FAA warns U.S. airlines about e-cigarette risk

By JEFF PEGUES | CBS NEWS
WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration is warning U.S. carriers about the risk of fires caused by e-cigarettes.
Earlier this month at Los Angeles International Airport, an overheated e-cigarette sparked a fire in a piece of luggage in a baggage area. Four months prior to that at Boston’s Logan Airport, an e-cigarette in a passenger’s bag caught fire in the cargo hold of a plane — forcing an evacuation.
Those incidents and others have prompted the FAA to issue an official warning to U.S. carriers. The agency says the popular tobacco alternative “can pose a fire hazard in the cargo compartment of planes.”
Fires can spread when lithium ion batteries ignite.The FAA has already cracked down on those but e-cigarettes are powered by the same technology: Lithium cells.
The concern is that e-cigarettes could inadvertently turn on in checked luggage, igniting a fire that could be catastrophic in mid-flight.
The FAA is not banning e-cigs on planes outright. It just wants passengers to carry them onto the plane so that they can be monitored.
To read more or watch video: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/faa-warns-airlines-carriers-about-e-cig-risk/

What to Know About the Science of E-Cigarettes

 
Eliza Gray & Alexandra Sifferlin | TIME Magazine

A guide to understanding conflicting and ongoing research

Two Columbia University professors warned in a new study Thursday that the health fears over electronic cigarettes are hindering research. The very same day, another new study showed that smoking e-cigs, or “vaping,” can produce cancer-causing formaldehyde.
Clearly there’s some disagreement among scientists about the risks and benefits of a product that’s growing in popularity. Here’s what you need to know about the latest science.
What’s with the latest disagreement?
Columbia public health professors Amy Fairchild and Ronald Bayer argue in Science magazine that the staunchest opponents of electronic cigarettes are so concerned about the potential downsides that they advocate for an anti-e-cigarette regulatory and research approach that may be bad for public health. This approach of “deep precaution,” they argue, “has served as a kind of trump argument, hostile to the notion of trade-offs, seeing in them perilous compromise. Such a posture does not serve either science or policy well.”
It “may be years before the disagreements over the evidence” about the effects of electronic cigarettes can be resolved, Fairchild and Bayer wrote. On the one hand, electronic cigarettes may serve as gateway drugs for young people to start smoking cigarettes, and “dual” use of electronic cigarettes with tobacco cigarettes may stop some smokers from quitting. Electronic cigarettes may also carry unknown health consequences of their own. On the other hand, they may provide harm reduction for people who have been unable to quit any other way.
Given these two competing possibilities, the authors argued that the best formula for public health is to acknowledge the possibility for costs and benefits and to push for a regulatory scheme that is flexible enough to account for both outcomes. It is better to make public policy and execute scientific research under the assumption that e-cigarettes could bring good as well as bad.
But also on Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine published a new study reporting that chemicals inside e-cigarettes—like propylene glycol and glycerol—can produce a type of the cancer-causing chemical called formaldehyde when heated during the vaping process. The researchers report that when testing samples of the aerosol from vaped e-cigs, they found that the e-cigs can contain formaldehyde-releasing agents slightly different from regular formaldehyde, and that the levels are especially high when a user vapes at high voltages. Scientists don’t yet know if formaldehyde-releasing agents carry the same risk as pure formaldehyde, but the researchers said in their report that if they assume the substances do carry the same risks, then long-term vaping could be associated with a significantly higher risk for cancer compared to long-term smoking. The researchers said formaldehyde-releasing agents may actually burrow into the respiratory tract more efficiently than regular formaldehyde, though the observation wasn’t confirmed.
Are there other reasons experts are concerned?

There’s also debate over the safety of the liquid nicotine inside e-cigarettes. In April 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report showing what they called a “dramatic” rise in e-cigarette-related calls to U.S. poison centers. Calls went from one a month in September 2010 to 215 calls a month in February 2014, and more than half of the calls involved children age five and under. Forty-two percent involved people age 20 and older. Symptoms of liquid nicotine ingestion are known to be vomiting, nausea and eye irritation.

