Posts

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

Andrew Knight: Extend to parks the push to reduce smoking

By Andrew Knight, Grand Forks Herald

Smoking should be allowed in Grand Forks parks because banning it “clamps down on personal freedom?” (“Too much cost for too little gain,” editorial, Page F1, June 1)

Is the argument really about progress vs. freedom?

The Herald’s “ThreeSixty” opinion section on June 1 includes the phrases “enjoy a cigarette on a park bench,” “cigarette smoke smells like roses,” and that a “(smoking) ban is ‘pointless’ from a traditional perspective.” It felt more like an opinion section from the 1960s.

Grand Forks Park District Commissioner Molly Soeby expertly lays out the issues with several pieces of evidence for this ban, and then non-local public policy wonks (Dennis Prager et al.) are trotted out as the counterpoint, with nary a point made specific to smoking in parks.

Soeby explains 78 percent of the Grand Forks community and 82 percent of golfers and softball managers are for a comprehensive tobacco-free policy. Even with sampling error, we can discern a clear majority opinion here.

How then, does Grand Forks City Council President Hal Gershman think the ban would be “very unpopular?” (“Banning smoking in parks a ‘needless intrusion,’” letter, Page A4, June 4).

This isn’t to say that I don’t expect a small but vocal backlash from the “hey, freedom!” crowd.

The supposed “counter” to Soeby’s arguments and statistics is a smattering of excerpts on the topic of smoking, starting with Simon Chapman from Australia (yes, Australia). Chapman compares car exhaust to secondhand smoke because we breathe in benzene from both sources. There are a LOT of car owners and not nearly as many smokers. How much benzene shoots out of exhausts in cars versus a single cigarette?

This argument fails because he’s using two different scales.

Chapman finishes the tortured analogy saying “we hear no serious calls for the banning of cars.” First, no one is calling for banning cigarettes; it’s about reducing smoking.

Second, there is substantial market pressure on car companies to reduce emissions. Science told us vehicle emissions are pretty bad, so we are trying hard to reduce them. Science also told us smoking is bad, so that’s why the push to reduce places where smoking is allowed needs to continue to parks and other public places.

The slippery slope fallacy continued with an excerpt from a New York Times editorial (from three years ago) to that city’s smoking ban, comparing it outright to alcohol prohibition 90 years ago. If we ban smoking in parks, it may lead to “a civic disaster,” according to the writer.

If this is the best group of arguments to keep smoking legal in parks, maybe it means there are few, if any, locals willing to write against the ban (in which case, kudos to Gershman and the Herald’s editorial board for being lone wolves on this minority opinion).

You have freedom to smoke on your property, in your car, while you walk around town and so on. You have freedom to do a LOT of things in your own home that you cannot do in a park because many of us believe it is better not to expose nature, playgrounds and children to it.

Add smoking to the list. We don’t want children to see adults smoking, feel cigarette butts in their toes or smell the cigarette smoke. Leave the cigarettes in the car for a round of golf or a volleyball match.

Soon my family is moving to Colorado — a state with acres ravaged by fires in recent years. Herald readers can probably understand that the residents there are skittish about smoking in places such as parks and playgrounds, and therefore have enacted smoking bans.

Like people in Grand Forks, they have natural beauty worth preserving, would prefer not seeing people “enjoying a cigarette on a park bench” and don’t want to take the chance that an errant cigarette butt could take down a forest range.

We’re packing up for the move and are already missing people we’ve befriended here, but we won’t miss the overly cautious, conservative approach to environmental protections.

This is not a simple false choice of progress or freedom. The Park Board should feel very confident moving forward in enacting this policy.

And to the Herald editorial board: Yes, the benefits are more than worth the costs.

Knight is an assistant professor in the music department at UND. 

http://www.grandforksherald.com/content/andrew-knight-extend-parks-push-reduce-smoking

5 Important Lessons From The Biggest E-Cigarette Study

 | by  Anna Almendrala

Those colorfully lit e-cigarettes are giving off way more than just “harmless water vapor,” according to a comprehensive new study review by UC San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Users could also be inhaling and exhaling low levels of chemicals such as formaldehyde, propylene glycol and acetaldehyde (to name a few), and this secondhand vapor could be a potentially toxic source of indoor air pollution.

