Posts

World Health Organization: Public Health Rules Needed to Curb E-Cigarette Risks

by Katie Weatherford, Center for Effective Government

Contrary to industry advertising, a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) finds that electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) and other electronic nicotine delivery systems pose significant public health hazards because of toxins emitted from the devices. The agency recommends that countries adopt e-cigarette rules to prevent misleading marketing of the products and to educate the public about the potential health risks involved.

E-Cigarettes Emit Dangerous Toxins

E-cigarettes contain a battery that heats a nicotine fluid inside the device until it produces a mist-like aerosol that the user can inhale. According to the WHO report, the aerosol contains “nicotine and a number of toxicants” that pose health hazards to users and non-users, especially pregnant women and children, contrary to claims that these devices release nothing more than water vapor. Nicotine use is linked to long-term adverse effects on brain development. Moreover, the aerosol typically contains “some carcinogenic compounds,” including formaldehyde.

Although the report finds that adult smokers who completely switch from regular cigarettes to e-cigarettes will be exposed to lower levels of toxins, WHO warns that the “amount of risk reduction . . . is presently unknown.” The report also notes uncertainty about whether second-hand exposure risks from e-cigarettes are lower than regular cigarettes.

Marketing Contains Unsubstantiated Claims, Targets Children

The WHO report also takes misleading marketing to task, noting the frequent use of unsubstantiated claims about e-cigarettes in product ads. According to the report, there is insufficient evidence that using e-cigarettes will help people quit smoking, yet ads commonly market e-cigarettes as a smoking-cessation device. Other marketing tactics may even encourage more frequent smoking.

For example, many ads promote using e-cigarettes in places where regular smoking is banned. WHO cautions that this could interfere with the intent of smoke-free policies, which “are designed not only to protect non-smokers from second-hand smoke, but also to provide incentives to quit smoking and to denormalize smoking . . . .”

Moreover, e-cigarette marketing has “the potential to glamorize smoking,” which may encourage nonsmokers and children to start using e-cigarettes. The endless variety of designs and flavor options can also appeal to adolescents.

WHO Recommends Developing Public Safeguards

The WHO report says, “Regulation of [e-cigarettes] is a necessary precondition for establishing a scientific basis on which to judge the effects of their use, and for ensuring that adequate research is conducted, that the public has current, reliable information as to the potential risks and benefits of [e-cigarettes], and that the health of the public is protected.”

The report will be a topic of discussion this October at the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The Convention is an international effort to address global tobacco use. The report calls on the 179 countries that are parties to the Convention to adopt new standards to protect the public from the hazards associated with e-cigarettes. Such safeguards would:

  • Prohibit claims that these products can help people quit smoking until manufacturers provide sufficient scientific evidence to support the claim and gain regulatory approval

  • Ban indoor use of e-cigarettes unless it is proven there are no health effects from second-hand exposure

  • Restrict marketing by requiring that all ads, promotions, or sponsorships provide warnings, encourage people to quit smoking, in no way promote use by nonsmokers or adolescents, contain no images, words, etc. associated with a tobacco product, and more

  • Require that manufacturers design products to reduce exposure to toxins, make information about contents and exposure levels available to users, register products with a governmental body, and report design and emissions information to a governmental body

  • Prohibit sales to people under the age of 18 and ban fruit, candy-like, and alcohol-drink flavors unless and until it is proven that these flavors do not appeal to minors

To ensure strong public health protections, the global community must adopt WHO’s recommendations so that people understand the risks associated with e-cigarettes and adults can make informed choices about whether or not to use them.

Protecting Public Health in the U.S.

Although the U.S. is a signatory to the Convention, it has not yet ratified the tobacco control treaty. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking some steps similar to WHO’s recommendations.

FDA proposed a rule in April that would ban the sale of e-cigarettes to anyone under the age of 18. The rule would also require e-cigarette manufacturers to register with the agency and report the manufacturing process and ingredients used in their products. Moreover, companies would be required to place health-warning labels on e-cigarettes.

