Harm reduction makes a primary goal an effort at reducing the harm of risk taking behaviors. Libertarians take risk taking behaviors as a primary right and harm reduction as a means of justification.
The tobacco industry has been quite successful in not only confusing this distinction but also recruiting advocates to perpetuate this misconception. Regrettably, this has worked to divide public health challenges to rogue capitalist goals.
Congratulations, Ms. Slocum!
Soon you will be approached by all manner of sponsors wanting to get a piece of the crown and publicity. One of these sponsors will be RJ Reynolds maker of Camel #9s, in the sleek pink and black packaging and promotion targeting young women.
RJR will offer you large dollars to promote in schools a program they fund that is ostensibly a tobacco prevention program directed toward youth. If you find it odd that a tobacco company would support effective tobacco prevention you would be right. The Centers for Disease Control cites research showing that tobacco company funded programs to reduce youth use not only are ineffective but may increase youth initiation to tobacco.
This particular program, 'Right Decisions, Right Now', by focusing on telling young people to resist peer pressure, infers that tobacco use is somehow more popular than they realized. Research has shown young people are twice as likely to smoke because of tobacco advertising than peer pressure. Additionally, this program portrays smoking as an activity only adults should choose. Can you think of a better way to get kids to want to smoke?
Miss Slocum, Miss Arkansas, I encourage you to take the high road and refuse to be the pawn of an industry that calls kids, “replacement smokers.” Your status and role model are so important to so many people. Please use it intelligently.
Thank you and good luck.
p.s. you can learn more about tobacco industry tactics here: http://no-smoke.org/document.php?id=276
It is no accident that the Arkansas Department of Health announced that smoking rates, since the 2002 inception of the state’s tobacco prevention program, have dropped by nearly 100,000 smokers. There is little doubt that this is monumental and will save countless lives and dollars. The impetus for releasing these stats is more than likely the Arkansas legislature’s perennial targeting of the Master Settlement Agreement funding for these programs is a little louder than usual.
It is almost baffling that some legislators cannot understand that tobacco use is the leading cause of death and disease, number one, most, more than the top five, combined. Almost baffling because the limited lobbying ability of publicly funded or un-funded tobacco free advocates is dwarfed by the full time lobbying effort of an industry convicted of fraud and racketeering in Federal court. The resilience of Arkansas legislators to the facts of challenging tobacco unfortunately leads to serious concerns about the intellect of some of our solons.
Additionally, questions surround the recent SB922 that would have decimated tobacco prevention specifically. This bill had sponsorship enough in both the house and senate to pass but mysteriously was pulled by the bill's main sponsor.
Justification for raiding Initiated Act 1 of 2000, that delegates Arkansas’ MSA funds for “health related issues” is far from clear. This act has actually really distinguished Arkansas’ spending of these monies. Nationally only about 3% of states’ MSA is spent challenging tobacco. Only a little less than a third, $12-15 million annually, are spent on actual tobacco prevention and cessation programs in Arkansas. Still, there are those that resent any opposition to the status quo subsidy the tobacco industry enjoys.
We should certainly demand results and oversight of these funds. I will not defend all uses that have evolved with this voter mandated legislation. But 100,000 fewer smokers and going from 6th highest adult use to 10th is a dramatically significant social change. Just as certainly should the funding for evaluation be the very last budget compromised.
Legislators should protect and enlarge tobacco prevention spending in Arkansas. None of Arkansas’ recently increased tobacco tax goes toward prevention. The actual increased tax should continue to significantly impact reduced smoking prevalence but the most cost effective tobacco prevention is still comprehensive clean indoor air legislation.
I said I wouldn’t defend all of the tobacco prevention funds and a particular emphasis on cessation over creating tobacco free space is a problem. In fact, research published in the American Journal of Public Health says,
“Smoke-free work-place policies are about 9 times more cost-effective per new nonsmoker than free NRT programs are. Smoke-free workplace policies should be a public health funding priority, even when the primary goal is to promote individual smoking cessation.” AJPH 2005 Jun;95(6):969-75. (07-17-2009)
Cessation is almost a natural fit for a department of health program but it is not tobacco prevention. It is treatment, treatment for nicotine addiction. ( The efficacy of NRT and pharmacology is a huge discussion) And treatment for nicotine addiction is not the most cost effective use of funds. It is part of an effective comprehensive evidence based plan to reduce tobacco use but it is not the primary means to de-normalizing tobacco use. ( Remember: taxes, tobacco free space, marketing reform)
Regardless, if legislators are interested in affecting the $812 million in annual tobacco related health care cost or the $1.3 billion in lost productivity, tampering with Act 1 is not the way to go. Even with the new taxes, tobacco will not begin to cover the cost to the community. Permissive tobacco policies are de facto subsidies for the tobacco industry; an industry whose return to the state is limited and debatable indeed.
