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This e-mail arrived unsolicited in one of our partners e-mail  in-box – he doesn’t even work in the Industry.

Nice to know others are taking care of our well-being!

“Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could all just “say no” to
tobacco? That’s what World No Tobacco Day on Sunday, May 31st is all
about.

According to the World Health Organization, by 2030, if current trends
continue, smoking will kill one in every six people around the world,
not to mention the financial toll that it takes.

In the United States alone, smoking cost $193 billion in 2004,
including $97 billion in lost productivity and $96 billion in direct
health care expenditures.

So please, take a moment to show your support of World No Tobacco Day by:

Going without tobacco for the day. Just one day will make a difference.
Isn’t it time to quit? Join our Freedom from Smoking®Online Program or
recommend it to a loved one who smokes. Our proven program can help
you end your addiction to tobacco and nicotine. The online program is
available at www.ffsonline.org
Become a Facebook® fan! And while you’re there, please donate your
status to the cause. On Sunday, simply change your status to: Today is
World No Tobacco Day — for tips on quitting, go to www.LungUSA.org
Follow us on Twitter! It’s a great place to find encouragement and support.
Make a donation. Your gift can truly save lives.

Thanks so much for all your help… and for supporting World No Tobacco
Day on Sunday.

Stephen J. Nolan
National Volunteer Chair

Copyright © 2009 American Lung Association

In a letter to ECigarette Direct, Brad Radu, a professor of medicine and holder of an endowed chair in tobacco harm reduction research at the University of Louisville, criticizes Tobacco Free Kids for opposing safe alternatives to smoking and for supporting the Kennedy tobacco bill due to enter the senate next week.

According to the Professor, the stance taken by the organization was not a rational position but a moralistic one:

“There is no public health justification for denying smokers information about and access to safer sources of tobacco and nicotine. But the war against tobacco, conducted by Tobacco Free Kids and their allies, is not about public health. It has become the latest in a long line of misguided American moral crusades.”

The letter was itself a comment upon an open letter to Tobacco Free Kids, which the Professor predicted there would be no reply to. He was also gloomy on the prospects of the Kennedy tobacco bill being defeated, remarking:

“The American legislative process is closed to all but a few powerful interests, who will soon be gloating over their “success” in passing FDA regulation of tobacco.”

Ultimately, the professor thought, the actions of groups like Tobacco Free Kids and similar groups would costs lives.

“I am convinced that these anti-tobacco extremists will eventually be held partially responsible for the deaths of millions of uninformed smokers.”

We forwarded both the open letter and Brad Radu’s reply to Tobacco Free Kids, but have yet to receive a comment.

What do you think? Is the position of the bodies like Tobacco Free Kids a blind crusade against tobacco, or a practical stance taken to protect the young against the dangers of nicotine addiction?

Have the tobacco police gone too far?

I’VE been called a traitor,” says Michael Siegel, a public-health doctor at Boston University in Massachusetts. “It’s been a character assassination.” This treatment seems surprising as, reading Siegel’s CV, you’d think he was a poster boy for the anti-smoking movement. He regularly publishes research on the harmful effects of passive smoking and has testified in support of indoor smoking bans in more than 50 US cities.

Despite these credentials, Siegel has come under fire from colleagues in the field of smoking research. His offence was to post messages on the widely read mailing list Tobacco Policy Talk, in which he questioned one of the medical claims about passive smoking, as well as the wisdom of extreme measures such as outdoor smoking bans.

In front of his peers, funders and potential future employers, other contributors posted messages accusing Siegel of taking money from the tobacco industry. When Siegel stood his ground, the administrators kicked him off the list, cutting off a key source of news in his field. “It felt like I was excommunicated, says Siegel. “I was shocked: I’ve been a leader in the movement for 21 years.”

Siegel’s case is perhaps the most clear-cut example of a disturbing trend in the anti-smoking movement. There are genuine scientific questions over some of the more extreme claims made about the dangers of passive smoking and the best strategies to reduce smoking rates, but a few researchers who have voiced them have seen their reputations smeared and the debate stifled.