However, some tobacco control advocates believe the proposal does not go far enough and are urging FDA to prohibit manufacturers from marketing candy-flavored options that attract children. The Center for Effective Government and other health and safety groups also heavily criticized the FDA’s decision to discount the benefits of the proposed rule by 70 percent, which the agency claims is necessary to account for the “lost pleasure” from reducing tobacco use.

FDA is currently reviewing public comments and considering any changes to its draft rule. We hope the agency will correct its flawed benefit calculation and move forward with strong safeguards without delay. The U.S. should also ratify the treaty and communicate its support for global efforts to combat the tobacco use epidemic.

http://www.foreffectivegov.org/node/13198

Q: Is hookah or water pipe smoking a safe alternative to cigarettes?

By Sanjay Gupta, MD

A: Absolutely not. In fact, as Daniel Neides, MD, medical director of the Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic points out, hookah smoking “may actually be worse than smoking.”

Hookahs are water pipes in which charcoal is used to heat up flavored tobacco. An ancient form of smoking that originated in the Middle East and India, it has become increasingly popular among American adolescents and young adults. Roughly 1 out of 5 U.S. high school seniors had smoked a hookah in the past year, according to recent data.

The hookah’s gaining popularity is largely due to the misconception that it’s not harmful. That’s not the case. “First, the tobacco used in hookah contains the same cancer-causing agents found in cigarettes,” Dr. Neides says. “Secondly, there is charcoal that is used to heat the tobacco, which gives off carbon monoxide and heavy metals as a by-product when it is heated.”

A hookah session usually lasts longer than time spent smoking cigarettes, with hookah smokers puffing more frequently and inhaling more deeply. A 2010 study reported the amount of smoke inhaled during a hookah session can be nearly 200 times the amount inhaled when smoking a cigarette. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that hookah smoking raised nicotine urine levels as much as 73 times.

Neides adds that because water pipes are usually smoked in specialty hookah shops or bars and shared among friends, users are exposed to greater levels of secondhand smoke and are at a higher risk of contracting viruses or infections.

The bottom line, Neides says, is that “hookah smoke should be considered the same as cigarettes and cigars – a very unhealthy habit that leads to chronic disease and death.”

http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/paging-dr-gupta/is-hookah-or-water-pipe-smoking-a-safe-alternative-to-cigarettes/

The Health Claims Of E-Cigarettes Are Going Up In Smoke

Jasper Hamill, Contributor | Forbes

The sales pitch of electronic cigarette manufacturers seemed too good to be true. Could nicotine addicts around the world really get their fix whilst dodging the health risks of puffing away on cancer sticks?

Sadly for smokers and “vapers”, the answer is far from clear. Over the past week, new evidence has emerged which suggests that E-Cigarettes can be dangerous too – in some cases carrying higher amounts of certain toxins than the blazing tobacco of old.

Researchers at the University of South California have found that although E-Cigarettes are less harmful than ordinary smokes, the vapour emitted by the gadgets contains the toxic element chromium, which is not found in traditional cigarettes, as well as levels of nickel four times higher than in real tobacco. The electronic replacements also contain lead, zinc and other toxic metals, although in lower levels than cigarettes.

English: Two electronic cigarette models. Self...

Two electronic cigarette models. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Our results demonstrate that overall electronic cigarettes seem to be less harmful than regular cigarettes, but their elevated content of toxic metals such as nickel and chromium do raise concerns,” said Constantinos Sioutas, professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

There is a bit of good news for reforming smokers, as E-Cigarettes contain virtually no detectable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known to cause cancer. The researchers also said the metal particles were likely to come from the cartridge of the E-Cigarette devices, opening up the possibility that a change in the production process could eliminate the dangerous chemicals.

