The 50-year war on smoking

By The Times editorial board, Los Angeles Times
The 1964 U.S. Surgeon General’s report on smoking — the first official acknowledgment by the federal government that smoking kills — was an extraordinarily progressive document for its time. It swiftly led to a federal law that restricted tobacco advertising and required the now-familiar warning label on each pack of cigarettes.
Yet there was nothing truly surprising about the conclusion of the report. Throughout the 1950s, scientists had been discovering various ways in which smoking took a toll on people’s health. Britain issued its own report, with the same findings, two years before ours. Intense lobbying by the tobacco industry slowed the U.S. attack on smoking. And even when then-Surgeon General Luther Terry convened a panel before the report was issued to make sure its findings were unimpeachable, he felt compelled to allow tobacco companies to rule out any members of whom they disapproved.
Saturday marks the report’s 50th anniversary. The intervening decades have seen remarkable progress against smoking in the United States, despite the stubborn efforts of the tobacco industry, which lobbied, obfuscated and sometimes lied outright to the public about the dangers of its products. During those years, though, independent research tied smoking and secondhand smoke to an ever-wider range of ailments. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking causes cancer of the lungs, larynx, bladder, bone marrow, blood, esophagus, kidneys and several other organs. It increases the risk of stroke, heart disease and cataracts. It can damage fetuses, weaken bones and harm teeth and gums. The list goes on.
The growing body of evidence bolstered important policies to combat tobacco use and the injury to nonsmokers barraged by the damaging effects of secondhand smoke. It can be hard for young Californians today to fathom that smoking was once practically ubiquitous throughout government buildings, restaurants and workplaces. In the 1970s, during hearings on legislation to curb smoking in public buildings, some legislators puffed away even as speakers described the asthma attacks they sometimes suffered from secondhand smoke. New restrictions helped smokers as well; if they could do without a cigarette for hours at a time at their jobs, many discovered, they could do without them entirely.
Limits on cigarette advertisements, rules that prevented sales to minors and new taxes on cigarettes helped bring smoking rates down.
In 1964, 42% of Americans smoked. Half the people on the panel that produced the surgeon general’s report smoked. Today, the U.S. smoking rate is 18%. Teen smoking rates fell to below 10% after the federal tax on cigarettes was increased by 62 cents a pack in 2009.
As smoking rates have declined, lung cancer rates have fallen as well. According to a report this week from the CDC, the rate among men ages 35 to 41 dropped by 6.5% per year from 2005 to 2009. One study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. estimated that 8 million premature deaths from all smoking-related causes have been prevented since the surgeon general’s report was issued in 1964.
Despite the good news, smoking is still the No. 1 cause of preventable death in this country. Smoking-related disease costs $183 billion a year in medical expenses and lost productivity.
We know what works against this: research, education, limits on secondhand smoke and higher cigarette taxes. But the tactics of tobacco companies continue to hold the nation back.
Knowing how heedless of our well-being they have been all along, we should ignore their ads and their lobbyists and take the following steps:
• Raise tobacco taxes, preferably at the federal level to avoid black-market sales across state lines. According to a 2012 report by the U.S. Surgeon General, every 10% increase in the cost of smoking leads to a 4% drop in smoking rates.
President Obama has proposed increasing the federal excise tax by 94 cents a pack, nearly doubling it from the current $1.01, and using the resulting revenue stream — an estimated $78 billion over the next decade — to fund pre-kindergarten education. The tax is a good idea, but we have concerns about using the money for preschool. If smokers are paying the tax, the revenue ideally should go toward education, research, affordable cessation programs, enforcement of existing laws and healthcare costs related to tobacco use.
• Place increased emphasis on reducing teen smoking. If there’s one thing all Americans, including staunch defenders of the right to smoke, should agree on, it’s that minors should be protected from smoking. According to the American Lung Assn., more than two-thirds of adult smokers developed the habit as teenagers. Studies have shown that many retailers don’t check identification and sell even when the ID shows the buyer to be underage.
In addition, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should immediately impose a ban on sales and marketing of e-cigarettes to minors, including Internet sales. E-cigarettes, which allow users to inhale nicotine-laced vapor rather than tobacco smoke, may turn out to be significantly more healthful than regular cigarettes, but studies are still underway about their long-term effects, and there’s no question that they encourage nicotine addiction. They have been heavily marketed to minors, who are allowed to buy them without restriction in most states. Further research is necessary as the e-cigarette market expands dramatically.
• Push for indoor-smoking restrictions in all states. It may surprise Californians, who now face smoking bans in parks, open eating areas and beaches, to learn that some states lack smoking bans even in workplaces, bars and restaurants. Kentucky, for example, restricts smoking only in government and university buildings.
Smoking is and should remain a personal choice among adults, but the nonsmokers around them have the right not to be sickened by the choices of others.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-smoking-50th-anniversary-of-surgeon-general–20140110,0,3302586.story#ixzz2q27cKUYc

