ASH Daily news for 23 August 2010
HEADLINES
- Finland bans tobacco display in Europe's toughest tobacco control law
- North East: 15 people still dying every day from smoking
- Even low tobacco smoke exposure is risky
- New Zealand: Third of emergency cases are smokers
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Finland bans tobacco display in Europe's toughest tobacco control law
ASH congratulates the Finnish president who signed a new law putting tobacco displays out of sight in shops. Finland joins a growing number of countries including Ireland, Canada and Norway that have adopted the measure to protect young people from tobacco marketing. In several jurisdictions, including Scotland and England, tobacco manufacturers have initiated legal challenges to defend this highly effective marketing asset.
The Finnish law does not stop at ending tobacco displays: it also makes it an offence for under 18s to possess tobacco products. Buying cigarettes on behalf of a minor becomes an offence punishable by up to 6 months in prison.
Martin Dockrell, Director of policy and research at the health charity Action on Smoking & Health said: "Across the UK those who make and sell cigarettes have been fighting tooth and nail to overturn this legislation but the tide is running against them. Laws for smokefree public places started in a few small jurisdictions and rapidly spread across the globe. We are seeing exactly the same process here, the only question is: Will the UK be one of the first major economies to implement a display ban or will it be the first to cave in to tobacco industry pressure and reverse a law that has already been passed by parliament?"
Source: Medical News Today,
Link: http://bit.ly/bLZF3f -
North East: 15 people still dying every day from smoking
Up to 15 people a day die in the North East from smoking-related conditions, new figures have shown.
Statistics released by The NHS Information Centre have revealed 25,485 people successfully quit the habit with the six NHS Stop Smoking Services in the North East during March 2009 to April 2010 – a rise of 14% more people than last year.
But smoking is still the region’s biggest killer, with 5,475 dying each year from the addiction and for every death another 20 people suffer smoking-related conditions as a result.
Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh, said: “The good news is the North East has the best NHS Stop Smoking Services in the country. They’re by far the best chance for anyone who has tried but failed, or wants to really give themselves the best chance of quitting.
“There’s been a massive change in the way smoking is now seen, and this has spurred on tens of thousands of people to quit, or try to do everything they can to stop their children from starting smoking in the first place.
“Around 1,500 people queued up at the Tall Ships Race to sign a petition to make smoking history for the North East. Some of the most outspoken were smokers themselves, who wanted to stop their children or grandchildren falling into the same trap.”
The region has seen the biggest drop in smoking in England, from 29% of adults regularly smoking in 2005 to just 21% smoking in 2008, and last year was a record year for quitting smoking in the North East.
This is partly attributed to Government’s smokefree law introduced on July 1, 2007, when lighting up was banned in all public places and workplaces, including shops, offices, factories, pubs, cafés, restaurants, membership clubs and work vehicles. As well as people successfully kicking the addiction once and for all, more people are giving quitting a go. Nearly 13% of all North East smokers made a quit attempt through the NHS last year – by far the highest rate of any other region.
Prof Stephen Singleton, regional director for Public Health, said: “Here in the North East smoking was part of daily life for too many years, but we have tackled the problem head-on and achieved the biggest drop in smoking in the country.
“It’s great to see our NHS Stop Smoking Services seeing more smokers than anywhere else, but these figures are also a stark reminder that the job is not done.
“Continuing to tackle tobacco is central to us achieving better health for our families, reducing the massive drain on the NHS and giving children the best start in life.
“No matter how disadvantaged you are in life, if you are a smoker you are further disadvantaged.
“The North East’s progress in tackling smoking has been as dramatic as it has been pleasing, but if we can make smoking history for more people, that will be a major part of the transformation of the North East.” The cost of smoking to the UK was recently estimated to be up to £16.2bn a year in the Cough Up report by the Policy Exchange think tank.
It states that every cigarette smoked is costing the UK money.
