Local Control Given Setback

First the requirements of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act that cigarette advertising be limited to black and white advertising where minors might view it were struck down. Now the ostensible overturning of Federal preemption for state and local authority to regulate point of purchase advertising was delivered a blow by a federal Judge in New York Wednesday, December 29.

The New york City Board of Health in 2009 voted to require tobacco retailers display graphic warnings of the dangers of tobacco use that included a number for free cessation services. However the decision delivered by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff considered that an infringement on the tobacco companies rights. “Even merchants of morbidity are entitled to the full protection of the law, for our sake as well as theirs," he said.

Tobacco free advocates were depending on Sec. 203 of the new law to allow local control preempted by the 1965 Federal Cigarette Advertising and Labeling Act. The law reads:

"Section 5 of the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act (15 U.S.C. 1334) is amended by adding at the end the following: ‘‘(c) EXCEPTION.—Notwithstanding subsection (b), a State or locality may enact statutes and promulgate regulations, based on smoking and health, that take effect after the effective date of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, imposing specific bans or restrictions on the time, place, and manner, but not content, of the advertising or promotion of any cigarettes.’’"

Apparently the graphic content denied those that profit from the leading cause of death and disease from the full protection of the law. Thus continues the odd saga in the United States of what is known only here as commercial speech. When applied to tobacco not only does it protect corporations’ speech it protects them from liability after 1969.

Supported by the major public health groups, and tobacco giant Phillip Morris, the new federal law giving limited authority over tobacco to the FDA is turning out to be yet another significant victory for tobacco companies.

New Surgeon General's report: No Safe Exposure

Click title for link to report.

subsidy

Subsidizing the tobacco industry is not dissimilar to subsidizing any industry in a capitalist community. Industry is offered tax breaks, incentives, and opportunity for conducting business in a community as an opportunity for employment and improving commerce. We provide tax breaks in return for a positive economic impact. The unfortunate difference is that the tobacco business is an economic drain. The American Lung Association has estimated that a pack of cigarettes should cost $16.66 to simply break even for the cost to the public health.

While honest work, jobs dependent on selling cigarettes are a poor trade for $812 million in tobacco related health care costs annually in Arkansas, the litter. or the lives.

Arkansas Cancer Coalition Press Conference, Lung Cancer Awareness

Click title for link to video.

Fed's Latest Effort

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17 November 2010

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HHS Announces Tobacco Strategy

Earlier this month the Director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, announced the federal government’s latest strategy to control the leading cause of preventable death, tobacco. Headlining the announcement were the new graphic pack and ad warnings required by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act giving limited authority over tobacco to the Food and Drug Administration. These 9 graphic warnings will cover 50% of any pack and 20% of advertising. In 1965 the tobacco lobby was successful in minimizing Surgeon General Luther Terry’s report that smoking caused cancer to the ubiquitous: “Smoking may be hazardous to your health.” Arguably, tobacco lobbyists still manipulate public policy.

Today 38 nations require similar or stronger warnings. Australia has required that all cigarettes be sold in plain packaging by 2012. Other nations‘ graphic pack warnings are a facet of the World Health Organizations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Ironically, the U.S. law requiring graphic warnings also inhibits this country’s compliance with the global treaty by including the tobacco industry on an FDA scientific advisory panel.

Requirements in the new legislation to quit using deceptive “light” and “low tar” packaging had been anticipated by the industry changing the actual language to suggestive lighter colored packaging. Actually, the elimination of the words “light” and “low tar” had been ordered by Judge Gladys Kessler in 2006 as part of her finding against the tobacco industry as racketeers. Restricting advertisements to black on white messaging were almost immediately struck down by the courts.

While the bill was supported by major public health groups, and global tobacco giant Philip Morris, not all advocates consider giving the FDA limited authority over tobacco a good idea. Dr. Heinz Ginzel, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences says, “ Any regulatory actions concerning tobacco taken under the auspices of the FDA are jeopardizing, contaminating, degrading and corrupting the declared original mission of the FDA.”