While the levels of the toxins were still much lower compared to conventional cigarette emissions, the findings fly in the face of the e-cigarette industries’ claims that the handheld devices are just as safe as any other smoking cessation tool.

E-cigarettes as we know them today were invented by a Chinese pharmacist, Hon Lik in the early 2000s as a smoking cessation aid. They are handheld nicotine vaporizers that deliver an aerosol made up of nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals to users. It’s the chemicals in those vapors that are moving municipalities like Los Angeles, New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago and Boston to restrict “vaping” in some way.

Formaldehyde, for instance, is a carcinogen that also irritates the eyes, nose and throat. Propylene glycol can also cause eye and respiratory irritation, and prolonged exposure can affect the nervous system and the spleen. Acetaldehyde, also known as the “hangover chemical,” is also a possible carcinogen.

The secondhand vapor finding is just one of several that UCSF researchers highlighted in the broadest review to date of peer-reviewed e-cigarette studies. The findings, which were published Monday in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation, include:

1. Some youth have their first taste of nicotine via e-cigarettes. Twenty percent of middle schoolers and 7.2 percent of high schooler e-cigarette users in the U.S. report never smoking cigarettes.

2. Nicotine absorption varies too much between brands. Early 2010 studies found that users got much lower levels of nicotine from e-cigarettes than from conventional cigarettes, but more recent studies show that experienced e-cigarette users can draw levels of nicotine from an e-cigarette that are similar to conventional cigarettes. Yet another study noted that the chosen e-cigarettes for the research malfunctioned for a third of participants. UCSF researchers say this indicates the need for stronger product standards and regulations.

3. Just because particulate matter from e-cigarettes isn’t well studied, doesn’t mean it’s safe. To deliver nicotine, e-cigarettes create a spray of very fine particles that have yet to be studied in depth. “It is not clear whether the ultra-fine particles delivered by e-cigarettes have health effects and toxicity similar to the ambient fine particles generated by conventional cigarette smoke or secondhand smoke,” wrote the researchers. But we do know that fine particulate matter from cigarettes and from air pollution are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular and respiratory disease. And some research has found that the size and spray of fine particulate matter from e-cigarettes is just as great or greater than conventional cigarettes.

4. So far, e-cigarette use is not associated with the successful quitting of conventional cigarettes. One clinical trial found that e-cigarettes was no more effective than the nicotine patch at helping people quit, and both cessation methods “produced very modest quit rates without counseling.”

5. Major tobacco companies have acquired or produced their own e-cigarette products. They’re promoting the products as “harm reduction” for smokers, which allows them to protect their cigarette market while promoting a new product. Companies also using “grassroots” tactics to form seemingly independent smokers’ rights groups, just like they did for cigarettes in the 1980s.

Based on the weight of the combined research, UCSF researchers end with several policy recommendations, which include banning e-cigarettes wherever cigarettes are banned, subjecting e-cigarettes to the same advertising restrictions that constrict cigarette marketing and banning fruit, candy and alcohol flavors, which are attractive to younger customers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/14/e-cigarette-studies_n_5319225.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

E-cigarette etiquette: While regulations remain in flux, users recommend being mindful