Researchers are also wary of the long term effects of inhaling propylene glycol, one of the main ingredients in e-cigarettes. The jury is still out, but some physicians are concerned. “As for long-term effects, we don’t know what happens when you breathe the vapor into the lungs regularly,” Thomas Glynn, the director of science and trends at the American Cancer Society, told ABC News. “No one knows the answer to that.”

Are they really attracting young people?

Several recent—but fairly small—studies say yes. A December 2o14 study in the journal Pediatrics surveyed 1,941 Hawaii high school students and found that about 17% of the high schoolers smoked e-cigarettes only, 12% smoked both e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes, and only 3% smoked conventional cigarettes. The findings suggested that kids who smoked e-cigarettes scored lower on outside risk factors to pick up a conventional smoking habit. “The fact that e-cigarette only users were intermediate in risk status between nonusers and dual users raises the possibility that e-cigarettes are recruiting medium-risk adolescents, who otherwise would be less susceptible to tobacco product use,” the authors wrote. Numbers released in 2013 from the National Youth Tobacco Survey showedthat the percentage of middle school and high school students who have tried e-cigarettes doubled from 3.3% in 2011 to 6.8% in 2012.

What’s the argument in favor of e-cigarettes?

Some smokers use e-cigarettes to help them curb their traditional cigarette habit, or even quit. An August 2014 study that surveyed over 20,000 Americans showed that among adults who used a product to help them quit smoking, 57% chose e-cigarettes. That’s compared to the 39% who used prescription drugs like Chantix and the 39% who used other over-the-counter methods like patches or nicotine gum. Another study from July 2014, which reviewed 80 studies on e-cigarettes’ safety and their effects on users, revealed that not only can e-cigarettes help smokers quit, but they are less harmful to smokers and bystanders’ health compared to regular cigarettes.

What’s the FDA doing about it?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only regulates e-cigarettes that are marketed for therapeutic purposes, though the agency has proposed a rule that would give it more regulatory power over e-cigarettes but that has not yet been implemented. The FDA has suggested a ban on sale of e-cigarettes to minors, and admits that there is a lot consumers don’t know about the product like whether they attract kids and teens or just how much nicotine is inhaled when a person vapes.

http://time.com/3678402/electronic-cigarettes-ecigs-health-science-research/
 

Lab tests suggest some e-cigarette use may release high levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Chief Medical Writer
Using certain electronic cigarettes at high temperature settings could potentially release more formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical, than smoking traditional cigarettes does, new lab tests suggest.
The research does not prove a health risk — it involved limited testing on just one brand of e-cigarettes and was done in test tubes, not people. It also does not mean e-cigarettes are better or worse than regular ones; tobacco smoke contains dozens of things that can cause cancer.
But it does highlight how little is known about the safety of e-cigarettes — battery-powered devices that heat liquid to deliver nicotine in a vapor rather than from burning tobacco.
“It’s a potential red flag,” one independent expert — Stephen Hecht, a chemist and tobacco researcher at the University of Minnesota — said of the study. “Under some conditions, e-cigarettes might be generating more formaldehyde than you’d want to be exposed to. But I don’t think we know enough yet. There’s a huge variety in the makeup of these cigarettes and how they are used.”
The study was published Wednesday as a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. The journal said it had been reviewed by experts in the field.
Formaldehyde is found in many things — certain building materials, disinfectants and embalming fluid. An earlier study found e-cigarettes generated less formaldehyde than regular cigarettes do, but that study looked at just the gas portion of the vapor. The new one looked at the liquid particles in the vapor, like the spray from an aerosol can.
Some tank system e-cigarettes let users turn up the voltage to increase the heat and the amount of liquid, which contains the nicotine and flavorings, in the vapor. David Peyton, a chemist at Portland State University, and colleagues tested one brand with two voltage settings. They used a syringe to collect vapor from 10 samples, each one representing several puffs, at both voltage levels.
They measured formaldehyde hemiacetal — a compound created during the vaping process that under certain conditions can release formaldehyde — in the liquid portion of the vapor.
At low voltage the chemical was not detected. But at the high voltage setting, levels of that compound were five to 15 times greater than the amount of formaldehyde users would get from traditional cigarettes.
Virtually all e-cigarettes use similar materials in the heated liquid, so the finding on formaldehyde “is not brand-dependent,” said Peyton, who plans more extensive tests.
However, Gregory Conley, a lawyer with the American Vaping Association, an advocacy group for e-cigarettes, criticized the study methods.
“They use the device in a manner that no one does,” he said.
Using the high voltage for as long as the researchers mimicked in the study “creates a burning, acrid taste” called a “dry puff” that would cause users to adjust the e-cigarette, Conley said.
What the researchers did is like leaving a steak on a grill all day — many cancer-causing substances might be formed but no one would eat such charred meat, he said.
Eric Jacobs, a biologist at the American Cancer Society, said a biochemist at the society looked at the work and “was reasonably convinced” that the chemical researchers measured would break down into formaldehyde in the user’s lungs.
“No one should conclude from this that e-cigarettes used at high voltage are worse than combustible tobacco cigarettes,” because of all the other toxins in tobacco smoke, Jacobs said.
The society’s advocacy affiliate, the Cancer Action Network, said the research “should raise serious concerns” about the lack of regulation of e-cigarettes, and urged the Food and Drug Administration to quickly finalize the proposal announced last spring to do so.
 
