USA: Are tobacco companies going too far?

As smoking bans become more popular, tobacco companies are developing new products and facing new criticism. 

Snus are tea-bags, filled with mint-flavored tobacco. They fit neatly between your teeth and gum, with no need to spit.

Tobacco companies say Snus' have become so popular, they're taking the next step towards totally dissolvable tobacco.

For traditional smokers it will solve all kinds of problems.

"They don't have secondhand smoke," Tommy Payne with R.J. Reynolds said. "They don't have a litter problem. The product actually dissolves in your mouth as opposed to having to spit or extract something like a patch from your mouth like other smokeless products."

R.J. Reynolds will soon test test three new products: Camel sticks: that dissolve as you suck them, minty tobacco strips: that look like breath strips and orbs: flavored dissolvable tablets, that some say look and taste like candy.

Critics say R.J. Reynolds is doing what it did with Joe Camel, marketing not to adult smokers, but smoker wanna-bees.

"Really, what you're doing with kids actually, it's like a gateway drug," Dan Smith with the American Cancer Society said. "You're getting them addicted to nicotine, which then leads them to possibly wanting to do other things."

And according to the Indiana Poison Control Center, just one Camel dissolvable delivers up to 300 percent of the nicotine found in just one cigarette.

Take too many, and nicotine poisoning might set in and you could possibly develop oral cancer.

Payne said, "They're not candy. They're tobacco products."

R.J. Reynolds said their new dissolvables have warning labels.

It's illegal for kids to buy them, and, yeah, they're not completely safe, but they're for adults.

Anti-smoking groups like the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids said use of smokeless tobacco causes oral cancer, gum disease, nicotine addiction, and increases the risk of heart disease. 

Source: 14WFIE, 28 May 2009
Link: http://tinyurl.com/pfay9o

Study finds that smoking triggers more stress

New research found that smoking is linked with significantly higher-than-normal stress levels.

Drawing on data from 2,250 adults, Pew Research — a non-partisan American think-tank — found half (50 per cent) of all smokers claim to experience frequent stress in their lives, compared with just 35 per cent of ex-smokers and 31 per cent of non-smokers. Even controlling for basic demographic traits such as sex, age, education, income and parental status, the researchers say current smokers are still significantly more likely than non-smokers and quitters to have self-reported stress.

With a survey showing a quarter of smokers worried about the recession are smoking more, and another 13 per cent are delaying quitting for the same reason, experts say the new report reflects an urgent need to debunk the "mythic relaxation response" of cigarettes.

"Many smokers perceive smoking as a way to calm stress, when, in fact, what they're doing is satisfying nicotine cravings and withdrawal," says Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst for the Canadian Cancer Society. "In many respects, smoking — or the delay in having a cigarette — is the cause of stress."

Cunningham believes Pew's report supports the need for more educational messages about the link between stress and tobacco use. At the same time, he's not convinced the deepening economic turmoil will necessarily increase smoking rates in Canada, which have remained flat (roughly one in five people) since 2005.

Cunningham said, "Clearly, a recession is bad news for Canada. But less disposable income may be a motivator to quit, or not start."

But Debbie Mandel, author of Addicted to Stress, says she's concerned the recession will cause people to "revert to old bad habits of self-soothing," including the use of tobacco products.

"There's insufficient publicized information about the stress smoking causes, as opposed to the mythic relaxation response it induces," says Mandel, citing such pop-culture imagery as smoking after sex.

The Pew report draws on data from a nationally representative U.S. poll in mid-2008, when economic anxiety was still months from peaking. It leaves open the question whether stress is a byproduct of using cigarettes or if smokers are predisposed to anxiety.

"Smokers tend to be lower on the classic socio-economic scales, and some of that correlates with stress," says Paul Taylor, director of Pew Social & Demographic Trends. "But we did a regression analysis that tried to hold those factors constant, and we still found an independent relationship between smoking and reports of being stressed."

Vince Harden, a smoker for nearly 40 years, is skeptical of the findings and points to the fact that tobacco rations were given to soldiers during the Second World War as an aid to relaxation. If his stress is any higher than the non-smoking population, the Winnipeg man says, it's not because of cigarettes, but rather the "anti-tobacco people" crusading against their use.

"Smokers were doing just fine before everyone started bashing us," says Harden, 55.

