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Number of cigarette smokers drops to 15%: CDC

The number of cigarette smokers in the United States has dropped to about 15 percent of the population, its lowest point in decades, U.S. health authorities said Tuesday.
“The prevalence of current cigarette smoking among U.S. adults declined from 24.7 percent in 1997 to 15.2 percent in January-March 2015,” said the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The figures will be updated once the entire year’s data is available.
Smoking continues to be more common among men (17.4 percent) than women (13.0 percent), the report found.
Smoking is most common among African Americans (18.1 percent), followed by whites (17.1 percent) and Hispanics (10.4 percent).
According to the U.S. surgeon general, smoking is known to cause “a host of cancers and other illnesses and is still the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, killing 480,000 people each year.”
Smokers made up 42 percent of the U.S. population in 1965, a fraction that has dropped steadily over the years, according to the CDC.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/number-cigarette-smokers-drops-15-cdc-article-1.2344374

HuffPo: The U.S. Smoking Rate Just Hit A Historic Low

, Senior National Correspondent, The Huffington Post
Chalk up another big win for public health: The smoking rate among U.S. adults appears to have hit a new low.
New survey data, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Tuesday morning, suggests that just 15.2 percent of American adults are now using cigarettes on a regular basis. That smoking rate is nearly 2 percentage points lower than what the same survey reported for calendar year 2014.
The basis for the findings are responses to the National Health Interview Survey, which the Census Bureau operates on behalf of the CDC and is among the most reliable instruments government has for measuring health habits and status. The data is preliminary, because it comes from January through March and the smoking rate might yet creep up before the year ends. Among other factors, people have been known to quit in January, after making a New Year’s resolution, and then resume a few months later.
But even allowing for that possibility, and the margin of error that all surveys have, it’s likely the adult smoking rate for the full 2015 calendar year will be lower than it was in 2014.
“This result is absolutely exciting and maybe even astonishing, if this decrease holds up when we see data for the full year,” Kenneth Warner, a professor of health policy and management at the University of Michigan, told The Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-smoking-rate-historic-low_55e4a96be4b0b7a96339de51?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

New CDC Report Shows Big Drop in Secondhand Smoke Exposure Among Americans, But 58 Million Still Exposed – Every State and Community Should be Smoke-Free

Statement of Susan M. Liss, Executive Director, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids

WASHINGTON, DC – The percentage of Americans exposed to secondhand smoke has fallen by more than half since 1999, but one in four non-smokers – 58 million people altogether – was still exposed in 2011-2012, according to a new report issued today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is especially troubling that children have the highest levels of exposure, with 40.6 percent of children aged 3-11 and 67.9 percent of African-American children in that age group still exposed to secondhand smoke. While the sharp decline in exposure to secondhand smoke is great news, it is unacceptable that 58 million Americans, including so many children, are still exposed to this serious and entirely preventable health threat.

The CDC report demonstrates both the effectiveness of and continuing need for comprehensive smoke-free laws that apply to all workplaces and public places, including restaurants and bars. To date, 24 states, Washington, DC, and hundreds of cities have enacted such laws, protecting about half the U.S. population (an additional six states have laws that apply to all restaurants and bars, but not all other workplaces). It’s time for every state and community to go smoke-free and protect everyone’s right to breathe clean air, free from the serious health hazards of secondhand smoke.

States in the South have lagged behind in providing this important public health protection, which is easy and cost-effective to implement and very popular with the public. New Orleans set a terrific example for southern states and cities last month when it enacted a comprehensive smoke-free ordinance. The Kentucky Legislature should quickly follow suit and finally approve comprehensive, statewide smoke-free legislation that has been under consideration for several years.

The high level of child exposure to secondhand smoke also underscores the need for parents to take additional steps to protect children, such as ensuring that homes, cars and other places frequented by children are smoke-free. It is encouraging that the proportion of U.S. households with voluntary smoke-free rules has increased from 43 percent to 83 percent in the last two decades. For parents who smoke, the best step to protect children is to quit smoking.

Overall, the CDC reported that the percentage of non-smokers exposed to secondhand smoke fell from 52.5 percent during 1999-2000 to 25.3 percent during 2011-2012. Exposure was higher among children, African Americans, those living in poverty and those who live in rental housing. Secondhand smoke exposure was determined based on blood levels of cotinine, a nicotine byproduct.