By: Ryan Johnson, INFORUM
FARGO – When Kelsey Eaton tries to explain electronic cigarettes to new customers at Infinite Vapor, she first has to give a lesson in lingo.
“Vaping” is now a verb, referring to the act of inhaling from the battery-powered devices available in all shapes, styles and price ranges; “atomizers” heat the concentrated liquid, available in several flavors and with or without nicotine.
Meanwhile, public health officials are now beginning to wonder if “secondhand vapor” could pose health risks to others.
Even after mastering the vocabulary, e-cig users still need to settle one more issue – how to vape as desired without risking a breach of etiquette, especially as the social norms continue to evolve.
“Mostly, I just tell people to definitely look at the laws in their area and where the legislation’s at,” said Eaton, who has managed Infinite Vapor in downtown Fargo since the store opened last November.
But Bryce Brovitch and Jake Berg, 18-year-old high school seniors in Park Rapids, Minn., said the rules of using
e-cigs around others depends on more than the latest state and local laws.
Berg prefers to ask permission before using his e-cig in someone’s house or car.
Even though there’s nothing on the books in Minnesota that bans vaping indoors in public places, Brovitch said he usually goes outside so he won’t bother others – or make them think he’s breaking the smoking laws that do apply to regular cigarettes.
“You know that you can’t smoke inside, but it’s not smoking,” he said. “It still kind of looks like it.”
The law, for now
At the federal level, e-cigarettes aren’t classified as tobacco products, meaning the devices and liquid refills don’t have to comply with the same restrictions on advertising, manufacturing or age requirements for purchase or use.
But many states and communities in recent years have passed local laws to deal with the devices, which are growing in popularity and show no sign of slowing down.
A statewide smoke-free law approved by North Dakota voters in 2012 does include electronic cigarettes, Eaton said, which means they can’t be used indoors in public places and are banned from use outdoors within 20 feet of doors, operable windows and air intakes.
Minnesota’s smoke-free law doesn’t include e-cigarettes, and the devices remain legal to use indoors unless a city has passed rules outlawing it.
Keely Ihry, coordinator of the PartnerSHIP 4 Health that includes health officials from Becker, Clay, Otter Tail and Wilkin counties, said Minnesota requires purchasers of
e-cigs to be at least 18, but North Dakota doesn’t have that same statewide age requirement.
Fargo and West Fargo both have passed city-level laws that require e-cig purchasers to be 18 or older, and Dilworth and Moorhead have enacted policies that restrict the devices at public schools, she said.
But health officials such as Ihry have their work cut out for them, she said, because the rules are changing, and many are working for more comprehensive statewide and national policies and laws to address the rising influence of e-cigarettes.
“Some people don’t know that they’re not regulated,” she said. “There’s not a lot of information that’s out there at this point.”
Social norms
Even if e-cigs aren’t technically classified as cigarettes at the federal level, and sometimes don’t contain nicotine, Ihry said public health officials think of them as another regular tobacco product – and believe they should be used in the same manner.
“We would ask that since we don’t know a lot about the vapor that they would be used like a normal cigarette, so they would not be used in indoor public spaces like the bars and restaurants and other general workplaces,” she said.
Another issue, Ihry said, is that children who have grown up in the era of indoor smoking bans could see the act of smoking “renormalized” if they spot adults puffing e-cigs in restaurants and workplaces.
A lot of the rules regarding cigarettes, either formally in the law or the proper usage as agreed to by the broader society, have sprung up because of the secondhand smoke these products produce, Eaton said.
Electronic cigarettes don’t make that same “bad,” “raunchy” smoke, she said, instead emitting a vapor that may leave a light odor in the air.
“It’s just water vapor, and maybe some scent,” she said.
Still, Eaton said Infinite Vapor has tried to stay ahead of the curve by following its own rules that often are stricter than the laws of the communities in North Dakota and Minnesota where it operates its eight stores.
The stores only sell to customers 18 or older, for example, and support calls for the federal Food and Drug Administration to begin regulating the manufacturing of e-cig liquids for consistency and safety.
But the biggest etiquette advice, Eaton said, is to be mindful of others when vaping.
“If I am inside in a different state, and if someone tells me, ‘Hey, that’s bothering me,’ then I don’t do it,” she said. “If it makes people uncomfortable, or if I notice people are uncomfortable, and they’re like, ‘Hey, we don’t want that,’ I’m like, ‘Hey, that’s fine, just let me know.’ ”
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/432381/group/homepage/

Tobacco control group promoting smoke-free apartments

By Bismarck Tribune
BISMARCK, N.D. _ The North Dakota Center for Tobacco Prevention and Control Policy is promoting smoke-free apartments.
The center has launched an education campaign encouraging smoke-free housing policies.
“In North Dakota, 24 percent of residents live in apartments and many of these residents continue to be exposed to secondhand smoke,” Executive Director Jeanne Prom said in a statement.
The center cited a 2006 surgeon general’s report that said air-cleaning technologies and ventilating buildings do not eliminate smoke because conventional systems cannot remove all the toxins. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems also can distribute secondhand smoke throughout a building.
Prom said there are high costs to landlords associated with allowing smoking in apartments, like painting and replacing carpeting.
The center cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that estimated the annual cost savings of eliminating smoking in subsidized housing nationwide would be $108 million in annual renovation expenses and $72 million in annual smoking-related fire losses.
For more information go to www.smokefreehousingND.com.
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/tobacco-control-group-promoting-smoke-free-apartments/article_a39a5b62-be9c-11e3-bd9c-0019bb2963f4.html

