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E-cigarettes as good as patches in helping smokers quit

Maggie Fox,  NBC News
Electronic cigarettes work about as well as nicotine patches in helping smokers kick the habit, researchers report. And e-cigarettes helped people smoke fewer cigarettes overall, even if they didn’t quit completely.
The study is the first major piece of research to show that the products, which deliver a nicotine mist using a cigarette-shaped pipe, can actually benefit smokers.
The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal, are not quite enough to make public health experts embrace e-cigarettes, which are not yet regulated and which are growing in popularity. But it’s enough to make them look more closely at whether there may be some benefit to them.
“You’re trading one addiction for another addiction,” Dr. Cheryl Healton, president and CEO of the anti-tobacco Legacy Foundation, told NBC News. “(But) it may be that for some people, this will be a better way to quit, and there may be people who’ve tried other things and haven’t been able to quit who will quit with this.”
For the study, Chris Bullen of the University of Auckland in New Zealand and colleagues recruited 657 smokers who wanted to quit. They divided them into three groups, to get either 13 weeks’ supply of e-cigarettes, nicotine patches or placebo e-cigarettes that contained no nicotine.
After six months, 5.7 percent of the volunteers had managed to completely quit smoking. It was slightly more in the e-cigarette group, but not in a way that was statistically significant, Bullen reported.
It’s very difficult to quit smoking, but the e-cigarettes also appeared to have helped people cut back on real tobacco. Bullen’s team found that 57 percent of volunteers given real e-cigarettes were smoking half as many cigarettes a day as before, compared to 41 percent of those who got patches.
“While our results don’t show any clear-cut differences between e-cigarettes and patches in terms of quit success after six months, it certainly seems that e-cigarettes were more effective in helping smokers who didn’t quit to cut down,” Bullen said in a statement.
“It’s also interesting that the people who took part in our study seemed to be much more enthusiastic about e-cigarettes than patches, as evidenced by the far greater proportion of people in both of the e-cigarette groups who said they’d recommend them to family or friends, compared to patches.”
Healton said that was a provocative finding. “It does also suggest consumer acceptability of the product is higher,” she said.
U.S. health officials are very concerned about the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration released a report on Thursdayshowing a doubling in the number of high school students who have tried them, to 10 percent.
More than 21 percent of adults have tried them at least once, but the CDC says they are addictive and may themselves be dangerous.
“We don’t know much about them,” says Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC Office on Smoking and Health. But he says they could potentially be useful if tobacco companies would stop making products like cigarettes and make e-cigarettes instead – and if those e-cigarettes did indeed turn out to be less harmful than conventional cigarettes.
“Our nirvana is a world where nobody is dying from death and disease caused by tobacco,” McAfee told NBC News. “If you have a product that doesn’t kill people, that is where the money should be going, that is where the promotion, the marketing should be going.”
They are pricey – an e-cigarette product ranges from $10 to $120, depending on how many charges it provides. And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of brands. FDA says some appear to contain carcinogens, and there is some evidence that nicotine is not only addictive, but may itself damage health.
“They could have inherent dangers that are greater than using something like gum or the patch,” Healton said.
CDC says tobacco is the leading preventable cause of dis­ease, dis­ability, and death in the United States, killing 443,000 people a year.
Public health experts are desperate for ways to help people quit smoking, but it is hard. The American Cancer Society says only 4 percent to 7 percent of people manage to quit on any single given try. Drugs such as Chantix or Zyban can raise this rate to 25 percent.
There’s also counseling, nicotine gum and patches, hypnosis and acupuncture, and companies are working on anti-nicotine vaccines.
Erika Edwards contributed to this report.