“Continued efforts to promote implementation of comprehensive statewide laws prohibiting smoking in workplaces and public places, smoke-free policies in multiunit housing, and voluntary smoke-free home and vehicle rules are critical to protect nonsmokers from this preventable health hazard in the places they live, work, and gather,” the CDC concludes. The report provides support for growing efforts to make public and subsidized housing smoke-free, with the report noting, “The potential for SHS [secondhand smoke] exposure in subsidized housing is particularly concerning because a large proportion of these units are occupied by persons who are especially sensitive to the effects of SHS, including children, the elderly and the disabled.”

Secondhand smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals, including hundreds that are toxic and at least 69 that cause cancer. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, secondhand smoke causes lung cancer, heart disease and stroke in non-smoking adults and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), low birth weight, respiratory problems, ear infections and more severe asthma in infants and children.

The Surgeon General also found that secondhand smoke is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the United States each year, there is no safe level of exposure, and only smoke-free laws provide effective protection. The evidence is also clear that smoke-free laws protect health without harming business.

The CDC’s report was published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

'Teens choosing health': Smoking hits a landmark low

Kim Painter, Special for USA TODAY

Cigarette smoking among high school students in the United States has reached a landmark low in a survey health officials have been conducting every two years since 1991.

Just 15.7% of teens were current smokers in 2013, down from 27.5% when the survey began and 36.4% in the peak year of 1997, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. That means the nation has already met the government’s official goal of getting teen smoking below 16% by 2020.

“I think the bottom line is that our teens are choosing health,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said.

Frieden was referring not just to the progress on smoking, but to other gains in healthy behaviors picked up in the nationally representative Youth Risk Behavior Survey of more than 13,000 teens. Data for the report also come from state and local versions of the survey. The surveys are conducted at public and private high schools.

The data show teens are drinking less alcohol and fewer sodas, getting into fewer physical fights and having less sex with more birth control. Also, despite all the recent news about school shootings, the share of students threatened or injured with a gun, knife or other weapon on school property has dropped to 6.9%, from a peak of 9.2% in 2003.

But it’s not all good news: Condom use among the sexually active (about one third of teens) is down to 59%, from a peak of 63% in 2003. Condoms remain essential for protection from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, but teens may not be getting the message, Frieden says.

Even the news on tobacco is mixed: A once-rapid decline in cigar use has slowed, leaving cigars as popular as cigarettes with high school boys. Cigars were smoked by 23% of 12th grade boys in the month before the survey. Smokeless tobacco use hasn’t changed since 1999, holding at about 8%. Other surveys have shown increases in e-cigarette and hookah use. And the declines in cigarette use are uneven from place to place, reflecting varying tobacco control efforts, Frieden says.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” with the help of increased cigarette taxes, better educational campaigns and other measures, says Vince Willmore, a spokesperson for the non-profit Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, Washington, D.C. “But the fight against tobacco isn’t over and it can’t be over when you still have 2.7 million high school kids who smoke.”

The survey, a treasure trove of data on more than 100 risky behaviors, “tells us what kids do but not why,” says Stephanie Zaza, director of CDC’s division of adolescent and school health. Among other details:

• 25% of students were in a physical fight in the year before the survey, down from 42% in 1991. Just 8% fought at school, down from 16%.

• 32% watched three daily hours of TV, down from 43% in 1999. But some of that time apparently shifted to computers, with 41% using a computer for non-school reasons at least three hours a day, up from 22% in 2003.

• 27% had at least one soda a day, down from 34% in 2007.

• 41% of those who drove admitted to texting or e-mailing while driving. CDC first asked about texting in 2011, but with a differently worded question, so it can’t say whether rates are up or down.

