Ohio State study: Smokers cost employers $6K more annually

By Alexa Carson
Employees who smoke cost their employers almost $6,000 more annually than nonsmokers, according to a recent study conducted by Ohio State researchers.
Lead author Micah Berman, from the College of Public Health and Moritz College of Law, told The Lantern he decided to research this topic when he was asked to give a presentation on policies involving smoking in the workplace, such as smoke-free policies and not hiring smokers. He discovered no studies had been done on the comprehensive costs of employing a smoker versus a nonsmoker.
“It was odd to me that the question hadn’t been answered given that employers were making decisions about smokers in the workplace,” Berman said.
By performing an analysis of previous studies done on individual smoking related expenses to an employer, Berman and his co-authors estimated a $5,816 annual excess expense from discrete costs related to smoking.
These costs include smoke breaks, health care costs, absenteeism and presenteeism, which Berman described as “reduced focus in the workplace due to going through nicotine withdrawal throughout the work day.” The study adjusted for the fact that smokers tend to make less than nonsmokers, and even factored in a “death benefit,” Berman said.
“Companies with defined benefit pension systems may save some money due to the fact that smokers die earlier than non-smokers,” Berman said. “But the cost savings is very minimal.”
Berman said he had expected to find smokers would incur excess costs, but two results of the study surprised him.
“One is the extent of the cost,” said Berman, “and second is the health care costs. Well, everyone’s aware of those, but in fact the majority of the costs weren’t due to health care costs but due to productivity costs from things like smoke breaks.”
Brooke Cavallo, a third-year in strategic communication, said she thinks productivity costs can be an issue between smokers and employers based on what she has seen at work.
“I work in a bar and most of my coworkers do smoke, and we are constantly getting in trouble because they take smoke breaks,” Cavallo said.
Berman said his research takes no position on whether businesses should or should not hire smokers, and focuses on the economical rather than ethical issues related to smoking policies. He believes, however, tobacco cessation programs, which “cost up front but save money over time,” or tobacco-free policies can reduce costs to employers.
Under the tobacco-free policy OSU plans to implement this semester, no tobacco products of any kind are allowed on any OSU property either indoors or outdoors. Previously, the university followed a nonsmoking policy that prevented smoking indoors but had no restrictions on smokeless tobacco or smoking outdoors, except in certain “tobacco-free” areas. The policy began on Aug. 1, but will not be implemented in earnest until January 2014.
Dr. Peter Shields, co-chair of the Tobacco-Free Implementation Committee at OSU, said the “first and foremost reason we are going tobacco free is because we want to have a healthier community.”
Shields is also the deputy director at the OSU James Comprehensive Cancer Center and a professor at the College of Medicine. He said cost was a factor in deciding to implement a tobacco-free policy.
“There are other reasons that follow behind that are not necessarily as important,” Shields said, “and one of those is the cost to the university for faculty and staff who continue using tobacco.”
Berman said he had similar beliefs about the policy.
“I don’t think cost is the most important reason for the adoption of the policy,” Berman said. “But it may end up saving the university money too.”
http://www.thelantern.com/campus/ohio-state-study-smokers-cost-employers-6k-more-annually-1.3051093#.UhTN2mRUM0M