Other advocates like the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network object to a failure to include menthol flavoring while banning fruit and candy flavors. A recent press release from NAATPN states, “Our organizational stance is and has always been steeped in the historic exploitation and targeting of Black communities by the tobacco industry which began in the 1950’s when only 5% of our community smoked mentholated tobacco, and continues today because now nearly 83% of all tobacco consumed by Blacks is mentholated.” The FDA scientific advisory panel has until 2011 to determine how to regulate, if at all, menthol flavoring in tobacco.

One positive aspect of the new law is the removal of federal preemption for state and local governments to regulate point of purchase marketing. Currently the only signage or advertising mandates are legal age requirements. These are most often produced by the tobacco industry. Arkansans could now require the Quit Line be placed at point of purchase, regulate signage, or enhance any federal health warnings.

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Governor Proclaims November Lung Cancer Awareness Month

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14 October 2010

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Governor Proclaims November Lung Cancer Awareness Month

ACC Executive Director Cornelya Dorbin displays Governor Mike Beebe’s proclamation that November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month in Arkansas.

Calling attention to the single greatest cause of lung cancer, tobacco smoke, is one motivation the Arkansas Cancer Coalition petitioned Governor Mike Beebe to join states across the country in proclaiming November 2010 Lung Cancer Awareness Month in Arkansas.

Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General, calls lung cancer a “manmade disease”. At the beginning of the 20th century lung cancer was almost unheard of but today more people die from lung cancer than any other cancer. “The increase and decrease in mortality from lung cancer follows the rise and fall of cigarette use,” says the Arkansas Department of Health Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Branch Chief Dr. Carolyn Dresler. “Historically and globally, we can follow a 20 year lag in a population when cigarette sales spike and lung cancer rates peak.”

“So much of the prevention for lung cancer can be achieved through policy change,” notes ACC Lung Cancer Workgroup Chair, Dr. Thaddeus Bartter. The CDC has established Best Practices for effective tobacco prevention that include increased tobacco taxes, smoke free air, and market reform. Exemptions to Arkansas’ 4 year old clean indoor air law makes it one of the weakest protections from secondhand smoke in the nation. Even after recent tobacco tax increases, Arkansas’ is still below the national average and 27th lowest in the country. The Arkansas legislature let a bill posting the quit line at tobacco retailers die in committee in 2009.

Lung cancer data enjoys an unfortunate distinction in Arkansas. Tobacco related disease is the leading cause of death in the nation and lung cancer accounts for about a third of this morbidity. Yet Arkansas’ 2,100 lives lost to lung cancer is 42% of annual tobacco related deaths in the state.

Another motive for calling attention to lung cancer is an effort at facilitating the most current quality care to all Arkansans. African Americans start smoking later in life, smoke less, but compared to whites, are more likely to die from smoking related disease. One of the major goals of the ACC Lung Cancer Work Group is to identify strategies for dealing w disparities and at risk populations.

The Arkansas Cancer Coalition will hold a press conference in the Capitol Rotunda on November 16 at 10:30am. Representatives of the medical community, advocates, and policy makers will join the Governor in highlighting the urgent need and potential for prevention and treatment for lung cancer. Please join us in demonstrating your support for intelligent effective tobacco prevention and providing all Arkansans with quality care.

Dr. Philip Gardiner Addresses CTFA Conference

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13 September 2010

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Authority Discusses Menthol in Tobacco

“Young Blacks have found their thing, it’s menthol in general and KOOL in particular.” Philip Morris Tobacco Company, 1974

Recently Arkansans were fortunate to have Dr. Philip Gardiner speak at the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas’ annual Striking Out Tobacco in Arkansas conference. Dr. Gardiner is a public health activist concerned with issues ranging from racial disparities in health care, AIDS and cancer, to the effect of menthol in tobacco and the African American community. The National African American Tobacco Prevention Network estimates that 82% of African Americans smoke menthols. The tobacco industry has a history of advertising, discounting, and promoting menthol cigarettes most heavily in African American communities.

In 2009 Congress passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act giving limited authority to the FDA over tobacco. The Act prohibited tobacco companies from using fruit and candy flavors in tobacco in an effort to curb youth smoking but failed to eliminate the most common flavoring, menthol.