• 2.3 % had ever used heroin, a number that has remained fairly steady through the years. But in some large urban school districts, use was much higher, up to 7.4%.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/12/teen-cigarette-cdc-survey/10368235/

Letter: Big tobacco goes after ‘replacement smokers’

By: Beth Hughes, Bismarck, INFORUM
Even though the risks of using tobacco are well documented, it remains the No. 1 cause of preventable death and disease in the country. This year alone, nearly 500,000 Americans will die prematurely because of smoking. Unfortunately, tobacco marketing efforts recruit two new young smokers to replace each tobacco user who dies.
It’s well documented that tobacco companies market to youth in an effort to recruit “replacement smokers.” Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us that smoking and smokeless tobacco use are initiated and established primarily during adolescence. In fact, nearly 9 out of 10 smokers start smoking by the age of 18. Tobacco companies know this and continually look for new ways to hook our youth.
Tobacco companies pay convenience stores – many located near schools – and other tobacco retailers to prominently display advertisements for their products near the entrances, exits and checkouts. Tobacco companies also target a new generation of potential tobacco users by designing items to appeal to youth, such as fruit-flavored products in colorful packaging that make tobacco look and smell like candy.
In addition to new flavors and packaging, price is another factor that affects tobacco use. In states with low tobacco taxes, like North Dakota, it’s easier to make tobacco products affordable, and that makes it easier for youth to obtain tobacco. Research supported by the CDC and the American Lung Association shows that increasing a tobacco tax is one of the most effective ways to reduce youth tobacco use; by making tobacco less affordable, kids are less likely to buy it.
The Center for Tobacco Prevention and Control Policy uses media campaigns to educate the public about the dangers of tobacco use. The Center also works with local public health units across the state to educate our communities on tobacco prevention so our children live healthier lives as fewer of them become addicted to nicotine.
We are committed to preventing tobacco use among our youth and adult populations. We’ve made great progress, but there is more work to be done. Showing support for tobacco prevention efforts in your community is a great start to help reduce youth tobacco use rates. Here is what you can do:
• Support tobacco-free and smoke-free policies within your community. When youth are not exposed to tobacco, it increases their chance to remain tobacco free.
• Support policies that restrict how tobacco is marketed. Tobacco companies are aggressive marketers that target youth through retail displays, internet marketing and magazines that are popular with teens.
• Support tobacco tax increases. Our youth are less likely to use tobacco if it is less affordable.
These strategies are CDC Best Practice strategies – strategies that are proven to reduce youth tobacco use rates. We ask the community to join us in this fight by showing your support for tobacco prevention.

Hughes, Ph.D., is a registered respiratory therapist, and chairwomen, North Dakota Tobacco Prevention and Control Committee.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/428702/group/Opinion/

Teenage E-Cigarette Use Likely Gateway to Smoking

By Caroline Chen, Bloomberg News
E-cigarettes facing municipal bans and scrutiny by U.S. regulators received a new slap on the wrist from scientists: A report today suggests the devices may be a gateway to old-fashioned, cancer-causing smokes for teens.
Youths who reported ever using an e-cigarette had six times the odds of smoking a traditional cigarette than those who never tried the device, according to a study published today in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. E-cigarette use didn’t stop young smokers from partaking in regular cigarettes as well.
The global market for e-cigarettes may top $5 billion this year, according to Euromonitor International Ltd. estimates. Makers of the devices, including Altria Group Inc. (MO), the largest U.S. tobacco company, market them online and on TV, where traditional tobacco ads are banned, and some have added flavors such as bubble gum to the nicotine vapor that may have extra appeal for youths. That allure is why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs to restrict the devices, opponents say.
“The FDA needs to act now,” Vince Willmore, spokesman for the Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in a telephone interview. “We think it’s overdue.”
Concerns about underage use of e-cigarettes were raised last year when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reported that use of the devices by youths doubled in 2012 from a year earlier.
“E-cigarettes are likely to be gateway devices for nicotine addiction among youth, opening up a whole new market for tobacco,” said Lauren Dutra, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California at San Francisco and the report’s lead author. “We’re most worried about nicotine addiction initiation in youth.”

Enticing Product

E-cigarettes “are enticing for kids,” said Donovan Robinson, dean of students at Chicago’s Lincoln Park High School. He said today’s findings weren’t surprising. “They’ll say, ‘Hey, now let’s try the real thing.’”
Children in middle and high school, the target of the research, don’t think about health consequences, he said.
“Everything is a fad with teenagers,” Robinson said. They use e-cigarettes “because it looks cool. Teenagers see somebody doing something cool, and they want to do it.”
The latest research analyzed data from the 2011 and 2012 National Youth Tobacco Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost 40,000 middle and high school students from about 200 schools across the U.S. participated in the survey. Students were asked about their frequency of use of e-cigarettes, conventional cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and other tobacco products.

