Posts

CDC: E-cigs may be tempting non-smoking youths to smoke

By Reuters Media

CHICAGO – Electronic cigarettes may be more tempting to non-smoking youths than conventional cigarettes, and once young people have tried e-cigarettes they are more inclined to give regular cigarettes a try, U.S. researchers said on Monday. A report, released by a team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lends evidence to the argument that electronic cigarettes encourage youth smoking.

The study, based on nationally representative youth surveys, found that more than a quarter-million adolescents and teens who had never smoked used an electronic cigarette in 2013, a threefold increase from 2011.

Youths who had tried e-cigarettes were nearly twice as likely to say they would try a conventional cigarette in the next year compared with those who had never tried an e-cigarette, according to the study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

E-cigarettes are slim, reusable, metal-tube devices containing nicotine-laced liquids that come in exotic flavors. When users puff, the nicotine is heated and released as a vapor containing no tar, unlike conventional cigarette smoke.

Health experts have raised concerns that the burgeoning $2 billion e-cigarette industry, which has been virtually unregulated, would reverse gains in the decades-long effort to curb youth smoking in the United States. Just 15.7 percent of U.S. teenagers reported smoking in 2013, the lowest rate on record.

In April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed rules that would ban the sale of e-cigarettes to anyone under 18 but would not restrict flavored products, online sales or advertising, which public health advocates say attract children.

Earlier this month, attorneys general from 29 states urged the FDA to strengthen those rules to better protect young people from nicotine addiction.

“We are very concerned about nicotine use among our youth, regardless of whether it comes from conventional cigarettes, e-cigarettes or other tobacco products,” Dr. Tim McAfee, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, said in a statement.

“Not only is nicotine highly addictive, it can harm adolescent brain development.”

In the CDC study, researchers analyzed data from the 2011, 2012, and 2013 National Youth Tobacco Surveys of students in grades 6-12. They found that more than 263,000 who had never smoked a conventional cigarette used e-cigarettes in 2013, up from 79,000 in 2011.

Among non-smoking youth who had tried electronic cigarettes, 43.9 percent said they intended to smoke conventional cigarettes within the next year, compared with 21.5 percent of those who had never used e-cigarettes.

Lorillard Inc leads the U.S. e-cigarette market, while Reynolds American Inc and Altria Group Inc are rolling out their own brands nationwide this summer. A Wells Fargo analyst report in July projected that U.S. sales of e-cigarettes would outpace conventional ones by 2020.

http://www.inforum.com/content/cdc-e-cigs-may-be-tempting-non-smoking-youths-smoke

Why Can’t the Pentagon Stop Smoking?

By The Editors

Even the most oblivious member of Congress knows that smoking is bad for you. As it turns out, it’s even worse for you if you happen to be a soldier. So why would Congress insist that the Pentagon sell cigarettes — at a discount, no less?

The rationale has long been that members of the military have to smoke because their jobs are so stressful. There’s no denying the stress of military service, or that troops who smoke experience more of it than their comrades who don’t (though it may come more from their nicotine addiction than from their work).

Yet soldiers who smoke are not immune to lung cancer and the other lethal pulmonary illnesses that smoking causes. And like all smokers, they face an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. In fact, as an article in the current New England Journal of Medicine points out, smoking is especially harmful to soldiers because it lowers their fitness for service: It makes them more susceptible to injuries and infections, slows the time it takes for their wounds to heal, and leads them to take more frequent breaks than nonsmoking soldiers take.

The Pentagon, to its credit, has been trying for decades to restrict smoking. Most recently, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said he’s considering banning tobacco sales on Navy ships and Navy and Marine Corps bases. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has asked for a Defense Department-wide review of tobacco policies.

Sadly and predictably, political forces are fighting back. In response to the Navy’s possible sales ban, Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, has inserted language in the defense authorization bill that would require military commissaries to keep selling tobacco products. Congress responded the same way in the early 1990s after the captain of the USS Roosevelt said he planned to make that aircraft carrier smoke-free.