The war on smoking is working — and should continue

By , Washington Post

FIFTY YEARS on, the war on smoking can look back and claim a huge victory. Nearly half of the country used to smoke. Now less than a fifth of the country does. Some say that public health advocates have done enough; let those who still choose to light up, disproportionately from poor and vulnerable communities, smoke away their lives in peace. We disagree. It’s time for more taxes, more regulation and more outreach.
“Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men; the magnitude of the effect of cigarette smoking outweighs all other factors; and the risk of developing lung cancer increases with the duration of smoking and number of cigarettes smoked per day, and diminishes by discontinuing smoking.”
Today, we know that smoking and secondhand smoke cause so many health problems across so much of the body that the benefits from the drop in use, accumulated across so many lives, are incalculable. Millions who quit or never started smoking breathe easier, suffer fewer strokes, get fewer cases of lung cancer, pass on fewer birth defects and take fewer sick days.
A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association attempts at least to calculate the number of premature deaths prevented since 1964 by changing the public’s view of the habit. Based on the assumption that smoking patterns would have continued without a decades-long public health push, the researchers estimated that tobacco-control programs have saved 8 million lives in the past five decades. Should the country forgo the opportunity to save millions more?
Of course not. Plenty of sensible measures that stop short of banning cigarettes but effectively discourage their use are not consistently applied in the United States. The most obvious is taxing cigarettes. Rates vary drastically by state , leading to interstate smuggling. The federal government should raise its excise tax, bringing laggard states closer to those that do the right thing, reducing the opportunity for criminals and increasing incentives not to smoke. If Congress doesn’t act, individual states with low taxes, such as Virginia, should. Similarly, states and localities without strong indoor smoking restrictions should bring them in line with others’ stronger rules.
The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, has a range of authorities over tobacco products that it should exercise with ambition. Perhaps the most promising is the possibility that requiring tobacco companies to reduce the amount of nicotine in their products will usefully cut their addictive quality.
Consumer choice might help, too. Electronic cigarettes appear to offer the hopelessly addicted a safer alternative to combustible tobacco products, and smokers’ increasing use of these indicates significant demand for this sort of product. If federal regulation, public education and other efforts combine smartly with smokers’ desire to stop lighting up, e-cigarettes might be a useful tool to reduce harm rather than a gateway to a life of smoking.
Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the editorial board. News reporters and editors never contribute to editorial board discussions, and editorial board members don’t have any role in news coverage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-war-on-smoking-is-working–and-should-continue/2014/01/10/7af7d9e4-797a-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html