But this isn’t the only bit of bad news for vape inhalers. In the UK, the BBC reported that E-Cigarette liquid sold in the north east of England was found to contain a chemical called diacetyl, which is used to add butterscotch flavor to liquid tobacco.

Whilst this substance is harmless to eat, it is extremely dangerous to inhale. The chemical is known to cause a serious condition called popcorn lung, orbronchiolitis obliterans, an irreversible disease which scars the lung and makes it impossible to breathe properly. This illness has struck workers in popcorn factories, who are known to breathe in vast quantities of diacetyl, as well as ordinary people who eat a lot of popcorn.

Commenting on the report, Dr Graham Burns, a respiratory expert at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, said the illness is often “serious enough to warrant lung transplantation”.

VP, the firm which manufactured the cigarettes, immediately withdrew the liquid from sale, and Lynne White, head of retail distribution, admitted there were concerns about inhaling the liquid on a long-term basis.

“We are very sorry it has happened, we are investigating how it has happened,” she added.

“Because of the small amount the vaper would actually consume it was deemed in the short term there would be no health concerns.

“Long-term yes there could well be, however we decided it was a withdrawal rather than a recall of the product and that was based on Ecita’s (Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association) guidelines.”

But for many health-conscious people, the damage is likely to have been done. Once upon a time, the world didn’t know about the many terrible effects of cigarettes. It was only after a concerted campaign by scientists, doctors and activists that the risks began to be publicized and governments began to act on them. The long term implications of switching to E-Cigarettes have not yet been tested, so anyone using the devices has to ask themselves if they are willing to take the risk of becoming a guinea pig.

Marlboro Cigarettes

Marlboro Cigarettes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The World Health Organisation has issued a report advising that use of E-Cigarettes should be banned indoors and and all advertising stopped until the emerging industry produces “convincing supporting scientific evidence and obtains regulatory approval”.
Backing this call, the British Medical Association board of science deputy chair Ram Moorth said “tighter controls are needed to ensure their use does not undermine current tobacco control measures and reinforces the normalcy of smoking behaviour”.

‘There is a need for research to understand the health impacts of E-Cigarettes on both the user and bystanders, and it is vital that the sale of e-cigarettes is appropriately regulated to ensure they are not sold to minors, and are not aggressively marketed to young people as tobacco was in the past,” he continued.

“Any health claims must be substantiated by robust independent scientific evidence to ensure that the consumer is fully informed regarding potential benefits and risks of E-Cigarettes.”
Are you willing to take the chance and keep on vaping?
For more news and comment, follow me on Twitter @jasperhamill
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasperhamill/2014/08/31/the-health-claims-of-e-cigarettes-are-going-up-in-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.

Letter: Tobacco taxes should be raised

By Jay Taylor from Durbin, N.D.

Hey! I have a great idea! Let’s raise a tax on something,” said no North Dakota legislator ever.

Wow! Raising a tax on anything, with North Dakota being so flush from oil money, just doesn’t make any sense at all.

And yet, taxes (or fees if you want a more politically correct term) do continue to inch up here and there.

During the 2013 legislative session, North Dakota lawmakers passed a bill that increased fees for many hunting and fishing licenses.

A tax is generally imposed to gain funds to pay for specific services or products: “It is a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers’ income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.”

As said, to raise a tax in North Dakota today just doesn’t seem to make any sense, unless it’s a tax to protect the health of our residents, prevent disease and thwart kids from starting a path of extremely unhealthy behavior.

OK, I’ve beat around the bush long enough. I have read a lot about the idea of increasing the tobacco tax in North Dakota, and I am totally in favor of such an action. Here’s why:

The tobacco tax in North Dakota is one of the lowest in the nation (we are 46th at 44 cents per pack of 20 cigarettes), the lower-than-us states include: Missouri at 17 cents; Louisiana at 36 cents; Georgia at 37 cents and Alabama at 42 cents.

Our tobacco tax hasn’t increased since 1993.