Target Field Says ‘No’ To E-Cigarettes

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (WCCO) – More smokers are turning to electronic cigarettes as a less-expensive and less-regulated way to get their nicotine. But they’re still so new, governments and businesses are grappling with how to deal with them.
E-cigarettes have a battery-powered heating element that produces vapor rather than smoke. They’re not restricted under Minnesota’s Clean Indoor Air Act, but many businesses – including the Minnesota Twins – are telling customers to put them away.
The team’s senior director of communications, Kevin Smith, says the restriction has been under consideration for some time.
“Because of the proliferation of it, we want to make it crystal clear that Target Field is a non-smoking venue of any kind,” Smith said.
Smith says an increasing number of fans had been spotted using the e-cigarettes, so stadium announcer Adam Abrams now has an extra line in his pre-game announcements.
Twins fan Jay Rudi of Edina appreciates the team’s policy.
“When I bring my family here, I don’t want to have to be breathing in smoke,” Rudi said.
Sina War, owner of Uptown Vapor Shoppe, says her store has been in business since April. She says many people misunderstand how e-cigarettes work.
“We call it ‘vaping’ because it’s vapor,” War said.
It may look and feel like smoking, but the e-cigarettes aren’t loaded with tobacco. They’re filled with liquids, in flavors like Red Bull, cupcake and mango.
Most of those liquids contain nicotine, which comes from tobacco.
“It just smells like what you’re vaping on, so if you’re vaping on lemonade, it just smells like lemonade,” War said.
Nancy Carlson of Minnetonka talked her cigar-smoking husband, Brian, into visiting the Uptown Vapor Shoppe in hopes that he’ll make the switch.
“We have a shed, and he’s banished to the shed in the winter time,” Carlson said.
The FDA has indicated it may start regulating e-cigarettes in the fall. For now, there are few studies into whether they’re actually safe.
“It’s not hurting anyone around you,” War said. “It’s helping the person actually using it.”
Advocates for e-cigarettes wish they could take the word “cigarette” out of it because of the negative connotation.
In California, they’re known as “personal vaporizers,” or PVs.
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/08/19/target-field-says-no-to-e-cigarettes/

Legislators aim to bar e-cigarette sales to minors

By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff
NATICK — Appearing on the Late Show, sassy actress Katherine Heigl puffed an electronic cigarette as she told David Letterman it had helped her kick a smoking habit and live healthier since becoming a mother.
Rather than applauding, Tami Gouveia, executive director of Tobacco Free Mass, is cheering a new bill to prohibit sale of e-cigarettes and other “nicotine-delivery devices’’ to anyone under 18 in Massachusetts.
Gouveia supports the bill filed last week by Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, D-Jamaica Plain, because she’s concerned such devices when glamorized by celebrities, like Jenny McCarthy and Johnny Depp, encourage minors to smoke.
“We regard them as an initiation pathway to using cigarettes. It’s dangerous to think of e-cigarettes as less dangerous than regular cigarettes. That’s what the industry wants us to think,’’ she said.
Sanchez’ bill “prohibits sale of nicotine delivery products … to anyone under 18″ and restricts retailers and manufacturers from providing samples of such products” except in tobacco stores and smoking bars.’’
Sanchez said he wrote his bill because current state laws “are silent on the availability of e-cigarettes to minors.’’
“Right now, my 7-year-old daughter could walk in and buy them at several locations and nobody would say anything. We want to make such products inaccessible to children. … We need to keep our children from becoming a new generation of nicotine addicts,’’ he said.
E-cigarettes and related products are currently sold under the name Smoke To Live: The Electronic Cigarette from a kiosk in the Natick Mall and can be purchased at several area tobacconists, package stores and from on-line sites.
Dvora Lieberman, regional manager for Smoke To Live, which operates in Massachusetts and three other states, said company policy prohibits sales to anyone under 18.
“If someone looks underage, we instruct our vendors to ask for IDs,’’ she said in a telephone interview. “If you’re going smoke cigarettes, e-cigarettes are better but they’re still addictive. It’s still a stimulant.’’
Lieberman said e-cigarettes can “definitely’’ help smokers quit traditional cigarettes which have many more harmful chemicals and they also provide “the option of reducing nicotine all the way down to zero if you want to quit.’’
She said e-cigarettes are also less harmful because they don’t burn and damage skin tissue and reduce the unpleasant tastes, smells and coughing associated with conventional cigarettes.
Speaking from her Framingham office, Gouveia expressed support for Sanchez’ bill’s prohibition of using e-cigarettes in places where smoking is outlawed, such as the workplace and high school campuses.
Several MetroWest legislators expressed support for the bill, citing the importance of discouraging nicotine use among minors.
After speaking with Sanchez, Sen. Karen Spilka, D-Ashland, described the bill as a “commonsense’’ measure to protect minors’ health.
“It’s important not to get these devices into children’s hands. Kids could think they’re better than cigarettes. The bottom line is nicotine is a poison that causes cancer,’’ she said.
While nicotine delivery devices are often marketed as safer alternatives to smoking, Spilka said further research is necessary to determine their impact on users’ health and the chemical composition of the “vapors’’ they release.
“We need to be wary and understand the consequences of these devices,’’ she said.
State Rep. Chris Walsh, D-Framingham, said the bill’s premise of keeping such devices out of minors’ hands makes good sense.
He said he was troubled by an advertising slogan for a brand of e-cigarettes that promised to help users “re-gain your freedom from smoking.’’
“Since nicotine is a habit-forming drug, promoting it by saying it’ll help get you off nicotine seems disingenuous,’’ said Walsh.
Walsh said, however, he wants to learn more about what carcinogens are delivered through such devices.
Two other area state representatives, Carolyn C. Dykema and Alice Hanlon Peisch, expressed support for Sanchez’ bill.
Dykema, D-Holliston, said she’d “just signed on to co-sponsor’’ Sanchez’s bill because of concerns nicotine delivery devices could be used to consume other illegal drugs including marijuana and some opioids including heroin.
She said she’s looking forward to a public hearing because research about the advertised benefits of such devices is “inconclusive.’’
Peisch, D-Wellesley, said she’d likely support efforts to restrict minors’ access to such devices and their use on school grounds. While Sanchez’ bill doesn’t recommend taxing such devices like conventional tobacco products, she said additional costs could further discourage minors from purchasing them.
Senator Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, cited an American Cancer Society study that said e-cigarettes might encourage people to smoke and added “more research is needed to see if the tobacco tax should be broadened to include electronic cigarettes.’’
And Sheriff Peter Koutoujian called “banning electronic cigarettes for children under 18 the right thing to do.’’
“Electronic cigarettes glamorize an unhealthy and addictive habit, not to mention that these are actual nicotine delivery devices,’’ he said. “That’s pretty much a one-two punch for children, setting them up to think smoking is cool then working in a chemical dependence. … Electronic cigarettes pose one more temptation for the younger teenagers that we don’t need out there.”
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/features/x606655175/Legislators-aim-to-bar-e-cigarette-sales-to-minors?zc_p=1