Fitful Progress in the Antismoking Wars

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, New York Times
Fifty years ago this Saturday, on Jan. 11, 1964, a myth-shattering surgeon general’s report on smoking and health brushed aside years of obfuscation by tobacco companies and asserted, based on 7,000 scientific articles, that smoking caused lung cancer and was linked to other serious diseases. Those findings expanded as more data was gathered.
Research since then has shown that tobacco can cause or exacerbate a wide range of diseases, including heart disease, stroke, multiple kinds of cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, asthma and diabetes, and can injure nonsmokers who breathe in the toxic fumes secondhand. The death toll from tobacco remains stubbornly high but can be driven down by using a range of new and proven tactics.
By some measures, the 50-year campaign to rein in tobacco use has been an enormous success. The percentage of American adults who smoke dropped from 42 percent in 1965 to 18 percent in 2012. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week estimated that tobacco control measures adopted since 1964 have saved eight million Americans from premature death and extended their lives by an average of almost 20 years.
Experts attribute the gains to vigorous campaigns to educate people about the dangers of smoking; increases in cigarette taxes; state and local laws that protect half the nation’s population from tobacco fumes in workplaces, bars and restaurants; restrictions on advertising; prohibition of sales to minors; and various prevention and cessation programs financed by states or private insurance.
Despite these gains, nearly 44 million American adults still smoke, more than 440,000 Americans die every year from smoking, and eight million Americans live with at least one serious chronic disease from smoking. Medical costs connected to smoking are nearly $96 billion a year, with an additional $97 billion lost in productivity because of illness.
On Wednesday, several health organizations, including the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids called for a new national commitment to drive smoking among adults down to less than 10 percent over the next decade; protect all Americans from secondhand smoke within five years by having every state enact laws against smoking in all workplaces, bars and restaurants; and ultimately eliminate death and disease caused by tobacco.
It won’t be easy. The tobacco industry spends more than $8 billion a year to market cigarettes and other tobacco products in this country, with much of its marketing slyly aimed at young people.
The industry is also invading foreign markets, often in less developed countries, in an effort to make addicts of millions more customers to replace those in industrialized nations. Although smoking rates among adults around the globe have fallen sharply since 1980, the number of smokers has increased significantly along with population growth and will continue to increase as national incomes and populations rise. The United States government must help counter the tobacco industry’s efforts to spread its noxious products around the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/opinion/fitful-progress-in-the-antismoking-wars.html?_r=0

War on smoking, at 50, turns to teens: Our view

The Editorial Board, USATODAY

Want kids to quit? Raise cigarette taxes. It works.

The war on smoking, now five decades old and counting, is one of the nation’s greatest public health success stories — but not for everyone.
As a whole, the country has made amazing progress. In 1964, four in ten adults in the U.S. smoked; today fewer than two in ten do. But some states — Kentucky, South Dakota and Alabama, to name just a few — seem to have missed the message that smoking is deadly.
Their failure is the greatest disappointment in an effort to save lives that was kick-started on Jan. 11, 1964, by the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. Its finding that smoking is a cause of lung cancer and other diseases was major news then. The hazards of smoking, long hidden by a duplicitous industry, were just starting to emerge.
The report led to cigarette warning labels, a ban on TV ads and eventually an anti-smoking movement that shifted the nation’s attitude on smoking. Then, smokers were cool. Today, many are outcasts, banished from restaurants, bars, public buildings and even their own workplaces. Millions of lives have been saved.
The formula for success is no longer guesswork: Adopt tough warning labels, air public service ads, fund smoking cessation programs and impose smoke-free laws. But the surest way to prevent smoking, particularly among price-sensitive teens, is to raise taxes. If you can stop them from smoking, you’ve won the war. Few people start smoking after turning 19.
Long before health advocates discovered this, the tobacco industry knew that high taxes kill smoking as surely as cigarettes kill smokers. “Of all the concerns … taxation … alarms us the most,” says an internal Philip Morris document, turned over in a gaggle of anti-smoking lawsuits in the 1990s.
The real-life evidence of taxing power is overwhelming, too. The 10 states with the lowest adult smoking rates slap an average tax of $2.42 on every pack — three times the average tax in the states with the highest smoking rates.
New York has the highest cigarette tax in the country, at $4.35 per pack, and just 12% of teens smoke — far below the national average of 18%. Compare that with Kentucky, where taxes are low (60 cents), smoking restrictions are weak and the teen smoking rate is double New York’s. Other low-tax states have similarly dismal records.
Foes of high tobacco taxes cling to the tired argument that they fall disproportionately on the poor. True, but so do the deadly effects of smoking — far worse than a tax. The effect of the taxes is amplified further when the revenue is used to fund initiatives that help smokers quit or persuade teens not to start.
Anti-smoking forces have plenty to celebrate this week, having helped avert 8 million premature deaths in the past 50 years. But as long as 3,000 adolescents and teens take their first puff each day, the war is not won.
USA TODAY’s editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/01/08/war-on-smoking-50th-anniversary-cigarette-tax-editorials-debates/4381299/

