A National Disgrace

I was coincidentally looking through the TTAC newsletter when Katherine Donald shared the link w her Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas mailing list.  What I happened to fall upon in the table of contents was the link to the FDA Tobacco Products page and 8 Tips for talking to youth about tobacco. I get the FDA updates but don’t always follow up.  This is one reason why.

The CDC 2007 Best Practices for  Comprehensive Tobacco Control Health Communications Interventions makes the statement:

“Adolescents and young adults are very sensitive to perceived social norms and media presentations of smoking behavior. Nonsmoking adolescents exposed to tobacco advertising and promotional campaigns are significantly more likely to become young adult smokers. Because adolescents and young adults have been and continue to be so heavily exposed to images of smoking in the media, tobacco advertising, and promotional campaigns, public health counter-marketing campaigns are needed to focus on preventing initiation and promoting cessation.”

Nowhere in the FDA ‘tips’ for talking to youth is there any mention of tobacco advertising, tobacco promotion, marketing, or even the words “tobacco industry.” Instead, it focuses on how the young individual must decide, regardless if they are 11 years old or not, if they will become a nicotine addict.  This is just another example of how and why the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act is a national disgrace.

How is it that the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and a wealth of popular public health groups, not including the National African American Tobacco Control Network and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, could support such a terribly flawed bill?

That is a huge question. How, or will, these groups rectify and apologize for their misspent support?  The greater issue is: how will the rest of us redeem a federal law that institutionalizes tobacco unlike never before?

SOS launches another youth activity, yawn.

A major aspect the tobacco industry uses to justify marketing and promotion of a deadly addictive drug is that consumers make a responsible adult choice.  In litigation, when victims have sued, almost invariably the argument industry takes is that you can’t be sure tobacco killed you and even if it did you knew better and chose to smoke.  I mean we’ve had this warning on the pack since 1965.  What were you thinking?

Phillip Morris funds ostensible tobacco prevention programs to keep kids from starting to smoke with the message that smoking is a choice only an adult should make.  Can you think of a better way to get kids to smoke?  It’s an adult choice.  So what if most smokers make that choice a few years early?  The tremendous capacity for nicotine to addict is fairly much a neglected aspect of the product.  It’s all about choosing.

And along comes the latest Stamp Out Smoking essay contest.  The theme this year is My Reason to Write.  Students are encouraged to write a letter thanking someone for their smoke free example or encouraging someone to quit.  Notice anything?  It’s all about choosing. In fact, the heading of the page says “We can all say NO to tobacco.” 

Undoubtedly we’ll see the same tired pleadings to addicted family members and blustering pledges to never start so they can make the team.  In fact one of the suggestions is to organize a pledge drive.  (I would welcome any legitimate research able to show that no smoking pledges are worth any more than the paper they are printed on.)  In the first case the focus is on a role model in their lives.  They may be an addict but they are still role models so something must be OK about nicotine.  In the second instance, the industry line about choice being the significant aspect of smoking is parroted.  Success with youth focused tobacco control programs are often frustratingly short term.  With efforts like this it is no wonder.

I am fond of saying that tobacco has not been a benign weed by the side of the road for 400 years.  But this is what is depicted when young people are told that the individual's choice to be tobacco free will make the difference.  In the tips for parents and teachers on how to talk to kids about tobacco nowhere is the tobacco industry mentioned.  Nowhere does it say that tobacco marketing, promotion, and public use are the result of multi-national corporations’ demand for profit. Instead these talking points would have us believe that being tobacco free was like choosing one cereal over the other for breakfast.  Characterizing the issue like this makes it seem that smoking is a normal part of their day, they shouldn’t do it, but it's normal.  When the very opposite should be our message.

In 1996 Dr. Stanton Glantz wrote in the American Journal of Public Health, 

“Finally, the public health community should realize that the best way to keep kids from smoking is to reduce tobacco consumption among every one.  The message should not be “we don’t want kids to smoke”; it should be “we want a smoke-free society.”  As the tobacco industry knows well kids want to be like adults, and reducing smoking sends a strong message to kids about social norms.”