So it’s little wonder the military has continued to have a smoking problem. The Defense Department spends more than $1.6 billion a year on medical care and lost days of work due to smoking, and the Veterans Administration spends billions more treating ex-soldiers with lung disease.

About 1 in 4 members of all branches of the U.S. military smoke, compared with about 1 in 5 of the general population. But the percentages differ across the military: While about 30 percent of Marines smoke, members of the Air Force and Coast Guard smoke less than the national average, as do officers in all branches.

Millions of troops, in other words, have found more healthy ways to deal with the stress that inevitably accompanies military service. Nor are smoking bans especially difficult to impose or enforce: There is no smoking allowed during basic training, for example, and a 2010 ban on smoking on submarines — instituted after a warning period, to allow sailors time to quit — went off with no trouble.

The policy review Hagel has requested is expected to be finished within a couple of months, and it can be expected to take account of the Institute of Medicine’s 2009 recommendation to work toward a tobacco-free military. That need not result in an immediate ban on all smoking. But gradual limitations on where and when troops are allowed to smoke are necessary, as are greater efforts to help them quit.

In the meantime, the military is right to want to get out of the cigarette-sales business — and Congress should let it.

To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg View’s editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net.

Tobacco Companies Have Made 9 Changes To Cigarettes, And They're All Scary Bad

Eric March, UPWORTHY
After the tobacco companies lost that major lawsuit in the ’90s, I always assumed they just sort of quietly went away. But nope. Turns out, they just laid low for a while, rebranded, and poured tons of money into figuring out these diabolical new ways to get and keep people addicted to cigarettes.
infographic-e2cdc205422dc634da47f9ff3c0052a4
 
 
ABOUT:  This graph was compiled by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. You can read their full report on the increasing danger of cigarettes, which is as massive in scope as it is infuriating,right here. You can also follow the campaign on Twitter and track them on Facebook.Thumbnail image posted to Flickr by user Javier Ignacio Acuña Ditzel, used under Creative Commons license.
http://www.upworthy.com/tobacco-companies-have-made-9-changes-to-cigarettes-and-theyre-all-scary-bad?c=hpstream

Smoking Kills (Your Organs): 6 Major Organs Damaged By Cigarette Smoke

By , Medical Daily

Coughing up heaping globs of mucous isn’t even the half of it. Neither is losing all sense of stamina, or coming home to a stale-smelling house with yellowed walls and furniture. No, the biggest consequences of smoking are, by and large, ones you will never see. These, however, tend to be the deadliest.

As you inhale cigarette smoke, the 7,000 or so carcinogens begin to swirl through the caverns of your body, beginning in your esophagus and winding up in distant locations you wouldn’t give second thought to. The truth is, for all its declining popularity, smoking still emerges as the single greatest preventable cause of death in the United States. Each year, some 480,000 people die from smoking-related causes. Here are six organs that feel the effects in the meantime.

1. Your Lungs

Best to get this one out of the way early. Lung cancer, emphysema, and bronchitis are three of the most common diseases directly associated with smoking. Eighty percent of lung cancer cases are due to smoking.

Columns of harmful smoke pour into the organs, paralyzing the delicate cilia lining the inner walls and irritating them to the point where they overproduce mucous. When these cilia die, and mucous builds, respiration suffers. Once the soft healthy tissue turns hard and black, asthma and cancer tend to follow. While many of the body’s processes stabilize after someone quits smoking, damaged lung tissue can never heal.

2. Your Skin

It’s easy to forget the largest organ in your body is even an organ at all. Smoking damages the skin in more ways than one. On the one hand, you’ll notice some profound cosmetic changes, such as bags under the eyes, a toughening of the skin, wrinkles, and stretch marks — all stemming from the skin’s dying elasticity. But you should also expect major health risks to rise. Among the heavy-hitters:skin cancer, warts, psoriasis, and poorer wound healing.