No Tar

While battery-powered e-cigarettes enable the ingestion of heated nicotine, users avoid the tars, arsenic and other chemicals common in tobacco products that have been linked to cancer, supporters have said.
The study today shows correlation, not causation, said Cynthia Cabrera, executive director of Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, the Washington-based e-cigarette association.
“I’ve yet to see any science that shows there’s a gateway effect,” Cabrera said in a telephone interview. “We want to work with facts and science, we don’t want to make knee-jerk decisions based on emotional responses.”
Cabrera warned against drawing inferences on teen use based on the use of flavors in e-cigarettes.
“We do know that thousands of people were able to switch over to vapor products because of the flavors,” she said in a telephone interview. “Would we deny people who were in a group who could die from tobacco to use flavors that helped them get off killer tobacco?”

Nicotine Effects

Opponents have countered that nicotine alone is so toxic it’s been used in the past as a pesticide. They say the health effects of nicotine, which has proven to be habit forming, are unclear and deserve more study. Until that’s done, they’ve said, advertising of the devices should be closely monitored to make sure it isn’t aimed at underage smokers.
“We’re concerned that the marketing for e-cigarettes risks re-glamorizing smoking” among youths who won’t make the distinction between electronic and conventional cigarettes, Willmore said.
In December, a billboard in Miami used Santa Claus to market e-cigarettes and in the recent Sports Illustrated bathing suit issue there was an ad for one of the devices “right in the middle of a bikini bottom,” he said.
“You couldn’t design an ad more appealing to a teenage boy,” Willmore said.

Pivotal Year

This is expected to a pivotal year for producers of electronic cigarettes, with all major tobacco companies either launching new products or expanding their e-cigarette sales exposure, said Kenneth Shea, a Bloomberg analyst. Altria, Reynolds American Inc. and Lorillard Inc. are all expected to pursue U.S. exposure for their e-cigarettes, while closely held Logic Technology Development LLC and Sottera Inc., the maker of the e-cigarette NJoy, try to keep pace, Shea wrote in a report this month.
While tobacco companies have been under the FDA’s watchful eye since Congress gave the agency authority over the $90 billion industry in 2009, e-cigarettes haven’t been subject to the same oversight. The agency is now in the process of readying new rules for the industry designed to establish clear manufacturing standards and set boundaries for how the products can be marketed.
Federal regulators aren’t the only government officials moving to control use of e-cigarettes. On March 4, the Los Angeles City Council voted to join New York and Chicago in banning the use of the electronic products in in workplaces, restaurants and many public areas.

Bans Criticized

The municipal restrictions were criticized by Miguel Martin, president of Logic Technology, the second-largest independent e-cigarette maker in the U.S. Localities should wait for the FDA to make its views known before taking action, Martin said in an interview before the council vote.
“I find it odd that everybody looks to the FDA for guidance on everything else, but because it’s politically expedient, they don’t on this,” Martin said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-06/teenage-e-cigarette-use-likely-gateway-to-smoking.html

Health Minute: Doctors weigh in on e-cigarettes

(CNN) — Tobacco-less cigarettes called e-cigarettes are gaining popularity in this country.
They can help people quit smoking, but some fear they can get others hooked on nicotine.
Peter Chugaev has been smoking for 45 years and for the past 15 he’s been trying to quit.
“You have a cup of coffee, you go on the deck, you have a cigarette,” Chugaev said.
Now he’s turning to electronic cigarettes to try to quit. Users inhale, but there’s no smoke. Taking a puff triggers a heating coil, which warms up liquid nicotine, in a plastic filter, resulting in nicotine-filled vapor.
But hardcore smokers aren’t the only ones seeking out e-cigarettes.
Young people are as well and this has some health experts concerned because these products are not federally regulated and there is limited research on their safety.
Dr. Sharon Bergquist, with the Emory School of Medicine said, “The greatest concern is that between 2011 and 2012 the rate of use between middle school and high school kids has doubled.”
These products come in flavors that may appeal to young people.
Dr. Thomas Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control says, “Well, there are not a lot of adults who would smoke a cotton candy e-cigarette.”
Health experts worry that once addicted to the nicotine in e-cigarettes, young people may branch out and try tobacco products.
Manufacturers say they don’t market to kids and maintain that electronic cigarettes are a good alternative to conventional cigarettes.
And for Peter, e-cigarettes seem to be helping. He is down from a pack a day of regular cigarettes to about half that and hopes to kick the habit by the end of the year.
http://fox44.com/news/health-minute-doctors-weigh-e-cigarettes