That was 16 years ago.  Dr. Glantz spoke at the CTFA conference just last week.  Was anybody  responsible for this campaign there?  Have they ever been?  It is bad enough to have Burson Marsteller’s only U.S. based affiliate paid to run campaigns like this. The revolving door of personnel without actual tobacco control experience in the TPCP program makes ineffective messaging like this even more unfortunate.

CTFA Holds Successful 10th Anniversary Conference

Handsel Art

16 September 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

contact J.R. Few

handselart@gmail.com

or 870-427-1365

CTFA Holds Successful 10th Anniversary Conference

Dr. Stanton Glantz

Over 160 advocates from around the state celebrating public health successes from the past decade gathered for the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas’ 10th annual Striking Out Tobacco in Arkansas conference in North Little Rock September 13th, 2012.  Attendees were treated with presentations from some of the most distinguished tobacco control authorities in the nation.

Dr. Greg Connelly, from the Harvard School of Public Health, was influential in getting the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act passed in 2009. This law gave limited authority over cigarettes to the Food and Drug Administration. An original member of the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, Connolly has since resigned and had little to recommend about the law today. He encouraged the audience to put pressure on the FDA to act more quickly regarding a decision about menthol.  The original bill banned characterizing fruit and candy flavors in cigarettes but neglected to include menthol in these restrictions.  The Committee concluded that menthol in cigarettes made initiation of nicotine addiction easier and quitting more difficult. Their March 23rd 2011 report stated, “removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States”.  The FDA’s final decision was due 90 days after the submission of the report but has not acted.  80% of African American smokers consume menthol cigarettes.

Keynote speaker, Dr. Stanton Glantz, a founding member of the group Americans for Non Smokers’ Rights and Director of the Center for Tobacco Control and Research at the University of California at San Francisco, recounted how the tobacco free movement had evolved in California.  He called attention to the statewide media campaign emphasizing that nicotine was addictive, secondhand smoke will kill you, and the tobacco industry lies. He noted that focusing on a corrupt industry creates a ‘social un-acceptability‘ quotient  that could be as effective as tobacco taxes in decreasing use.

Glantz pointed out that he and Dr. Connolly had been on opposite sides of the law giving the FDA authority over cigarettes. Noting that the industry was now offering soluble nicotine products to sidestep smoke free laws and keep people addicted he added, “One thing I think we should be pressing for at the FDA,  if they should ever grow a back bone, which is unlikely, but if they should they should prohibit co-branding of these non cigarette products, so they can’t say Use Marlboro snus on the plane and smoke Marlboro cigarettes when you can.” 

He concluded that tobacco control efforts really do work.  Over 15 years the California  tobacco control program cost $1.4 billion.  But health care costs from an almost immediate reduction of heart disease deaths and asthma attacks, and 14% decreased incidence of lung cancers over a decade, saved the state $86 billion.  “So when politicians say we don’t have enough money for tobacco control, everything they cut from that, they are paying over and above that in health care costs and it’s not 20 years from now.”

Recognizing  Arkansas’ deeply flawed clean indoor air law, Glantz suggested that activists work locally to rectify exemptions.  He complimented advocates for a 30% drop over the last 3 years in cigarette sales in Arkansas.  “You’ve got to realize that every little success you have is dollars out of a multi national corporation’s pocket, and they don’t like that,  and are going to do everything in their power to stop that.”

Additional speakers included representatives from the National Latino Tobacco Control Network, the American Lung Association, and the University of Wisconsin. “CTFA always does a great job addressing disparities,” says Julie Andersen from Marion County.   “This year was no different with speakers focusing on Latinos, the LGBT community, and nicotine dependence among those living with a mental illness. Excellent conference!”

The Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas is a statewide network of organizations with a shared mission to challenge the tobacco industry.  More information can be found at www.arfreshair.com