http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2015/01/21/lab-tests-imply-formaldehyde-risk-in-some-e-cigarette-vapor

SAVE OUR SCOUTS – A CALL TO END PARTNERSHIP WITH BIG TOBACCO

The following post was written collaboratively by the 2014-2015 Legacy Youth Activism Fellows, in an effort to call for the end of the partnership between the Boy Scouts of America and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.

Each day, we interact with a world full of seemingly static realities. Because facets of the world we live in appear the same day after day, it is easy to accept them. The natural inclination to go on autopilot prevents us from questioning the realities created around us. As youth activists engaged in the 2014-2015 Legacy Youth Activism Fellowship Program, we feel a deep-rooted sense of questioning when it comes to facing the seeds of Big Tobacco that are planted all around us. We are baffled by the way tobacco is a reality of our world, despite the unnecessary disease and death it causes, and the evidence that the tobacco industry has acted on a vested interest in attracting youth to its products.

On November 25, 2014, three U.S. Senators took a stand to question the status quo of Big Tobacco’s presence in youth tobacco prevention programs. We applaud U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) for urging the Boy Scouts of America to put an end to their partnership with Right Decisions Right Now (RDRN), a youth tobacco prevention program funded by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.  These leaders are not buying Big Tobacco’s efforts to insinuate themselves into youth-focused programs – and neither are we.

Other tobacco prevention programs funded by tobacco companies have been found to be ineffective. When we take a step back to question the presence of Big Tobacco in uncanny places like prevention programs, we can evaluate the reality of their drive. Big Tobacco is maintaining a presence with young people, who are key to keeping their business going as older smokers pass due to tobacco-related illness. In fact, the very company that is sponsoring this prevention program once stated that “younger adult smokers are the only source of replacement smokers… if younger adults turn away from smoking, the industry must decline…”

Inconspicuously, Big Tobacco continues to place its image in front of youth such as through prevention programs like RDRN, and offering funding to after-school programs. In addition to the Boys Scouts of America, some youth-serving groups are partnering with other industry-sponsored prevention programs. Philip Morris USA and other Altria companies are also supporting groups that provide youth-targeted services through the Success360 prevention program. For an industry that has a history of deceitful marketing, it’s shocking that we are continuing to see their involvement with these national organizations and the youth that they serve.