Poll: Minnesotans strongly support prohibiting e-cigarette use indoors

MINNEAPOLIS, Feb. 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — A poll released today shows that a strong majority of Minnesotans (79 percent) support prohibiting e-cigarette use indoors in places where smoking is prohibited. Other regulations to prevent youth from using e-cigarettes are also overwhelmingly supported by Minnesotans.
“This new poll shows that a strong majority of Minnesotans – 79 percent – support prohibiting e-cigarette use in indoor public places, including workplaces,” said Janelle Waldock, Director of the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. “E-cigarette use threatens our high standard of clean indoor air. Limiting their use the same way we limit conventional cigarettes will protect the clean air that Minnesotans have come to expect and support.”
To continue reading, visit: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1758111#ixzz2uT8Px5H7

Illinois Could Soon Become The Next State To Ban Smoking In Cars With Children Inside

The Huffington Post  | by  Joseph Erbentraut
Another state could soon ban smokers from lighting up while in a car carrying passengers under the age of 18.
Illinois State Sen. Ira Silverstein, a Chicago Democrat, has proposed legislation (SB 2659) that would hit those who smoke with anyone under the age of 18 in the car with up to a $100 fine.
A vehicle could not be stopped solely as a result of violating the ban, according to bill’s text.
Kathy Drea, vice president of advocacy of the American Lung Association’s Illinois chapter, testified in front of the Senate’s public health committee Tuesday. She said that drivers who light up put their passengers at risk of a smoking-related illness due to the harmful secondhand smoke being experienced within the confined space of a vehicle.
The bill is a “very simple thing that you can do to protect all of our children from a very serious health risk,” Drea added, according to GateHouse Media.
No vote has yet been taken on the measure.
Six other states — Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Maine, Oregon and Utah — already have similar bans on the books, though the cutoff age for child passengers varies from state to state. Puerto Rico has also passed a ban.
The most recent state to pass the smoking ban was Oregon, where a ban went into effect on Jan. 1, 2014. Oregon’s ban includes heftier fines of $250 for a first violationand $500 for additional instances.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/19/illinois-smoking-ban-cars-with-children_n_4818018.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

Safety of e-cigarette vapors questioned

, Buffalo Business First Reporter-Business First
It’s been years since viewers have sat through a cigarette commercial during the Super Bowl, with commercials for beer and cars dominating advertising.
But this weekend’s game included for the second consecutive year an ad for NJOY King, an electronic cigarette, with a theme of friends helping friends.
The response has been mixed from health advocates. While some say inhaling vapors or “vaping” is safer than smoking traditional tobacco cigarettes, others insist quitting entirely is the healthiest course of action. And it turns out vaping also exposes non-users to nicotine in the same way secondhand smoke affects those who spend time around smokers, though at much lower levels.
That’s according to research by Maciej Goniewicz, an assistant professor of oncology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute’sDepartment of Health Behavior, published by the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.
Goniewicz and his team studied vapor from three different brands of e-cigarettes, as well as secondhand smoke exposure of vapors and tobacco smoke generated by dual users. The results showed the e-cigarettes emit nicotine at levels of about 10 times less than conventional tobacco cigarettes, though they did not emit substantial amounts of carbon monoxide and toxic volatile organic compounds.
The study was a collaboration between Roswell Park and researchers at the Medical University of Silesia in Poland.
Though exposure to toxins is substantially lower, there’s still no definitive data on short and longterm health: The U.S. Surgeon General has not yet evaluated the short and longterm health risk from secondhand exposure to vapors.
“We don’t know yet the longterm affects of using these products,” Goniewicz said. “We know there are some traces of some potentially dangerous chemicals in the vapor. We don’t know what will happen after 10-20 years of inhaling this vapor.”
Still, vaping is considerably less dangerous than regular cigarettes, since users and those around them are exposed to significantly less toxins.
“The clear conclusion is that these products are safer than tobacco cigarettes. When you compare them, we believe these products are safer than tobacco cigarettes, but there is no doubt for smokers that quitting is the best way,” he said.
The other growing issue is how to handle vaping indoors, including in public places, restaurants and the workplace. The Food & Drug Administration and individual states place limits on advertising and how and where tobacco cigarettes are sold, but there have not yet been any rulings on exactly whether e-cigarettes fall into the same category.
A number of companies have already taken steps to limit vaping in the workplace, while in other places, it’s the state or municipality making the rules: New York City Council in December voted to ban the use of e-cigarettes in all places where smoking is prohibited. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority is now considering a ban on its transit vehicles and within its properties.
Goniewicz said he believes vaping should be limited as well to protect non-users, but it’s a difficult question.
“The main reason we have the indoor smoke-free law is to protect non smokers from being exposed to tobacco smoke,” he said. “We should protect these people from being exposed to vapor. But some people also believe that since we know this product is safer for smokers and it has the potential to save the lives of smokers, how can we encourage smokers to use electronic cigarettes instead of smoking? Any regulation should balance between the potential benefits and harm from the products.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/health_matters/2014/02/safety-of-e-cigarette-vapors-questioned.html