Gardiner’s presentation noted the CDC estimates smoking rates in the African American community at 22.4%. A more detailed study shows smoking rates closer to 38%. African Americans start smoking later in life, generally smoke fewer cigarettes, smoke cigarettes with a higher nicotine content compared to other ethnic groups, and are more likely to smoke menthol cigarettes. They also suffer disproportionately from tobacco related disease and death.

The FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Panel is currently studying the effect of menthol in tobacco. Menthol is used in many different products and is generally considered harmless. Dr. Gardiner’s emphasis was to broaden the concept of harm in cigarettes because it makes smoking more palatable, harder to quit, and “makes the poison go down easier.” It is the “ultimate candy flavoring”, he said.

Menthol Also Global Issue

The status of adding menthol to tobacco is at question for more reasons than the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act’s giving limited authority to regulate tobacco to the FDA. Globally, Article 9 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control proposes regulating the contents of tobacco products to eliminate any additive that is not tobacco.

The Louisville Courier-Journal quotes the President of the Lexington-based Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association, Roger Quarles as saying, “The ingredients themselves (in burley tobacco) are not harmful whatsoever.” Mr. Quarles may well have missed several decades of the science surrounding tobacco and health. The problem here is that the harshness of burley tobacco smoke practically requires some flavoring to make it palatable. At issue is the 200 million pounds of burley is produced in the U.S. each year, 3/4 of which is exported. Kentucky’s 2009 burley crop was worth $274 million.

We’ll see what influences both the FDA and the Senate more, lives saved globally or dollars for a few farmers in Kentucky.

That Minty Fresh Taste in the Bile of Political Manipulation

In 2009 the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was passed with huge support from status quo public health groups and opposition from tobacco companies, with the exception of Philip Morris, and a minority of tobacco prevention advocates. These minority advocates, before any particulars, knew that historically any collaboration with the tobacco cartel had been in the end only beneficial to the industry. That conclusion is being affirmed daily.

Prohibition of tobacco marketing assertions that claimed FDA approval of tobacco products was quickly struck down by the courts, as were the black and white advertising limitations. Passage of the bill was momentarily held up because while eliminating fruit and candy flavors it did not prohibit menthol flavoring for tobacco. The argument was that after passage there would be the opportunity to eliminate menthol as one of many substances in tobacco that had been proven to be a harm. Well guess what? The guidelines that dictate how and what the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Board can recommend may well preclude the elimination of menthol because menthol, by itself is not harmful. This at least is one of the argument that the industry will take in opposing any change in regards to menthol.

There is little doubt that menthol in tobacco is a key in the initiation of nicotine addiction. It acts as an anesthetic cooling tobacco smoke and making tobacco more palatable. Eliminating menthol in tobacco could prevent many youth from ever starting to use tobacco and make quitting more possible for other untold millions. The enormity of the potential lives saved by restricting this additive is almost incomprehensible.

One of the basic premises this bill’s advocates took was that if we knew what was in tobacco products their harm could be evaluated and the industry forced to remove them. But now it seems this harm could well be evaluated independently of tobacco. Dr. Joel Nitzkin describes the situation in a Globalink post: “In other words -- the problem is not the "science" related to menthol -- but a bureaucratic standard operating procedure adopted by FDA on the basis of an overly constrictive interpretation of the legal authority granted to them under the new FDA tobacco law.”

75% of African American smokers smoke a “menthol” brand but virtually all tobacco has to some degree menthol as an additive. The African American Caucus held up passage of the Family Smoking and Tobacco Prevention Control Act’s limited authority to regulate tobacco over the issue of restricting menthol flavoring just as the bill had eliminated fruit and candy flavors. However, objections from Philip Morris prompted supporters to compromise with the assurance that menthol could be eliminated after the bill’s passage. This may not be the case at all.

The panel has until 2012 to make its recommendations concerning menthol. This issue, if nothing else, displays quite well the irony and inanity of asking the FDA to regulate an inherently unsafe product without the authority to regulate it out of existence.