Are e-cigarettes dangerous?

By Harold P. Wimmer
Editor’s note: Harold P. Wimmer is the president and CEO of the American Lung Association.
(CNN) — For the makers of electronic cigarettes, today we are living in the Wild West — a lawless frontier where they can say or do whatever they want, no matter what the consequences. They are free to make unsubstantiated therapeutic claims and include myriad chemicals and additives in e-cigarettes.
Big Tobacco desperately needs new nicotine addicts and is up to its old tricks to make sure it gets them. E-cigarettes are being aggressively marketed to children with flavors like Bazooka Bubble Gum, Cap’n Crunch and Cotton Candy. Joe Camel was killed in the 1990s, but cartoon characters are back promoting e-cigarettes.
Many e-cigarettes look like Marlboro or Camel cigarettes. Like their old-Hollywood counterparts, glamorous and attractive celebrities are appearing on TV promoting specific e-cigarette brands. Free samples are even being handed out on street corners.

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the promotion of e-cigarettes is reaching our children with alarming success. In just one year, e-cigarette use doubled among high school and middle school students, and 1 in 10 high school students have used an e-cigarette. Altogether, 1.78 million middle and high school students nationwide use e-cigarettes.

The three largest cigarette companies are all selling e-cigarettes. Because tobacco use kills more than 400,000 people each year and thousands more successfully quit, the industry needs to attract and addict thousands of children each day, as well as keep adults dependent to maintain its huge profits.
Nicotine is a highly addictive substance, whether delivered in a conventional cigarette or their electronic counterparts. The potential harm from exposure to secondhand emissions from e-cigarettes is unknown. Two initial studies have found formaldehyde, benzene and tobacco-specific nitrosamines (a well-known carcinogen) coming from those secondhand emissions. We commend New York City recently for banning the use of e-cigarettes indoors.
No e-cigarette has been approved by the FDA as a safe and effective product to help people quit smoking. Yet many companies are making claims that e-cigarettes help smokers quit. When smokers are ready to quit, they should call 1-800-QUIT NOW or talk with their doctors about using one of the seven FDA-approved medications proven to be safe and effective in helping smokers quit.
According to one study, there are 250 different e-cigarette brands for sale in the U.S. today. With so many brands, there is likely to be wide variation in the chemicals — intended and unintended — that each contain.
In 2009, lab tests conducted by the FDA found detectable levels of toxic cancer-causing chemicals — including an ingredient used in anti-freeze — in two leading brands of e-cigarettes and 18 various e-cigarette cartridges.
There is no safe form of tobacco. Right now, the public health and medical community or consumers have no way of knowing what chemicals are contained in an e-cigarette or what the short and long term health implications might be.
Commonsense regulation of e-cigarettes by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is urgently needed. In the absence of meaningful oversight, the tobacco industry has free rein to promote their products as “safe” without any proof.
A proposal to regulate e-cigarettes and other tobacco products has been under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget since October 1, 2013. The Obama administration must move forward with these rules to protect the health of everyone, especially our children.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Harold P. Wimmer.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/06/opinion/wimmer-ecigarette-danger/

Be it resolved to quit ….