Putting aside the question of whether such tactics are ethical, they could ultimately backfire. About half of US states and many parts of Europe do not yet ban smoking even indoors in public places like bars and restaurants, so the anti-smoking movement cannot afford to lose credibility.

On the other hand, in some parts of the US, particularly California, the anti-smoking movement has grown so strong that smoking bans outdoors and in private apartments are in force in a few places, and being considered in more. These measures are at least partly based on disputed medical claims, so it is vital their accuracy be determined. But questioning the orthodoxy seems to be frowned on. “It’s censorship,” says Siegel. “We’re heading towards scientific McCarthyism.”

This is censorship. We are heading towards scientific McCarthyism
The irony is that the tobacco industry is notorious for its history of unethical research conduct. As evidence emerged in the 1950s linking smoking to lung cancer, several firms paid scientists to produce contrary findings. They held scientific conferences, and published journals to promote their results.

By the mid-70s, the dangers of first-hand smoke were indisputable, so the industry switched to questioning emerging evidence of the dangers of second-hand smoke. In spite of their efforts, a convincing case has now been made that long-term exposure increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, respiratory illness and cot death.

By the 1990s, California had banned smoking in all indoor public places, and in 2004 Ireland became the first country with a nationwide ban. The UK, Australia, some other European countries and about half of US states have since followed (see map).

Researchers like Siegel, and others under fire from the anti-smoking lobby, do not question that people regularly exposed to second-hand smoke suffer harm. “It’s difficult to imagine that there’s an easier argument to make than ’smoke is bad for you’;,” says Carl Phillips, an epidemiologist from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who has also been targeted.

But in the past few years some of the claims about passive smoking have gone further. Siegel first got into trouble when he questioned assertions that breathing in second-hand smoke for just 30 minutes raised people’s risk of a heart attack to that of an active smoker.

There is no doubt that passive smoke affects blood flow, even over the very short term. Research in the 1980s showed that 20 minutes’ exposure makes blood platelets slightly more sticky, which could theoretically raise the risk of blood clots and hence heart attacks and strokes. Realistically, though, this would only be a danger for those already at high risk.

In 2001, a study showed that 30 minutes of passive exposure to smoke reduces the blood vessels’ ability to dilate (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 286, p 426). If this happened repeatedly over a long period, it could permanently harm blood vessels and harden arteries. In a few people who are on the verge of a heart attack, it is possible that 30 minutes’ exposure could tip them over the edge. But it would be no worse than eating a high-fat meal; most people would easily cope.

When anti-smoking lobby groups highlight this issue, however, they fail to mention that most people would be OK. Here is a typical claim, from the US group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in 2006: “Breathing drifting tobacco smoke for as little as 30 minutes (less than the time one might be exposed sitting on a park bench) can raise a non-smoker’s risk of a fatal heart attack to that of a smoker.”

Siegel has counted at least 65 organisations making such claims, and they are not fringe groups but anti-smoking stalwarts. They include the American Cancer Society and the UK National Health Service (NHS). “These claims are ridiculous,” says Siegel. “Just telling the truth would be enough to show that second-hand smoke is toxic.”

Even Stanton Glantz, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who did a more recent study confirming the blood-vessel effect, acknowledges some of the claims about it are overblown. “A healthy 25-year-old won’t drop dead from a heart attack by breathing second-hand smoke,” says Glantz, who is one of the linchpins of the anti-smoking establishment.

Another disputed claim is whether the introduction of smoking bans in indoor public places brings about an immediate drop in heart attacks. A few studies of individual US cities have suggested this effect. According to Siegel, however, they covered small populations and were too short to account for yearly fluctuations, or indeed the fact that many western countries have seen a gradual long-term decline in heart-disease deaths.

Then last year, a large study was published that seemed to shore up the argument that bans cause a fall. The study covered most of the biggest hospitals in Scotland and compared the two 10-month periods before and after the introduction of the smoking ban in indoor public spaces in March 2006 (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 359, p 482). It found a 17 per cent drop in people admitted to hospitals with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), which comprises heart attacks and angina.