As nearly 9 out of 10 smokers start before the age of 18, the tobacco epidemic can be halted by removing these influences and preventing youth from starting to use tobacco. We urge schools and youth programs like the Boy Scouts of America to divest from their partnerships with Big Tobacco. Prevention programs and funding from tobacco companies undermine efforts such as our own to end youth tobacco use. As Legacy Youth Activism Fellows, we are taking a stand in our own communities to challenge the norms that keep tobacco use prevalent, including: evaluating point of sale tobacco advertising, exploring use of emerging tobacco products on college campuses, supporting tobacco cessation in mental health settings, and engaging youth in promoting smoke-free policies in apartments. Through each of our local efforts, we are striving to place an image in front of youth and our communities that encourages people to live free of tobacco.

We encourage youth-serving groups to join us in questioning the presence of Big Tobacco in their midst. Youth should seek to interact with the many great tobacco prevention programs in their state. With their help and the support of bold leaders like Senators Blumenthal, Brown, and Harkin, we can challenge the status quo and create an environment that gives our communities, especially youth, the tools to thrive. Together, we can #FINISHIT.

http://www.legacyforhealth.org/newsroom/blog-making-waves/save-our-scouts-a-call-to-end-partnership-with-big-tobacco

E-cigarettes may promote lung infections

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News

Vapor from electronic cigarettes may increase young people’s risk of respiratory infections, whether or not it contains nicotine, a new laboratory study has found.

Lung tissue samples from deceased children appeared to suffer damage when exposed to e-cigarette vapor in the laboratory, researchers reported in a recent issue of the journal PLOS One. The vapor triggered a strong immune response in epithelial cells, which are cells that line the inside of the lung and protect the organ from harm, said lead author Dr. Qun Wu, a lung disease researcher at National Jewish Health in Denver.

Once exposed to e-cigarette vapor, these cells also became more susceptible to infection by rhinovirus, the virus that’s the predominant cause of the common cold, the researchers found.

“Epithelial cells are the first line of defense in our airways,” Wu said. “They protect our bodies from anything dangerous we might inhale. Even without nicotine, this liquid can hurt your epithelial defense system, and you will be more likely to get sick.”

The new report comes amid a surge in the popularity of e-cigarettes, which are being promoted by manufacturers as a safer alternative to traditional tobacco cigarettes and a possible smoking-cessation aid.

Nearly 1.8 million children and teens in the United States had tried e-cigarettes by 2012, the study authors said in background information. Less than 2 percent of American adults had tried e-cigarettes in 2010, but by last year the number had topped 40 million, an increase of 620 percent.

For the study, researchers obtained respiratory system tissue from children aged 8 to 10 who had passed away and donated their organs to medical science. Researchers specifically looked for tissue from young donors because they wanted to focus on the effects of e-cigarettes on kids, Wu said.

The human cells were placed in a sterile container at one end of a machine, with an e-cigarette at the other end. The machine applied suction to the e-cigarette to simulate the act of using the device, with the vapors produced by that suction traveling through tubes to the container holding the human cells.

The vapor spurred the release of IL-6, a signaling protein that promotes inflammation and an immune system response. This occurred whether or not the vapor contained nicotine, although nicotine appeared to slightly enhance the release of IL-6, the researchers said.

The exposed lung tissue also appeared more susceptible to the common cold virus, developing higher amounts of virus compared to healthy cells that had not been exposed to the vapor, the investigators found. In follow-up testing, lab mice exposed to e-cigarette vapor also appeared more likely to come down with a cold from rhinovirus, compared with unexposed mice.

The American Vaping Association, an industry group representing e-cigarette makers, said the study findings were limited because the tests involved cells in a laboratory, not actual people using e-cigarettes. The tests also failed to compare the effects of the vapor to other inhalants, the group said.

“Many in public health agree that the risks of vaping must always be considered in the context of the risks of cigarette smoking and traditional stop-smoking therapies,” said Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association.

“Unlike past studies, this study provides the reader with no data to compare the liquid results to. What would happen if these same cells were exposed to combustible cigarettes, nicotine gum, or the smoking cessation drug varenicline (Chantix)? That is an important — and unanswered — question that the authors don’t appear to have great interest in answering,” Conley said.