Candy Flavors Put E-Cigarettes On Kids' Menu

By Jenny Lei Bolario
Electronic-cigarettes are often billed as a safe way for smokers trying to kick their habit. But it’s not just smokers who are getting their fix this way. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 5 middle schoolers who tried one say they’ve never smoked a cigarette. And between 2011 and 2012, e-cigarettes doubled in popularity among middle and high school students.
At a middle school in the San Francisco Bay Area, 8th grader Viviana Turincio noticed some kids smoking in class– or at least, that’s what it looked like.
“There was a group at the table and they were just smoking on the vape pen and the teacher was right there, and the teacher didn’t even notice,” she remembered.
That’s because her classmates were smoking an electronic cigarette, sometimes called a vape pen. It’s a hand-held, battery-powered device that vaporizes a liquid, which is often infused with nicotine. You inhale the vapor through a mouthpiece, and exhale what looks like smoke. In this case the smoke smelled like candy.
“My favorite flavor is gummy bears because it tastes really good,” Viviana said.
Vapor liquids come in various flavors but teens prefer dessert-inspired ones, which are more appealing than the smell and taste of burning tobacco. Marleny Samayoa, also in the 8th grade, thinks traditional cigarettes taste too bitter. “It has kind of a weird taste to it, like coffee without sugar,” she explained.
E-cigarettes are easier for kids to buy than regular cigarettes. There’s no federal age limit for how old you have to be. But some states, including California, prohibit the sale to minors. That’s why middle-schoolers turn to sites like E-bay, where independent sellers don’t ask for your age.
“A lot of kids are getting them online and they’re just introducing it to a lot of other kids and it just keeps going from there,” explained Marleny.
She has noticed the growing popularity of e cigs on social media sites like Instagram. Look up #Vapelife and the pictures are endless. “I take pictures and do tricks, like blowing O’s, blowing them on flat surfaces and making tornadoes,” Marleny described.
Swirling clouds of vapor are touching down in theatres, restaurants and malls, while health professionals are trying to catch up with this new fad.
Dr. Cathy McDonald runs a center for Tobacco Dependence, Treatment and Cessation for Alameda County in California. She admitted that, “right now we don’t have as much information as we would like.” What researchers do know, Dr. McDonald explained, is “ten minutes of smoking an e-cigarette for a person who has never smoked a cigarette does cause a noticeable increase in airway resistance in the lungs.”
But, she conceded, “it’s probably better than smoke and I say that because smoking a cigarette is 4000 chemicals, 400 are poison, 40 cause cancer.”
Researchers haven’t had the time to do long-term studies comparing traditional cigarettes to electronic ones. But at least among my friends, the ones who’ve made the switch have noticed a positive change. My boyfriend, Gray Keuankaew, is one of them.
“Within the two months that I’ve been vaping, my body feels a little bit more healthy,” he said. “I’m a runner, so I’m able to run a bit longer without having to catch my breath. So if it’s gonna be any type of positive benefit, then I’m definitely gonna stick to it.”
I’m glad it’s easier for him to run, but he hasn’t outrun his nicotine addiction. E-cigarettes still have nicotine – you choose what amount you want. The Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association estimated that e-cigarette sales will surpass $2.5 billion dollars this year. Geoff Braithwaite owns Tasty Vapor, a company in Oakland that sells and distributes liquids for e-cigarettes.
“Our target customer base is those people who felt doomed to a life of smoking,” said Braithwaite. But he admits that adults aren’t the only ones who may be jumping on this new trend. “There’s going to be that novelty around it, it’s a brand new thing, it’s an electronic device. That kind of stuff will always appeal to kids, it would have appealed to me.”
Anti-smoking campaigns spent decades and billions of dollars to make smoking lessappealing to youth– helping cut teen smoking by 45%. But cheap prices for brightly colored e-cigs, sweet flavors, and the ability to vape anywhere is putting nicotine back on the kids menu. The Food and Drug Administration has said it plans to regulate e-cigarettes, but so far the agency hasn’t issued any rules.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/youth-radio-youth-media-international/candy-flavors-put-e-cigar_b_4833286.html

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

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