Miami Herald report by Patrick Danner. Phillip Morris attorneys argued that smoking had simply been a “lifestyle choice” for Stuart Hess. Hess, the tobacco lawyers asserted, voluntarily chose not to follow the advice of family members and doctors, who told him to quit smoking.

According to the Miami Herald report, Hess “tried various means to quit smoking, including hypnosis, Nicorette gum and even going cold turkey. But all of his attempts failed.”

While technically the Hess case has no bearing on the individual court cases to come, attorneys said it was expected to serve “as a template for the other cases,” Danner wrote in the Herald article. Murray Garnick, a senior vice president and associate general counsel for parent company Atria, said in a press release that the verdict was the result of “an unconstitutional and profoundly flawed trial procedure. Fundamental fairness requires the plaintiff to establish basic liability before a jury can award damages.”

Photo Credit: http://snus-news.blogspot.com/2008_01_06_archive.html

addictiondrugs smoking nicotine

Scared Smokeless

Will New Yorkers quit smoking if you frighten them?

If it looks grim, that’s because it’s meant to. And if you don’t like that one, the New York Health Department has several other yucky pictures you’re bound to dislike just as much.

That’s the idea, anyway. Whether or not it proves successful or even useful is another matter. Yesterday, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene rolled out its new series of revolting matchbooks designed to help undercut tobacco industry marketing schemes. By focusing awareness on the graphic presentation of smoking’s worst effects, the campaign hopes to highlight the ugly side of the public health equation and reinforce this message by associating cigarettes with pictorial representations of gum disease, blackened lungs, and throat cancer.

“The tobacco industry spends $13 billion dollars each year promoting smoking by showing glamorous, healthful images,” the Health Department’s Sarah B. Perl said in a press release. “The reality of smoking is ugly and devastating. We hope these images will encourage New Yorkers to get the help they need to quit.”

Health officials are keying off several similar campaigns conducted in Canada, Australia, Brazil, Thailand, and other countries. However, in those countries, the grisly images have been placed directly on cigarette packs, rather than on matchbooks. Cigarettes sold in Canada must have warning labels that occupy at least 50% of the principal display space on the pack.

While inconspicuous text boxes with dire warnings have been mandatory on cigarette packs and other nicotine products for more than forty years in the U.S., the current warnings have not been updated since 1984, according to New York health officials.

According to the September 22 New York Times, the matchbooks will be distributed for free in the neighborhoods that have so far proven the most resistant to public anti-smoking campaigns—the heavy-smoking neighborhoods of East Harlem, the South Bronx, and Brooklyn.

In the Times article by Sewell Chan, Dr. Susan D. Karabin of the American Academy of Periodontology said: “These images are accurate: Smoking interferes with healing, with the immune system, and if you have periodontal disease—a chronic, low-grade infection—it exacerbates it, and makes the body less able to deal with that infection.” The result, said Karabin, is that smokers lose more teeth than non-smokers do. She supported the new “Eating You Alive” matchbook campaign: “Unfortunately, I think it does take scare tactics to get people to stop smoking.”

Graphic credit: NYC Health

smoking nicotine