Dr. Norman Edelman, senior medical adviser for the American Lung Association, agreed that people should be cautious in drawing conclusions based on lab tests using cell cultures.

At the same time, Edelman said, the study findings are “interesting and provocative” and fit in with prior research on the effects of e-cigarette use.

“We already know that if you have someone smoke an e-cigarette and then test them, they show airway inflammation,” Edelman said. “The susceptibility to viral infection is brand new and interesting.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/sc-health-0121-e-cigarette-infections-20150109-story.html

Major cancer groups call for e-cigarette research, regulation

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 largest cancer science and treatment groups in the United States called on the government to start regulating “electronic nicotine delivery systems” and step up research on the health effects of vaping.

“While e-cigarettes may reduce smoking rates and attendant adverse health risks, we will not know for sure until these products are researched and regulated,” said Peter Paul Yu, president of the 35,000-member American Society of Clinical Oncology, in a statement. “We are concerned that e-cigarettes may encourage nonsmokers, particularly children, to start smoking and develop nicotine addiction.” His group was joined by the American Association for Cancer Research, which has more than 33,000 members.

The joint statement endorsed the urgent need for new research into the health effects of e-cigarettes and using tobacco tax revenues to help fund studies. It also included a long list of recommended actions by state and federal government agencies. They include requiring makers of e-cigarettes to register their products with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to identify the chemicals and levels of nicotine in various brands, and to agree to help stop teenagers from vaping.

In April 2014, FDA issued a proposal to start regulating e-cigarettes. The proposal would require FDA reviews of e-cigarette products and force makers to stop claiming health benefits until the science is in. The rule would also ban the distribution of free samples of e-cigarettes and vending machine sales. Health warnings would be mandatory. FDA has not finalized the rules, however, and researchers and health professionals say they hope today’s statement will highlight the need to move quickly.

“As someone who runs a treatment program for tobacco addicts, I would love to be able to endorse the use of e-cigarettes as an alternative,” says Michael Steinberg of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in New Jersey. “But I cannot do that because we don’t know the risks involved, nor can we be sure that moving to e-cigarettes really helps people stop smoking.” Steinberg says it could turn out that smokers who start vaping tend to end up using both e-cigarettes and flammable ones or that the nicotine produced by e-cigarettes is unexpectedly toxic.

Some researchers worry that any new rules won’t go far enough, soon enough. Neither the FDA proposal nor today’s joint statement calls for a ban on television advertising by e-cigarette makers, for example, notes Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. (Glantz, a frequent critic of the health claims made by makers of e-cigarettes, says he supports such a ban.) There’s also no mention of regulating e-cigarette “flavorings,” such as minty or fruity flavors, which were banned from cigarettes after they were linked to elevated smoking rates among teenagers.

Glantz also worries that it could be years before FDA fully regulates the devices. “It’s an especially torturous political and legal process at the federal level,” he says. Regulations may be easier to finalize on the state and local level, he adds, noting that several states and cities have already imposed restrictions. “I would look for progress at the local level,” Glantz says. “I expect that in this case the most important changes will start at the bottom, not the top.”

In the meantime, e-cigarettes are becoming increasingly mainstream. The small, battery-powered devices first became readily available in the United States in 2006, and sales rose to about $2 billion in 2014 alone. “Vaping” bars where people speak of “vapers’ rights” are popping up in towns and cities. Movie stars have advertised their vaping skills on late-night television talk shows.