Health Matters: N.D. resources for tobacco cessation

By: Dr. Joshua Wynne, Grand Forks Herald
Q. I know that I need to quit smoking cigarettes, but it sure is hard! My doctor tells me that I need to quit cold turkey, but when I’ve done that, I soon restart puffing away. I think I can stop by gradually reducing my smoking. What do you think?
A. Although many might favor abruptly discontinuing cigarettes as the preferred strategy (similar to what often is recommended for abusers of alcohol), the available evidence actually suggests that the gradual route may not be significantly inferior to abrupt cessation. Some patients I’ve worked with have stopped smoking completely by setting targets — and then meeting them. So, for example, a patient might be smoking half a pack per day (10 cigarettes) and cut down by one cigarette/day every week.
Thus, in less than three months, the patient can be free of tobacco use. The key to the gradual option is to hold to the preselected targets — otherwise the patient will end up right back where she started. One very helpful resource in North Dakota is NDQuits, a free telephone-based service available to smokers and smokeless tobacco users. People using NDQuits have about a 10-fold higher chance of staying off of cigarettes after one year than those choosing to go cold turkey on their own. Give them a call at (800) QUITNOW or (800) 784-8669. And please call them soon!
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/271022/group/homepage/

FDA Struggles To Regulate The Thriving Flavored Cigar Market

By 
Cigarette smoking has been on the decline for years now, but as some people turn to e-cigarettes, others turn to cigars. For a long time, regulators didn’t focus on cigars. This has allowed the market to thrive over the past few years by appealing to smokers in ways cigarettes did not — many cigars are cheap and they come in a variety of flavors.
The 2009 Family Prevention and Tobacco Control Act banned virtually every flavor of cigarettes except menthol. Its purpose was to discourage youth under 18 years old from buying cigarettes. The law also called for cigarette companies to limit the color and design of packaging, and also to display larger health warnings.
Read More: Teens Ditching Cigarettes but Tobacco Consumption Problem Remains
Although teenage smoking declined 33 percent last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that tobacco use in other forms grew by 123 percent, which could mean that cigarettes are just being switched for other, cheaper forms, especially since cigar and loose tobacco sales increased to 10 percent of all tobacco sold in 2011, from only three percent in 2000.