We don’t think of skin as playing much more than a cosmetic role, but the largest organ in the body is the first line of defense for keeping out invading forces, like bacteria and viruses. Psoriasis, for instance, was found in 2007 to double in risk for people who smoked a pack a day for 20 years. To put it bluntly, when there’s a tear in the sheath of shrink-wrapped flesh draped over the other organs, getting sick becomes a lot easier.

3. Your Uterus

Among smoking’s long cons is its effect on reproductive health. Cigarettes significantly raise a woman’s risk for ectopic pregnancy — the maturation of an embryo outside the walls of the uterus, typically in the fallopian tubes. One 2010study suggested this was due to an overproduction of the protein PROKR1, making it harder for the fallopian tubes to contract and send the egg all the way to the womb.

In addition to ectopic pregnancies, research has found cigarette smoking to lead to more failures involving in vitro fertilization, adverse reproductive outcomes, and a lower fecundity rates overall. Women have also been having kids later in life, upping their risk even further, as it means they’ll have been smoking longer before pregnancy.

4. Your Penis

The ability to achieve and maintain an erection could suffer drastically if a man smokes. That finding has been repeated over and over throughout the decades, most compellingly in a 2011 study that found men who kicked the habit had quicker, firmer, and most durable erections than men who smoked — achieving that erection up to five times faster than smokers who relapsed.

Important to keep in mind: Nicotine, not smoking, determined men’s physical arousal. They didn’t see full return to health until after they quit nicotine patches or gum. Also, study co-author Christopher Harte, of the VA Boston Healthcare System, pointed out, a man’s success depends on his relationship with his sexual partner.

5. Your Eyes

As previously stated, expect some under-eye droopage after having smoked for a while. More than that, cigarette smoking has been found to lead to a raft of conditions related to vision loss, such as age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and dry eye syndrome.

Smoking attacks the eye from two fronts. The first is the smoke itself, which collects in front of your face as you smoke and again after you exhale. The constant exposure to the smoke can dry your eyes out and irritate them. Combine this with smoking’s effects on blood flow, which stops the optic nerve from getting enough antioxidants. As a result, scientists believe, the chemicals in cigarette smoke pollute the blood and starve the ocular organs.

6. Your Liver

The liver isn’t confined to damage from alcohol consumption. Smoking ups people’s risk for liver cancer dramatically, according to a 2011 study that found nearly half of all liver cancer cases were the result of smoking. By contrast, 21 percent were associated with hepatitis C, 16 percent from obesity, 13 percent from hepatitis B, and, all the way at the bottom, 10 percent for alcohol consumption.

The majority of liver cancer deaths are the result of hepatocellular carcinoma, a leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, among sub-Saharan African and Southeast Asian countries. Cirrhosis — when liver cells turn to scar tissue — is one of the greatest non-cancerous forms of liver damage; in the U.S. cirrhosis is often alcohol-related, which is why the conventional wisdom keeps the two so closely linked.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/smoking-kills-your-organs-6-major-organs-damaged-cigarette-smoke-295436

Tobacco tax law reportedly cost U.S. billions in revenue

By Reuters Media
WASHINGTON – A 2009 law that raised federal taxes to discourage smoking cost the U.S. government billions of dollars in lost revenue as manufacturers relabeled products and consumers shifted to cheaper pipe tobacco and large cigars, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report released on Tuesday.

The GAO estimated $2.6 billion to $3.7 billion in lost revenue from April 2009 to February 2014 as manufacturers exploited loopholes in the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act which raised taxes for smoking-tobacco products.

“Each of the three tobacco manufacturers that agreed to speak with us explained that their companies switched from selling higher-taxed roll-your-own tobacco to lower-taxed pipe tobacco to stay competitive,” the congressional watchdog agency said in the report, which was the focus of a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

At the hearing, Liggett Vector Brands LLC Chief Executive Ronald Bernstein urged lawmakers to take action against abuses by manufacturers.

He held up two seemingly identical, but differently labeled non-Liggett bags of tobacco. Showing a third sample, he pointed out that a label saying “all-natural pipe tobacco” covered up a statement that the bag “makes approximately 500 cigarettes.”

