By John Nielsen, ScienceInsider One telling sign of the popularity of electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, which allow users to inhale nicotine vapors without other harmful chemicals, arrived late last year: The editors of the Oxford Dictionaries declared “vape” their Word of the Year for 2014. Today, e-cigarettes earned another kind of notice: Two of the […]
By Wendy Leonard, Deseret News SALT LAKE CITY — An increase in emergency room visits and calls to the local poison control hotline has Salt Lake County Health Department officials concerned about e-liquid used in battery-operated electronic cigarettes. “You really have to treat it as a drug because it is fatal to a small child,” said Kathy […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tobacco companies on Wednesday accused a federal judge of forcing them to inaccurately describe themselves as unscrupulous villains who continue to deceive the public. In an appeals court filing, the industry said statements ordered by the judge in a government lawsuit would only trigger public anger against the companies and should be […]
Matthew L. Myers, Washington – The Washington Post The Dec. 28 editorial “A tax that saves lives” pointed out that Maryland’s push to reduce smoking is not only good public health policy but also good fiscal policy. It helps reduce tobacco-related health-care costs, which total $2.7 billion a year in Maryland, including $476 million paid by the state’s […]
By Samantha Olson, Medical Daily Smoking is addictive and bad for the body in a laundry list of ways, but it hooks men and women differently. Researchers at Yale University studied the brains of men and women using positron emission tomography (PET) scans. Their intention was to measure the changing levels of dopamine, which control […]
By Editorial Board, The Washington Post AMID AN electoral backlash against high taxes in Maryland, anti-smoking advocates have abandoned a campaign to raise the state-imposed levy on cigarettes. Politically, that makes perfect sense. As public-health policy, it is foolish. A new study by Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shows that the state’s drop […]
By Dr. Nicholas Leeper | Special to the Mercury News The changing of the New Year brings about a fresh start. If you are one of the estimated 46.6 million Americans who smoke cigarettes, quitting the habit is likely being considered for a New Year’s resolution. Polls have shown that a vast majority of smokers […]
By: Vincent DeMarco, Baltimore A recent op-ed criticizing Maryland’s tobacco tax increases ignores the most important consequence of these measures: a dramatic decrease in tobacco use by teens that has saved thousands of young people from preventable tobacco-related deaths and serious illnesses (“Md. cigarette taxes have unintended consequences,” Dec. 18). According to data compiled by […]
Reuters via Fox News Of every $10 spent on healthcare in the U.S., almost 90 cents is due to smoking, a new analysis says. Using recent health and medical spending surveys, researchers calculated that 8.7 percent of all healthcare spending, or $170 billion a year, is for illness caused by tobacco smoke, and public programs […]
MMWR – MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY WEEKLY REPORT The CDC recently updated its statistics about current cigarette smoking among adults. In its MMWR article of November 28, 2014, it tracked changes in smoking between 2005 and 2013. In general, the trends of previous years continued. Here are some of the results: The proportion of U.S. adults who smoke […]