New Study Provides More Evidence for FDA to Ban Menthol Cigarettes

Statement of Matthew L. Myers
President, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
WASHINGTON, DC – Menthol cigarettes are much more likely to be used by youth and young adult smokers than older smokers and are undermining efforts to reduce smoking in the United States, according to a new study published today in the journal Tobacco Control.  The study also found that menthol smoking rates have increased among young adults and remained constant among youth and older adults, while non-menthol smoking has decreased among all three groups.
These findings indicate that “the presence of menthol cigarettes in the marketplace is slowing progress in the reduction of population smoking prevalence,” the study concludes.
This study adds to the powerful scientific evidence that menthol cigarettes have a profound adverse impact on public health in the United States, resulting in more smoking and more death and disease from tobacco use.  It underscores why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must act quickly to ban menthol cigarettes.
In July, the FDA began a regulatory process by inviting public comment to inform its decisions regarding menthol cigarettes.  There is more than adequate scientific evidence for the FDA to quickly develop a formal rule banning menthol cigarettes.
The new study adds to the evidence contained in the FDA’s 153-page report on the health impact of menthol cigarettes released in July.  That report found that menthol cigarettes lead to 1) increased smoking initiation among youth and young adults; 2) greater addiction; and 3) decreased success in quitting smoking. “These findings, combined with the evidence indicating that menthol’s cooling and anesthetic properties can reduce the harshness of cigarette smoke and the evidence indicating that menthol cigarettes are marketed as a smoother alternative to nonmenthol cigarettes, make it likely that menthol cigarettes pose a public health risk above that seen with nonmenthol cigarettes,” the FDA’s report concluded.
The FDA’s report independently affirmed the findings of the agency’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, which in March 2011 issued a report that concluded, “Removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States.”
The new study estimated menthol and non-menthol cigarette use during 2004-2010 using data from the federal government’s annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health.  Its key findings include:
·         Among cigarette smokers, menthol cigarette use was more common among 12-17 year olds (56.7 percent) and 18-25 years olds (45 percent) than among older age groups.
·         From 2004 to 2010, menthol smoking rates increased among young adults and remained constant among youth.  In contrast, smoking rates for non-menthol cigarettes decreased for both age groups.
·         Use of Camel menthol and Marlboro menthol cigarettes increased during the study period, especially among youth and young adults.
The study was led by Gary Giovino, PhD, professor and chair of the University at Buffalo Department of Community Health and Health Behaviors.  It was funded by Legacy, (http://www.legacyforhealth.org/), a leading public health non-profit whose primary mission is to reduce tobacco use.
Tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States, killing more than 400,000 people and costing $96 billion in health care bills each year.  The new study makes it even more clear that banning menthol cigarettes is a critical step in reducing tobacco’s devastating toll on our nation.
The University at Buffalo – State University of New York press release on the study can be read at http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2013/08/033.html.
 

Doctors can help prevent teen smoking, panel says

Kim Painter, Special for USA TODAY
Children and teens may hear about the dangers of smoking from parents, teachers and friends, but they may be less likely to take up the deadly habit if they hear the message from at least one more important person: their doctor.
That’s the conclusion of an influential panel publishing new recommendations today in two medical journals, the Annals of Internal Medicineand Pediatrics. In a number of studies, kids were less likely to try smoking if they got some kind of counseling or education from their doctors or other health care providers, says the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
“We didn’t recommend any particular intervention, because a variety of things seem to help,” says panel member David Grossman, a pediatrician and researcher at the Group Health Research Institute and the University of Washington-Seattle. “The important thing is that the message is coming from a physician and that’s an important voice … even to kids.”
The report says “even very minimal interventions,” such as a doctor’s office mailing a series of prevention guides to parents and kids, could make a difference.
Stopping kids from ever smoking could have a huge health impact, the panel says: Smoking kills about 443,000 people a year in the United States, and 90% of smokers start before age 18.
The American Academy of Pediatrics already urges doctors to talk to parents, children and teens about smoking.
But the task force, the academy and other experts also say that broader strategies — enlisting families, communities, mass media and lawmakers — are needed to chip away at smoking initiation rates. As of 2011, about 18% of high school students and 4% of middle school students were smokers, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While those numbers have been falling, the fact that nearly one in five teens still leave high school as smokers is unacceptable, says Michael Steinberg, an internist who directs a tobacco dependence program at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, New Brunswick, N.J.
“We need to do everything we can to reduce a young person’s opportunity to try their first cigarette or to go from experimenting to becoming addicted,” he says.
In an opinion piece published alongside the task force’s report in the Annals, Steinberg endorses one increasingly proposed strategy: raising the legal age to buy cigarettes to 21. A proposal to do that is under discussion in New York City, and several states and counties have already raised the age from 18 to 19, over the protests of smokers’ rights advocates and some retailers. The small town of Needham, Mass., was the first to raise the age to 21, with a phased-in plan that started in 2005, and some other Massachusetts towns are following suit, says Jonathan Winickoff, a Harvard Medical School pediatrician who spearheads anti-smoking efforts for the pediatrics academy.
Raising the age to 21 could cut teen smoking rates dramatically, largely because younger teens often get cigarettes from older teens and young adults, Winickoff says. “And if you make it to 21 without smoking, your chances of ever becoming a smoker drop to about 2%,” he says.
Some of the steepest drops in teen smoking have occurred since the federal government started requiring states to beef up enforcement of existing under-18 sales bans, says the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The share of retailers caught selling to minors dropped from 40% in 1997 to 8.5% in 2011, the agency says. Numbers for 2012 will be released Tuesday.
• Parents, educators and others who want to talk children and teens about smoking can get help from the CDC at www.cdc.gov/tobacco/youth/
• Teens who want help can go to teen.smokefree.gov, a government website with information on text and app-based tools, or Tobacco-Free Teens, a free app in Apple iTunes stores developed by researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/26/teen-smoking-doctors/2687711/