“Everyone knows this is cigarette tobacco,” Bernstein said. “The manufacturer knows. The consumer knows. And I know. I know because I tried smoking it in a pipe and it was not a pleasant experience.”

Some manufacturers also add a few ounces of tobacco to small cigars so they qualify as the larger product. Others even mix in clay or kitty litter to increase the weight, Michael Tynan, policy officer at the Oregon Public Health Division, told the hearing.

The GAO said the tobacco market shifted accordingly. Yearly sales of pipe tobacco rose more than eight-fold from fiscal 2008 to 2013, while sales of roll-your-own tobacco declined almost six-fold.

Over the same period, large cigar sales doubled, while small cigar sales dropped to just 700 million from 5.7 billion.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, who convened the hearing, criticized the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which is responsible for collecting tobacco taxes and cracking down on evasion, for “footdragging.”

In recent years, the agency has pushed to apply “advanced investigative techniques to uncover illicit trade and fraudulent activity,” including deploying about 125 auditors and investigators, the TTB wrote in its Senatetestimony.

Responding to a push to better differentiate between roll-your-own and pipe tobacco, the agency published an “advanced notice of proposed rule making” in 2010 and 2011. But no rule had yet been issued, the GAO wrote.

In 2015, the TTB will issue a proposed regulation cracking down on the illegal activities, TTB Administrator John Manfreda said on Tuesday.

But Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said it was not enough. He said the problem reminded him of “the old marquee at the movie house that says: ‘Coming soon,’ and it never gets there.”

http://www.inforum.com/content/tobacco-tax-law-reportedly-cost-us-billions-revenue

Taxes on cigarettes help reduce number of smokers

By Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
The Hill
Science and experience have demonstrated conclusively that cigarette tax increases are highly effective at reducing smoking, especially among kids. Thus, the conclusions in a Gallup poll The Hill recently wrote about (“High cigarette prices aren’t stopping smokers,” July 18) are inconsistent with what happens in the real world every time cigarette taxes are increased.

The most recent surgeon general’s report on tobacco concludes that “raising prices on cigarettes is one of the most effective tobacco control interventions.” The report called for additional cigarette tax increases “to prevent youth from starting smoking and encouraging smokers to quit.” The Congressional Budget Office has also reviewed the evidence and concluded that an increase in the federal cigarette tax would significantly reduce the number of adult smokers.

In the year after a 62-cent increase in the federal cigarette tax in 2009, cigarette sales declined by a historic 11.1 percent. Adult and youth smoking rates also declined. “This single legislative act — increasing the price of cigarettes — is projected to have reduced the number of middle and high school students who smoke by over 220,000 and the number using smokeless tobacco products by over 135,000,” the surgeon general’s report noted.

Even the poll The Hill wrote about reported that more than a quarter of adult smokers surveyed said they smoked less due to tax increases. As there are 42 million smokers in the United States, this translates into millions of smokers whose behavior is affected by cigarette tax increases. And this survey of current smokers would not have included former smokers who have already quit due to increased tobacco taxes.
Tobacco tax increases don’t have to cause every smoker or even a majority of smokers to quit or cut back in order to have a big impact on public health. As the scientific evidence and even the new Gallup poll show, such tax increases will impact the behavior of large numbers of smokers, saving many from a premature death.
From Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Washington, D.C.

Read more: http://thehill.com/opinion/letters/213571-taxes-on-cigarettes-help-reduce-number-of-smokers#ixzz38sdK91IE
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

Report: Smoking bans, cigarette taxes linked to lower suicide rates

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah mental health and public health officials say a new report that links stronger anti-smoking initiatives to lower suicide rates suggests an added benefit of states’ prevention and cessation efforts.

The report, published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, found that public health interventions, such as raising cigarette taxes and imposing indoor smoking bans, could reduce risk of suicide by as much as 15 percent.