Lung Cancer in the Natural State

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11 June 2010

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Physicians, Laypersons Challenge Lung Cancer

Over 100 physicians, nurses, and advocates engaged Arkansas’ greatest cancer killer at the Current Care and Emerging Technologies, Lung Cancer in the Natural State Conference at the UAMS I. Dodd Wilson building in Little Rock June 11. Sponsored by the Arkansas Cancer Coalition, Stamp Out Smoking, and UAMS, the symposium was designed to be an interdigitation between medical professionals, tobacco prevention advocates, and cancer survivors and caregivers.

Making welcoming remarks were State Representative Fred Allen and Dr. Peter Emanuel with the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Center. Hematologist Dr. Mazen Safar then outlined frustration with the lack of progress in lung cancer morbidity. In the past decades research has shown that lifespan for lung cancer patients is increased as much from quitting smoking as chemotherapy.

Physician and Advocate breakout sessions dealt with topics ranging from the staging of lung cancer and stereotactic radiation to the guilt misplaced on smokers. Dr. Thaddeus Bartter, chair for the conference, noted during the Advocate’s session the enormous cost of unnecessary screening as , “Taking anatomy and trying to turn it into biology” while physicians discussed tailored therapy for patients.

Lung cancer survivor, American Cancer Society volunteer and patient advocate Joanne Blos, encouraged the hope that living, “means being a contributor and having joy.”

Co-chair for the event, J.R Few, opined that this had been a singularly significant opportunity for tobacco free advocates to learn from and join oncologists and surgeons in a front line challenge to cancer.

Pictured at the first annual Lung Cancer in the Natural State conference is surgeon Dr. Matthew Steliga addressing the statewide audience. Recognizing patients as individuals, as persons, Dr. Steliga said, “ A patient is not a carton of milk with an expiration date.”

Presentations will be available with the Arkansas Cancer Coalition at www.arcancercoalition.org.

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The presentation, Lung Cancer, or How Tobacco Changed the World can be seen here: http://www.vimeo.com/12517090

The Subtleties and Sophistication of Tobacco PR

This morning i opened up my daily Google Alert on Tobacco and happened to catch the headline, “Tobacco could help save lives, UC Davis team says”. Following up on this I read the press release concerning the UC Davis Big Bang business plan competition winners who had been awarded $15K for their proposal to use the tobacco plant as a source for vaccines. One of the members of the winning team is quoted, "I think this is an opportunity where tobacco can be used in a good sense."

Now this caught my eye for a couple of reasons. One is because I knew Davis, CA had a historical reputation for a tobacco free environment. In 1993 Davis had the only 100% smoke free policy in the nation and even today has extensive outdoor protections from secondhand smoke.

The second reason I was suspicious is because I knew that there was a bizarre use of Arkansas Master Settlement monies at the Arkansas Biosciences Institute. The MSA was the $246 billion settlement with the tobacco companies and the states for the harm caused by tobacco related disease. This has proven to have been a huge victory for the tobacco companies for the simple reason that nowhere in the agreement is it stipulated how this money is spent. Today states have only dedicated about 2.3% of MSA and tax revenue monies for tobacco control. Arkansans, however, stand alone with the Initiated Act 1 of 2000 dedicating their MSA payments toward primarily health related issues. Among these issues is the Arkansas Biosciences Institute created from 23% of the MSA to “focus on agriculture and basic and clinical scientific research that will lead to health improvement, especially in the area of tobacco-related diseases.” Now a state of the art research facility is a fantastic thing for a place like Arkansas. But early in 2004 Dr. Carole Cramer was hired as the Executive Director. Dr. Cramer’s expertise is the genetic engineering of the tobacco plant. This takes some mental agility to see that as an area of tobacco-related disease, but this is Arkansas.

So knowing of this tobacco industry coup and the smoke free distinction Davis enjoys I went to see just who could have influenced the Big Bang award. The major sponsor of the award is DLA Piper, a global law firm that represents anyone from the French gaming industry to, you guessed it, the tobacco industry. Arkansans may recall that DLA Piper senior Policy advisor Dick Armey recently came into the state to campaign against the proposed tobacco tax to fund our state's trauma system.

So now, is anyone else leery here?

The tobacco industry has a ready history of deceit and manipulation of public opinion toward tobacco and a degree of sophistication and cunning that almost baffles the imagination. This is just one more example.

Riverfest Smoke Free?

In July of last year, after much ado and the hard work of many of us, City Manager Bruce Moore signed the Little Rock Parks Commission recommended policy that Little Rock City Parks be tobacco free. The policy went into effect in October.

Now as Riverfest approaches it is questionable if the organizers of the event are going to respect this policy or continue their subsidy for the tobacco industry at the expense of the community. A quick glance at the Riverfest website cites only Arkansas clean indoor air laws with no recognition of the Parks Commission’s tobacco free policy at all.

Will we once again suffer the drifting smoke, pay for collecting the cigarette litter, and finance the corporate welfare for a rogue industry? The organizers of Riverfest may not care about the community and the entertainers but I bet their sponsors do. You can find them here. Contact the city manager’s office too. Demand not merely simple courtesy but evidence based public health policies.

It’s your air and your music, don’t share any more of it with the tobacco industry.

Tobacco Leaves on a Dollar

Dr.s Simon Chapman and Ross MacKenzie’s 2010 paper, The Global Research Neglect of Unassisted Smoking Cessation: Causes and Consequences, and more recently Chapman’s op ed on the marketing and promotion of NRT and pharmacopeia for tobacco cessation may well be the key to the next paradigm for effective tobacco control.

Recently there has been much attention given the ostensible “inveterate smoker”, the smoker who does not quit. It has been felt that after we raise the cost of tobacco, create tobacco free space, and eliminate tobacco marketing there still are going to be people who will not or cannot quit. This alleged population has been much of the motivation for those referring to themselves as harm reduction advocates, encouraging the promotion of forms of nicotine delivery allegedly less harmful than smoking. Chapman and Mackenzie’s work here calls into question whether that population exists at all and the validity of research funded by those marketing NRT or pharmacopeia.

He make 3 structural points: Most research is done by those interested in interventions and because of that primarily are testing their own means. In a capitalist society there is the tendency for medical means to become commodities. And lastly that these interventions are based on the erroneous assumption that there are some individuals who have an impenetrable addiction that warrants the interventions.

Yet 3/4 of all ex-smokers quit with no assistance at all. Cold turkey quitters outnumber all cessation methods combined. Studies have shown that most successful nicotine addiction was overcome with no preparation at all, that certain environmental cues prompted cessation and abstinence.

Recent genetic discoveries have suggested that there are predispositions to nicotine addiction and has been a facet of the thesis of the inveterate addict. This should not be underestimated in evaluating the risks of ever starting to use nicotine. But Chapman and Mackenzie’s research sheds light on the need to shift our perspectives toward modifying the environment beyond increased pricing, tobacco free spaces, and marketing reform. What we have been calling cessation support perhaps should not take as strong an active, or pharmaceutically interventionist, role as it does a further reformation of the environment.

The theory that some people cannot quit without intervention becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when seen with the enormous amounts spent by pharmaceutical companies, and others, advertising cessation assistance and funding research to test their products. We know that youth are more likely to start smoking if they believe quitting will be easy. Are we not re-enforcing the myth that quitting is difficult with our capitalist emphasis on marketing cessation support?

The under publicized figures surrounding cold turkey cessation point to rogue capitalism as a major factor in challenging tobacco perhaps no less than that of the tobacco industry. Somewhere in the evolution of dealing with nicotine addiction the emphasis on changing people’s perspectives on tobacco use from a social issue to a medically treatable problem a step was missed. There is little doubt that if there weren’t a dollar to be made it would not have happened.

Dr. Chapman points out that for the developing world, the growth market for tobacco companies, NRT and pharmacopeia is not a viable economic or realistic option. His paper suggests that we are far from optimizing the environmental and behavioral cues that enhance cessation and should not be dissuaded by the drive to profit in our capitalist society.

This also helps clarify where the harm reductive E cigarette clamor is coming from. Right now E cigarettes can’t decide whether they are cessation devices or that fairy tale of a safe tobacco habit. Emphasizing the fact that most people overcome nicotine without NRT shows how unwarranted another nicotine delivery device is.