Health Matters: N.D. resources for tobacco cessation

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

Study Says Smoking Bans Don't Hurt Bars, Restaurants

A new study suggests a statewide law banning smoking in public places would not harm the restaurant and bar industry and the people who work in it.
The study has been done in North Carolina, the nation’s leading state for tobacco production. It is the home of major tobacco companies including the nation’s largest one, Phillip Morris. It’s also the home of RTI International, a think tank that has explored various health issues including those that are smoking-related.
Missouri is one of eight states without anti-smoking laws that has been studied by RTI. The lead author of the study, Brett Loomis, says the findings are straightforward.
He says local smoking ban ordinances in Missouri “were unrelated to any changes in restaurant and bar employment in those communities and revenues in eating and drinking places also were unaffected by the law.”
RTI looked at eleven years of employment and revenue records for Missouri bars and restaurants, the businesses most often targeted by local ordinances approved in almost cities-and the businesses most likely to oppose local ordinances.
The study has been indirectly underwritten by Pfizer, which makes an anti-smoking drug. Loomis says the company attended no meetings, had nothing to do with gathering and analyzing information. He says it had no influence on the findings.
Read the Summary
Read the Full Report
http://www.ozarksfirst.com/story/study-says-smoking-bans-dont-hurt-bars-restaurants/d/story/wZ7rRs6YMUGa5lsirLp2Jw

Cigarette Taxation Helps to Reduce Drinking Among Groups Considered Vulnerable

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and disability in the U.S., while heavy drinking ranks as the third leading cause of preventable death. Cigarette taxation has been recognized as one of the most significant policy instruments to reduce smoking. Given that smoking and drinking often occur together, a first-of-its-kind study has examined cigarette taxation and found that increases are associated with modest to moderate reductions in alcohol consumption among vulnerable groups.
Results will be published in the January 2014 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
“Smoking and heavy drinking co-occur at alarmingly high rates,” said Sherry McKee, associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine as well as corresponding author for the study. “Tobacco can enhance the subjective effects of alcohol and has been shown to increase the risk for heavy and problematic drinking. Smokers drink more frequently and more heavily than non-smokers, and are substantially more likely than non-smokers to meet criteria for alcohol abuse or dependence. The co-occurrence of smoking and drinking is of particular clinical significance given evidence that health consequences exponentially increase with combined versus singular abuse of alcohol and tobacco.”
“Smoking and drinking are strongly linked for a host of reasons including complementary pharmacologic effects, shared neuronal pathways, shared genetic associations, common environmental factors, and learned associations,” added Christopher W. Kahler, professor and chair of the department of behavioral and social sciences at Brown School of Public Health. “However, it is possible to intervene through behavioral treatments, pharmacotherapy, and policy to affect both behaviors in a positive way.”
“Cigarette taxes have broad population reach and have been recognized as one of the most significant policy instruments to reduce smoking,” said McKee. “Increases in cigarette taxes predict decreases in smoking initiation, increases in quitting, and reductions in cigarette-related morbidity and mortality. By increasing the price of cigarettes, taxes are thought to encourage smokers to reduce their use of cigarettes or quit altogether, and discourage non-smokers from starting to smoke.”
McKee and her colleagues examined data gathered through personal interviews with 21,473 alcohol consumers as part the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a survey conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Analyses evaluated whether increases in cigarette taxes between Waves I (2001-2002) and II (2004-2005) were associated with reductions in quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption. These analyses were conducted by gender, hazardous drinking status, age, and income group, and were further adjusted for demographics, baseline alcohol consumption, and alcohol price.
“We hypothesized that the public health benefits of cigarette taxes would extend beyond smoking to reduce alcohol consumption,” said McKee. “Results suggest that increases in cigarette taxes were associated with reductions in alcohol consumption over time among male smokers. The protective effects were most pronounced among subgroups who are most at risk for adverse alcohol-related consequences, including male heavy drinkers, young adults, and those with the lowest income.”
“These findings suggest that if states increase taxes on cigarettes, they are not only likely to reduce smoking — based on a large body of literature — but they also may have a modest impact on heavy drinking rates among men, those with lower income, and those who drink most heavily,” said Kahler. “In other words, policies that target one specific health behavior may have broader benefits to public health by affecting additional health behaviors that tend to co-occur with the targeted health behavior.”
Kelly Young-Wolff, post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford Prevention Research Center, and one of the study’s co-authors, agreed, adding that these results support research that targets the interactions of tobacco and alcohol. “Results from our study can pave the way for a productive line of future research aimed at reducing secondary public health harms such as alcohol-related violence, drunk driving, and alcohol-related morbidity and mortality.”
“While the study does not show a causal association,” added Kahler, “in the context of laboratory, clinical, and policy studies conducted to date, it suggests that policy makers and clinicians may have significant opportunities to address heavy drinking and smoking together.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130810063508.htm