Janae Duncan, coordinator of the Utah Health Department’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, said Utah’s Indoor Clean Air Act “is really strong.”

While the state’s rate of adult smoking of 10.6 percent is the lowest in the nation, Utah’s tobacco taxes are relatively low at $1.70 per pack of cigarettes, Duncan said. Utah’s rate is higher than the national average but well below the rates of some East Coast states such as New York, which imposes a tax of $4.35 per pack.

“The study said each dollar increase in cigarette taxes was associated with a 10 percent decrease in (the relative risk of) suicide,” she said. “Even though we have a low tobacco use rate, it may be a good reason to look at raising our excise tax for tobacco.”

Other Utah officials say the report lends credence to mental health and substance abuse treatment practices that encourage wellness across the spectrum.

The state’s 2013 Recovery Plus initiative, for instance, required all publicly funded substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities to be tobacco free by March 2013.

“When we first started talking about doing this, there was a lot of talk such as, ‘You can’t expect someone with substance abuse or mental illness to also give that up. It’s too much on a person.’ They found that’s not the case. It actually helps with their recovery,” said Teresa Brechlin, coordinator in the Utah Department of Health’sViolence and Injury Prevention Program.

Kim Myers, suicide prevention coordinator with the Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, said Utah officials have long observed that clients in publicly funded substance abuse and mental health facilities smoke at substantially higher rates than the general population.

The authors of the report noted that clinical and general studies have likewise documented elevated rates of smoking among people with anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug dependence, and schizophrenia, among other diagnoses.

“However, it is also possible that smoking is not merely a marker for psychiatric disorders, but rather directly increases the risk for such disorders, which in turn increases the risk for suicide,” the study’s authors wrote.

Myers said the study raises the question whether nicotine itself raises suicide risk.

“How do we use that information on a population level, but also on an individual level, to reduce someone’s risk, especially when it comes to people who have some of those other risks such as serious mental illness or substance use disorders?” she asked.

The study also determined that smokers’ risk for suicide is two to four times greater than nonsmokers.

Duncan said more research is needed to understand how the link applies to Utah. Utah’s suicide rate has been consistently higher than the national rate for the past decade, according to state health department statistics, while smoking rates are very low.

“The study doesn’t give those clear answers. I think what it does do, it helps us see we should be looking at whole health, and it’s important to look at it across the board, not just issue by issue, but how all these things are tying together,” Duncan said.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=157&sid=30887197

The young and poor are keeping big American tobacco alive

By Roberto A. Ferdman, The Washington Post

Big American tobacco wants to get bigger in America.

Reynolds American Inc., which sells both Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes, has agreed to acquire rival and Newport menthol-maker Lorillard for an estimated $27.4 billion. If approved, the deal will effectively combine the portfolios of two of the country’s largest cigarette companies—as of last year, Reynolds and Lorillard controlled roughly 26 percent and 14 percent of the U.S. market, respectively—and send a number of brands to the smaller but still significant player Imperial Tobacco Group.

“The deal strengthens Reynolds position in the US, supplying them with Newport’s excellent brand equity and establishes Imperial as a viable third force in the world’s third largest cigarette market by volume,” Shane MacGuill, Tobacco analyst at Euromonitor International, said in an interview.

The shuffle atop American tobacco is a sign that consolidation might be the industry’s best way to cope with the country’s growing disinterest in cigarettes. It also nods to a few areas of potential growth, most notably menthol cigarettes, for which sales have proven comparatively resilient—Newports, a menthol brand, is second only to Marlboro in U.S. sales.