Confusingly, however, the results of the study seem to be contradicted by the publicly available statistics on emergency admissions to hospitals due to heart attacks, released by the Scottish NHS in November 2007. These admittedly show fewer heart attacks in the year after the ban, but the fall was smaller, at only 7 per cent, which does not stand out from the background decline. In 2000 there was an 11 per cent drop, and between 2004 to 2006 the rate fell by roughly 5 per cent a year.

Sheila Bird is a statistician from the MRC Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge, UK, who is independent of either side in this debate. She points out that it is hard to compare the two sets of Scottish data because they measure different things: ACS diagnoses are made using blood tests while heart attack admissions are based on ECG measurements.

Bird also points out that because the NEJM study compared 10-month periods before and after the ban – not 12-month periods – it could have been distorted by seasonal fluctuations in heart-attack rates. The period before the ban spanned more colder months, when people generally have more heart attacks.

The picture in Scotland remains unclear, but last month saw a body blow to the side who say bans cause a fall. The first set of NHS data was published for England since the smoking ban came into effect there in July 2007. Between April 2007 and March 2008 there was a 3.7 per cent drop in heart attacks. That’s exactly the same as the year before the ban. Although the “post-ban” year includes three months before the ban, a crude analysis suggests that should only reduce the size of any fall by about one-quarter.

Third-hand smoke
Another issue that is currently raising eyebrows is the concept of “third-hand” smoke. This refers to the particles of smoke that linger on smokers’ clothes, hair and the carpets and furniture of a room for days, “outgassing” toxic vapours. Young children may be at particular risk, since they could ingest the residue while crawling around or mouthing their toys.

The first signs that third-hand smoke may be a danger emerged in 2004. A study showed that even if parents only smoke outside the home, detectable levels of cotinine – a metabolite of nicotine – were present in their children’s urine (Tobacco Control, vol 13, p 29).

Levels were much lower if the parents only smoked outside the house: 2.32 nanograms per millilitre compared with 15.57 from second-hand smoke. Still, some researchers think even this low level could be enough to cause harm, particularly to a child’s developing brain. “My sense is that these levels are high enough to be concerning,” says Kimberly Yolton, a psychologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio, who has previously shown that exposure to nicotine from second-hand smoke seems to slightly depress a child’s school results.

As yet there is no consensus on whether the cotinine levels are high enough to have any meaningful effect. “We’ll need a lot more evidence before we act on this,” says Martin Dockrell of Action on Smoking and Health in London.

In January, the issue of third-hand smoke gained new prominence after a paper on the subject in Pediatrics (DOI: 10.1542/peds.2008-2184). Many news outlets and even the US Department of Health and Human Services covered the “new-found risk”. Author Jonathan Winickoff, a paediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said people should “hammer home” the risks of third-hand smoke, and urged smokers to wash their hands – and possibly clothes – before interacting with children.

The paper, however, sheds no new light on the degree of risk. It was just a telephone poll showing that people were more likely to have smoking bans in their house if they believed that third-hand smoke was harmful.

Does it matter if the dangers are exaggerated? Yes, says Siegel, because it risks alienating parents who might otherwise have heeded advice to avoid exposing their children to second-hand smoke. It could also leave people distrustful of health advice in general.

Establishing the truth relies upon researchers engaging in open debate about what the evidence really shows. This is less likely if criticism entails the risk of excommunication, as Siegel experienced. “It’s like an unwritten rule in this movement that you don’t question these claims,” he says.

At the time of going to press, the administrator who removed Siegel from the tobacco mailing list had not responded to New Scientist’s requests for a comment. However, one of the list’s current administrators, Bill Godshall, who is an executive director of SmokeFree Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh, defends the decision, claiming that some of Siegel’s posts had been “uncivil”. Siegel “staunchly opposed the very purpose of the listserve: advocating reasonable and responsible policies to reduce the leading cause of disease and death”, says Godshall.