Cigarette Taxes Linked to Binge Drinking

By Elbert Chu, Associate Producer, MedPage Today
Cigarette tax hikes were associated with a drop in the number of binge drinking bouts among male smokers and the amount of alcohol consumed when they did drink, investigators found.
Compared with male smokers who were not hit with any cigarette tax increases, those who were binged seven fewer times a year — a 22% drop — and drank 11% less — roughly a third of a drink — per “episode,” according to a study published online inAlcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Excessive drinking costs the U.S. about $234 billion each year, noted Sherry A. McKee, PhD, of Yale University School of Medicine and colleagues.
“We were surprised at the strength of the associations between increases in cigarette taxes and reductions in alcohol consumption,” McKee told MedPage Todayin an interview. She and her co-authors noted that to their knowledge, “no prior study has considered the potential for crossover association of cigarette taxation on drinking outcomes using a longitudinal, epidemiological U.S. sample.”
The researchers dug into prospective surveys of 21,473 U.S. alcohol drinkers from theNational Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Two data sets provided the before-and-after cigarette tax increases. One set from 2001 and 2002, and another from 2004 and 2005.
Among the sample, 51% lived in the 31 states that increased cigarette taxes. Increases ranged from seven cents to $1.60 (mean = 61 cents, SD= 42 cents, median = 40 cents).
The investigators also accounted for alcohol prices, education, marriage status, and ethnicity. They further stratified their sample by age, drinking level, sex, and income.
The survey asked respondents about their drinking habits in the previous 12 months on a scale that ranged from “every day” to “never in the last year,” and how many drinks in consumed in each bout. Drinking was classified as “hazardous” when men reported downing more than 14 drinks per session, or women seven drinks. Also labeled as a “hazardous” drinker was anyone who binged at least once in the year they were surveyed.
Only people who said they smoked daily were included as smokers. Smokers who were also hazardous drinkers were more likely male, younger, and less likely to be married, compared with other drinkers.
Women drinkers showed no associated response to increased cigarette taxes. McKee attributed the difference between the sexes to higher rates of male drinkers in the U.S. population. “Eight percent of the population meets the criteria for alcohol use disorder. Out of that, five percent are men and three percent are women,” she told MedPage Today.
In young adults ages 18 to 29, increased cigarette taxes reduced the frequency of binge drinking (b= -0.19, P= 0.02). A similar effect was seen among smokers 50 and older (b = -0.23,P=0.04). Non-smokers showed no changes in their drinking habits.
“Nicotine acts with specific receptors in the brain unrelated to alcohol but have non-nicotine compounds that induce triggers and cues unrelated to nicotine receptors,” said Gregory N. Connolly, DMD, MPH, faculty director for the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard School of Public Health. “So the researchers may have found something big.
“We do know the opposite is true. Alcohol and the social acceptance of smoking in the bar induces relapse. The bar or pub has become the nicotine classroom for the young,” Connolly continued.
The primary limitation of the study was the reliance on people to accurately recall and record their drinking habits. In addition, the timing of the tax increases was not consistent across all states, nor does the data account for online or bulk purchases of alcohol that could be exempt from taxes.
“Absolute magnitude of increases in cigarette taxes was in the direction expected (greater increases in tax were associated with less heavy and less frequent drinking); however, the pattern of results was unchanged,” the authors wrote. It is unclear whether there’s any upper limit to the effect of increased taxes and associated drinking reductions, McKee said.
To be sure, there are other avenues for future research on other associated behaviors mentioned in the study like the rates of sex crimes and drunk driving among youth.
Although there are attempts to develop a safer cigarette underway, “smoking is the number one leading cause of morbidity in the U.S., and alcohol is the number three preventable cause of morbidity,” McKee said. “This study suggests that there are positive spillover effects to enacting these tax policies. If you can change one, you’re likely to change the other behaviour.”
Smokers are more likely to drink too much alcohol, particularly more vulnerable young men. With both behaviors so closely linked, what are the most effective strategies you use with your patients to curb binge drinking? Let us know by Adding Your Knowledge below. — Sanjay Gupta, MD
http://www.medpagetoday.com/theguptaguide/publichealth/40918

