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R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Launches VUSE Electronic Cigarette
Posted by: Vranks on June 10, 2013 Under: E-Cig News |
Winston-Salem-based tobacco company, R.J. Reynolds, has recently announced its own line of electronic cigarettes, called VUSE. According to Reynolds American representatives, the VUSE is “a game-changing product in the e-cigarette category”.
News about R.J. Reynolds intention to enter the e-cigarette business emerged last year, when they confirmed VUSE was still in the development stage. It had been introduced in a very limited test market a while ago, and last Thursday the tobacco maker finally launched a revamped version of VUSE during an event in Colorado. Created by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co. (RJRV), a subsidiary of Reynolds American, this new electronic cigarette promises to offer vapers unsatisfied with the products available on the market today the “perfect puff”. According to the official press release, “VUSE is completely designed and assembled in the U.S., and, as an additional quality step, VUSE incorporates automated manufacturing to ensure a consistently reliable cartridge every time.” Stephanie Cordisco, president of RJRV says “VUSE is powered by Smart Technology which is designed to monitor and regulate the power, heat and cartridge performance to ensure a perfect puff first time, every time.” This new technology apparently monitors and adjusts heat and power more than 2,000 times per second to deliver consistent puffs.
- See more at: http://vaperanks.com/r-j-reynolds-tobacco-company-launches-vuse-electronic-cigarette/#sthash.hBJAnpgd.dpuf
Smart Technology and quality-related claims aside, the VUSE doesn’t seem much different than other electronic cigarettes. It features the same battery-and-cartridge system, mirrors analog cigarettes and replaces harmful tobacco with e-liquid. Actually, Reynolds’ is called “v-liquid”, but I bet it’s not much different than the stuff already used in the industry. Still, Cordisco is confident the fact that VUSE is designed and assembled in the United States and its ability to provide a consistent puffing experience will give it an edge over the competition.
Photo: video caption
For the time being, VUSE will only be available in the state of Colorado, but R.J. Reynolds has its sights set on expanding nationally in the future. “We plan to be a large, strong national leader in a very short period of time, and Colorado represents just one of our major states as we roll it out,” Stephanie Cordisco told CNBC. The new electronic cigarettes will be available as a single rechargeable unit called VUSE Solo, which includes the lithium battery, one cartridge and a USB charger, for an estimated price of $10, and as a starter kit, called VUSE System, which includes the battery, three cartridges (two Original and one Menthol), a USB charger, an AC adapter and a carrying case. The VUSE System will retail at around $30. VUSE cartridges will be sold in packs of two at an estimated price of $6. Just like the majority of electronic cigarette companies, R.J. Reynolds Vapor says one VUSE cartridge is the equivalent of a pack of analogs.
Big Tobacco Goes High-Tech To Convince You That Smoking Is Cool Again
by Igor Volsky Posted on June 13, 2013 at 9:00 am Updated: May 16, 2014 at 12:35 pm
As a growing number of Americans are turning away from smoking, the nation’s largest tobacco companies are ramping up production of high-tech cigarettes that could lead an entirely new generation of Americans to become addicted smokers — and the government is doing nothing to stop them.
Next month, R.J. Reynolds, the second-largest tobacco manufacturer and maker of Camel, Salem and Winston, will start selling Vuse — an electronic cigarette the size of a slick, thin pen. The product is packaged like the latest release from Apple, surrounded by clear plastic and a crisp logo, set against a clean black background. It even comes with a USB charger. When a user inhales, a sensor heats the liquid nicotine solution, emitting an odorless vapor.
“It’s a high-tech product, there are in fact micro chips inside the cartridges that communicates with the processor inside the power unit, so it’s a sophisticated piece of technology,” spokesperson Richard Smith said. “The package design is to compliment the technical forward facing digital nature of this product, same with the design of the product itself.” July’s campaign is “just the first of a major national roll out” that will include the full range of marketing support and advertising, including T.V. commercials.
Electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes have been on the market for several years, raking in just a fraction of the tobacco market, $500 million in 2012. But the recent decision by all three big tobacco companies to develop e-cigarette lines has analysts anticipating up to $1 billion in sales this year, with the possibility that the next generation of smokes could even “surpass consumption of traditional cigarettes in the next decade.” Altria Group, the owner of Philip Morris USA — the largest tobacco company in the country with brands like Marlboro, Virginia Slims, and Parliament — unveiled a new e-cigarette on Tuesday. And Lorillard, the third largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the United States, with brands like Newport and Kent, acquired the e-cigarette company blu in April 2012.
“E-cigarettes are to tobacco what energy drinks were or are to beverages,” Bonnie Herzog, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities who follows the tobacco industry, told the New York Times last year. “It is a small category that is growing very fast, embraced by retailers and consumers.” Indeed, in 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that “more than 20 percent of adult smokers said they had tried e-cigarettes, double the rate in 2010.”
Phillip Morris and R.J. Reynolds pushed back against claims by health groups that e-cigarettes are designed to appeal to young nonsmokers, insisting that their products are for “consumers looking for alternatives to traditional cigarettes” and are not meant to target those who have quit or haven’t started. “It’s a guiding principle of Reynolds operating companies, including JRVapor, that adults who do not smoke should not start and those who quit should not re-start,” Smith said. “Kids should never have access to tobacco products.”
Tobacco companies have long argued that they are only competing among existing adult smokers, when in reality their products and marketing appealed to children. In the 1990s, R.J. Reynolds claimed that it developed the infamous Joe Camel character in 1988 to lure adult customers from their competitors, even though studies repeatedly indicated that the “character was widely recognized by and popular among children.” The Federal Trade Commission ultimately concluded that Joe Camel attracted underage smokers, noting that teen smoking spiked after he entered the marketplace. The company discontinued use of the character in 1997.