Flavored Cigars Growing Popularity

But the tobacco companies may have found a loophole when dealing with these new regulations. Although they applied to cigarettes, the regulations made no mention of cigars, and left it up to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use its judgment on whether or not to regulate them.
Since then, convenience stores’ inventories have become loaded with a slew of colorful wrappers adorning various flavors of both small and large cigars, including grape, strawberry, pineapple, chocolate, and many more, according to The New York Times. On top of this, many of them are cheap — three for 99 cents in some places — appealing to many smokers who can’t always afford cigarettes.
“The 20th century was the cigarette century, and we worked very hard to address that,” Gregory N. Connolly, director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at Harvard School of Public Health, told the Times. “Now the 21st century is about multiple tobacco products. They’re cheap. They’re flavored. And some of them you can use anywhere.”
Flavored cigars account for more than half of all convenience store and gas station cigar sales, Christine Delnevo, a tobacco researcher at Rutgers University, told theTimes, adding that their sales increased almost 40 percent since 2008.
But some people believe the increased sales could be attributed to marijuana use. Some people use the cigar wrapper, which is a tobacco leaf, to roll the marijuana into what’s called a blunt — named after the cigar brand Phillies Blunt. One study found that about a fifth of 5,000 middle and high school students were using cigar wrappers to roll blunts.

How The FDA Is Discouraging Cigars

The FDA has begun sending out notices to tobacco companies, warning them about passing off roll-your-own tobacco as pipe tobacco, which is a way of avoiding taxes and FDA regulation since the two types have two different tax codes.
“The giant has finally awoken and hopefully will do its job,” Ron Bernstein, chief executive of cigarette producer Liggett Vector Brands, told the Times. He’s worried his company is being subjected to unfair competition from cigar makers.
If the FDA does succeed in regulating the largely unregulated cigar market, many people might be turned off of cigars, which are often harsher to smoke unflavored.
“If they take away the flavor, it would be a problem,” Trayvon Henderson, 19, told theTimes. “I’d probably stop smoking them. Or maybe I’d go back to cigarettes.”
http://www.medicaldaily.com/fda-struggles-regulate-thriving-flavored-cigar-market-252279

Vaping May Be Hazardous to Your Health

By the Editors
“Mind if I vape?”
The question may become more common as electronic cigarettes become more popular. The answer, however, remains elusive. Etiquette aside, the health effects of inhaling nicotine vapor (hence the term) are largely unknown. More research is clearly needed, but in the meantime, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has to start regulating e-cigarettes.
U.S. consumers will spend $1 billion on battery-powered smokes this year, 10 times more than they did four years ago. Are e-cigarettes, which come in such flavors as chocolate and butter rum, a benign device to help people stop smoking? Or are they just a new way to feed an old addiction? How safe, compared with tobacco smoke, is the vapor they create?
No one knows. The small studies that have been done so far hint at both pros and cons; one found that smokers cut back on real cigarettes after trying the electronic kind, while anotherfound particles of metal and silicates in e-cigarette vapor that could cause breathing problems. That there are more than 200 brands containing varying levels of nicotine and other substances only makes it harder to assess their safety.
The FDA has indicated it will begin to regulate e-cigarettes this fall. After a federal judge ruled that it couldn’t classify them as medical devices (because they deliver a drug, nicotine), the FDA will regulate them as tobacco products (because nicotine is derived from tobacco). Unlike regular cigarettes, however, e-cigarettes are not known to be lethal. Wariness is warranted, but it’s safe to assume that their vapors are not nearly as dangerous as tobacco smoke.
The FDA’s approach, therefore — and that of states and cities that regulate tobacco use — should be two-pronged: It should find out whether e-cigarettes are indeed safe. And while it does, it should ensure that “vaping” remains restricted to adults who are fully informed of the potential risks.
To begin, e-cigarette makers should be required to report and label all ingredients in the nicotine solutions they use. Even though these deliver fewer poisons than are found in traditional cigarettes, they nevertheless have been found to contain carcinogenic nitrosamines and other harmful impurities derived from the tobacco, as well as the additive diethylene glycol, an ingredient in antifreeze.
Manufacturers should also disclose the amount of nicotine that can be inhaled from their e-cigarettes. Today’s models haven’t been found to give users as large a hit of nicotine as regular cigarettes do, but that may not always be the case. (Some bottles of solution meant to refill e-cigarette cartridges have been found to contain enough nicotine to kill an adult if ingested.) Once more is known about the potential hazards of e-cigarette vapors, the FDA may need to restrict certain substances or place limits on nicotine levels.
Then there is the issue of flavoring — something the FDA forbids in standard cigarettes. All electronic cigarettes are flavored, so to ban flavoring would be to ban the product entirely. But it’s possible to allow tobacco- or even mint-flavored e-cigarettes and still ban or restrict flavors designed to appeal to children, hard as they may be to define.
While they’re at it, the FDA should also ban sales to those younger than 18 and restrict e-cigarette marketing and advertisements in much the same way it limits them for cigarettes. As for health warnings, the agency will need to wait for more data before deciding what exactly they should say.
States and cities, meanwhile, should include e-cigarettes in their restrictions on smoking in public places and office buildings, and apply the same rules on the retail sale of e-cigarettes as they do to tobacco products. Even in towns where there are few restrictions, bars and restaurants would be wise to prohibit “vaping” until they know whether it pollutes the air.
On the question of taxes, states and cities may want to act gradually. If e-cigarettes are found to be valuable smoking-cessation tools, then they may warrant a tax rate that’s lower than what’s imposed on real cigarettes.
It would be great if e-cigarettes turned out to be the breakthrough that gets people to give up smoking tobacco. In the meantime, we should all be careful that e-cigarettes not perpetuate a habit that society has come a long way toward snuffing out. Sensible regulation can help protect that progress.
To contact the Bloomberg View editorial board: view@bloomberg.net.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-18/vaping-may-be-hazardous-to-your-health.html