Jury is out on health effects of e-cigarettes

By Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times
Electronic cigarettes are either a potent weapon in the war against tobacco, or they are an insidious menace that threatens to get kids hooked on nicotine and make smoking socially acceptable again.

There are health experts who back each point of view. But they do agree that the empirical evidence that will tell them who is right will not be in for several years.
“There are a few studies out there right now, but scientists like to have a gazillion,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control at UC San Francisco.
Among the most pressing questions for researchers: What are the long-term health effects of e-cigarettes on users and people around them? Do e-cigarettes help people kick the smoking habit, or do they actually make it harder? If kids start smoking e-cigarettes, are they likely to graduate to regular cigarettes?
“My big question with e-cigarettes is whether it puts youth on a pathway to smoking,” said acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak, who will join other U.S. health officials Friday at the White House to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the surgeon general’s first report on the hazards of smoking.
When that landmark report was released in 1964, the proportion of U.S. adults who smoked was at an all-time high of 43%. By 2012, that figure had dropped to 18%. But without a renewed focus on the campaign against tobacco, the U.S. will miss its goal of reducing the national smoking rate to 12% by the end of the decade.
E-cigarettes are uniquely positioned to undo recent public health gains, Lushniak and others fear.
The battery-operated devices heat nicotine, propylene glycol and glycerin into a vapor, which is inhaled by the user. Unlike conventional tobacco-burning cigarettes, e-cigarettes do not deliver poisonous tars or carbon monoxide.
Currently, the devices are regulated only by a smattering of local governments who have passed laws concerning their sale and use. The Food and Drug Administration has the legal authority to regulate e-cigarettes as a tobacco product, but has not yet done so. In the meantime, e-cigarettes have grown to become a $2-billion industry with no federal oversight.
Though the FDA says propylene glycol and glycerin food additives are “generally regarded as safe,” the long-term effects of inhaling the substances are unknown. The FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products has begun collecting reports of adverse effects from e-cigarettes, and those complaints include claims of eye irritation, headaches and coughing.
E-cigarette backers say the health effects of the key component — nicotine — are well established and minimal for most everyone except pregnant mothers. They note that nicotine gum and patches have been used as smoking cessation tools for many years.
“It’s not the nicotine that’s the real enemy; it’s the way it’s burned and delivered in cigarettes,” said psychologist David Abrams, executive director of the American Legacy Foundation’s Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies in Washington. “In reasonable doses, and assuming good quality control, nicotine might raise your heart rate two or three beats per minute, but it really has few adverse effects.”
Yet that might not be true for teens. A surgeon general’s report released Friday says evidence now suggests that nicotine exposure during adolescence “may have lasting adverse consequences for brain development.”
And then there are the potential health effects on bystanders, who are also exposed to nicotine and propylene glycol emitted by the e-cigarette and its user.
Studies performed on e-cigarette vapor have detected heavy metals and volatile compounds such as formaldehyde, but the concentration and threat they pose has been hotly debated.
In a review of studies that examined e-cigarette mist, Drexel University environmental and occupational health expert Igor Burstyn concluded that “while these compounds are present, they have been detected at problematic levels only in a few studies that apparently were based on unrealistic levels of heating.”
Abrams took heart in that assessment, though he acknowledged that the vapor was not benign. Even so, the bystander effects are “almost immeasurable compared to the toxins in secondhand cigarette smoke,” he said.
That assessment may change when several studies examining fine particulate matter from e-cigarette vapor and their effects on the cardiovascular system are completed, Glantz said.
The burning question for most experts is whether e-cigarettes actually help people to quit smoking.
Researchers have conducted surveys that give them a “snapshot” of smoker behavior at a particular moment, but not over an extended period. Some results suggest e-cigarette users are continuing to smoke conventional cigarettes and relying on the electronic substitutes to satisfy nicotine cravings in the workplace, restaurants and other places where cigarettes are forbidden.
Another study published in the journal Lancet compared the effectiveness of e-cigarettes to nicotine patches and gum. Researchers said they expected e-cigarettes to be the clear winner, but it was a tie.
Now experts are looking toward long-term behavioral studies that will reveal how smokers actually use e-cigarettes. One such analysis by the FDA is set to begin field work this year, and will track about 60,000 smokers and nonsmokers for two years.
“It should tell us if people are using them for cessation, or as a gateway to traditional tobacco use,” said Brian King, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-e-cigarettes-science-20140117,0,7562029.story#ixzz2qh59hXu7