This past December, a survey released by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that 17% of high school seniors said they’d vaped at least once a month, compared with 14% percent who admitted to smoking. Vaping among 10 graders, at 16%, was more than twice the rate of smoking. Antismoking activists found these reports alarming, arguing that vaping could become a “gateway habit” that could draw nonsmokers toward cigarette use.

http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2015/01/major-cancer-groups-call-e-cigarette-research-regulation

Salt Lake County health study reveals big problem with inaccurate e-liquid labeling

By , 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 Garrett, tobacco prevention and cessation manager for the Salt Lake County Health Department.
The health department, Garrett said, is encouraging users to put e-cigarettes and the “enticing candy-flavored cartridges” out of the reach of young people.
It is also seeking to pass new regulations to keep manufacturers in check.
“E-liquid is a serious poisoning threat to children,” Garrett said, adding that the United States Food and Drug Administration does not regulate e-liquid manufacturing at all. “If they drink enough of it, it can be fatal to small children.”
The Salt Lake County Health Department recently concluded its own study, where undercover workers visited all 14 vape shops and 16 of the 80 tobacco specialty stores in the county to purchase a variety of e-liquid cartridges for testing at the Center for Human Toxicology at the University of Utah.
Health officials found that 61 percent of the e-liquid cartridges collected strayed at least 10 percent from what was indicated on the labels, with either more or less nicotine content than expected.
Garrett said even the samples that listed no nicotine content had trace amounts, and at least one variety had 7.35 miligrams per milliliter.
1467294“Both specialty stores and vape shops are inconsistent with their labeling,” she said. “These findings support the need for local policy that requires licensing for the manufacturing of e-liquid, and also we’d like to regulate the sale of e-cigarettes to ensure safety standards that include accurate labeling and ingredients with nicotine levels.”
The Utah Legislature has yet to pass legislation that would govern any part of the surging electronic cigarette industry in the state, and the federal government is just beginning to assess the issues surrounding production and sales.
Last year, the number of adults using e-cigarettes topped 40 million nationwide, an increase of more than 620 percent over the previous year. The number of children and teens who use them is on the rise as well, health officials said.
The Utah Department of Health reports that 4.8 percent of adults and 5.8 percent of teens routinely use the nicotine vapor product, according to 2013 data, the latest available. The rate of regular e-cigarette use in Utah more than doubled from 2012 to 2013, and it tripled among Utah students from 2011 to 2013.
Without state or federal laws to govern e-cigarette and e-liquid production and sales, local jurisdictions have taken it upon themselves to protect Utahns, and Garrett said Salt Lake County will be the next to enact a policy.
She expects the board to vote on something as early as next month. If a policy is adopted, the health department would be responsible for enforcing it through random inspections and monitoring of local manufacturing activity.
Garrett said there are several manufacturers in the valley that the health department would love to keep its eye on to make sure they’re following the rules.
“Inaccurate labeling is alarming because consumers don’t know exactly what they’re taking into their bodies or at what level,” she said. “It’s also a real concern for poison control and emergency room staff, who don’t know if the labeled amount of nicotine in a bottle a child has ingested is accurate.”
Nicotine in e-liquids was to blame for 131 calls to theUtah Poison Control Center in 2014, according to the health department.
Health officials also reviewed the availability of child-proof lids for e-liquid cartridges and found that more than a quarter of the samples containing a listed amount of nicotine did not have safety caps.
There are 12 local health departments in the state, and at least Davis, Weber and Utah counties have adopted regulations, while Summit County has an ordinance, but Garrett said most if not all departments would be on board for statewide legislation, which may be presented in the upcoming session of the Utah Legislature.
In the meantime, Garrett said, “if you have e-cigarettes of e-juice lying around, lock it up where a child can’t get into it. Just like any medication, you should lock it up and keep it out of reach.”
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865619211/Salt-Lake-County-health-study-reveals-big-problem-with-inaccurate-e-liquid-labeling.html?pg=all

Tobacco companies criticize federal judge

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 scrapped.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the largest cigarette makers to admit they had lied for decades about the dangers of smoking, and to publicize a federal court’s conclusion that Altria, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard, and Philip Morris USA deliberately deceived the public.

The companies said the statement was misleading and too broad.

In 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit directed Kessler to craft corrective statements confined to purely factual and uncontroversial information that would reveal previously hidden truths about the tobacco industry’s products.