The effects of North Dakotans’ tobacco use also affects the wallets of those who don’t use tobacco. North Dakota’s annual health care costs directly caused by smoking are $326 million. The portion covered by state Medicaid is $47 million.

But the most important reason is that a higher tobacco tax encourages people to quit and discourages younger folks from starting. According to the Tobacco Free Kids organization, “tobacco tax increases are one of the most effective ways to reduce smoking and other tobacco use, especially among kids. Every 10 percent increase in cigarette prices reduces youth smoking by about seven percent and total cigarette consumption by about four percent.”

For all the work being done by public health and health advocacy organizations, raising the tobacco tax is win-win.

I think it’s about time the North Dakota legislators started having a serious talk about this rather serious idea.

http://www.westfargopioneer.com/content/letter-tobacco-taxes-should-be-raised

Letter: Tobacco taxes should be raised

“Hey! I have a great idea! Let’s raise a tax on something,” said no North Dakota legislator ever.

Wow! Raising a tax on anything, with North Dakota being so flush from oil money, just doesn’t make any sense at all.

And yet, taxes (or fees if you want a more politically correct term) do continue to inch up here and there.

During the 2013 legislative session, North Dakota lawmakers passed a bill that increased fees for many hunting and fishing licenses.

A tax is generally imposed to gain funds to pay for specific services or products: “It is a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers’ income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.”

As said, to raise a tax in North Dakota today just doesn’t seem to make any sense, unless it’s a tax to protect the health of our residents, prevent disease and thwart kids from starting a path of extremely unhealthy behavior.

OK, I’ve beat around the bush long enough. I have read a lot about the idea of increasing the tobacco tax in North Dakota, and I am totally in favor of such an action. Here’s why:

The tobacco tax in North Dakota is one of the lowest in the nation (we are 46th at 44 cents per pack of 20 cigarettes), the lower-than-us states include: Missouri at 17 cents; Louisiana at 36 cents; Georgia at 37 cents and Alabama at 42 cents.

Our tobacco tax hasn’t increased since 1993.

The effects of North Dakotans’ tobacco use also affects the wallets of those who don’t use tobacco. North Dakota’s annual health care costs directly caused by smoking are $326 million. The portion covered by state Medicaid is $47 million.

But the most important reason is that a higher tobacco tax encourages people to quit and discourages younger folks from starting. According to the Tobacco Free Kids organization, “tobacco tax increases are one of the most effective ways to reduce smoking and other tobacco use, especially among kids. Every 10 percent increase in cigarette prices reduces youth smoking by about seven percent and total cigarette consumption by about four percent.”

For all the work being done by public health and health advocacy organizations, raising the tobacco tax is win-win.

I think it’s about time the North Dakota legislators started having a serious talk about this rather serious idea.

http://www.westfargopioneer.com/content/letter-tobacco-taxes-should-be-raised

Ebola-fighting compound created using tobacco

Laura Ungar, USA TODAY

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Kentucky company used local tobacco to help produce an experimental serum to fight Ebola, which may help save two American aid workers stricken with the deadly disease.

David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds American Services, said Owensboro-based Kentucky BioProcessing complied with a request from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and Samaritan’s Purse this week “to provide a limited amount” of the compound, called ZMapp.

Kentucky BioProcessing, which was acquired by North Carolina-based Reynolds American Inc. in January, does contract work for many clients, including ZMapp maker Mapp Biopharmaceutical of San Diego.

Howard couldn’t confirm that the compound was used on the aid workers, and Emory officials didn’t respond by deadline to a call or email seeking confirmation. But The Associated Press, CNN and other media outlets reported that the aid workers have gotten the serum and have improved.

The fact that a Kentucky company focused on plant-based science played a part “is fantastic,” said Kenneth Palmer, a University of Louisville professor who is involved in tobacco-based research in Owensboro but not in this project. “The more that (medicines) made in plants are used, the better the acceptance. … It gives tangible evidence of how what we do can be applied to help people.”

Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pointed out that ZMapp is not a proven treatment for Ebola but said it’s a good example of the intriguing science of growing medicines in tobacco plants.

“We’d love to see tobacco used for health,” said Frieden, who was in Hazard, Ky., on Tuesday for a series of talks on health problems in Appalachia. But he added, “We don’t have proven treatments or vaccines against Ebola. … This Ebola outbreak is the biggest, worst, most complicated one that the world has ever seen.”

Howard said tobacco helps in the production of ZMapp, acting like a “photocopier” to mass-produce proteins used to make the serum. Palmer said three, single-gene antibodies are put into trays of plants at Kentucky BioProcessing and replicate the antibodies after about 10 days.

Palmer likened it to antibodies being produced in the bodies of people or animals after an infection.

“What the plants are doing is pumping out the antibodies,” Palmer said. “The plants are used to make the antibodies, and then they purify the antibodies.”

“It’s faster than more traditional methods,” Howard added. “It allows for rapid growth of proteins … on a reasonably large scale.”

At the direction of Mapp, the Kentucky company developed a precursor to ZMapp, called MB-003, which was tested in non-human primates and showed good results, published last August in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Researchers said the treatment previously had been shown to protect all the primates when it was given an hour after exposure to Ebola, and two-thirds of them when given 48 hours after exposure.

ZMapp was never tested in humans, but even before the latest Ebola outbreak, the companies had planned later this year to begin the federal process to get the drug approved, Howard said.

Meanwhile, tobacco plants also will be used to develop a gel to prevent the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. University of Louisville researchers announced this week they will lead the international effort, which is being funded by a five-year, $14.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The gel — designed to be used during sexual intercourse by people at risk for HIV — is developed using a synthetic copy of a protein found in red algae shown to act against HIV in the lab.

Research is also underway at Louisville using tobacco plants to produce a cheaper version of the vaccine against human papillomavirus, which causes most cervical cancer.

University of Louisville President James Ramsey said all of the tobacco-based research is exciting, particularly in a state where smoking kills at the highest rate in the nation.

“It is ironic,” Ramsey said in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve been a tobacco state, and it’s been such a part of our economy, and it’s pretty amazing that they can take tobacco and potentially solve some of the biggest health problems around the world.”

Laura Ungar also reports for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/05/ebola-fighting-compound-created-using-tobacco/13642819/

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

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

Florida jury awards $23.6 billion verdict in big tobacco lawsuit

By Jacob Passy, NBC News

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company must pay $23.6 billion to the estate of a man who died of lung cancer in what may be the largest verdict for a single plaintiff in Florida state history, according to attorneys.

A state jury awarded the punitive damages Friday to the estate of Michael Johnson Sr., who died in 1996 from lung cancer after years of smoking cigarettes, attorney Christopher Chestnut told NBC News. Johnson’s estate previously won a $17 million verdict as compensation for his family’s loss.

“This jury sent a message and gave 23.6 billion reasons why you can’t lie to consumers,” said Chestnut, who along with attorney Willie Gary represent 400 cases in Florida against big tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds.

The Johnson case stems from a class-action lawsuit involving Miami Beach pediatrician Howard Engle, who sued the tobacco companies for misleading the public and government as to the dangers of smoking. He was awarded $145 billion in a landmark verdict in July 2000 — the largest punitive damage ever awarded in U.S. history at the time.

It was overturned in 2003 after an appeals court ruled that it shouldn’t have gone forward as a class-action suit. J. Jeffery Raborn, vice president and assistant general counsel for R.J. Reynolds, said the latest verdict of $23.6 billion was “far beyond the realm of reasonableness and fairness.” Raborn said the company plans to file post-trial motions to appeal the decision and verdict.

This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/florida-jury-awards-236-billion-verdict-big-tobacco-lawsuit