The-most-popular-cigarette-brands-in-the-U-S-Cigarettes-sold-in-2013_chartbuilder

But the deal is also a surprising indication of optimism surrounding the U.S. industry.
“The U.S. is a key growth market for us,” Alison Cooper, Chief Executive for Imperial Tobacco Group, said in a call with reporters. “We’re hugely excited about the opportunities that lie ahead.”
Why? Because the American tobacco market, while challenged, is still more attractive than many of its international counterparts. The U.S. tobacco market contracted by four percent last year, according to the Food and Drug Administration, but cigarette sales in Europe are falling even faster—they are now nearly half what they were in 2000—and other markets are difficult to penetrate. China’s, while growing, is dominated by local player China National Tobacco Corp.
Make no mistake, cigarette consumption has long been in decline in the United States. Americans adults, on average, smoke fewer than 1,300 cigarettes per year, according to a report (pdf) released earlier this year by the Surgeon General. By comparison, that number was upwards of 4,200 in 1963–three times the current figure.

Tobacco-consumption-historical

But some states and demographics still seem to be clinging on to the habit–and keeping American tobacco companies afloat.

“Approximately one in five U.S. adults smoke cigarettes, and certain population groups have a higher prevalence of smoking,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted in a report from earlier this year.

On a state-by-state level, that certainly appears to be true. Take Kentucky and West Virginia, for instance, which each sport smoking rates well above the national average, according to the CDC’s report. More than 28 percent of Kentucky’s and West Virginia’s adult population were regular or frequent smokers as of 2012. In Utah, smokers made up barely more than 10 percent of the population; in California, just over 12 percent; and in New York, just over 16 percent. The national smoking rate was just above 18 percent.

Tobacco-by-state

Smoking, as it happens, also appears to be highly correlated with both poverty and education levels in the United States: 27.9 percent of American adults living below the poverty line are smokers, while just 17 percent of those living above it are, according to the CDC; 24.7 percent of American adults without a high school diploma are smokers, while 23.1 percent of those with one are. Only 9.1 percent of those with an undergraduate degree, and 5.9 percent of those with a graduate degree are smokers.

It ranges considerably by race, too. The CDC found that Americans of mixed race were the biggest smokers, with 26.1 percent still smoking cigarettes in 2012. Next were Native Americans, with 21.8 percent smoking. By comparison, only 10.7 of Asians smoked in 2012, according to the survey.
And cigarettes are most popular among those adults between the ages of 25 and 44 years old: 21.6 percent of the age group smokes, more than any other.
Tobacco-smokers
If the big tobacco deal is approved, Reynolds will suddenly find itself with more than 30 percent of the American market, and Imperial will find itself with more than 10 percent (Altria Group, which owns Marlboro, controls nearly 50 percent). Don’t be surprised if both turn to those Americans who have been slowest at kicking their respective cigarette habits for help.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/16/the-young-and-poor-are-keeping-the-u-s-tobacco-industry-alive/

Smoking may increase suicide risk, study says

By MONTE MORIN, Los Angeles Times

It’s well known that cigarettes are bad for your health, but does smoking make you more likely to kill yourself too?

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, authors argued that smoking and suicide may be more closely related than previously thought.

The researchers analyzed suicide rates in states that aggressively implemented anti-smoking policies from 1990 to 2004 and compared them to suicide rates in states that had more relaxed policies.

Those states that imposed cigarette excise taxes and smoke-free air regulations had lower adjusted suicide rates than did states with fewer anti-smoking initiatives, authors wrote.
“There does seem to be a substantial reduction in the risk for suicide after these policies are implemented,” said lead study author Richard Grucza, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“For every dollar in excise taxes there was actually a 10% decrease in the relative risk for suicide,” Grucza told Washington University BioMed Radio. “The smoke-free air policies were also very strongly associated with reduced suicide risk.”

Study authors said that states with lower taxes on cigarettes and more lax policies on public smoking had suicide rates that were up to 6% greater than the national average.

This is not the first study to document a correlation between cigarette smoking and suicide, but it is among the first to suggest smoking and nicotine may be specific factors.

Up until now, researchers believed smoking coincided with suicide because people with psychiatric problems or substance abuse problems were more likely to smoke as well as to commit suicide.
“Markedly elevated rates of smoking are found among people with anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug dependence, schizophrenia and other diagnoses, in both clinical and general studies,” authors wrote. “However, it is also possible that smoking is not merely a marker for psychiatric disorders, but rather directly increases the risk for such disorders, which in turn increases the risk for suicide.”