But Siegel has his defenders. “It is sobering and scandalous to think, if Mike is correct, that our field now is guilty of the same junk science long perpetrated by the tobacco industry,” says Alan Blum, director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

It is scandalous if our field is now guilty of the same junk science as the tobacco industry
Ensuring the science is rigorous becomes paramount at a time when the anti-smoking clampdown is reaching new levels. Siegel fears that the growing concerns around third-hand smoke will trigger more firms to bring in non-smoking hiring policies, already in place at several US companies and the World Health Organization. Several independent researchers have voiced concerns that such measures will further exacerbate social inequalities between smokers and non-smokers (New Scientist, 31 January, p 5).

And even the most fanatical enemies of smoking have reason to be wary of the anti-smoking movement’s current direction. Making exaggerated claims will only reduce the movement’s impact in regions where smoking bans in indoor public spaces have not yet been introduced, Siegel believes. “It’s like the boy who cried wolf – the public won’t know the difference when the claims are true,” he says.

Siegel says his experience has not damaged his career, and has since set up a blog about the anti-smoking movement’s extremes. But Carl Phillips almost lost his job after he questioned the orthodoxy. Phillips is one of a few researchers who favour “harm reduction” strategies in tobacco control (New Scientist, 10 November 2001, p 28). This means promoting smokeless tobacco products – such as chewing tobacco, a form of “sucking” tobacco known as snus, and electronic cigarettes – to allow nicotine addicts to get their fix without many of the risks of smoking. Many anti-smoking researchers are vehemently opposed to such strategies.

Unlike Siegel, Phillips has accepted research grants from the US Smokeless Tobacco Company – a fact he declares on his research papers, and which was approved by his university as they came with no strings attached. This has allowed anti-harm-reductionists to paint him as a tobacco-company stooge, and he has experienced vandalism to a poster paper at a medical conference. After his adversaries threatened to block the school’s academic accreditation and cancel funding for other projects, the School of Public Health tried to terminate his contract. Phillips appealed to the university’s central administration, however, who overturned the school’s decision, and he remains in his post.

For many researchers like Phillips it’s a catch-22 situation. If their research challenges the orthodoxy, anti-smoking groups refuse to fund it, so they turn to tobacco firms instead. This provides ammunition to question the results. “It drives researchers from doing anything innovative,” says Phillips.

Given the tobacco industry’s reputation, this deep suspicion may be understandable. “The industry has sown the seeds of so much distrust that scientific debate can be difficult,” says Kelley Lee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who has uncovered some of the industry’s dirty tricks.

On the other hand, many anti-smoking researchers accept grants from the drug firms that make nicotine-replacement therapies. When it comes to research ethics, the pharmaceutical industry’s reputation is not exactly whiter-than-white either.

So where can the anti-smoking movement go from here? “They must be intellectually mature enough to recapture the process of producing sound science,” says Lee. “There is no room for mud-slinging.”

Editorial: The dangers of inhaling dubious facts

David Robson is a junior editor at New Scientist

01 April 2009 by David Robson
Magazine issue 2702. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
For similar stories, visit the Drugs and Alcohol Topic Guide
Editorial: The dangers of inhaling dubious facts

I find this to be a very interesting article written by David Robson. What are your thoughts? How can we get the “truth”? Do you agree with those quoted in the article? Were you aware that there are those within the anti-smoking movement that want the “truth” to be told? “Truth” that is not exaggerated or manipulated! Or do you think the facts as presented are the truth? Tell us your thoughts and what you think should be done? Let it fly!

Since Sweden’s Trade Minister Ewa Bjorling earlier this month called on the European Union to lift its ban on Swedish snus, politicians have become divided on whether the moist tobacco product should be made an issue in European Parliamentary elections, with Swedish candidate Ella Bohlin saying there is no demand to legalize snus from other EU member nations, and a rival candidate Anders Edberg saying there is no evidence that snus is harmful to people’s health. Sweden, which is preparing to take over the rotating EU presidency in July 2009, has been fighting the EU directive that bans the sales of snus in all EU nations except Sweden. The EU ban was introduced in 1992, but Sweden obtained an exemption when it joined the EU in 1995. Some researchers and anti-tobacco activists say snus and some other forms of snuff could help smokers kick the habit. Snus is at least 50% less likely to lead to heart disease compared to cigarettes and unlikely to cause lung cancer, according to an EU committee report. It is steam-cured, so it is said to contain lower concentrations of nitrosamines and other carcinogens compared to other tobacco products. Sweden’s smoking rate is 16%, the lowest in western Europe, according to the World Health Organization (Irish Times 4/21).

I have always been interested in the “Swedish Experience” as it relates to the high prevalence of individuals who use Swedish Snus.  It does makes me wonder why the EU would not remove the ban when the results seem so evident? Is this a political issue? Will it change? What are your thoughts? But let’s look at this from an other point, is this just a classic example that since it’s tobacco it’s evil maybe redundant but isn’t it about time that folks understand that “relative harm of tobacco products”does matter? Is’nt it about time that folks are told the truth rather than tobacco always being a political football? What are your thoughts? Oh, and what are your thoughts on the US future as it relates to Snus?

The World Health Organization believes higher prices deter smoking and limit uptake. As a result they enthusiastically endorse higher tobacco taxes; particulary cigarettes.

Governments, at least many of them, think this a great idea and have happily complied – taxing their constituents almost literally to death. The UK and Brazil are two good examples.

So far so good (if you’re a government) but now the dependence issue takes precedence. The huge tax revenues are hard to give up – so what to do when smoking really declines – impacting that precious revenue stream on which you’ve come to depend?

This was seen in Canada some years ago when the provincial governments of Ontario and Quebec actually reduced taxes to preserve revenue, discouraging contraband in the process.

As taxes rise significantly in the US – with the large Federal tax increases on April 1 and a slew of pending State tax increases – what will be the unintended consequences?

Will Federal and State coffers become dependent? Are they already dependent?

Is this a form of addiction?

Will contraband increase?

What is the impact on gross tax revenues in the long term?

Isn’t it all about the money?

US Senators from North Carolina Richard Burr (R) and Kay Hagan (D) introduced on March 11th the Federal Tobacco Act of 2009, which would establish a separate entity called the Federal Tobacco Regulatory Agency to regulate the manufacture, marketing, sale and use of tobacco products, as opposed to US Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-California) HR 1256, which seeks to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory control over tobacco products.  Under the Burr-Hagan proposal, the new Federal agency would enforce existing as well as new statutes and regulations governing tobacco products. The measure would prohibit the advertising of tobacco products in newspapers and magazines as well as ban the use of descriptors such as ‘light,’ ‘mild,’ ‘ultra-light,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘low.’ In a press release, Hagan said the “FDA is overburdened already, and lacks the capacity or the expertise to take on a large, complicated new industry. Rather than merely oppose FDA regulation, Senator Burr and I have offered an alternative proposal that protects the tobacco industry while also imposing stringent new restrictions that will prevent children from smoking. I will not stand idly by while the FDA is put in charge of such a critical industry to North Carolina.” Hagan said she will seek support for the measure from her colleagues in the Senate

Good idea or not? What do you think?

Swiss banking giant UBS (well, until recently a giant!) looked at the tobacco industry and believes Lorillard is a possible merger or acquisition target. They came up with three possibilites……………

Their first – and favorite – involved Reynolds American and Lorillard. This is old news and speculation – all of it unsubstantiated – has been rife for months (some would say years.) They’re wrong and here’s why………… Reynolds has enough issues right now trying to stop market share bleeding and right-sizing its business to be distracted with a major acquisition. While the acquisition of Lorillard looks initially attractive for RAI it ignores the dilemma of what to do with Salem and Kool. And would the FTC approve? This is likely but not a given, as RAI would own the top three US menthol brands?

Second option was Imperial (Tobacco UK) acquiring Lorillard. An intriguing possibility but does Imperial have the money to pull off such a deal right now? Swallowing Altadis and Commonwealth must have used (most of) their acquisition war chest. 

Their third option, and in UBS’ view least likely, is Lorillard acquiring Swedish Match. What about the other way round or much more likely a true merger of equals? Swedish match gains a big market hold in the US with Newport. Lorillard gains acess to international markets, snus / smokeless technology and a big cigar business. 

What do you think?? Which option makes sense?