100,000 fewer smokers is huge for Arkansas. Before hampering these results the legislature has a clear need to rectify the exemptions and lack of enforcement for Arkansas Clean Indoor Air act and Act 13 protecting children from SHS in cars and take seriously challenging the subsidy for the rogue capitalists that profit from tobacco.
Just a note from the southern end of the state tonight.
Handsel Art
12 July 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
contact J.R. Few
or 870-427-1365
Community Supports Smoke Free Bars.
Tobacco free activists marshaled nearly three dozen advocates to amend their city’s clean air ordinance to include bars at the El Dorado City Council meeting in Union County July 9th. Led by Pride Youth Program’s executive director Deb Crawford, the Union County Tobacco Free Coalition’s presence dwarfed a minority of pro tobacco voices.
Championing the amendment is Alderperson Vertis Mason. (pictured)
El Dorado’s smoke free ordinance was enacted in 2006 before the Arkansas’ Clean Indoor Air act. This local ordinance includes much needed buffer zones around entrances and exits. Arkansas’ Clean Indoor Air act specifically neglects protection from any smoke out of doors and adds exemptions for businesses that restrict anyone under 21.
Speaking in favor of the amendment, north Arkansas activist J.R. Few praised the Council’s foresight in correcting a flaw in Arkansas’ law because, “We do not lose the right to breathe at 21.”
Executive director for the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas, Katherine Donald, noted that the whole state is watching El Dorado set the curve for smoke free air in Arkansas. The El Dorado City Council is expected to take up a third and final reading of the amendment on July 23.
###
This morning KUAR, the public radio station in Little Rock, ran this story on the 3rd anniversary of Arkansas Clean Indoor Air act. http://tinyurl.com/lxwlqt
The statement is made that the law went into effect 3 years ago but fails to mention that the state only began enforcement 2 years ago. The inside scoop here is that when the environmental branch of ADH was planning to enforce the law the tobacco prevention branch was not invited to these meetings. As recently as September of 2007 ADH was telling businesses that secondhand smoke could not drift back inside a building when, in fact, the law specifically does not regulate any outside smoking.
Dr. Gary Wheeler is quoted in saying that Arkansas has not seen an expected reduction in heart attacks yet and there may be due to other variables unique to Arkansas. He goes on to suggest that confusion about the law could be rectified by removing the exemptions. Dr. Wheeler is right on both counts.
The Arkansas variable that may be most important is the fact that the ACIA is not comprehensive protection from tobacco smoke.
Celebrated advocate, UCSF’s Dr. Stanton Glantz, during a presentation at Pulaski Tech in NLR last year, specified that heart attack rates only go down when clean indoor air laws have no exemptions, like bars. http://tinyurl.com/ktd39n
Arkansas clean air law may have numerically increased the number of smoke free businesses in what seems a dramatic fashion. But the large exemptions, like the over 21 loophole, probably did not decrease anywhere near as dramatically the amount of secondhand smoke to which people were exposed. And to stretch the argument further those individuals still enduring heavy exposure to SHS, bar patrons and employees, may well also be those at the greatest risk for heart disease; poor health habits, little health care, etc.
Arkansas Clean Indoor Air act needs a tremendous overhaul. This is made most urgent given that we are now discovering the new lottery legislation opens the door for potential gambling parlors. These parlors as well as the racinos will no doubt include restrictions for minors and a carte blanch ‘adults only’ cachet for the tobacco industry.
One of the more important in tobacco prevention documents written in recent history is Samantha Graf’s There is No Constitutional Right to Smoke . Published and updated in 2008 by the Tobacco Control Legal Consortium, the paper clarifies that due process and equal protection claims to a right to smoke have been consistently denied by the courts. If you haven’t enjoyed this paper yet it is highly recommended.
The confusion about a right to smoke is not an accident but the result of decades of tobacco industry deceit to the point of a 2006 conviction for racketeering and fraud under Federal statutes typically reserved for organized crime.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of attending a local city council meeting where a smoke free skate park policy was being discussed. The attitude was generally negative with one council person practically throwing a fit that his civil rights were being violated. As an aside, the council person neither smoked nor skated.