Grucza said that the imposition of anti-smoking rules presented the researchers with a naturally occurring experiment. However, the authors did note that there were limitations on their research.

In particular, they said that since they considered state-imposed anti-smoking efforts only, their research would not account for local-level policies aimed at smoking behavior.

“While further studies may be required to establish a compelling weight of evidence, this study provides strong epidemiological support in its favor of the proposition that smoking is a casual risk factor for suicide,” authors wrote.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-smoking-suicide-20140716-story.html

Secondhand smoke as harmful to pets as people

By SUE MANNING, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ten years ago, Shirley Worthington rushed Tigger to the vet when the dog’s mouth started bleeding. When she was told he had cancer, she knew to blame her heavy smoking, an addiction she couldn’t kick until after her pet died.

Secondhand smoke can cause lung and nasal cancer in dogs, malignant lymphoma in cats and allergy and respiratory problems in both animals, according to studies done at Tufts University’s School of Veterinary Medicine in Massachusetts, Colorado State University and other schools.

The number of pets that die each year from tobacco exposure isn’t available, but vets know from lab tests and office visits that inhaling smoke causes allergic reactions, inflammation and nasal and pulmonary cancers in pets, said Dr. Kerri Marshall, the chief veterinary officer for Trupanion pet insurance.

Despite Worthington’s certainty about the cause of her dog’s death, more research needs to be done before veterinarians can definitively say whether a dog’s cancer was caused by secondhand smoke or something else, said Dr. Liz Rozanski, whose research at Tufts College focuses on respiratory function in small animals.

Worthington, 52, of Brooklyn, New York, said she was a teenager when she started smoking and she had always smoked around Tigger, who was 8 when he died in 2004. A year later, Worthington, her mom and sister all quit in honor of the bichon frise.

Then, in 2007, Worthington’s mom died while suffering from cancer.

“Cigarettes took my mother,” she said. “And they took my dog.”

Pets aren’t mentioned in this year’s surgeon general’s report, but in 2006, it said secondhand smoke puts animals at risk. The Legacy Foundation, the nation’s largest nonprofit public health charity, encouraged smokers to quit for the sake of their pets, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals urged making homes with pets smoke-free.

It’s even more important to safeguard cats, which are more susceptible to tobacco smoke than dogs.

Lymphoma is one of the leading causes of feline death. The Tufts research showed that repeated exposure to smoke doubled a cat’s chances of getting the cancer and living with a smoker for more than five years increased the risk fourfold. It can also cause a fatal mouth cancer.

Tobacco companies acknowledge the risks of smoking in people but haven’t taken the same stance with dogs and cats. Philip Morris USA says on its website that it believes cigarettes cause diseases and aggravates others in non-smokers and that the problems warrant warnings.

But “we haven’t taken a stand on the potential impact on pets,” said David Sylvia, a spokesman for Altria Group Inc., the parent company of Philip Morris.

Symptoms of cancer in animals include coughing, trouble eating or breathing, drooling, weight loss, vomiting, nasal discharge, bleeding and sneezing. Cancer kills more dogs and cats than any other disease, according to Denver-based Morris Animal Foundation, which has been funding pet cancer research since 1962.

In addition, the recent surge in the use of electronic cigarettes has raised questions about their impact on pets. The greatest danger is the trash, where dogs can find nicotine cartridges from e-cigarettes, said Rozanski, the Tufts veterinarian.

“You wouldn’t think dogs would eat such things, but they do,” she said.

___

Online:

Tufts University: www.tufts.edu/vet

ASPCA: www.aspca.org

Legacy Foundation: www.legacyforhealth.org

Morris Animal Foundation: www.morrisanimalfoundation.org

http://bismarcktribune.com/news/national/secondhand-smoke-as-harmful-to-pets-as-people/article_8a132d3e-e45d-53ed-8ca8-cb831ca46390.html#.U8VrjqFboDM.facebook