Tobacco Companies Agree on Ads Admitting Smoking Lies

By Andrew Zajac, Bloomberg News
Altria Group Inc. (MO), Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) and other tobacco companies agreed with the U.S. on how they will publicize admissions that they deceived the American public on the dangers of smoking.
The companies and the Justice Department resolved that “corrective statements” will appear in the print and online editions of newspapers and on television as well as on the companies’ websites. Expanded information on the adverse health effects of smoking will appear on cigarette packages, according to the agreement filed yesterday in federal court in Washington.
The plan for the statements is another stage in a 15-year-old civil racketeering case against the tobacco companies brought by the U.S.
The ads, fought over in court for more than two years, were ordered by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, who in 2006 found the tobacco companies violated anti-racketeering laws by conspiring to hide cigarettes’ risks. The defendants in the case include Lorillard Inc. (LO)
Kessler also ordered the companies to stop marketing cigarettes as “light” and “low-tar.”
She later approved the text of corrective messages. The tobacco companies lost their bid to overturn Kessler’s decisions on the statements at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington in 2012.

Judge’s Approval

The agreement on the dissemination of the ads, which covers details such as the size of lettering and schedules of publication, is subject to Kessler’s approval.
Negotiations are continuing on whether the corrective ads will be required in retail locations, according to the agreement.
The consent order was filed the day before the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Surgeon General’s watershed Jan. 11, 1964, report warning of the health consequences of smoking.
Each of the ads begins by declaring that a federal court found that the four companies “deliberately deceived the American public” and goes on to state “here is the truth.” A description of companies’ wrongdoing follows, along with correct public health information in five areas including the dangers of smoking and its addictiveness, second-hand smoke and false advertising about low-tar and light cigarettes.

Appeals Pending

The ads are scheduled to begin after companies’ appeals connected to Kessler’s order have run their course.
The “agreement ensures that when all potential appeals are exhausted, the corrective statements will be ready to run without further delay,” according to a statement by Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund and five other public health groups that joined the case.
Brian May, a spokesman for Richmond, Virginia-based Altria and its Philip Morris USA unit, declined to comment on the agreement
Bryan Hatchell, a spokesman for Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Reynolds American, didn’t immediately respond after regular business hours yesterday to a phone message seeking comment on the agreement. No one responded to an e-mail to Lorillard’s press contact address after regular business hours yesterday.
The case is U.S. v. Philip Morris USA Inc., 99-cv-2496, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-10/tobacco-companies-u-s-agree-on-ads-admitting-smoking-lies-1-.html