Employees Who Smoke Cost Businesses $6,000 Extra Per Year; Cigarette Breaks Big Factor In Loss of Productivity

By Zulai Serrano z.serrano@hngn.com
A new study reveals U.S. businesses pay almost $6,000 per year extra for each employee who smokes, according to Ohio State University researchers.
The researchers took an in depth look at the financial burden for companies that employ smokers, and the findings may surprise you.
“By drawing on previous research on the costs of absenteeism, lost productivity, smoke breaks and health care costs, the researchers developed an estimate that each employee who smokes costs an employer an average of $5,816 annually above the cost of a person who never smoked. These annual costs can range from $2,885 to $10,125,” University said in a news release.
One aspect researchers looked into was the loss of productivity.  According to the findings, smoke breaks were the biggest reason businesses were losing money, followed by health-care expenses that exceed insurance costs for nonsmokers.
The analysis used studies that measured costs for private-sector employers, but the findings would likely apply in the public sector as well, said lead author Micah Berman, who will become an assistant professor of health services management and policy in The Ohio State University College of Public Health.
“This research should help businesses make better informed decisions about their tobacco policies,” Berman said in a news release, who also will have an appointment in the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State. “We constructed our calculations such that individual employers can plug in their own expenses to get more accurate estimates of their own costs.”
The University made it clear the study focused solely on economics, and did not address ethical and privacy issues related to the adoption of workplace policies covering employee smoking.
However, researchers added providing smoking-cessation programs would be an added cost for employers.
“Employers should be understanding about how difficult it is to quit smoking and how much support is needed,” Berman said. “It’s definitely not just a cost issue, but employers should be informed about what the costs are when they are considering these policies.”
The research is published online in the journal Tobacco Control, click here to read the study.
http://www.hngn.com/articles/9653/20130808/employees-who-smoke-cost-businesses-6-000-extra-per-year.htm