In All Flavors, Cigars Draw In Young Smokers

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
BALTIMORE — At Everest Greenish Grocery, a brightly lit store on a faded corner of this city, nothing is more popular than a chocolate-flavored little cigar. They are displayed just above the Hershey bars along with their colorful cigarillo cousins — white grape, strawberry, pineapple and Da Bomb Blueberry. And they were completely sold out by 9 one recent evening, snapped up by young people dropping by for a snack or stopping in during a night of bar hopping.
“Sorry, no more chocolate,” the night clerk, Qudrad Bari, apologetically told a young woman holding a fruit drink.
In 2009, Congress passed a landmark law intended to eliminate an important gateway to smoking for young people by banning virtually all the flavors in cigarettes that advocates said tempted them. Health experts predicted that the change would lead to deep reductions in youth smoking. But the law was silent on flavors in cigars and a number of other tobacco products, instead giving the Food and Drug Administration broad discretion to decide whether to regulate them.
Four years later, the agency has yet to assert that authority. And a rainbow of cheap flavored cigars and cigarillos, including some that look like cigarettes, line the shelves of convenience stores and gas stations, often right next to the candy. F.D.A. officials say they intend to regulate cigars and other tobacco products, but they do not say how or when. Smoking opponents contend that the agency’s delay is threatening recent progress in reducing smoking among young people.
Cigarette sales are down by a third over the past decade, according to federal data, but critics of the agency say the gains are being offset by the rise of cheaper alternatives like cigars, whose sales have doubled over the same period and whose flavored varieties are smoked overwhelmingly by young people. Loose tobacco and cigars expanded to 10 percent of all tobacco sold in the United States in 2011, up from just 3 percent in 2000, federal data show.
“The 20th century was the cigarette century, and we worked very hard to address that,” said Gregory N. Connolly, the director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Now the 21st century is about multiple tobacco products. They’re cheap. They’re flavored. And some of them you can use anywhere.”
The F.D.A. is now wrestling with how to exercise its authority over an array of other tobacco products. In recent weeks, for example, it sent warning letters to several companies that it says are disguising roll-your-own tobacco as pipe tobacco, a practice that industry analysts say has become a common way to avoid federal taxes and F.D.A. regulation.
“The giant has finally awoken and hopefully will do its job,” said Ron Bernstein, the chief executive of Liggett Vector Brands, a cigarette producer that is worried about unfair competition from cigar makers and others.
Mitchell Zeller, 55, a public interest lawyer who became the director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Tobacco Products this spring, acknowledged in an interview that the emergence of new tobacco products meant a new look was needed.
“What we’ve seen in the past 10 years is this remarkable transformation of the marketplace,” Mr. Zeller said. “There are products being sold today — unregulated products — that literally did not exist 10 years ago.”
But new rules have to be grounded in scientific evidence, he said, and written to withstand legal challenges. The tobacco industry won a recent court fight against graphic images on cigarette labels.
As for the criticism that the agency has been slow to act, Mr. Zeller said, “Message received.”
But the F.D.A.’s careful approach exasperates smoking opponents.
“We shouldn’t need 40 years of study to figure out that chocolate- and grape-flavored cigars are being smoked by young people,” said Matthew L. Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Traditional handmade cigars were seen as a luxury for older men, but much of the recent growth has been in products sold in convenience stores to low-income customers. Flavored cigars now represent more than half of all convenience store and gas station cigar sales, up nearly 40 percent since 2008, according to Nielsen market data analyzed by Cristine Delnevo, a tobacco researcher at Rutgers University.
A three-pack of Good Times flavored cigarillos at Everest costs 99 cents, an alluring price for the store’s clientele: young, poor African-Americans.