400 years ago European colonial efforts to export tobacco co-opted an entheogenic plant from aboriginal Americans. In short order the plantation economy spawned the genocide of native peoples and the importation of an enslaved African population. As the leading cause of death and disease today is the capitalism surrounding tobacco today significantly different? The profit certainly isn’t.

Dismantling FDA Authority for Tobacco Begins

A Federal court in Kentucky overturned the first advertising regulations of the Philip Morris FDA bill this week. While leaving in aspects for larger health warnings and prohibiting event sponsorships, two key parts of the marketing restrictions were tossed. The bill had stipulated that only black and white advertising in mediums where children were likely to view would be allowed. This was thrown out as overly broad. You think?

Tobacco companies can continue to use their color graphics and imagery in advertising which are integral to branding and normalization of tobacco promotion.

Additionally, restricting tobacco company language claiming that FDA regulation made their product safer was tossed. This was one of the more telling and foolish parts of the bill. Detractors began much of their criticism of this legislation saying that industry marketing would take advantage of giving regulatory authority to the agency that supposedly guaranteed the health and safety of our food and drugs. In response, this ridiculous and obviously unconstitutional restriction was tacked onto the bill. “No you can’t claim that an FDA regulated cigarette is safer!” Apparently, yes you can. So why have we ruined the tenable integrity of the FDA anyway?

Philip Morris wrote this legislation. Other tobacco company lawyers cued up almost immediately to help dismantle the most potentially effective regulatory authority and thus far are successful. One can only imagine what the current Supreme Court will do for them as the suits creep upstream. What is not left to the imagination is that when all is said and done Philip Morris will have gotten almost everything it wanted without ever filing a brief.

Eradicate the Tobacco Industry?

The group Airspace ASH has been doing one of these informal online polls, "Should the tobacco industry be eradicated?" My reply of course is Absolutely! Or if I may restrain my enthusiasm suggest that removing the opportunity for massive profit could accomplish the same. The tobacco industry is an historical anomaly. No industry receives such freedom from regulation and none causes as much inherent disease, death, and correlate health care cost. None. None accidentally. None incidentally. None.

Yet the tobacco industry retains blue chip status in stock markets around the globe.

The challenge to tobacco must include opposition to the bizarre economics of permissive tobacco policies subsidizing the rogue capitalism and complexity of nicotine addiction. That is why incremental approaches to de-normalizing tobacco, (taxes, tobacco free space, market reform) are considered effective. Prohibition is not effective prevention. But prohibiting means of profitably marketing nicotine may well be. Hence, the increments.

In an age of transnational corporations it is perhaps oversimplified to call for the eradication of the tobacco industry. They have a tendency to morph and are as aggressive as the most pernicious cancer in pursuing profit. But it is most certainly a worthy goal to remove the profit for which these corporations exist. It is this predatory profit that drives the pandemic.

I do take issue with those that suggest more accessible nicotine is an appropriate response. One need not eradicate tobacco to de-normalize the popularity of nicotine addiction. But it may well be possible to regulate nicotine delivery, access, marketing, etc. to the point where tobacco use is much less desirable or socially acceptable.

Tobacco corporations are archetypical in their amorality. As we slowly inch our way toward a tobacco free society in more developed nations they open new markets on the Pacific Rim and in Africa. Talking about snus and nicotine vapor is counterproductive when transnational corporations are recruiting share croppers and new markets in the rest of the world. We will be successful in our challenge to tobacco someday but it will not be expedited by ignoring the global accommodation and predation for which the tobacco industry continues to distinguish itself.

Industry collaboration

“We cannot continue allowing hatred and disdain towards tobacco companies to interfere with and trump efforts to achieve our fundamental goal of rapidly reducing the leading cause of disease, disability and death (i.e. cigarettes). Its daily cigarette smoking that is killing millions of people, not nicotine, tobacco, or tobacco companies.”

Bill Godshall, Pennsylvania

Mr. Godshall’s exemplary missive conveniently ignores the fact that daily cigarette smoking would not occur were it not for addictive nicotine. Nicotine is inherent to tobacco. Tobacco use would not be prevalent were it not for tobacco companies, and tobacco companies would not market nicotine were it not for the profit.