Christine Dryden, manager of Newcastle and North Tyneside NHS Stop Smoking Service, said: “One of the main causes of people lapsing when they quit is not having the right support in the first place. Their best possible chance of success is through using a NHS Stop Smoking Service.”Source: ChronicleLive, 20 August 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/cPbZSJ -
Even low tobacco smoke exposure is risky
Even low levels of tobacco smoke exposure pose a risk to lung health, triggering potentially hazardous genetic changes, according to a new study.
The hazards of secondhand smoke have been known for years, says researcher Ronald Crystal, MD, chief of the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and chair of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. ''But there were never any studies that had looked at the biology, why this is the case."
His study does that, demonstrating that even the lowest levels of smoke exposure lead to genetic changes at the cellular level in the lungs. "What this study shows is, if we could detect nicotine in the urine, we could also detect changes in the number of genes turned on and off'' in the cells of the lungs, Crystal tells WebMD.
The new findings put ''scientific teeth" behind the epidemiological evidence that smoke exposure even at low levels is hazardous, says Zab Mosenifar, MD, a pulmonologist, director of the Women's Lung Institute, and executive vice-chair of the department of medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, who reviewed the study findings for WebMD.
The study also suggests that those ''casual'' smokers who think smoking a few cigarettes a week is not hazardous are incorrect, according to the researchers.
rystal and colleagues evaluated 121 people, classifying them as nonsmokers, low-exposure smokers, or active smokers.
They categorized the people after evaluating their urine for levels of nicotine and a nicotine breakdown product, cotinine.
Next, "we took a small sample of the cells lining the airways," Crystal tells WebMD. "The cells lining the inside of your airways are called epithelial cells.'' When you puff a cigarette, he says, these are the first cells affected.
Next, Crystal's team scanned each person's entire genome to figure out which genes were activated or deactivated in the cells lining the airways.
"When exposed to smoke, the genes get turned on and off abnormally," he says. "The cell is crying out at a biological level, saying, 'Something's wrong. I'm being stressed here.'"
About 370 different genes sense the smoke, he says, and turn off and on in the area.
Eventually, Crystal says, the genetic discoveries may help experts figure out why some people are more susceptible to the health effects of smoke exposure than others are, and to develop treatments.
''What they have shown is that these epithelial cells inside the small airways contain very sensitive genes," Mosenifar says.
"These cells, they have these antennae, they pick up very low levels of tobacco. Small airway epithelium is very sensitive," he says."This says basically even a small amount of exposure to smoke does create changes at the cellular level in genetically susceptible people."
Source: WebMD, 20 August 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/c1RkpZ -
New Zealand: Third of emergency cases are smokers
Smokers are more likely to find themselves in a hospital emergency ward, a New Zealand-based study has found.
Researchers checked the smoking status of 500 ill or injured patients who presented for treatment at Wellington Hospital's emergency department (ED) over six days during August last year.
A third were found to be smokers - well over the prevalence of smoking in the broader community - and those smoking patients were also asked whether they wanted to quit.
"We found 33.1 per cent of our patient population smoke compared with 20.7 per cent of the general NZ population (and) the majority want to quit," said the hospital's emergency registrar Dr Abigail Lynch.
"Our results indicate that 74.9 per cent of smokers want to quit and, of those wanting to quit, 76.3 per cent took a quit smoking pack and showed an interest in receiving ED-based quit smoking advice."
Dr Lynch said the research showed the need for quit smoking advice to be delivered via hospital emergency departments.
She said around 15 per cent of the smoking patients said they did not have regular contact with a GP, and the ED could be their sole point of contact with the health system.
"If smoking is not addressed with these patients during their ED visit, it might not be addressed at all," Dr Lynch said.
"For these patients the ED might be the only place to obtain physician-based smoking cessation advice."
Dr Lynch said recent studies had demonstrated that counselling by physicians increases the likelihood that patients will stop smoking.
Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in the world, she said, and was responsible for one in every ten adult deaths globally.
Emergency physician Dr Paul Quigley, also based at Wellington Hospital, contributed to the research which is published in the journal of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/ac8ewV