On a recent evening, Mr. Bari, a native of Pakistan, was in a generous mood. He had just broken his Ramadan fast with sweet tea and was helping a customer with the last 30 cents needed for a pack of Newports. But he said flavored cigars were actually more popular in his store than cigarettes. Sometimes people pay for them with spare change.
Jay Jackson, a 19-year-old nursing assistant in hospital scrubs, rarely has the $6.50 for a pack of cigarettes, which she also smokes, but can usually come up with a dollar for the kind of cigar she likes. Flavors improve the taste of cigars that are otherwise so harsh they make her light headed, she said, paying Mr. Bari for two — chocolate and cherry.
Mr. Bari said he remembered only strawberry, vanilla and chocolate when he first arrived 10 years ago. “Now look at this,” he said, motioning toward the cigar shelf disapprovingly. Some companies are producing small filtered cigars that look like cigarettes in brown wrappers, avoiding the federal taxes and F.D.A. regulation required for cigarettes. Mr. Bernstein, the cigarette producer, contended that such cigars made up much of the recent increase in cigar sales. A typical pack of 20 costs about $2, compared with about $6 for a pack of cigarettes.
Tobacco in cigars is cured by a different method than tobacco in cigarettes. And cigars come in a wrapper made of tobacco, while cigarettes are wrapped in paper. Smaller cigars popular among young people tend to be inhaled more, making the health risks similar to cigarettes.
Nationally, about one in six 18- to 24-year-olds smoke cigars, federal research shows, compared with only 2 percent of people over 65. More than half of the younger users smoke flavored cigars, with the highest rates among the poorest and least educated.
Those are familiar circumstances in certain parts of Baltimore, where life expectancy for men can be as low as 63 years, a level last seen for all American men in the 1940s. The smoking rate here is double the national one — a pattern that Devin Miles, a high school junior who started smoking cigarettes when he was 10, said was obvious at his school.
“Everybody smokes, even the teachers,” he said.
Cigar producers say they are bracing for F.D.A. action, even as sales have flattened in the last few years, dampened by new taxes. But they question a flavor ban, pointing out that the F.D.A. has yet to prohibit the most common flavor, menthol, in cigarettes and that chewing tobacco still comes in flavors.
“We continue to ask the question, ‘What’s the rationale?’ ” said Joe Augustus, a spokesman for Swisher International, a cigar producer. Flavors have existed “since the beginning of time,” he said, and are popular with “the guys who are cutting your lawn and fixing your car.”
There is also evidence that cigar purchases are related to marijuana use. In a survey of 5,000 middle and high school students in Massachusetts in 2003, researchers found that about a fifth were using cigar wrappers to smoke marijuana.
Mr. Bari, the night clerk, said many of his customers used the wrappers for marijuana. “It’s the younger generation,” he said. “Your sister’s crying, your daughter’s crying, you don’t care.”
One customer, Torri Stevens, a 19-year-old who said she worked at a strip club in Washington, said she sometimes smoked as many as 12 blunts a day, a name for marijuana in a cigar wrapper that is associated with Phillies Blunt, a cigar brand.
Black youths were the one group that registered a rise in cigar smoking nationally. Twelve percent of black high school students smoked cigars in 2011, compared with 7 percent in 2009, the C.D.C. said.
Maryland, where the legal age to buy cigarettes is 18, did its own survey and found that cigar smoking had increased across the entire high school population. It is now one of at least six states where cigar smoking among youths now equals or surpasses cigarette smoking, according to the C.D.C.
Alarmed officials started a public education campaign. A Web site, TheCigarTrap.com, shows an ice cream truck adorned with a giant lit cigar and children running after it.
On a recent night at Everest Greenish Grocery, Mr. Bari sold cigars to patrons of a nearby transvestite bar and people who were just leaving work.
Trayvon Henderson, 19, was still wearing his McDonald’s uniform when he stopped in for a chocolate cigarillo. Cigars are stylish, he said, and some of his favorite rappers smoke them.
“If they take away the flavor, it would be a problem,” he said, cigarillo in hand. “I’d probably stop smoking them. Or maybe I’d go back to cigarettes.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/health/in-all-flavors-cigars-draw-in-young-smokers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