By KAREN HERZOG, Bismarck Tribune
It’s safe to say that “lose weight” and “quit smoking” are at the top of many a New Year’s resolution list. And they, sadly, top the failure list every year as well.
Not that it’s a contest, but some say weight loss is harder, because people can’t just “quit” eating. Others say quitting cigarettes is harder because it’s so physically addictive.
Either way, when you hear people say, about giving up unhealthy physical or mental habits, “I could never …” they truly believe it.
“Never” is not literally true, of course. If somebody were stranded on the South Pole without smokes or sweets, they would give them up. They’d have to. Or if somebody put a gun to their head and said, “eat that doughnut or smoke that cigarette, and I’ll shoot,” I’ll bet they could stop.
People can do it. They just really, really don’t want to.
Resolutions fail oftentimes because people are aiming at the wrong target — they fixate on the end product instead of resolving to follow a process. Because imagining the daily slog required for success is so less enjoyable than hazy fantasizing about the prize.
“Quit smoking” is tough, no doubt about it.
The idea that they can’t ever smoke another cigarette empowers some people and terrifies others.
That’s because there are cold turkey people and baby steps people.
Cold turkey people tend to be dramatic and competitive. These folks are the ones who will make the operatic gesture of ceremonially tossing out their last pack. This signals to the world that the gauntlet has been thrown. They have challenged the cigarette lover within them. Since they hate to lose, the next weeks will be a bloody spectacle. These are black-and-white folks — they will never have another cigarette or lapse back to two packs a day.
Baby steps people prefer stealth. They don’t appreciate commentary from the peanut gallery. It makes them uneasy to have others watch them sweat and struggle. They want to grind through the process alone to emerge one day quietly smoke-free.
Baby steps people can accept shades of gray, admitting that backsliding a few times will be part of the process.
But they persist, gradually narrowing their window for smoking — first the house is off-limits, then the car, then certain times of day. They sneak quietly away from cigarettes like a mom tiptoeing away from a baby who has finally fallen asleep.
Whichever type you are, one realization can boost your chance of success.
“Self-talk” matters.
When you’re already struggling to do something hard, coming down even harder on yourself when you falter or fail doesn’t necessary spur you on to greater commitment — it just adds another level of frustration and disappointment to carry. Then the temptation arises to just chuck it all and give up.
Instead of flogging yourself for setbacks, turn a 180 and praise yourself for making the effort. Applaud your spirit.
Despite your own resistance and those who want to sabotage your process, you have an intimate friend who supports your will to live healthier.
It’s yourself.
(Karen Herzog feels your pain. She had her last cigarette 39 years ago and still sometimes feels nostalgic for them.)
(Reach Karen Herzog at kherzogcolumn@gmail.com.)
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/columnists/karen-herzog/be-it-resolved-to-quit/article_de7c7e1e-717f-11e3-baf9-0019bb2963f4.html

Forum editorial: Progress in tobacco cessation

North Dakota was recognized last week as leader among states meeting national standards for funding anti-smoking programs. It’s a welcome designation. Moreover, it’s more evidence the state is doing an excellent job with the resources it has to educate about the risks of smoking and secondhand smoke and provide programs to help smokers quit.
No thanks to the Legislature.
At nearly every turn in the smoking debate during the last decade, lawmakers, particularly those in the Republican majority, have done the bidding of the smoking lobby and hospitality industry. Lobbyists worked to scuttle statewide smoking curbs, and their legislative allies fell into line, despite clear indications that a majority of North Dakotans wanted a smoking ban. Indeed, several cities, large and small, were ahead of the Legislature in imposing smoking restrictions, most of them via the ballot.
As in the cities, it took the ballot box to spank the Legislature. Two measures did what the legislators refused to do. The first in 2008 established a tobacco prevention and cessation program funded in large part by tobacco lawsuit settlement money. The second passed by a landslide in 2012 with every county voting “yes.” It made all public places 100 percent smoke free.
Despite dire predictions from fans of poisoning their customers (it’s their “right,” you know), the sky did not fall on the bar scene or the hospitality sector. Instead, smoking levels among adults are down significantly. There is more work to do among the state’s youth, and that’s where education programs are focused.
It’s good news. It’s good for the state’s long term public health, which, in turn, is a plus for everything else in North Dakota.
————-
Forum editorials represent the opinion of Forum management and the newspaper’s Editorial Board.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/421219/