Consumer advocates now fear that tobacco companies are using the same playbook to market e-cigarettes, and are urging the federal government to step in and provide additional regulation. The products are not covered by “the longtime restrictions on using commercials to sell tobacco cigarettes” or overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In 2009, the FDA classified electronic cigarettes as drug delivery devices, subject to pre-approval. But the industry took the government to court, insisting that they should be regulated as tobacco products. The manufactures won the case, forcing the FDA to drop its ban on importation of electronic cigarettes from China, and quickly moved to market without any federal oversight whatsoever. In January, the FDA announced that it would issue a proposed rule to regulate “additional categories of tobacco products” in April, but as the large tobacco companies have started moving into the marketplace, the agency has yet to publish any guidelines.
“Right now it’s the wild, wild west and we have an industry that has a history of marketing to youth and claim they don’t,” Matthew Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said, “making implicit and explicit claims about their products that often prove to be false.”
The Campaign and other health groups are demanding that the FDA explain what’s in these products, ensure that the levels of nicotine and the presence of other substances that make them more dangerous are carefully regulated, and prohibit aggressive advertising to children and misleading health statements.
“There has been very limited independent evidence done to find out what the ultimate consequences are either to the individual user, but also to the public health consequences,” Erika Sward, the American Lung Association’s Director of National Advocacy, explained. In 2009, the FDA released an analysis of 18 electronic cigarettes and found that half of the vapor samples “contained carcinogens, and that one contained diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical used in antifreeze.” The agency concluded that “consumers of e-cigarette products currently have no way of knowing whether e-cigarettes are safe for their intended use, how much nicotine or other potentially harmful chemicals are being inhaled during use, or if there are any benefits associated with using these products.” The Canadian health ministry also issued an advisory against electronic cigarettes, warning that the products “may pose risks such as nicotine poisoning and addiction.”
Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds conceded that “there is no safe tobacco product,” but insisted that the e-cigarettes rely on “the highest quality ingredients under strict manufacturing standards.” Neither company would discuss how they plan to advertise the smokes, although several other brands are already running ads deeply reminiscent of traditional tobacco commercials, relying on actors and celebrities to sell their products. The R.J. Reynolds spokesperson told ThinkProgress that the company’s advertisements would be similar in nature. A report from Citibank finds that spending on e-cigarette TV ads increased 17.9 percent from 2011 to 2012, while print ad spending rose 71.9 percent.
“The highly stylized TV advertising we’re now seeing reintroduces smoking in a very glamourous way on our nation’s airwaves,” Myers warned. “The electronic cigarette industry has used the lack of consumer regulation to aggressively market their product.”
“We have done and failed at the experiment of this country of having tobacco products being on the market until they are proven to be dangerous. We’ve seen the consequences of that,” Sward said, adding that the future of e-cigarettes “is going to depend on what FDA ultimately does.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/13/2137481/big-tobacco-high-tech-smoking-cool/
Jesse L. Steinfeld, Surgeon General and Tobacco Foe, Dies at 87
By WILLIAM YARDLEYAUG. 6, 2014
Dr. Jesse L. Steinfeld, who as surgeon general in the Nixon administration spoke out against cigarette smoking, bringing new attention to the risks it posed to women and to people exposed to secondhand smoke, died on Tuesday in Pomona, Calif. He was 87.
The cause was complications of a stroke, his daughter Susan Steinfeld said.
Dr. Steinfeld had been a top official at the National Cancer Institute under President Lyndon B. Johnson before President Richard M. Nixon named him surgeon general in December 1969. He soon developed a contentious relationship with the tobacco industry, which lobbied for his dismissal.
Along with many other top administration officials, he was asked to submit his resignation after Nixon’s re-election in November 1972. He later said that he had not expected the resignation to be accepted, but it was. Nixon did not appoint a permanent successor.
Dr. Steinfeld said he believed he lost the job because of his efforts to reduce smoking and his concerns about violence on television.
He arrived in office amid increasing attention to smoking as a public health issue.
Beginning in 1965, after a report by a previous surgeon general, Luther L. Terry, cigarette packs were required to bear labels saying, “Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health.” In 1970, under a bill initially proposed during the Johnson administration, the labels were strengthened to say, “Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health.”
The surgeon general’s office had been required to issue reports about smoking since the mid-1960s. But with increasing evidence that smoking caused lung cancer and other diseases, Dr. Steinfeld made the issue his own and his office a bully pulpit.
Citing new studies showing that women were less likely than men to quit smoking, he helped lead a campaign to reduce the number of female smokers. He spoke out against how tobacco companies marketed cigarettes to women and warned that smoking could be dangerous to women’s health and to the health of their children, born or unborn. He said smoking ruined teeth and caused wrinkles.
“I am puzzled by women’s attitudes toward smoking, the tenacity with which they cling to this habit despite the compelling health and aesthetic reasons there are for quitting,” he said in 1972.
Dr. Steinfeld was among the first public health officials to warn of secondhand smoke. When he became surgeon general, he removed ashtrays from his office (his two predecessors smoked) and put up signs that read, “Thank you for not smoking.”
Some of his ideas, including bans on smoking in restaurants, airplanes, trains and other public places, did not take hold for decades. His boldness gave momentum to activists who opposed smoking and sought similar restrictions.
Industry critics accused him of lying.
“The results of public misinformation are evident,” David S. Peoples, the president of the tobacco giant R. J. Reynolds, wrote in a letter to Elliot Richardson, the secretary of health, education and welfare in 1972. “Public transportation, for example (including the open-decked Staten Island Ferry), is beset with no-smoking policies on the basis of the surgeon general’s arbitrary campaign to ban all smoking.”
Jesse Leonard Steinfeld was born on Jan. 6, 1927, in West Aliquippa, Pa., near Pittsburgh. He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Hungary. His father, a smoker, died when he was 5 years old. His mother ran a dry goods and hardware store.
He finished high school at 16 and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh 19 months later. He was 22 when he received his medical degree from what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
He studied oncology during a residency at the University of California, San Francisco, and later taught medicine there. In 1954, he moved to the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. He returned to California in the late 1950s to teach and do research at the University of Southern California but moved back to the Washington area in 1968 to work again at the cancer institute. Later that year he was appointed deputy assistant secretary for health and scientific affairs.
Organizational changes in 1968 left the surgeon general without a clear line of authority — the position had previously supervised the Public Health Service — and some sought to abolish the office altogether. But the title had a high profile and respect on Capitol Hill, and Dr. Steinfeld embraced the role of a public figure. In addition to his antismoking activism, he spoke frequently against what he regarded as the negative effects of television violence on children.
He later held several teaching and administrative positions at medical schools and hospitals. He was director of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center in Rochester, Minn., in the mid-1970s before moving to California to teach at the University of California, Irvine. He also served as chief of medicine at the V.A. hospital in Long Beach.
He was later the dean of the school of medicine of the Medical College of Virginia and president of the Medical College of Georgia.
Besides his daughter Susan, his survivors include his wife of more than 61 years, the former Gen Stokes; two other daughters, Dr. Mary Beth Steinfeld and Jody Stefansson; and two grandchildren.
A version of this article appears in print on August 7, 2014, on page B17 of the New York edition with the headline: Jesse L. Steinfeld, 87, Surgeon General and Tobacco Foe, Dies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/us/jesse-l-steinfeld-surgeon-general-and-tobacco-foe-dies-at-87.html?_r=0
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DR. LUTHER L. TERRY, 73, IS DEAD; WARNED PUBLIC OF CIGARETTE PERIL
By ERIC PACE
Published: March 31, 1985
Dr. Luther L. Terry, who as Surgeon General of the United States was instrumental in preparing a 1964 report that said cigarette smoking contributed so substantially to the death rate that ''appropriate remedial action'' was called for, died Friday in Philadelphia, where he had lived for 20 years. He was 73 years old.
Family members said Dr. Terry died at Pennsylvania Hospital after suffering a heart attack.
The report, which did much to discourage Americans from smoking and helped lead to a variety of measures to curb the adverse effects of smoking, was prepared, at President Kennedy's initiative, to help the Government determine what to do about the issue.
The report was prepared by a committee of 10 prominent scientists led by Dr. Terry, a former cigarette smoker who had switched to a pipe by the time the report came out. Dr. James M. Hundley, the Assistant Surgeon General, was vice chairman, and Dr. Eugene H. Guthrie, chief of the Division of Chronic Diseases in the Public Health Service, was the staff director.
A Problem of 'National Concern'
The panel began its work in mid-1962, assessing and organizing thousands of documents on earlier studies concerning the relationship of smoking and health; it did not do original research. The 387-page study, which was 14 months in preparation, contained roughly 150,000 words.
Dr. Terry, a soft-spoken, Alabama- born physician, said at a news conference in Washington on Jan. 11, 1964, when the report was made public, that the problem of cigarette smoking was one of ''national concern.''
The report concluded that there was no question as to the role of cigarette smoking in causing lung cancer. It said the death rate from lung cancer, the most frequent form of cancer in men, was almost 1,000 percent higher in men who smokeed cigarettes than it was in nonsmokers.
The report said cigarette smoking was the ''most important'' cause of chronic bronchitis and increased the risk of death from that disease and from emphysema. The report also said that in cases of coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, mortality was 70 percent higher for cigarette smokers than for nonsmokers.
A Blow to the Tobacco Industry
The committee made no specific recommendations for action, but its report was seen at the time as dealing a heavy blow to efforts mounted in previous years by the tobacco industry in defense of cigarette smoking.
The report dismissed arguments questioning the validity of earlier studies, but the Tobacco Institute, an industry group, rejected the study, contending that it was not the final word on smoking and health.
For the rest of his career, Dr. Terry remained largely concerned with the dangers of cigarette smoking. After serving as Surgeon General from 1961 to 1965, he declared in 1967, when he was chairman of the National Interagency Council on Smoking and Health: ''The period of uncertainty is over. There is no longer any doubt that cigarette smoking is a direct threat to the user's health. There was a time when we wpoke of the smoking and health 'controversy.' To my mind, the days of argument are over.''
''Today we are on the threshhold of a new era,'' he went on, ''a time of action, a time for public and priate asgencies, community groups and individual citizens to work together to bring his hydra-haded monster under control.''
19 Million Quit Smoking
By then, Dr. Daniel Horn, director of the National Clearinghouse on Smoking and Health, said 19 million Americans had quit smoking, but almost 50 million other Americans continued to smoke and more than a million young people began smoking each year.
Luther Leonidas Terry was born in Red Level, a small town in southern Alabama, on Sept. 15, 1911, the son of James Edward Terry and Lula M. Durham Terry. He earned a bachelor of science degree from Birmingham- Southern College in 1931 and an M.D. from Tulane University in 1935.
After a succession of medical teaching and research posts, he was called to active duty in the Public Health Service in 1942, and became chief of medical service in 1943 at what was then the United States Marine Hospital in Baltimore, a post he held for almost a decade while also teaching and doing some reaearch at Johns Hopkins University.
In 1944, Dr. Terry became a member of the Regular Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service. In 1953, he became a full-time medical researcher with he National Heart Institute, becoming assistant director in 1958 and concentrating on the problem of hypertension.
Concern for the Workplace
He was named Surgeon General in 1961 and remained in that post until 1965, when he became vice president for medical affairs and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He retired as a professor in 1982.
In his last years, one of Dr. Terry's chief medical interests was cigarette smoking in the workplace. In public appearances around the country, he argued that companies should take steps to prevent nonsmoking employees from being exposed to cigarette smoke.
Over the years, he was awarded 17 honorary degrees.
Dr. Terry is survived by his wife, Janet Reynolds Terry, whom he married in 1940; two sons, Luther L. Terry Jr. of Singapore and Michael Durham Terry of Old Greenwich, Conn.; a daughter, Jan Terry Kollock of Philadelphia; a brother, Durham Terry of Red Level, a sister, Elizabeth Terry White of Charlotte, N.C., and three grandchildren.
Michael Terry said Friday that his father would be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but funeral and burial arrangements were not yet complete.
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/31/us/dr-luther-l-terry-73-is-dead-warned-public-of-cigarette-peril.html
How Big Tobacco Has Made Cigarettes So Much Deadlier Than They Used To Be
CREDIT: Shutterstock
By Tara Culp-Ressler June 23, 2014 at 1:29 pm Updated: June 23, 2014 at 2:17 pm
Fifty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general tied tobacco to lung cancer for the first time.
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/initiatives/tobacco/
Since then, additional scientific research has linked smoking with a host of other health issues,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/health/list-of-smoking-related-illnesses-grows-significantly-in-us-report.html?smid=tw-nytimeshealth&seid=auto&_r=1
and efforts to publicize those harmful side effects helped spur a historic decline in the number of Americans who regularly smoke.
Nonetheless, more than 42 million adults remain addicted to cigarettes, http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/
and the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that tobacco is still the greatest public health challenge of our time. http://www.vox.com/2014/4/21/5636750/scared-of-legal-pot-hold-on-lets-talk-about-tobacco
Why is tobacco still at the top of the CDC’s list?
Why haven’t we moved past this yet? Largely because cigarette manufacturers have worked hard to keep their products relevant even in the midst of aggressive public health campaigns to crack down on smoking, according to a new report released on Monday by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/content/what_we_do/industry_watch/product_manipulation/2014_06_19_DesignedforAddiction_web.pdf
The cigarettes sold today are quite different from the cigarettes that were on the market five decades ago,
http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/press_releases/post/2014_06_23_report
according to the new report, and that’s because tobacco companies have done extensive research to figure out how to make smoking appealing for new customers. They’ve essentially made it easier to get hooked on their products by increasing the levels of nicotine — the addictive chemical in cigarettes — and using new additives to help enhance nicotine’s impact. They’ve also added flavoring, sugars, and menthol to mask the effect of inhaling smoke, ultimately hoping that will make it more pleasurable to use cigarettes:
Cigarettes have evolved over the past 50 years to make smoking more desirable
“Most people would think that 50 years after we learned that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, cigarettes would be safer. What’s shocking about the report we issued today is that we’ve found that a smoker today has more than twice the risk of lung cancer than a smoker fifty years ago, as a direct result of design changes made by the industry,” Matt Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in an interview with ThinkProgress.
On top of that, Myers’ organization notes that these corporations have made calculated moves to create the next generation of smokers, according to internal marketing documents from tobacco companies that have been made public as a result of litigation against them. Brands like Marlboro, Newport, and Camel have specifically worked to attract younger customers in order to remain viable, citing statistics that most regular smokers pick up the habit before they turn 18.
Most people know that cigarette makers have historically worked to target young people with their advertising.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/14/2157141/tobacco-ads-teen-smoking/
Indeed, before increased regulation attempted to rein in this practice, it used to be even more explicit than it is now. For instance, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company infamously used the cartoon character Joe Camel to help sell their cigarettes in the 1990s, a practice that mobilized anti-tobacco advocates to fight hard against marketing aimed at younger Americans.
But the new report finds that tobacco companies have actually gone even further to woo teens. The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company didn’t just rely on its camel; it also looked to change its cigarettes to appeal to a younger demographic. “Two key areas identified for improvement were smoothness and sweetness delivery. Smoothness is an identified opportunity area for improvement versus Marlboro, and sweetness can impart a different delivery taste dimension which younger adult smokers may be receptive to,” a 1985 product development plan for the company noted.
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/11/suppl_1/i32.abstract
“We would have thought, with the tobacco industry claiming they don’t market to kids, that they wouldn’t be making design changes that increase the number of our kids who smoke,” Myers said. “But they have, quietly and behind the scenes.”
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids’ report was released to coincide with the five year anniversary of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, http://www.fda.gov/tobaccoproducts/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/ucm246129.htm
historic legislation that gave the FDA power to regulate tobacco products and marketing efforts.
At the time, that measure was hailed as the “toughest anti-tobacco bill in American history” — and Myers’ group wants the government to use it to undo some of the changes that have been made to cigarettes over the past several decades.
“At a very minimum, the FDA should act swiftly to require the tobacco industry to reverse all the steps they’ve taken to make these products more dangerous, more addictive, and more appealing to our kids,” Myers said. “I think this report tells us that the tobacco industry has not reformed over the last 50 years.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/06/23/3451935/big-tobacco-hooked-cigarettes/
Full Report: A HALF CENTURY OF AVOIDABLE DEATH -- 2014
A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON TOBACCO IN AMERICA
http://ash.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/US-TOBACCO-REPORT_FNL-WEB.pdf
Should You Be Worried About Your E-Cigarette Exploding?
Here's a brief history of e-cigs blowing up—in your face, in your car, in your home, in your bar.
—By Dana Liebelson and Asawin Suebsaeng
| Thu Apr. 17, 2014 3:00 AM PDT
patrisyu/Shutterstock
w/imbedded videos
Update, April 24, 2014:
On Thursday, the FDA proposed regulating e-cigarettes, [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/health/fda-will-propose-new-regulations-for-e-cigarettes.html ] banning the sale of the devices to Americans under 18 and requiring makers of e-cigarettes to to disclose their ingredients to the agency. But a spokesperson for the FDA tells Mother Jones that the proposed rule does not cover "accessories of proposed deemed tobacco products," which includes batteries and chargers that have been blamed for e-cigarette explosions. The FDA is still seeking comment on whether it might include these products under its regulatory umbrella.
Last week, an 18-year-old bartender in North Yorkshire, England, was serving drinks when a colleague's electronic cigarette exploded, setting the bartender's dress on fire. This was not the first reported incident of an e-cigarette exploding—over the past few years, there have been more than a dozen similar reports.
Specifically, it's e-cigarettes' lithium-ion batteries that combust.
These batteries are also found in laptops and cellphones. But with e-cigarettes, the batteries are especially prone to overheating because smokers use incompatible chargers, overcharge the e-cigarettes, or don't take sufficient safety precautions. For example, many e-cigarettes are made to plug into a USB port, which smokers may take to mean the devices can be safely charged with a computer or iPad charger. But if left too long in a common USB port, some e-cigarette batteries can fry.
The industry acknowledges that explosions are a possibility. "I'm aware of 10 failures in the last year," Thomas Kiklas, who represents the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association, told NBC Chicago last October. "When you charge them, they are 99.9 percent safe, but occasionally there will be failures."
The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees tobacco products, does not currently regulate e-cigarettes. An FDA spokesperson says the agency is working to change that.
Here is a brief history of notable e-cigarette explosions and fires:
Niceville, Florida, February 2012
A 57-year-old Vietnam veteran was smoking an e-cigarette when it exploded in his face, knocking out his teeth and part of his tongue, according to ABC News. A fire chief told the news outlet that the accident was most likely caused by a faulty lithium battery, which exploded like a "bottle rocket."
Muskogee, Oklahoma, April 2012
Shona Bear Clark bought an NJOY e-cigarette from Walmart to help her cut back on smoking half a pack a day. Clark says it exploded when she tried to remove it from its package. "It was as loud as firing a gun, but a gun fired right in your face," she recalled.
Corona, California, March 2013
Jennifer Ries and her husband, Xavier, were driving to the airport, with their VapCigs e-cig charging in the car. "I looked around and I saw the battery to the [e-cigarette] dripping," she told CBS Los Angeles. "I went to unscrew it and the battery started shooting fire toward me and then exploded and shot the metal pieces onto my lap…A blowtorch type of fire and then an explosion." Ries suffered second-degree burns, and the the couple later sued the e-cig manufacturer.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 2013
Kyle Czeschin's e-cig was plugged into his laptop. Guess what happened next? "Everything was on fire, my laptop was on fire, my lamp was on fire, the shades," he told News On 6.
Sherman, Texas, July 2013
Wes Sloan wanted to kick his habit, so bought what he assumed would be a safer, electric alternative to cigarettes. "The battery was into about a two-hour charge and it exploded and shot across the room like a Roman candle," he said. Sloan was charging the e-cig in the USB port of a Macbook. He says he suffered second- and third-degree burns, and that he and his wife, Cathy, were treated for smoke inhalation.
Mount Pleasant, Utah, September 2013
A Utah mom was charging her e-cigarette in her car when she said there was "a big bang, and kind of a flash, [and] smoke everywhere," according to Fox 13 News. The e-cigarette reportedly released a hot copper coil that landed in her son's car seat, burning the boy. The mom was finally able to put the fire out with an iced coffee. A fire marshal told the news outlet that the mom's charger was standard and factory-issued, and it was a "catastrophic failure of the device." He also noted this was the second e-cigarette explosion he'd investigated recently in the region.
Atlanta, September 2013
A woman in Grant Park plugged her e-cigarette into her computer to charge it, according to WSB-TV Atlanta. Fortunately, she was home when she says it began to shoot four-foot flames across the living room. (A screenshot in the above link shows the rag that the woman used to unplug the e-cigarette as it was burning.) "If I hadn't had been home, I would have lost my dogs, I would have lost my cats, I would have lost my house," she told the news station.
La Crosse, Wisconsin, September 2013
The La Crosse Fire Department explains how they're learning to deal with e-cig fires:
Blaine, Minnesota, October 2013
A man was charging his e-cigarette through his computer when his wife noticed that it was "sparking like a fountain firework," according to KMSP Fox 9. The device then "shot out like a missile" from the computer, she said. The owner of a nearby e-cigarette business told the news outlet that the battery didn't have overcharge protection, and that's likely why it overheated.
Kootenai County, Idaho, November 2013
An e-cigarette started a fire in an Idaho household's living room while the family of four slept. The device, which was charging through a laptop, overheated and exploded. "If that smoke alarm didn't go off, none of us would have woken up, you know, none of us would have been able to get to the door, 'cause it would have been blocked by the flames and we would have all died," the son said.
Queen Creek, Arizona, November 2013
Just four days after Kyler Lawson bought his Crown Seven Gladiator e-cigarette, it exploded while charging. "It shot out like a bullet, hit the window, dropped from the window to the carpet," he said. "Caught the carpet on fire…If you're going to charge it, be there. Be present when you're charging it because you never know what can happen."
Eugene, Oregon, November 2013
Judy Timmons had been charging her e-cig in her car for two hours when it exploded. "I'm just glad my grandkids weren't in the backseat because it could have exploded at any time," she said. "It had enough power and momentum to shoot all the way to the backseat," Larry, her husband, said.
Colorado Springs, Colorado, November 2013
A man in Colorado Springs was charging his e-cigarette when it exploded, setting his bed on fire, according to KRDO NewsChannel 13. He used a blanket to smother the flames, suffering burns on his body and face. The manufacturer of "Foos" e-cigarettes told the news outlet that this was the first time he'd heard of their products malfunctioning. The man said that nonetheless, "I'm back on normal cigarettes now."
Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, January 2014
A North Carolina man who spent over 20 years working as a firefighter was injured after his e-cigarette exploded in his face. He described the incident to the Jacksonville Daily News as feeling like "a bunch of hot oil hit my face." After spending the night in the hospital, the newspaper reported that he continues to suffer from the incident: "The bottom of his left eyeball is sensitive to light, hard to see out of, and will need to be looked at by an optometrist."
Springfield, Missouri, January 2014
Last Christmas Eve, Chantz Mondragon was sitting in bed with his wife when his e-cig overheated and burst into flames. The device was charging via a USB port on his laptop. He described the explosion as "a searing hot blinding light like a magnesium sparkler, [like] whenever you see a person welding." Mondragon also said the fire burned through his bed, and caused second-degree burns on his leg and foot.
North Yorkshire, England, April, 2014
Eighteen-year-old Laura Baty was serving a customer at the Buck Inn Hotel when her coworker's charging e-cigarette exploded behind the bar. "I started crying hysterically and my arm was all black," she told the Press. "My dress caught on fire as I ran away, and I just didn't know what was happening."
London, April 2014
A woman who used an incompatible charger to charge her e-cigarette caused a major fire that took about 40 minutes to get under control, according to the London Evening Standard. A member of the London Fire Brigade told the paper that, "As with all rechargeable electrical equipment, it's vitally important that people use the correct type of charger for their e-cigs to prevent fires which can be serious and could even result in death."
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/e-cigarettes-explode-fda-timeline
Number of US students who've tried e-cigarettes has doubled, CDC says
By Maggie Fox
VIDEO
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/number-us-students-whove-tried-e-cigarettes-has-doubled-cdc-f8C11080370
The percentage of U.S. high school students who say they have tried e-cigarettes has doubled in the past year to 10 percent, government researchers reported Thursday.
They say it’s a troubling trend as no one knows yet how safe e-cigarettes are, although they are often marketed as a safer alternative to regular cigarettes.
“E-cigarette experimentation and recent use doubled among U.S. middle and high school students during 2011–2012, resulting in an estimated 1.78 million students having ever used e-cigarettes as of 2012,” researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration wrote in a report.
“Moreover, in 2012, an estimated 160,000 students who reported ever using e-cigarettes had never used conventional cigarettes. This is a serious concern because the overall impact of e-cigarette use on public health remains uncertain.”
While the numbers of kids smoking e-cigarettes aren’t huge yet, the fact that they are doubling so quickly is a bad sign, said Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC Office on Smoking and Health.
“I think the thing of most concern is the trend,” McAfee told NBC News. “There aren’t many things where we see a doubling in one year. We are not talking about adults here. The absolute numbers in middle school are small but they are doubling. We think it is something we need to get ahead of.”
And, health experts say, tobacco companies are obviously marketing e-cigarettes to young people. “With flavors like bubble gum and cotton candy, e-cigarettes are very clearly being made and marketed in ways that appeal to children,” said Paul Billings of the American Lung Association.
“These data show the urgent need for oversight of these products,” Billings added the FDA doesn’t regulate e-cigarettes but wants to.
Just 2.8 percent of high school students say they’ve used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, which suggests many are experimenting but not smoking them steadily - yet. "Nicotine is a highly addictive drug,” says CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden.
E-cigarettes are pencil-shaped devices that use a cartridge to deliver an aerosol mist containing nicotine with flavorings. It’s propelled by propylene glycol or glycerol. “Potentially harmful constituents also have been documented in some e-cigarette cartridges, including irritants, genotoxins (which can damage DNA), and animal carcinogens,”
FDA says in a statement on its website.
http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publichealthfocus/ucm172906.htm
More high school students are trying e-cigarettes, the CDC and FDA report
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.
CDC and FDA researchers looked at answers from the 2011 and 2012 National Youth Tobacco Survey, a pencil-and-paper questionnaire given to students in grades 6-12 at their schools.
The data show that 76.3 percent of middle and high school students who used e-cigarettes within the past 30 days also smoked conventional cigarettes in the same time. And about 20 percent of the middle school students who had tried e-cigarettes said they have never tried conventional cigarettes.
The researchers worry that e-cigarettes might act as a gateway to conventional tobacco products. “About 90 percent of all smokers begin smoking as teenagers,” said McAfee. “We now have young movie stars being paid to appear in ads on television for the first time in 40 years doing something that looks to all intents and purposes like smoking.”
McAfee fears the promotion may undo years of work marginalizing smoking, banning it from workplaces and restaurants and making it an unpopular habit.
Nicotine itself may also be harmful, McAfee added. “We are particularly concerned about adolescents being exposed to nicotine in any form because it has the potential to impact their brain development,” he said.
About 20 percent of Americans smoke, down from 40 percent in the 1960s. About 18 percent of high school students have smoked one or more cigarettes in the past month. Earlier this year the CDC reported the number of adults who have tried e-cigarettes has also doubled, to 21 percent, in the past year.
Members of Congress said they'd work to support tougher regulation of the electronic cigarettes.
“Electronic cigarettes as marketed today – with flavors like bubblegum and strawberry – are targeted at young people with the very clear intent of creating a new generation of smokers," Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said in a statement.
"Without question, tobacco companies are using the same despicable tactics with e-cigarettes that they used in previous decades with traditional cigarettes to lure youth down a path of nicotine addiction and eventual death. Efforts to reduce tobacco use among youth must be redoubled, and include more aggressive action by the FDA. "
CDC says cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States, killing 443,000 people a year.
First published September 5th 2013, 1:47 pm
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/number-us-students-whove-tried-e-cigarettes-has-doubled-cdc-f8C11080370
E-cigs, hookahs gain new hold with middle, high school kids
Use of novel tobacco products like e-cigarettes and hookahs is on the rise with middle school and high school kids, government researchers reported.
By JoNel Aleccia
First published November 14th 2013, 12:11 pm
New kinds of tobacco products like e-cigarettes and hookahs are catching on fast with U.S. middle school and high school students, even as conventional cigarette use holds steady, government researchers said Thursday.
It’s a worrisome rise, they say, because the products are often specifically targeted to teens as better choices than regular smokes.
“The increase in use of electronic cigarettes and hookah tobacco could be attributed to low price, an increase in marketing, availability and visibility of these products, and the perception that these products might be ‘safer’ alternatives to cigarettes,” officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in a new report.
Just weeks ago, government officials released data showing that the percentage of high-schoolers who had tried e-cigarettes had doubled to 10 percent between 2011 and 2012.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/number-us-students-whove-tried-e-cigarettes-has-doubled-cdc-f8C11080370
But the new numbers confirm that although e-cigarettes are used by a tiny proportion of kids — 1.1 percent of middle-schoolers and 2.8 percent of high schoolers — use in the past 30 days jumped more than 83 percent among middle-school youth and 86 percent among high-schoolers between 2011 and 2012. And hookah use among high school students jumped 30 percent, to about 5.4 percent of the nearly 27,000 students included in the National Youth Tobacco Survey.
“It’s not like the bongs that old folks think of,” said Peter Hamm of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group. “You look at these numbers and you say 6 percent of high school kids are using hookah pipes?”
Not exactly. Many young teens are buying small, disposable hookahs that dispense tobacco in flavors like mocha latte, jungle juice and coconut twist. They buy them at the same convenience stores, gas stations and head shops that sell e-cigarettes — pencil-shaped devices that use a cartridge to deliver an aerosol mist containing nicotine with flavorings. They sell small cigars, too, which are also a troubling trend, the report found.
Cigar use climbed overall from 11.6 percent to 12.6 percent in a year among all high school students, but it jumped from 11.7 percent to 16.7 percent in black kids, more than double the rate since 2009, the report warned.
Nearly 17 percent of all high school boys in 2012 used cigars in the past month, about equal to the proportion that smoked cigarettes.
“The report raises a red flag about newer tobacco products,” said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement. “Cigars and hookah tobacco are smoked tobacco — addictive and deadly. We need effective action to protect our kids from addiction to nicotine.”
The Food and Drug Administration regulates most tobacco products, but not e-cigarettes, although the agency is pushing for oversight there, too.
Overall, nearly 7 percent of middle-school kids and 23 percent of high-school kids used tobacco of any kind in 2012, figures that dropped slightly, but not significantly, from the previous year.
Nearly 90 percent of adult smokers in the U.S. began smoking by age 18, the CDC said. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S. and it kills 440,000 people — about 1,200 a day — every year. More than 2,000 teens and young adults become daily smokers every day, the CDC said.
But tobacco companies work hard to reach that market, Hamm said.
“If you’re not addicted to nicotine by the time you’re 21, the odds are against you getting addicted,” said Hamm. “They have to get them while they’re young or they don’t get them at all.”
For their part, tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds of Winston-Salem, N.C., say that they market their products to consenting adults who understand the risks of smoking.
“Minors should never use tobacco products and adults who do not use or have quit using tobacco products should not start,” the company says on its website.
JoNel Aleccia is a senior health reporter with NBC News. Reach her on Twitter at @JoNel_Aleccia or send her an email.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/e-cigs-hookahs-gain-new-hold-middle-high-school-kids-f2D11591242
E-Cigarette Poisonings Skyrocket, Mostly in Kids
By JoNel Aleccia
First published April 3rd 2014, 12:01 pm
Calls to U.S. poison control centers about people sickened by e-cigarettes containing liquid nicotine have soared in the past four years, climbing from just one a month in 2010 to at least 215 per month this year, federal health officials said Thursday.
More than half of the poisoning reports involved children younger than 5, including many kids drawn to the nicotine-laced liquids flavored like fruit, bubble gum and soda pop, which come in containers ranging from small vials to multi-gallon jugs that are not required to be childproof.
E-cigarettes — battery-powered devices that let users inhale nicotine-infused vapors — now account for more than 40 percent of all poison center calls about cigarette-type products, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This report raises another red flag about e-cigarettes
— the liquid nicotine used in e-cigarettes can be hazardous,” CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement. “Use of these products is skyrocketing and these poisonings will continue.”
Between September 2010 and February 2014, there were 2,405 calls about e-cigarettes to the nation’s 55 poison control centers, and about 16,248 calls about conventional cigarettes, the study found.
E-cigarettes — and the liquids used to refill them — are not regulated by the federal Food and Drug Administration, though stakeholders in the growing $1.5 billion industry are anxiously awaiting a proposed rule that could give the agency new authority.
“A teaspoon of that solution could potentially kill a child, there’s no doubt.”
Until then, experts at poison centers across the country say they want to warn users of e-cigarettes to store them out of reach of kids and to be careful with the highly toxic refills that allow continued “vaping.”
Kids are the biggest worry — as little as a teaspoon of highly concentrated liquid nicotine could cause serious harm, said Lee Cantrell, director of the San Diego division of the California poison control system. Reports of poisonings in kids jumped 10-fold at his site in the past 14 months.
“I went online and found some retailers selling concentrations of 7.2 percent nicotine in 100-milliliter bottles,” Cantrell said. “A teaspoon of that solution could potentially kill a child, there’s no doubt.”
E-cigarette health risks cited
TODAY
Concentrations of nicotine used in e-cigarettes vary widely, from none in flavored liquids aimed at helping people quit smoking to as little as 6 milligrams per milliliter up to 36 milligrams per milliliter, online ads show.
But even adults are reporting harm from the e-cigarette liquid, experts said. Some mistook nicotine in small vials for eye drops and put them in their eyes. Others got the fluid in their mouths when the vials broke or intentionally ingested the liquid nicotine. Others spilled the fluid on their hands and didn’t wash it off, becoming ill when the nicotine was absorbed into their skin.
“They’ll call and say they have spilled a large amount on their hands and they say, ‘My heart’s racing, I’m anxious, I feel like I’m going to throw up,” Cantrell said.
The worry is shared by poison center experts from California and Colorado to Kentucky and beyond, said Dr. Al Bronstein, medical director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver.
“The concern is eventually we’re going to have a really bad outcome,” he said. “Nobody that we know of has died yet, but that’s what we want to prevent.”
Smoking ban: Western Health Trust becomes smoke-free
12 March 2014 Last updated at 06:07 ET
Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry is one of the sites where the total ban has come into force
A complete ban on smoking has come into force on all the Western Health Trust's sites, including the grounds of Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry.
Patients, staff and visitors will not be able to smoke at the entrance of the trust's buildings, car parks or inside their own cars on trust premises.
The new rule has been introduced to coincide with No Smoking Day.
The Western Trust is the first health authority in Northern Ireland to ban smoking in its grounds.
About 360,000 people in Northern Ireland - 20% of the population - are smokers.
A smoking shelter at Altnagelvin Hospital was destroyed earlier this week
The Western Trust's head of health improvement said the aim was to eventually "make it unthinkable for anyone to smoke on health and social care facilities right across Northern Ireland".
"We are a healthcare facility, we are a health-promoting organisation and we need to lead by example," said Dr Maura O'Neill.
"When we asked the public and our staff if this was the right thing to do, 70% of staff and 76% of the public agreed."
Dr O'Neill said that rather than appointing wardens to enforce the ban, "it's every staff member's responsibility in the trust to approach someone if they're smoking to ask them if they've thought about quitting and offer them support".
"We do know this is going to be challenging - we don't expect this is going to happen overnight," she said.
"People may feel they don't want to go up and ask someone to stub out their cigarette - we have training and support in place to allow that to happen, but it will take time."
Earlier this week the trust demolished a smoking shelter outside Altnagelvin Hospital.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-26540166
European Parliament Approves Tough Rules on Electronic Cigarettes
By DAVID JOLLY FEB. 26, 2014
PARIS — The European Parliament on Wednesday approved rules for the region’s fast-growing market for electronic cigarettes, regulations that could help set a benchmark for standards around the world.
Beginning in mid-2016, advertising for e-cigarettes would be banned in the 28 nations of the European Union, as it already is for ordinary tobacco products.
E-cigarettes would also be required to carry graphic health warnings and must be childproof. The amount of nicotine would be limited to 20 milligrams per milliliter, similar to ordinary cigarettes.
Governments across the globe are grappling with how to regulate e-cigarettes, which turn nicotine-infused propylene glycol into an inhalable vapor. As sales of e-cigarettes have ballooned, the debate over the public health implications has intensified.
The Food and Drug Administration in the United States is soon expected to issue regulations for the devices; some American cities have already acted independently to ban e-cigarettes in public places.
A shop for electronic cigarettes in Paris. The rules adopted on Wednesday in Europe go further than United States laws. Credit Corentin Fohlen for The New York Times
In Europe, the tobacco legislation just needs the final approval of member states — something that appears all but certain. It is expected by April.
The regulation of e-cigarettes in Europe is part of a broader overhaul of the region’s tobacco rules, which have been in place since 2001.
The rules adopted on Wednesday go further than United States laws. Along with the e-cigarette changes, they will require that the top 65 percent of all cigarette packs be covered with health warnings and pictures of things like diseased lungs. They would ban all tobacco products specifically targeted at children, like chocolate cigarettes, as well as cigarettes that come in packages designed to look like lipstick or perfume containers. Menthol cigarettes would also to be prohibited, after a four-year delay.
But the new rules stop short of an earlier proposal to regulate e-cigarettes as medicines. Such oversight would have moved them out of the specialty shops that have sprouted across Europe and into drugstores, where they would have been subject to the same regulatory regime as pharmaceuticals.
“This is a victory,” said Linda McAvan, the British Labour Party member of the European Parliament who guided the legislation through the chamber in the face of determined opposition from the tobacco industry. “The original proposal was stricter, and I would have voted for that, but the new law is anyway a huge step forward in tobacco control,” she added.
The fight will probably continue as Big Tobacco and e-cigarette start-ups looks to protect their business. For example, the tobacco companies’ case has previously been taken up by countries like Ukraine, Cuba and Indonesia in a challenge to Australia’s rules at the World Trade Organization, arguing that the regulations constitute “technical barriers” to trade and violate the companies’ intellectual property rights.
“I’m totally confident that we’ll be taken to court by the tobacco companies,” