Federal mandate requires tobacco companies to place graphic images on their products warning about the dangers of smoking have been released into the environment a judge in Washington, with the judge saying the requirements are in violation of freedom of speech.
“Unfortunately, because Congress did not consider the implications of the First Amendment to the Act, he does not care about how the rules can be narrowly specifically to avoid unintended compelling commercial speech,” said Federal Judge Richard Leon in his 19-page decision.
Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act passed in 2009 would have required nine written warnings such as “Cigarettes are addictive” and “Tobacco smoke harms children.” It would also be alternating images of a corpse and smoke-infected lungs.
The group of tobacco companies, led by RJ Reynolds and Lorillard filed a lawsuit, claiming that the warning would have been prohibitive, and will dominate and damage the packaging and promotion of specific brands. Legal question was whether the new mark was purely factual and precise nature and was designed to discourage the use of products.
“Graphic images here were not designed to protect consumers from confusion and deception, or to increase consumer awareness of the risks of smoking,” saidLeon. “Most likely they were designed to cause a strong emotional reaction calculated to provoke the viewer to stop smoking or never start smoking.”
Other color images is required in accordance with the rules of the Food and Drug Administration would be: a man smoking through a tracheotomy hole in his throat, smoke wafting from the child, who kissed her mother, the patient’s mouth allegedly from cancer of the oral cavity associated with chewing tobacco and the woman crying uncontrollably.
There was no immediate reaction to the ruling from the FDA and the Department of Justice, which defends the rights in court, said that he refused to comment.
But the president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said the ruling “is bad for public health.”
“Today’s decision ignores the vast, long-term need for strong health warnings on cigarettes and Big Tobacco can continue” business as usual “continues to promote its highly addictive and deadly products,” Christopher W. Hansen said in a statement from the Cancer Action Network.
Richard Daynard, a lawyer and critic who heads the smoking of tobacco products liability project inBoston rejected the argument ofLeon.
“First of all, Congress has considered,” he said in a telephone interview. “They have a complex of facts in the preamble to the statute that directly relate to why this is now compelling state interest, the public interest to restrict cigarette advertising.
He said the ruling “shows a complete lack of sensitivity to public health dimensions of the epidemic of smoking, because it was cleverly demonstrated time and time again that tobacco marketing encourages children to start smoking.”
The way to combat this, he said, with such a strong image thatLeonhas ruled against it. “Negative advertising works,” said Daynard. “Everyone knows that.”
Lorillard lawyer Floyd Abrams applauded the legal opinion. “The government, as noted by the court, has the right to speak for him, but he can not, except in rare circumstances, to demand from other companies of its position,” said Abrams, a renowned scholar of the First Amendment.
The labels by word and image warnings would cover half a pack of cigarettes sold in retail outlets, and 20% of the advertising of cigarettes.
Federal law in question, also regulate the amount of nicotine and other substances in tobacco products and limit the promotion and related promotional products at public events like sporting events. Free speech was the only aspect of the question, in this case.
Several other claims on labels are pending in federal court, a part of two decades of federal and state efforts to force tobacco companies to limit their advertising, and live for billions of dollars of public and private class action requirements of the health risks of smoking.
Anti-tobacco funding gone up in smoke
When it comes to tobacco use, there is a problem of willpower. It’s not limited to smokers who can’t resist the urge for one more cigarette. It also affects state lawmakers, most of whom can’t summon the willpower to spend tobacco settlement and tax money on smoking prevention and cessation.
According to a report by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, states in fiscal year 2012 are collecting a near-record $25.6 billion in tobacco-related revenue. That total is a combination of a 1998 court settlement with tobacco companies and taxes on tobacco products.
The American Medical Association and others have pushed for maximizing spending on smoking prevention and cessation. But, as the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids notes, states will spend only 1.8% of tobacco revenues — or $456.7 million — on anti-tobacco programs. Worse yet, the spending is on a sharp decline — down 36% in four years.
No one expects 100% of tobacco settlement and tax money to go toward anti-smoking efforts. But it’s shameful that states can only muster up less than 2 cents out of every revenue dollar to fight the No. 1 preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. The campaign’s report should wake up state legislators to the idea that anti-tobacco programs must be funded adequately if they want to eliminate tobacco-related health, social and economic consequences.
In areas other than funding, there is some good news to report. States and localities have gone a long way toward restricting where smokers can light up, with laws banning indoor smoking in many public places. And they’ve made it tougher to buy tobacco by raising taxes on it.
But what state legislators haven’t done much is to help those smokers who want to quit. Anti-tobacco funding from the 1998 settlement and tobacco taxes doesn’t even come close to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended goals.
The CDC points out that states need only spend $3.7 billion — 15% of their tobacco revenues — to meet its recommended funding level (that’s about one-quarter of what tobacco companies spend annually on advertising their products). Instead, states are spending barely more than one-tenth of what they should be spending, the CDC reports.
According to the Nov. 30, 2011, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids report, Alaska and North Dakota are the only states funding tobacco prevention programs at CDC-recommended levels. Only four other states reach half the recommended funding. Meanwhile, 33 states fund less than one-quarter, including four states — Connecticut, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio — and the District of Columbia, which budgeted nothing in fiscal year 2012 for tobacco cessation and prevention programs.
Some federal money has been available for states to use in anti-tobacco efforts. However, one source of that funding — the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as the stimulus bill — is drying up, and money for tobacco prevention that was included in the health system reform bill is under threat of being slashed. And even at its maximum, federal funding can’t come close to replacing the tobacco revenue states have on hand.
States have argued that their declining budget situations have necessitated spending tobacco revenues on more immediately pressing items. But evidence shows that spending the money on anti-tobacco efforts more than pays for itself — right away.
For example, a study published Dec. 15, 2011, in the American Journal of Public Health found that between 2000 and 2009 in Washington state, $5 in health costs was saved for every $1 spent by the state on tobacco cessation and prevention. That $5 wasn’t projected savings on future health costs — that benefit was realized immediately. And yet, Washington in fiscal year 2012 cut its anti-tobacco funding to $750,000, or 1.1% of CDC-recommended funding, from $13.4 million, or 19.8% of CDC-recommended funding, in fiscal 2011.
The AMA is urging physicians and state medical societies to be active in educating elected officials on the public health and economic need to fund anti-smoking efforts. Lawmakers must understand the importance of tobacco prevention and cessation programs, and they must summon the political willpower to fund them at adequate levels.
ama-assn.org
Potsdam’s Tobacco Cessation Center offers a quitting smoking plan for 2012
Tobacco Cessation Center of NNY
Let’s make our community healthier and save lives by quitting smoking in 2012.
St. Lawrence County has one of the highest smoking prevalence rates in the state at 25%, whereas, the state average is at it’s all time lowest at 16%. As you know, tobacco use is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. It accounts for at least 30% of all cancer deaths, as well 87% of lung cancer deaths, which in 2012 will total about 157,000. Tobacco use also increases the risk for cancers of the mouth, lips, nasal cavity, larynx, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, kidney, bladder, uterus, cervix, colon/rectum, ovary, and acute myeloid leukemia.
Therefore, as 2011 comes to a close and the New Year approaches let’s make a plan to quit smoking and become a healthier community in St. Lawrence County.
Here is a plan to follow:
1. Think of your plan to quit smoking as a project, a process that will take time and not one that is a snap decision or that will take only a few days. Remember you are embarking on a journey to change a behavior or habit that took many years to develop, however do not give up because you can do it!
2. Make a list of all the reasons you would like to quit smoking, such as: your health, family/ friends, money etc.-and keep that list in your pocket at all times and take it out every time you are tempted to smoke (laminate the list).
3. Decide on a quit date. However, make sure your quit date is not during a stressful time.
4. Tell your family, friends and co-workers your plan to quit and ask for their support.
5. Talk to your physician about your plan to quit and discuss with them whether one of the seven FDA approved medications for quitting might be the most useful for you. Also, you may contact the NY Smokers’ Quit line at 1-866-697-8487 or www.nysmokefree.com.
6. In the days before your quit date, clean out your car, house and workplace of all extra packs of cigarettes, ashtrays, lighters, matches and anything that might tempt you to smoke.
7. On the quit day call your family and friends and let them know the big day has arrived and ask them for support.
8. Be prepared for some of the immediate side effects of quitting such as: headache, light headedness, anxiety, nausea, irritability, unable to sleep, unable to concentrate, etc.
9. If you slip, don’t give up! Look at the situation that caused your slip and adjust your routine, so you are not in that situation for a couple of months to avoid the danger of slipping again.
10. Remember this is a journey of a lifetime and you will need support from your family and friends.
Benefits of quitting smoking! After you smoke your last cigarette, within in 20 minutes, your body begins a series of changes that continue for years.
• 20 minutes after quitting your blood pressure drops, blood begins to flow more smoothly and your heart rate drops.
• 12 hours after quitting the carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal and your brain starts to receive the oxygen that is has been deprived of while smoking.
• 2 weeks to 3 months after quitting your heart attack risk begins to drop and your lung function begins to improve.
• 1 to 9 months after quitting your coughing and shortness of breath will decrease.
• 1 year after quitting your added risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.
• 5 years after quitting your risk of suffering a stroke is reduced to that of a nonsmoker’s 5-15 years after quitting.
• 10 years after quitting your lung cancer death rate is about half that of a smoker’s and your risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney and pancreas decreases.
• 15 years after quitting the risk of heart disease is back to that of a nonsmoker’s.
Did you know that more American’s died last year from smoking related diseases then all the Americans that died in WWII?
By BETH GERO
northcountrynow.com
North Carolina Prevention Partners recognizes FirstHealth hospitals
North Carolina Prevention Partners has recognized FirstHealth of the Carolinas for providing the highest standard of excellence for tobacco-cessation programs offered to patients.
The three FirstHealth hospitals – Moore Regional in Pinehurst, Richmond Memorial in Rockingham and Montgomery Memorial in Troy – were acknowledged as Gold Heart Standard Hospitals. FirstHealth is the first health system in the state to receive the recognition.
NC Prevention Partners works with corporate leaders and staffs in North Carolina hospitals to enhance tobacco-cessation efforts and resources available to all hospital employees and patients. The FirstHealth hospitals were recognized for identifying tobacco-using patients as a required vital sign, providing a team approach to cessation counseling, providing and promoting evidence-based treatments, and evaluating the quit-tobacco system. These are among several components recommended by NC Prevention Partners for comprehensive quit-tobacco systems for patients.
FirstHealth’s inpatient tobacco-cessation program is provided by Community Health Services. Health Programs Manager Linda Harte supervises the team of specially trained health educators who work with the program. She says the inpatient program, which began as a pilot at Moore Regional during the summer of 2009, was a logical expansion of the established outpatient FirstQuit program that was started more than 10 years ago.
FirstQuit receives daily referrals from FirstHealth Home Care Services for patients who are discharged from the tobacco-free environment of a hospital only to find themselves challenged to continue their tobacco-free status at home.
A couple of years ago, that situation prompted a discussion about tobacco-cessation services that could be offered to inpatients and, Harte says, “how we could identify tobacco-using patients sooner” and “support them better while in the hospital.”
Eventually, the discussion turned toward giving hospitalized patients the motivation and confidence to remain tobacco free once they got home and providing options that would help them achieve their tobacco-free goal.
A committee comprised of staff representatives from various FirstHealth departments worked for about six months to develop the inpatient plan. The process they came up with begins as the patient is being admitted to the hospital and is identified by nursing staff as being a tobacco-user. It continues when the physician in charge of the patient’s hospitalization orders a consultation with a Community Health Services tobacco treatment specialist (TTS).
During the bedside consultation, the patient is told that his/her doctor requested the session and asked for permission to continue. During the 20- to 30-minute session, the TTS collects a tobacco-use history and determines if the patient is currently on a nicotine replacement therapy patch to help deal with cravings.
The TTS also determines the patient’s readiness to quit and begins a conversation about the quitting process before ending the consultation with an offer of information about the FirstQuit outpatient program and a referral to the NC Quitline. Patients are left with a “busy bag” of support materials that also helps them deal with cravings.
“We commend all three FirstHealth hospitals for their hard work in becoming some of the first North Carolina hospitals to adopt a quit-tobacco system for patients and now earning the Gold Heart.” says Melva Fager Okun, senior manager, NC Prevention Partners. “They are doing a great job in supporting their patients in quitting the use of tobacco. I applaud their great effort.”
The work of NC Prevention Partners in North Carolina hospitals is funded by The Duke Endowment and is in partnership with the NC Hospital Association.
By Special to the Chronicle
thecherawchronicle.com
Study Documents Toll Of Smoke Inhalation Injuries
A study of burn patients has found that those who suffered the most severe smoke inhalation also had more inflammation and spent more time on ventilators and in intensive care.
The study, led by researchers at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, is published ahead of print in the journal Critical Care Medicine. It is the first to show that the severity of smoke-inhalation injury may play a role in the overall pulmonary inflammatory response.
Inflammation occurs in response to injury. It includes the release of proteins that can trigger wound healing. But too much inflammation can damage healthy tissue.
Researchers wrote that their findings could “serve the purpose of better understanding the biological mechanisms behind smoke inhalation injury.”
In the United States, about 40,000 people are hospitalized for burn injuries each year. As many as 20 percent of fire victims also have smoke-inhalation injuries.
At Loyola, smoke inhalation is rated from 0 (no injury) to 4 (massive injury). Researchers conducted an observational study of 60 adult burn patients, including nine patients who had Grade 0 inflammation, 15 who had Grade 1, 15 who had Grade 2, 18 who had Grade 3 and three who had Grade 4.
The study included an examination of proteins called cytokines contained in fluid flushed out of patients’ lungs. (Cytokines are the so-called hormones of the immune system.) Researchers looked at 28 cytokines associated with inflammation, and found that 21 were at their highest in patients with the most severe smoke inhalation injuries. (The inflammatory proteins included interferon-γ, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, monocyte chemotactic protein-1 and several interleukins.)
Patients who had low smoke-inhalation injuries (Grades 1 or 2) spent a median of seven days on the ventilator, while patients with high-inhalation injuries (Grades 3 or 4) spent a median of 23 days on the ventilator. Low-inhalation-injury patients spent a median of 13 days in intensive care; high-inhalation-injury patients spent 24 days. Thirty-three percent of low-inhalation-injury patients required a tracheotomy, compared with 52 percent of high-inhalation-injury patients. However, the degree of inhalation injury did not have a significant effect on subsequent pneumonia, sepsis, hospital length of stay or mortality.
Senior author of the study is Elizabeth J. Kovacs, PhD, director of Loyola’s Burn and Shock Trauma Institute. First author is Joslyn M. Albright, MD, a research fellow in the Burn and Shock Trauma Institute. “This study is an excellent example of clinicians and basic scientists working together,” Kovacs said.
Other co-authors are Christopher S. Davis, MD, MPH, Melanie D. Bird, PhD, Luis Ramirez, BS, and Richard L. Gamelli, MD, FACS, of Loyola’s Burn and Shock Trauma Institute; Hajwa Kim, MS, MA of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Ellen L. Burnham, MD, MS of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. Gamelli is Director of the Burn and Shock Trauma Institute and Senior Vice President and Provost of Health Sciences of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.
The study is supported in part by funding from the National Institutes of Health, the International Association of Fire Fighters and the Dr. Ralph and Marian C. Falk Medical Research Trust.
17 Nov 2011
medicalnewstoday.com
Passive Smoking
Choosing to smoke and destroying your own health is one thing but passive smoking, also known as Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) or Secondhand Smoke (SHS), damages the health of those around you. These people have no choice as to whether or not they are exposed to your harmful smoke. Passive smoking constitutes a serious public health risk to both children and adults. It is also a major source of indoor air pollution. A non-smoker is subjected to both the “sidestream” smoke from the burning tip of the cigarette and the “mainstream” smoke that has been inhaled and then is exhaled into their environment by the smoker. Nearly four-fifths of the smoke that builds up in a room containing a smoker is of the more harmful “sidestream” type.
It is not too much of a conceptual leap to understand that the smoke from cigarettes, which is so bad for the smoker, is also damaging to everyone else. Tobacco smoke contains over 4000 chemical compounds, including at least 40 cancer-causing carcinogenic agents. Tobacco smoke also contains carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas, which inhibits the transportation of oxygen to the body’s vital organs via the blood. The smoke emitted from the tip of a cigarette has about double the concentration of nicotine and tar as the smoke being directly inhaled by the smoker. It also contains about three times the amount of the carcinogen benzo(a)pyrene, five times the level of carbon monoxide and about 50 times the amount of ammonia. Add to these the other chemicals in the smoke like arsenic, formaldehyde, vinyl chloride, and hydrogen cyanide and you have a very unappetizing toxic gas cocktail. Remember that the passive smoker receives all of this and gets none of the enjoyment that you get out of smoking in return. Many of the potentially toxic gasses in the smoke are present in higher concentrations in the “sidestream” smoke than in the “mainstream” smoke. In tests tobacco specific carcinogens have been found in samples of blood or urine provided by non-smokers who have been exposed to passive smoking.
Any person exposed to passive smoking may experience short-term symptoms such as a headache, a cough, wheezing, an eye irritation, a sore throat, nausea or dizziness. Adults with asthma may also experience a significant decline in lung function when exposed to secondhand smoke. Under these conditions it can take as little as half an hour for an individual’s coronary blood flow to become reduced.
It was estimated that prolonged exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke, such as in the home, increases the risk of lung cancer by approximately 20 to 25%. Even if you do not accept the accuracy of these percentages, it is well established that you have an increased chance of developing lung cancer through passive smoking if you are a non-smoker but live with someone who smokes. The chances of suffering from ischaemic heart disease is greater for those exposed to passive smoking compared to those who are not. Studies have shown that the risk of experiencing a heart attack is believed to be almost doubled by regular exposure to secondhand smoke.
Some of the most serious damage inflicted by passive smoking is done to children during their formative years. As you would expect, a child’s bronchial tubes are smaller and their immune systems are less developed making them more susceptible to the harmful effects of passive smoking. Because their airways are smaller, children breathe faster than adults and, consequently, they actually breathe in comparatively more of the harmful chemicals in the smoke, based on their body weight, than adults do. Few parents who smoke would continue to do so if they knew the potential harm that they were doing to their children. Young children, by necessity, spend a lot of time at home and maternal smoking is one of the major sources of passive smoking because of the child’s close proximity to their parents during early childhood.
Exposure to tobacco smoke can double the chances of your child requiring hospitalisation for illnesses like bronchitis, bronchiolitis, and pneumonia that affect the lower respiratory tract, especially during the first year of life. They are also more likely to suffer from ear infections (glue ear), tonsillitis, and asthma. Passive smoking is known to be one of the main contributing factors in the development of childhood asthma. It can exacerbate existing asthma, increasing both the frequency of the attack and its severity. Secondhand tobacco smoke may damage a child’s olfactory function so that they have difficulty differentiating certain smells. There is also the chance that passive smoking may have a negative effect on a child’s cognitive abilities, impairing their ability to read or use reasoning skills.
Just as a woman should not smoke during pregnancy, she should not be exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke. There are links between parental smoking and the incidence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or “cot death”. It has been estimated that the infants of mothers who smoke are put at almost five times the risk of dying from “cot death” when compared to the infants of mothers who do not smoke. Yet a poll organised by ‘SmokeFree London’ discovered that only 3% of the adults surveyed knew of this connection between passive smoking and “cot death”. Passive smoking is also a recognised factor in lowering the birth weight of babies.
Not only can passive smoking harm your foetus but it can also reduce the chances of you getting pregnant in the first place. Female fertility can suffer because of passive smoking, making it harder to conceive a child.
Passive smoking can even put your pets at risk of developing cancer. One US study observed that passive smoking increased the incidence of feline lymphoma in cats and the likelihood of them developing health complications increased the longer they were exposed to passive smoking.
To continue to smoke and put the health of your family and loved-ones at risk would seem, on the face of it, to be a rather selfish act. When you take into account the damage that smoking is doing to your own body then it seems more like insanity. Think of how traumatic it would be if a member of your family became ill or died because of your smoking habit. Now consider the fact that they would feel exactly the same way if smoking ended your life prematurely or made you seriously ill. You may find yourself asking “Why do I still smoke?”
stopsmokingtoday.com
The history, economics and hazards of tobacco
Most people know that smoking is bad for the health and causes lung cancer and heart attacks. What they may not know is that smoking causes many other diseases and illnesses. It is also the single most preventable cause of death in the U.S.
Tobacco causes about 435,000 deaths or 1 out of 6 deaths in the U.S. each year. 20,000 flu and pneumonia deaths are tied to smoking. Every year 174,000 smokers will die from heart disease. Smoking increases the risk of dying of a heart attack by 60%. Every year 143,000 smokers will die from different cancers, 83,000 from lung cancer alone, and 26,000 from strokes. A stroke happens when the brain does not get enough oxygen. For example, when a person has a stroke, he/she may not be able to talk and/or move a part of his/her body for awhile or forever.
Because of smoking, 40% of men and 28% of women die prematurely, before their time. According to the Surgeon General Report of 1985, “Smoking has killed more people in the U.S. alone than the number of Americans killed in battle or who died of war related diseases in all wars ever fought by this nation.” The total number of U.S. deaths in the Vietnam War was 58,151.
Smoking is the number one killer in the African-American community. Adult black males have a greater chance of dying from cigarettes than adult white males. This is partly because black males are more likely to smoke menthol-cigarettes-brands like Newports, Kools, and Salems and higher tar and nicotine brands. Mentholated cigarettes are particularly dangerous because the smoke is pulled deeper into the lungs.
Smoking-Attributable
Death Rate*, 1988
Race
Men
Women
Both Sexes
Black
702.9
231.5
437.3
White
555.8
244.2
389.3
Total Population†
558.6
240.7
387.8
* per 100,000 persons > = 35 years old adjusted to the 1980 U.S. population
† includes racial category “other” and passive smoking-related deaths
Source: Centers for Disease Control. Smoking-attributable mortality and years of potential life lost – United States, 1988, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1990; 40: 62-71.
Credit: African Americans and Smoking At A Glance, U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, CDC
Cigarette smoking is responsible for 30% of all cancer deaths. Smokers die not only of lung cancer but also of cancers of the mouth, larynx (throat), esophagus, bladder, kidney, cervix, and blood (leukemia). 87% of all lung cancers are caused by smoking. Since 1987, lung cancer has been the number one killer of women. Women who smoke more than 15 cigarettes a day double their risk of getting cervical cancer.
Cigarette smoking also causes or increases the risk of getting other lung diseases and conditions. Smoking causes bronchitis and emphysema. When a smoker has bronchitis, his/her bronchial tubes become inflamed or irritated. They produce too much mucus. This mucus blocks the tubes, and the smoker coughs a lot.
Emphysema is a lung disease that has no cure. A person with this disease has difficulty breathing because the walls of the small air sacs in the lungs are being destroyed. This makes big air surfaces. A person with emphysema gets tired very easily. He/she uses up so much energy just to breathe. As the disease gets worse, he/she cannot breathe in enough oxygen from the air and has to breathe through tubes attached to an oxygen tank. There is no cure for emphysema.
Smoking greatly increases the risk of getting other diseases and health problems. It speeds up the loss of bone in older women leading to osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a disease in which the bones get thin and weak. The bones can break very easily. People who are HIV positive are twice as likely to develop full blown AIDS if they smoke. Smokers also have a greater chance of getting stomach ulcers. Ulcers are sores in the stomach that are very painful and can bleed.
Heavy smokers also increase their chances of getting Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD). In this disease the arteries that lead to the limbs (arms and legs) keep getting narrower. As a result, not enough oxygen-rich blood goes to the arms and/or legs. PVD causes pain in the arms or legs. It also makes it harder for the body to fight off infections. When an arm or leg is hurt, it cannot heal well. If the arteries get closed and no blood gets to a limb, the person gets gangrene. The limb then dies and must be cut off (amputated).
A man with Peripheral Vascular Disease may have trouble performing sex. His penis cannot get erect or hard because it does not receive a good flow of oxygen-rich blood.
Smoking-Related Diseases
() indicate the % of diseases caused by cigarettes
Cardiovascular Diseases
coronary artery disease (21-40%)
heart attacks
strokes (18%)
pain in the legs & gangrene
atherosclerosis
Lung (82%)
emphysema (90%)
chronic bronchitis
Cancer (30%)
lung cancer (80-85%)
mouth
larynx (84%)
esophagus
pancreas
kidney
leukemia
cervix
myeloma
bladder (40-60% in men, 20-30% in women)
Health Dangers of Smoking for Nonsmokers
Cigarettes do not just harm the people who smoke. They also harm the people who are near cigarettes and breathe the smoke. This includes fetuses (unborn babies still inside their mothers) and small children. They are breathing second hand smoke. Second hand smoke is the smoke that comes out of the lit end of a cigarette and that a smoker exhales (breathes out). Second hand smoke is also called passive smoke, involuntary smoke, and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS).
About 53,000 people die from second-hand smoke every year. When we breathe second hand smoke, we are breathing the same 4,000 chemicals a cigarette smoker breathes. 51 of those chemicals cause cancer. That is why a U.S. government agency called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has labelled cigarettes as a Group A carcinogen. A carcinogen is something that causes cancer. The EPA put cigarettes in the same group with arsenic, which is a deadly poison, and asbestos, a cancer causing material that used to be put around pipes to insulate them.
Source: Centers for Disease Control
In 1986 the Surgeon General of the U.S. wrote about the dangers of second hand smoke. He listed three conclusions:
First: Involuntary smoking is a cause of disease,including lung cancer, in healthy nonsmokers.
Second: The children of parents who smoke compared to children of nonsmoking parents have an increased frequency of respiratory infections, increased respiratory symptoms and slightly smaller rates of increase in lung function as the lung matures.
Third: Simple separation of smokers and non-smokers within the same airspace may reduce, but does not eliminate, exposure of nonsmokers to environmental tobacco smoke.
Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is dirtier than the smoke that is inhaled in a cigarette because it is not filtered. The filter on the end of a cigarette removes some the harmful chemicals. ETS is the largest source of indoor air pollution. Restaurants that allow smoking can have six times the pollution of a busy highway.
When people breathe ETS or second hand smoke on a regular basis in the workplace, their lungs are affected. Their lungs look as if the people smoked one to 10 cigarettes a day. That means nonsmoking workers in a smoking office have the same lung damage as a mild smoker. They have a 34% higher risk of getting lung cancer than workers who do not smoke or breathe second hand smoke on the job.
Every year second hand smoke causes 3,000 deaths from lung cancer in nonsmokers over 35 years old. These deaths are not just from people breathing cigarette smoke in the workplace. Second hand smoke increases the risk of lung cancer even in dogs. It increases the risk of heart disease in human beings by 30%. Every year 37,000 nonsmokers die from heart disease caused by exposure to ETS.
Antismoking proposals in Japan are stubbed out by the government-big business alliance
For Japanese fashion designer Juri Satou, who recently moved to New York City, recently-passed laws there banning smoking in city 
parks, beaches, and other public spaces took her by surprise. “Lots of people ignore the laws, risking the $50 fine,” she told Metropolis. “Anyway, you can smoke when you’re walking on the street. It’s strange! But for me, the most annoying thing is that I can’t smoke in nightclubs.”
Yet in Japan, these rules are inversed—smoking is highly regulated in public spaces, but a practical free-for-all indoors. This can cause horror in visiting nonsmokers, or pleasure for those tobacco fiends among us.
“It all harks back to a decision made in 2002 by Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, penalizing smoking in busy areas,” begins Dr. Manabu Sakuta, chairman of the Japan Society for Tobacco Control (JSTC). Established in 2003, the JSTC is an NGO comprised mostly of health and legal professionals, which boasts tobacco industry whistleblower Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (The Insider) as honorary advisor. Chiyoda’s law, the first of its kind, classified 25 percent of the ward as nonsmoking, including the surroundings of Akihabara and Ochanomizu stations.
“Governments realized it was easier to enforce smoking laws in public spaces, and Japan Tobacco [JT] has lobbied vigorously against changes being made to smoking laws in restaurants and pubs,” adds JSTC executive secretary Kyoichi Miyazaki.
A telling example is that of Kanagawa Prefecture, whose April 2010 law banning smoking in public facilities such as hotels, restaurants and pubs, was watered down after an outcry. In the end, the provision of nonsmoking areas was allowed in place of a total ban.
“JT created a scare campaign and told restaurant owners that they would lose customers if they became nonsmoking,” says Miyazaki. He goes on to cite figures disproving this claim. Newly nonsmoking venues even stand to gain new customers—for example from families. “We’ve heard that even smokers appreciate the taste of food in nonsmoking restaurants!” Miyazaki laughs.
Government involvement
In a country where the Ministry of Finance controls a majority stake in Japan Tobacco and determines all tobacco business policies, it’s no surprise that further nonsmoking legislation is difficult to pass. Add the Tobacco Business Law of 1984, created to “promote the sound development of the Japanese tobacco industry,” and it’s no surprise the JTSC’s lobbying doesn’t get very far.
Though the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) calls for abolishing the Tobacco Business Law, which allows the government to own more than half of Japan Tobacco’s outstanding shares and recommends that tobacco-related issues be included in the health portfolio, the Finance Ministry is extremely reluctant to let go of its money. One of JTSC’s aims is to move tobacco jurisdiction from the Finance Ministry to the Health Ministry. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
Although Japan signed and ratified the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2004, it was successful in passing through amendments. In turn, the JSTC has submitted its own bills—four of them to be exact—as proposed amendments to the Tobacco Business Law.
But don’t expect too much change from a government that only acknowledged the health risks of smoking in 1987, when antismoking groups convinced WHO to sponsor a global tobacco conference in Tokyo. Discussions that the Finance Ministry sells its stake in Japan Tobacco (also part of the DPJ manifesto) might be the only hope, though this plan would need the support of opposition parties to go ahead.
Beating The bad guys
Both the DPJ and rival party the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have connections with the tobacco industry or unions, whose income they claim to be in favor of protecting. Though proposed antismoking legislation contains provisions to find alternative crops for tobacco farmers in order to safeguard their livelihood, JT’s aggressive international outsourcing proves that protecting local industry is not what is really at stake here. Farms in Japan supply a third of JT’s tobacco needs, with the rest sourced from Africa, India and other countries.
Domestically, JT is active on a corporate social responsibility level, though this tends to lend an extra perversity to their insidious methods. Miyazaki tells of when he was asked to give a talk for a heart disease foundation at a JT-funded university in Shibuya.
The Tax Commission held hearings during September to discuss ways in which to raise funds for reconstruction in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, as well as how to ameliorate the nation’s ballooning public debt and social welfare costs. Health Minister Yoko Komiyama said tobacco taxes should be raised until the average price for a pack of cigarettes is about ¥700 or 75 percent more than now—to help with medical costs. Naturally the JSTC wholeheartedly supports this measure. Komiyama also tabled the idea of increasing tobacco levies by ¥100 annually for three years.
In the end, it might well be the pocket that is the most effective antismoking measure of all. In an October 2010 Dimsdrive Research survey, 31.3 percent of respondents said they would quit smoking if a packet of cigarettes cost between ¥701 and ¥999.
Smoke stats
- No. of people who smoke in Japan: nearly 30 million
- Percentage of men: 43%
- Percentage of women: 13%
- Percentage of Japan Tobacco controlled by the Finance Ministry: 50.2 %
- JT’s yearly profit: nearly $3 billion
- No. of cigarettes consumed per year: around 350 billion
- Per capita cigarette consumption per year: 2770 cigarettes
- Average cost of pack: ¥420
- Current revenues from tobacco in Japan: around ¥2.3 trillion
- Tobacco tax per year: about ¥1.5 trillion
- Percentage of govt. total revenue: 3%
By: Jane Kitagawa
Health groups weigh in on graphic cigarette label suit
RICHMOND, Va. — Several public health groups are weighing in on a lawsuit over graphic cigarette warning labels that include the
sewn-up corpse of a smoker, saying the federal government has a strong interest in more effectively informing people about the effects of tobacco and current warnings aren’t sufficient.
The groups filed a friend of the court brief with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ahead of a Wednesday hearing in which some of the nation’s largest tobacco companies will ask a judge to stop the labels, set to appear on packs next year. A decision on a preliminary injunction could come as soon as October.
The companies, led by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co., sued the Food and Drug Administration last month to block the labels, saying they violate free speech laws, unfairly urge adults to shun their legal products and will cost millions to produce.
Tobacco companies are increasingly relying on their packaging to build brand loyalty and grab consumers. It’s one of few advertising levers left to pull since the government has curbed their presence in magazines, billboards and TV.
But the health groups wrote: “It is difficult to imagine any product for which the government has a stronger interest in ensuring effective warnings to consumers. … Tobacco products are unique among consumer goods: They kill up to one-half of the people who use them as they are intended to be used.”
The groups include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Legacy Foundation, the American Lung Association, the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and Public Citizen.
“In addition to failing to inform consumers about the risks of tobacco use, the current warnings fail to change consumers’ decisionmaking or behavior,” they added.
In opposition to the lawsuit, the FDA similarly said that the public interest in conveying the dangers of smoking outweighs the companies’ free speech rights. And it said the cost to the companies to incorporate the new graphics is not sufficient to halt the labels.
The federal agency also argued that Congress gave it the authority to require the new labels because existing warnings dating to 1984 were going unnoticed. It says it drew on the advice of various experts to create the labels, which the FDA said are similar to those used in other countries, including Canada.
The companies responded that while the government has authority to mandate them to accurately warn consumers about the dangers of their products plainly and legibly, it “lacks authority to compel manufacturers to replace their product labels and logos with emotionally-charged photographs and messages demanding that adult customers stop using their lawful products.”
In June, the FDA approved nine new warning labels that companies are to print on the entire top half of cigarette packs, front and back. The new warnings, each of which includes a number for a stop-smoking hotline, must constitute 20 percent of cigarette advertising, and marketers are to rotate use of the images.
One label depicts a corpse with its chest sewn up and the words “Smoking can kill you.” Another shows a healthy pair of lungs beside a yellow and black pair with a warning that smoking causes fatal lung disease.
Joining R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard in the suit are Commonwealth Brands Inc., Liggett Group LLC and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company Inc.
Altria Group Inc., parent company of the nation’s largest cigarette maker, cigs4us.biz/marlboro-cigarette maker Philip Morris USA, is not a part of the lawsuit.
The tobacco industry’s legal challenge could delay the new warning labels for years. That is likely to save cigarette makers millions of dollars in lost sales and increased packaging costs.
Battle Against Smoking Goes Back Centuries
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has snuffed out smoking more audaciously than any of his recent predecessors, as the latest figures attest: only 14 percent of New Yorkers now smoke, the city reported Thursday, discouraged in large part by the ever-cresting wave of Bloomberg-driven taxes and bans.
But Mr. Bloomberg is hardly the first New York official to battle tobacco use. Efforts to restrict smoking can be traced back at least as far as an edict in 1639, which happened to coincide with the start of New Amsterdam’s first tobacco plantation.
William Kieft, the Dutch colony’s hapless director general, tried to ban pipe-smoking altogether, the journalist Eric Burns writes in “The Smoke of the Gods: A Social History of Tobacco.”
The episode inspired a chapter in Washington Irving’s fact-and-fiction-mixing 1809 opus “A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker” in which Kieft meets his match in Manhattan’s burghers. The citizens stage a smoke-in at his house to protest the ban, forcing him to compromise and permit short pipes that “would not be in the way of business.” (It is not known whether such a protest occurred, and the short-pipe compromise did not, but attempts to curb the Dutch smoking habit were widespread in the colonies, said Elisabeth Funk, a historian.)
By the early 19th century, cigar-smoking had replaced pipes as a protest target. In 1817, a visitor from abroad wrote that among the sights that struck strangers most was “the custom of smoking segars in the streets (even followed by some of the children).”
In 1839, The Evening Post complained that “the nuisance of smoking in the streets has much increased lately” and the atmosphere in parts of Broadway “is almost as narcotic and sickening with tobacco smoke as the air of the traveler’s room in a High Dutch tavern.”
“No doubt,” the newspaper continued, “many of those persons who indulge in their favorite habit in the public streets, do it thoughtlessly without thinking how offensive it is to others, and would be surprised at hearing that they are guilty of a blackguard practice.”
The New York Times weighed in in 1853, two years after it began publishing, with an editorial asking: “What right has any man to become a perambulating nuisance — a moving smoke-house — a traveling volcano — leaving his trail of nauseous vapor on the air, which his neighbor cannot avoid, but must, perforce, respire?”
Smoking indoors was considered even more offensive. A news article in 1853 reported that a passenger caught smoking on a Sixth Avenue streetcar was ordered by a conductor to stop, “but the ladies and gentlemen who were so unfortunate as to be in the car at the time, found their clothes so thoroughly besmoked that the disagreeable odor of smoke at second hand, remained with them till the following day.”
Later, the antismoking crusade was embraced by temperance leaders, who reasoned that the habit left smokers parched and craving drink, most likely alcohol. In 1907, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Manhattan began inspecting library books to eliminate smoking heroes and heroines from modern novels.
“In 95 percent of the reading matter published the cigarettes and tobacco are represented as indispensable,” said Mrs. Emile D. Martin, the W.C.T.U.’s New York County superintendent. “In stories in all classes of literature the hero, although he may be an about-to-be-translated saint, Christian, evangelist or philanthropist is surrounded by a halo of ‘white curling wreaths of priceless Havanas.’”
The following year, word that some restaurateurs would allow women customers to smoke prompted Timothy P. Sullivan, known as Little Time, the majority leader of the Board of Aldermen, to introduce legislation that would impose penalties on hotels, restaurants and places of public entertainment that permitted women to smoke.
His bill, which became effective immediately, passed just two weeks later. It was on the books for only two weeks when it was vetoed by the mayor, but not before Katie Mulcahey, 29, was arrested on the Bowery for lighting up. “No man shall dictate to me,” she said, before being jailed because she was too poor to pay the $5 fine.
In vetoing the bill, Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. maintained that the aldermen were not empowered to ban smoking. “While the conduct of individuals or of the owners of private property can be regulated by legislation, to a certain extent, for the protection of the public morals, health or safety,” he said, “I do not believe that this general power, which is technically known as the police power of a government, can be invoked to sustain an ordinance of this kind.”
Others thought the aldermen had not gone far enough. Dr. Charles J. Pease, president of the Non-Smokers’ Protective League, argued for a ban against anyone smoking in a public place where women were present “who ought not be forced to inhale tobacco fumes.” He also pressed for a ban on smoking at park concerts.
A 1909, an editorial in The Times condemned smoking in subway stations, which was subsequently banned by the Board of Health — a ban that the United States Tobacco Journal branded as “obtuse and reactionary paternalism.” The editorial further railed against even extinguished cigars, complaining that “the odor of one partly burned cigar, disagreeable anywhere, is positively nauseating in a subway car.”
In 1911, The Times urged: “Anything that may be done to restrict the general and indiscriminate use of tobacco in public places, hotels, restaurants, railroad cars, will receive the approval of everybody whose approval is worth having.”
A year later, following the Triangle Waist Company fire, the Fire Department distributed 35,000 placards in English, Italian and Yiddish advising that smoking in factory workrooms and department stores was illegal “under such circumstances as renders the act ‘dangerous to human life’ or ‘endangers the safety of a considerable number of persons’ or ‘renders a considerable number of persons insecure in life or in the use of property.’ ”
In 1920, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company limited smoking to only the rear seats on the upper deck of its buses.
A 1988 law passed under the administration of Mayor Edward I. Koch and amended in 1995, prohibited smoking in most restaurants and offices, with some exceptions. A much stricter ban covering bars and other public places was imposed effective 2003 and was extended to hospital grounds in 2009. In May, it was further applied to parks, pools, beaches and other outdoor areas.
As for Governor Kieft, who was known as William the Testy, the smoking ban was far from his only miscalculation. He was fired by the Dutch West India Company after massacring scores of Indians. He drowned in 1647 when his ship sank as he was returning to the Netherlands to defend himself.