Will your children buy candy, gum or little cigars?

By Dr. Tom Frieden, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Dr. Tom Frieden is director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(CNN) — They’re on display at cash registers all across America: Candy bars, packs of gum — and little cigars.
In some cases, those cigars aren’t tucked away behind the counter where only the attendant can get to them but right in front for anyone to pick up.
Traditional fat cigars are a small part of today’s cigar industry. Newer types of cancer sticks include cigarette-sized cigars, or little cigars, designed to look like a typical cigarette but which evade cigarette taxes and regulations.
Flavored little cigars can be sold virtually anywhere, and kids are a prime target of these new products.
Unlike cigarettes, many are sold singly or in small, low-priced packs, at a fraction of the cost of a cigarette in most states.
These little cigars have names like “Da Bomb Blueberry” and “Swagberry.” The flavors themselves — chocolate mint, watermelon, wild cherry and more — can mask the harsh taste of tobacco and are clearly attractive to children.
The Food and Drug Administration banned candy and fruit flavors in cigarettes so young people would not be enticed. But cigars weren’t covered.
The tobacco industry claims that its marketing efforts are solely aimed at adults. It has long argued that its marketing doesn’t increase demand or cause young people to smoke but instead is intended to increase brand appeal and market share among existing adult smokers.
How many grown-ups do you know who smoke grape-flavored cigars?
Little cigars have become more popular in recent years. Flavored brands have almost 80% of the market share.
In 2011, among middle school and high school students who currently smoke cigars, more than one in three reported using flavored little cigars.
Six states — Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Wisconsin — have youth cigar smoking rates the same as or higher than those of youth cigarette smoking.
Despite industry statements to the contrary, the link between marketing and youth tobacco use is clear.
Some legislative and regulatory actions that tackle elements of tax discrepancies, youth appeal and marketing are in place or under consideration.
New York and Providence, Rhode Island, have enacted city-wide ordinances prohibiting the sale of flavored tobacco products, including flavored little cigars. Both ordinances have been challenged and upheld in U.S. District Court.
In April, the Tobacco Tax and Enforcement Reform Act was introduced in the Senate. This bill aims to eliminate tax disparities between different tobacco products, reduce illegal tobacco trade and increase the federal excise tax on tobacco products.
Based on decades of evidence, the 2012 surgeon general’s reporton tobacco use among youth and young adults concluded that tobacco industry marketing causes youths to smoke, and nicotine addiction keeps them smoking.
This sobering fact holds true in spite of bans on advertising and promotions that target children and youths, and restrictions on certain other marketing activities.
Nearly 90% of smokers started before they were 18 years old, and almost no one starts smoking after age 25.
To prevent the needless death, disability and illness caused by smoking, we must stop young people from even starting to smoke.
A key part of prevention efforts must be action that will eliminate loopholes in restrictions on tobacco marketing, pricing and products that encourage children and youth to smoke.
I don’t think it’s too much to expect of our society that we protect our kids so they can reach adulthood without an addiction that can harm or kill them.
– – – –
The opinions expressed are solely those of Dr. Tom Frieden.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/11/health/frieden-little-cigars/