Our esteemed colleague, Dr. K. H. Ginzel has noted that harm reduction is analogous to Allied forces negotiating w Hitler on the beaches of Normandy for how many lives we can accommodate for the Nazis to remain in power. Collaboration, whether complicit or duplicate, is still culpable.

It most certainly is the tobacco companies that are killing people. Tobacco has not been a benign weed on the side of the road for 400 years. Without the predatory capitalist promotion of an addictive deadly product there would be no pandemic. To assume that tobacco companies are going to rectify this with new nicotine products is ludicrous.

We already have ‘harm reduction’ policies proven to reduce the harm of prevalent use: taxes, tobacco free space, and marketing reform. And criminal proceedings for corporate executives seems promising. The best we can hope for with Reynolds, or any tobacco company, in producing NRT products is a perpetuation of the misdirection that warranted a federal conviction in a U.S. court for fraud and racketeering. A corporations’ only obligation is to profit and the tobacco industry’s profit is incompatible with the public health.

One of the best gauges of the effectiveness of tobacco free advocacy is how the industry behaves. This dubious flirtation with NRT and the incredibly overhyped E cigarette should do little more than question the efficacy of either to actually reduce use. The tobacco industry has had decades to reduce the harm they cause and have responded with fraud, smuggling, endless litigation, manipulation of policies and politicians, and an ever increasing mortality rate in the developing world.

An alliance with the tobacco industry is just that. Don’t expect any applause.

harm reduction or criminal distraction

The recent acquisition of cessation products manufacturer Niconovum by Reynolds American International reveals much in the way prevention advocates should treat a harm reduction perspective and provide greater emphasis on challenging the rogue capitalists that market nicotine. Mr. Ezekwesiri Eluchie has quite astutely pointed out that the industry is once again setting the agenda within which tobacco control advocates find themselves.

The acquisition of Niconovum displays just how much harm reduction is of necessity product centered and by definition unconcerned w the corporations that profit from the spread of nicotine addiction. Harm reduction advocates do little more than collaborate with sophisticated marketing strategies that subtly shift the onus of addiction back to the user. Until advocates can unite in recognition that it is not merely tobacco, but the rogue capitalism practiced by nicotine profiteers we must challenge, they will continue to set the agenda.

As well this casts umbrage on those that profit from NRT and pharmacological solutions to nicotine addiction and unfortunately raises questions about funding from these companies for tobacco control. Given how woefully and comparably underfunded advocates are I have no immediate solution. But Mr. Eluchie’s suggestion that we fully acknowledge the magnitude of death and disease from tobacco as simply criminal seems a very good place to start.

Effective, Evidence Based Messaging

The December edition of the journal Adolescent Health includes an important study regarding effective messaging for tobacco initiation. The paper, The Perception of Secondhand Smoke Risks Predict Future Adolescent Smoking Initiation , concludes that “perceptions of personal second-hand smoke risks and parental second-hand smoke risks significantly deterred adolescent smoking initiation”. This current research may not be novel but it is impressive in showing that perceptions about the dangers of secondhand smoke have triple the effect on smoking initiation among youth compared to peers’ smoking. And this conclusion is revealing because focusing on peer pressure is a mainstay of industry funded campaigns ostensibly aimed at reducing youth addiction to nicotine. The 2007 CDC Best Practices on Health Communication Interventions cites research showing that these campaigns not only are ineffective they actually can increase youth initiation (p 32). The Best Practices also notes that the most effective media campaigns created a negative reaction to the tobacco industry itself (p 34).

Those campaigns reliant on no evidence base will not be interested in this. But sincere efforts at reducing smoking prevalence in Arkansas can take advantage of this research to fashion campaigns that will not only be effective but also can be crafted to work toward rectifying seriously flawed clean indoor air laws.

Currently Arkansas’ Stamp Out Smoking tobacco prevention media is capitalizing on the recent state and federal tobacco tax increases to promote the 1-800 QUIT NOW cessation services. This may well be justified for a time but should not miss opportunities for long term effective tobacco prevention policies.

Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods, the firm that holds the SOS account, has in the past cited market research showing a high degree of brand recognition as evidence of a successful campaign. In 2008 CJRW announced it was becoming an affiliate of the PR monolith Burson Marsteller. With longtime ties to the tobacco industry, BM is responsible for creating the National Smokers’ Alliance and the Accommodation Program as front groups to oppose tobacco taxes and clean indoor air laws.

This tremendous conflict of interest becomes most suspicious when media campaigns do not take advantage of evidence based research for effective prevention. At some point attention should be given to the differences between effective branding and effectively reducing the influences of the tobacco industry on our communities.

Gambling Addiction

Oregon Lottery addicted to big losses of gambling addicts

"Addictions," says Joseph Frascella, director of the division of clinical neuroscience at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), "are repetitive behaviors in the face of negative consequences, the desire to continue something you know is bad for you."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1640436,00.html

It is intriguing that researchers have actually found that gambling excites the same dopamine activity that other behaviors, or substances, do in the brain. MRI work at Cal Tech in 2006 surprised a lot of folks and of course the DSM IV has criteria distinguishing gambling addiction. The point is that there are actual physiological differences between an addiction and a habit, like how you like your eggs, etc.

Now what interests me is of course related to nicotine addiction and genetics. Ever wonder why some people find it easy to quit smoking and some go to their grave clutching a fag? Well an important part of that is how the body metabolizes nicotine in the liver and that enzyme is inherited.

I don’t really have a dog in this hunt but, if problem gambling is inherited and the government is exploiting that genetic makeup to fund the bulk of whatever it is they fund w a lottery, an ethical quandary comes into play. It seems analogous to taxing redheads for no other reason than the color of their hair. This is one reason the article interested me.

A fellow at UAMS, Warren Bickel just got a couple of million $ from NIH I believe to study what he’s calling behavioral economics and meth addiction. I heard him speak a few years ago and the short of it is that addicts don’t have the same concept of long term and short term rewards. You and i may contribute to an IRA for long term goals but an addict my think of a long term goals as scoring tomorrow’s fix today. That’s over simplified but not much. ( This comes into play w nicotine addiction and children. Kids just do not recognize long term health benefits. We were all immortal once.)

Anyway, that’s a little bit about the difference and similarity between being unable to stop smoking, or feeding the ponies at the race track, and how you like your eggs.

E cigarettes, NRT, and Distraction

The Wall Street Journal reports that tobacco giant Reynolds American International is involved in talks to purchase Niconovum the Swedish manufacturer of Nicotine Replacement Therapy products. NRT is of course a popular method for tobacco cessation. At first blush this seems a truly strange union. Is RJR trying to sabotage tobacco cessation efforts? Or is this simply revealing what we have known all along about tobacco marketing? It is nicotine dependent.

"We are, then in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in the relief of stress mechanisms." RJR July 17, 1963. Bates 1802.05

And if we suspect Niconovum’s/RJR’s nicotine products why then should we not be suspicious of others that profit from the sale of nicotine like Pfizer et al. Is it because we question RJR’s intent and not the drug companies that have made a huge business out of cessation products?

E cigarettes are being promoted as smoking cessation devices by everyone except the E cigarette companies. That classification would give the FDA more authority to regulate the devices, the nicotine. More than anecdotal evidence is required to show that nicotine delivery in this fashion is harmless or effective.

The best evidence that E cigarettes pose no competitive threat is demonstrated by a lack of opposition from the tobacco cartel. If tobacco companies thought nicotine vapor threatened their profit, we’d know because they would swoop down and buy the tiny businesses that are producing these vaporizers. And they may yet just as RJR is eyeballing NRT manufacturer Niconovum. In the meanwhile big tobacco is content to let E cigarettes play the spoiler for the myth of a safe cigarette. The poor will never get their fix as cheaply as the traditional cigarette and the few who can afford to switch to taking their nicotine in a vapor will reaffirm nicotine addiction as a normal part of the day. But at the end of the day as long as it contains nicotine big tobacco has nothing to lose.