Civil rights pertain to people not behavior. The courts have been quite clear that there is no more civil right to smoke than there is to run naked in public or drive drunk. Tobacco free policies are not about you but about children and the public health.
Most recently it was learned the Little Rock City City Attorney’s office was in opposition to the policy over a concern for freedom of speech claims against tobacco free parks policies. This is specious to the point of absurdity.
No one ever heard of a right to smoke until a couple of decades ago when public relations monolith Burson Marsteller started funding and founding smokers’ rights front groups to challenge a growing trend for tobacco free public space and tobacco taxes.
But what this shows is how successful the industry has been in its public relation’s measure, and in its fraud. Smokers are not a protected class nor is tobacco free space an unreasonable reaction to regulating hazardous conduct.
Permissive tobacco policies are essentially a subsidy for tobacco companies and only serve to confuse corporate responsibility with personal rights, the right to protection from rogue capitalists. We have a right to a tobacco free environment, a human right...
Any doubt that the future of the tobacco cartel as a dealer in the drug nicotine took a hit when Phillip Morris purchased the South African operations of Swedish Match. Swedish Match is the maker of the Swedish snus, the oral tobacco that is being held up as an alternative to smoking. This follows in recent years Altria’s acquisition of U S Smokeless Tobacco, the maker of Skoal and Copenhagen, and RJ Reynolds purchase of Conwood, the second largest spit tobacco producer. Worse yet, these tobacco products are ingested into the body without expelling the detritus.
These multi national corporate shifts are the result of growing clean air legislation around the world and an alarming trend in both the public health and the tobacco industry to pursue a harm reduction motif. This is in addition to claiming spit tobacco as an aid to smoking cessation despite SAMSHA research showing that 88% of smokers who tried smokeless tobacco were still smoking 6 months later.
Renowned advocate Dr. Heinz Ginzel has equated the harm reduction movement as akin to negotiating with Hitler on the beaches of Normandy to see how the tobacco companies can stay in business. Given the recent successes of the tobacco cartel in the U.S. Congress it's perhaps more like negotiating with the industry while paddling away from Dunkirk.
Heres a nice little interview with Dr. Joel Nitzkin, chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of Public Health Physicians at Democracy Now.
This was a pretty good summary of what needs to be discussed, so copy and paste, right?
“Who could have seen it coming?! That's sarcastic of course. Dr. Ginzel forwarded this NY Times article with the admonition that supporters are getting their due.
The synopsis is that first amendment challenges to advertising restrictions are expected. And here's the rub. Speech restrictions are allowed only when the government has a specific reasonable interest at stake. "In the case of the new tobacco law, Congress specifically defined the government interest as a reduction in youth smoking." 'Adults only' language is peppered throughout the bill yet that is exactly what the tobacco industry wants us to believe; that tobacco use is appropriate and acceptable at some level. This is the same argument that fills our clean air laws with exemptions for venues that restrict youth. Neither instance is correct. Tobacco is never safe. This was the opinion of the Supreme Court a decade ago that sent congress on a quest to limit the FDA's authority enough to oversee tobacco here. But by specifying the interest of reducing youth smoking it slipped right in line with the industry's best marketing tool for youth, adults only.”
And the point now is that if the courts get around to simple black and white signage with the exception of adults only situations how then will the industry market?
One of the most heinous marketing devices the industry uses now are the ostensible anti- smoking campaigns that not only are ineffective but have been shown to increase youth initiation.
“Furthermore, youth- and parent-focused anti-tobacco advertising campaigns sponsored by the tobacco industry have been shown to actually increase youth tobacco use. Youth exposed to these ads are more likely to report greater intention to smoke in the future and more positive feelings toward the tobacco industry than those who were not exposed.” p. 32 Health Communication Interventions - 2007 CDC Best Practices
This is the sort of sophisticated marketing the industry already camouflages.
The tobacco industry would market the perspective that tobacco use is a behavior for adults only. This emphasizes and includes the inference that only a mature choice would elect to use their product, and couches that in all manner of rhetoric about rights, etc. Never mind nicotine and addiction or that 90% are addicted before the age of consent.
Minors only signs are another fine example of camouflaged marketing. The courts have held that the FCLAA allowed states to regulate advertising at tobacco retailers only to the extent with which it informed the population about laws regarding minor sales. This led to the profusion of industry sponsored signage, We Card etc.
There’s an awful lot to discuss here. And for the sincere tobacco free advocate much to anticipate given the new FDA legislation.