Keep E-Cigarettes Away From Teens

Chicago Sun Times Editorial Board
Electronic cigarettes, those hip new cigarettes that blow a thick white vapor rather than smoke, are clearly less harmful than real cigarettes.
But that doesn’t mean e-cigarettes are harmless.
And until we know something different, that’s how we ought to treat them.
Folks who are wary of e-cigarettes — battery-operated nicotine inhalers that do not produce smoke — are going after them on two fronts. This group includes Mayor Rahm Emanuel, New York’s city council, other municipalities and states as well as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The first is a no-brainer: keeping e-cigarettes out of the hands of teens and pre-teens. We cheer on efforts to do that in the city of Chicago and at the national level.
E-cigarettes don’t burn tar or tobacco, removing the risk of exposure to carcinogens in cigarette smoke. But they contain nicotine and the risks there, particularly to young people, are well documented. Nicotine is highly addictive, can impact the development of young brains, raises the heart rate and is one of the elements of smoking associated with heart disease.
E-cigarettes are being marketed aggressively to young people and come in flavors clearly meant to entice, such as bubble gum, pina colada and cherry. It appears to be working: between 2011 and 2012, use among middle and high school students more than doubled, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The risks of young people getting hooked on e-cigarettes and then switching to the more noxious traditional cigarettes are all too real.
Fortunately, Illinois already has joined about half the states in banning the sale of e-cigarettes to anyone under 18, effective Jan. 1. The FDA appears poised to take action across the country, with the agency noting with “great concern” the rise in youth e-cigarette usage. The wisest course is to ban the sale or marketing to anyone under 18.
The Chicago City Council could take that a step farther under an ordinance introduced last week. The mayor proposed prohibiting the sale of methol and flavored tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, within 500 feet of Chicago schools, up from 100 feet.
The mayor also wants to ban the smoke-less cigarettes anywhere that regular cigarettes are banned, including virtually all of indoor Chicago expect homes and cars, and at least 10 feet from business entrances. This is the second front that critics of e-cigarettes are pursuing. New York City will consider a similar ban this month.
This one is a little trickier but not by much. Without smoke, the risks to non-smokers nearby are clearly diminished. But the risks are not eliminated — there is concern that nicotine and chemicals such as formaldehyde and acetone are present in the e-cigarette vapor as well as other particles that can cause heart problems.
There is only limited and preliminary research on the potential hazards of e-cigarette vapors to others, leaving us in the do-no-harm category.
Until we know the full second hand effects of smoke-less cigarettes, it’s prudent to restrict them in the same way we do regular cigarettes. The City Council can and should be a forerunner in this area.
If and when the science on this questions is settled, a ban could be reconsidered.
Until then, do no harm.
http://www.suntimes.com/opinions/24065452-474/keep-e-cigarettes-away-from-teens.html

Letter to the Editor: E-cigarettes aren’t a solution for those addicted to nicotine

By: Jim Tennant, Napa
After reading the story about a new e-cigarette store in Napa, I was disappointed that your reporter uncritically repeated the propaganda that the e-cigarette industry (which is being taken over by the traditional tobacco industry) has been feeding the public (“E-cig entrepreneur hopes to blow away tobacco cigarettes,” Nov. 20).
In fact, there is no evidence that e-cigarettes are any safer than the deadly, traditional tobacco products. E-cigarettes are not useful as a way to quit or cut down smoking. Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs known to man and e-cigarettes are another way of delivering this terrible drug to your body. E-cigarettes seem to me to be like washing your glass before drinking poison.
Flavored e-cigarettes are a blatant attempt to market to children — adult smokers would not buy them. Napa County has regular, free, effective quit-smoking classes available to the public and I hope that anyone who wants to quit smoking will use this service and not switch to another form of this deadly drug.
 http://napavalleyregister.com/news/opinion/mailbag/e-cigarettes-aren-t-a-solution-for-those-addicted-to/article_a25bbf74-5705-11e3-9c78-001a4bcf887a.html