According to the Pew report, about a quarter of smokers consider themselves "very happy," compared with more than a third of quitters and nearly four in 10 non-smokers. When asked about family life, smokers were also less likely to report being "very satisfied:" about six in 10, compared with seven in 10 non-smokers and quitters.

Health Canada declined to comment on the report. The data, collected by Princeton Survey Research International for Pew Research, is considered accurate within 2.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20

Source: The Vancouver Sun, 28 May 2009
Link: http://tinyurl.com/pyb5aw

Pictorial warnings on tobacco products in India

A bench of Supreme Court judges in India has given clearance to the display of health warnings on all tobacco products from May 31. Health activists warn that any dilution of the pictorial warnings would paralyse the campaign of warning people about tobacco-related health risks.

A Supreme Court bench comprising Justice B.N. Agrawal and Justice G. S. Singhvi, on May 5, 2009, cleared the display of pictorial warnings on all tobacco product packages in the midst of allegations by health activists that the law was being diluted to favour the tobacco industry.

The warning will be positioned parallel to the top edge of the package and in the same direction as information in the principal display area. This is mandated under Section 7 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003.

Rules under the Act were framed in 2006 but amended in 2007 to be implemented from December 1, 2007. However, implementation was postponed to March 31, 2008, and again to November 2008.

The specified warning will be inscribed in the same language as that used on the pack. In case of more than one language, the warning shall appear in two languages, one in which the brand name appears and the other in any one of the languages that appear on the product pack.

Packaging and labelling rules under the Act mandate that no message that directly or indirectly promotes a specific tobacco brand or tobacco usage in general can be inscribed on the package, and no product will be sold unless the package contains the specified health warning. The warning may be printed, pasted or affixed.

The centre recently issued a notification stating that tobacco products would carry the health warning covering 40% of the principal display area of the front panel of the product. This was strongly objected to by the anti-tobacco community, including former Union health minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss, as it was felt that the health warning had been diluted.

“The pictorial warning shall be limited to 40% of the principal display area on the front panel of the package only”Meanwhile, a case filed by an arm of the Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) against the dilution of pictorial warnings came up before the Supreme Court early this week.

The petitioner said that although initially the government had decided to have warnings on both sides of the cigarette pack, the minutes were later changed to the effect that “the pictorial warning shall be limited to 40% of the principal display area on the front panel of the package only”. A notification to this effect was issued on May 3. The government also decided to exempt large packs from the purview of the rules.

Health activists see this as a “death blow” to their efforts. The strongest criticism came from the Advocacy Forum for Tobacco Control (AFTC), comprising a number of anti-tobacco networks, which said that the government was counting tobacco votes over tobacco deaths.

The president of Public Health Foundation of India and reputed cardiologist Dr K Srinath Reddy said any dilution of the pictorial warnings detracted from the country’s commitment to protecting people against known tobacco-related health risks.

Dr Ramadoss alleged that the minutes of a Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting on pictorial warnings had been altered. Since its constitution in early-2007, the GoM has delayed implementation of the pictorial warnings for two years.

"Tobacco use is a major cause of death, disease and disability"The former health minister has in the past alleged that pro-tobacco lobbies were at work and that the government, after bringing in the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Rules in 2006, was dragging its feet on its implementation.

Tobacco use is a major cause of death, disease and disability; it kills 9 lakh Indians (900,000) every year according to the Advocacy Forum for Tobacco Control. May 31 is World No Tobacco Day. The theme this year is ‘Tobacco Health Warnings’.

Source: One World South Asia, 27 May 2009
Link: http://tinyurl.com/qg3ld5

Men's heart health boosted by fall in smoking

Death from coronary heart disease in South Gloucestershire is falling steadily as the level of smoking continues to drop.

But as life expectancy in the district improves generally, it is especially the case for men.

A report by Dr Chris Payne, the director of public health in South Gloucestershire, said some areas of women's health were getting worse, particularly those linked to cigarette smoking.

Figures showed a declining mortality rate from lung cancer in men but a plateau, or slight increase, in women.

Dr Payne said: "This reflects a slower reduction in smoking in women over the past 60 years, particularly in the period between 1948 and the early Seventies."

Where men live also influences their likely life span. The report said those in the more affluent areas benefited from an increase in life expectancy compared to those in the most deprived places, where there was no significant improvement.

For women, the difference in life expectancy in the most and least deprived areas appeared to have reduced to the point where the difference was not statistically significant.

Source: thisisbristol, 28 May 2009
Link: http://tinyurl.com/r57rrn