But the companies said in the new filing that Kessler went beyond those instructions and ordered a series of inflammatory statements that require the defendants to denigrate themselves.

The companies said that in accordance with the appeals court’s ruling, they stand ready to disseminate statements that provide public health information about cigarettes.

Arguments in the case will be heard on Feb. 23.

http://news.yahoo.com/tobacco-companies-criticize-federal-judge-192705159–finance.html

Opinion: A tobacco tax increase would make Maryland healthier

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 Medicaid program.

That should spur Gov.-elect Larry Hogan (R) and legislators to step up efforts to prevent kids from using tobacco and to help users quit.

Ideally, Maryland would increase its tobacco tax. The last tobacco tax increase, in 2008, helped reduce smoking among youth and adults.

Maryland must also increase funding for its tobacco prevention and cessation programs, which have been cut by more than half in recent years. Maryland will receive $543 million from the 1998 tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes this year, but it will spend just $8.5 million on tobacco prevention. This paltry sum is less than 18 percent of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends. These programs save lives and money. Washington state saves more than $5 in health-care costs for every $1 spent on its program.

Maryland can’t let up; the tobacco industry isn’t letting up in promoting its products. Nationwide, Big Tobacco spends $8.8 billion a year on marketing, including more than $120 million in Maryland. The result: Tobacco remains the No. 1 cause of preventable death. Unless Maryland’s leaders continue to fight this scourge, the state will pay a high price in lives and dollars.

Matthew L. Myers, Washington

The writer is president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-tobacco-tax-increase-would-make-maryland-healthier/2014/12/31/0cbfb454-905a-11e4-a66f-0ca5037a597d_story.html

Cigarette Addiction Affects Men, Women's Brains Differently; Brain Scans Reveal Need For Tailored Treatment

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 the brain’s pleasure and reward pathways, in men and women’s brains, and published their findings in the Journal of Neuroscience earlier this month.

Dopamine levels increase when addictive substances, such as the nicotine found in cigarettes, enter the body and flood the brain. For the first time, researchers have developed a way to watch the dopamine levels change while a person smokes. Researchers observed the dopamine levels of 16 addicted cigarettes smokers — eight men and eight women — with at least 17 years of smoking behind them.

Each participant was told to smoke one or two cigarettes whenever they wanted while under observation, and they weren’t allowed to use any nicotine patches or medications during the study. The study’s lead researcher Kelly Cosgrove, a radiology professor from Yale University, scanned each of their brains, and pieced each of the images together in order to create a sequence of brain movements.

Dopamine struck women harder and faster in one section of the brain called the dorsal putamen, while men had moderate to low activation in the same area. Men, on the other hand, had much faster and consistent activity in the ventral striatum, while women were only mildly affected. But what did all this mean?

“I think it confirms that strategies that focus on drug reward are likely to work better for men –- these would include the nicotine replacement strategies [like the patch],” Cosgrove, told the Huffington Post. “And for women it highlights that we need different and new medications — ones that target the reasons why women smoke, such as to relieve stress and manage mood.”

Women were more affected by the sensation of smoking, such as its taste and the smell of smoke, while men were more affected by the nicotine itself. Men are much more likely to use chewing tobacco because they don’t care about the cigarette or the activities smoking brings with it; they just want that nicotine. Women, on the other hand, may do better smoking a low-nicotine cigarette, so long as they have a cigarette in hand to take a drag and blow smoke from.

“If [women] are smoking more for the taste and sensory effects, then low-nicotine cigarettes might be an effective way to wean themselves off the regular cigarettes, whereas men might have more nicotine withdrawal and not really get much out of those [low-nicotine] cigarettes,” Kenneth Perkins, a psychiatric professor at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the study, told HuffPost. “The possibility is that they might be a more effective way for women to quit than men, but that’s purely speculative at this point.”

Source: Cosgrove K. Journal of Neuroscience. 2014.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/cigarette-addiction-affects-men-womens-brains-differently-brain-scans-reveal-need-315628