Parental smoking tied to kids' risk of lighting up

By Andrew M. Seaman
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children born to parents with a history of cigarette smoking are more likely to light up than kids of people who never smoked, according to a new U.S. study.
Despite falling smoking rates across age groups, researchers found that children raised by current or even former smokers were about three times more likely to be smokers themselves during their teenage years than kids raised by parents who never smoked.
“Things are getting better, but we can see it’s best among the consistent non-smoking households,” said Mike Vuolo, the study’s lead author from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Previous research has produced similar results, but the new study was based on 23 years of data on the smoking patterns of the parents in the study – 214 people who were ninth grade students in 1988 – to see whether their habits from adolescence onward were tied to their children’s risk of smoking.
For example, Vuolo and his colleague, who published their findings in Pediatrics, were able to compare the children of never-smokers and people who had smoked consistently since high school.
They had data on 314 children of the original group of teens. In 2011, the kids of the second generation – all at least 11 years old – were asked if they had smoked cigarettes within the last year. Sixteen percent said yes.
Among the children of parents who had never smoked, about 8 percent reported smoking cigarettes during the past year.
That compared to between 23 percent and 29 percent of the children of current or former smokers.
The researchers also looked at the parents’ “trajectories” of smoking for clues about the parental influence on the children’s behavior.
They found that 23 percent of kids whose parents had smoked as adolescents but quit or reduced their smoking as young adults were smokers themselves.
Among kids whose parents had smoked little or not at all in high school but started smoking in adulthood, 29 percent were smokers.
And 25 percent of children whose parents had smoked consistently since high school were smokers.
In addition, children who said they had smoked during the last year were more likely to be older, to display more symptoms of depression and to have low grades and low self-esteem. They were also more likely to feel distant from their parents and to have an older sibling who smoked.
While the study can’t prove that parental smoking caused the children to adopt the habit, Dr. Jonathan Winickoff, who has studied teen smoking behavior but wasn’t involved in the new research, said the new results support past findings.
“I think the first confirmatory result is that if you are a parent who smokes, your teenage child has a three-fold increased risk of smoking,” Winickoff, an associate professor in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Pediatrics in Boston, said.
He added that there are several theories on why children of smokers may be at an increased risk of picking up the habit, including modeling their parents’ behaviors, easy access to cigarettes and being “primed” for an addiction through second-hand smoke exposure.
He cautioned, however, that the new study can’t determine whether a child’s risk of becoming a smoker falls if the parents stop smoking early-on, such as in their early adult years, because the group that contained those early quitters also included some current light smokers.
“They can’t say – based on these data – whether earlier parental quitting is associated with less smoking in their kids,” he said.
The researchers also warn that their findings may not apply to all smokers, because only 15 percent of the people included in their survey had a bachelor’s degree or more education and most had their first child at a fairly young age.
Vuolo added that they don’t know whether these smoking rates in the second generation are an improvement over the past because they’re only looking at one point in time. Going forward, they will be able to look at smoking rates over time as they collect more data.
“We’re going to be able to answer that question,” he said.
http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2013/aug/05/parental-smoking-tied-to-kids-risk-of-lighting-up/

Higher Minn. cigarette prices drive more to try to quit

by Mark Zdechlik, Minnesota Public Radio
MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Anan Barbarawi expected cigarette sales at his store to drop once Minnesota’s $1.60 a pack tax increase took hold in July. But Barbarawi, manager at Maplewood Tobacco, was shocked to see his numbers plunge “50 to 70 percent.”
On the bright side, Barbarawi said, sales of electronic cigarettes have taken off.
A month into the tax increase, it’s not clear yet how much cash Minnesota is collecting. The stiff tobacco levy, though, is changing behavior.
Programs that help people quit smoking say they’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of Minnesotans contacting them for help because of the higher prices. Demand for tobacco alternatives is up.
State officials maintain that was always the goal when they pushed the total tax to $2.83 per pack. They say they’d be happy if they didn’t get any tax revenue from tobacco and argue the state would save huge amounts of money on health care if Minnesotans didn’t smoke.
There’s no doubt cost led Bob Holmes to stop at the end of May — a month before the cigarette tax increase took effect.
“Yeah, it might have helped push me into quitting smoking,” said Holmes of St. Paul, who’d driven his friend to the Maplewood smoke shop to pick up some cheap cigars.
It’s good the higher tax is getting people to stop smoking, he said. Still, he and many other smokers thinks it’s not fair that many of those hardest hit by the tax can least afford it.
Tobacco tax figures from July on are not yet available, but anti-smoking advocates say the effects are visible already.
Calls to Minnesota’s QUITPLAN program were up more than 250 percent over the same time last year and website hits were up almost 300 percent, for the first half of July, said Mike Sheldon, spokesman for ClearWay Minnesota, the group that runs QUITPLAN.
ClearWay offers free quit-smoking counseling using $202 million from Minnesota’s 1998 legal settlement with tobacco companies. Summer is usually not a busy time, he said.
The group says about 625,000 adults in Minnesota smoke. About three of every 10 QUITPLAN clients abstain from tobacco for at least six months, Sheldon added.
The tobacco tax increase inspired Erik Nordstrom, 38, to look for options. The St. Paul man, a smoker since age 14, hopes to wean himself from nicotine with e-cigarettes. That’s what brought him to the tobacco store in Maplewood.
Quitting tobacco is the ultimate goal, but there was an immediate need to cut spending. He was fed up with paying almost $300 for his monthly cigarette fix.
“When I go into a store and I’m paying $7.75 (for cigarettes), there’s something seriously wrong with that picture,” he said. “I had a pack of Newports on me which is the last pack I’ll be smoking.”
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2013/08/02/health/cigarette-prices