Significant increase in fires due to improper disposal of smoking materials

By: Michael Yoshida, WDAZ
Officials with the Grand Forks Fire Department say they’ve seen a significant increase in fires caused by careless use of smoking materials. A deck fire on Monday was the latest, and in the last year there have been about ten accidental fires, one resulting in death. These fires can cause damages ranging in cost from $1,000 to excess of $100,000. Often times, fire marshals find that the cause of fires is careless and improper disposal of smoking materials. Officials say that if you choose to smoke, be responsible and aware.
Fire Marshal Brandon Boespflug said, “Every one of these fires are preventable. The deaths caused by these fires are preventable, and the key is if you’re going to smoke, smoke smart.”
Some tips for fire safety while smoking include using proper ashtrays, and not using your foot to put out smoking materials. For more safety information click here.
http://www.wdaz.com/event/article/id/19010/#sthash.c6JZoybR.dpuf

Letter: Tobacco tax is working

By:  Gina Johnson, Red Wing
In July 2013, a new law went into effect raising our state tobacco tax by $1.60, causing the average price of cigarettes to raise to $7.50 a pack.
Many people were concerned about how tobacco users who have limited income would manage. As a public health professional, I am pleased to see many tobacco users are now getting professional help to quit tobacco.
A recent study done by QUITPLAN Services, a free tobacco cessation program available to any Minnesotan, shows that this tax hike is reducing the smoking rates. The increased price of cigarettes has caused an increase in many smokers to seek out professional cessation support to help them quit.
QUITPLAN Services saw an increase of 256 percent in the first two weeks of July 2013 compared to the same time period in July 2012.
This data proves that price increases work, and that our communities are one gigantic step closer to becoming tobacco free.
Thank you to everyone who supported the $1.60 increase!
Gina Johnson is the Clearway Minnesota tobacco grant coordinator with Goodhue County Human and Health Services.
http://www.republican-eagle.com/content/letter-tobacco-tax-working#sthash.xxzIkHT6.dpuf
 

Letter of the Day (Aug. 13): Electronic cigarettes

An article last month (“Up in vapor,” July 13) described research related to electronic cigarettes and smoking cessation. As one who conducts research related to electronic cigarettes, I feel compelled to provide additional findings.
First, the Italian researchers cited in the article also conducted an experiment with smokers by randomly assigning them into using electronic cigarettes with or without nicotine (published in PLOS ONE). They found that smokers who used electronic cigarettes with nicotine reduced and quit smoking at the same rate as those who used electronic cigarettes without nicotine. This suggests the limited ability of nicotine-delivering electronic cigarettes to aid smoking cessation.
Second, researchers have studied the effect of secondhand electronic cigarette smoking. This work, published in Inhalation Toxicology, found that nonsmokers who stayed in the same room with electronic cigarette users showed elevated nicotine concentration in the blood, comparable to that of secondhand cigarette smoke.
The Freedom to Breathe Act of 2007 protects nonsmokers, particularly those who work at bars and restaurants, from the harmful effect of secondhand smoking. Given the known effects of secondhand electronic cigarette smoking, the Legislature should consider expanding the act.
KELVIN CHOI, Minneapolis
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters/219329381.html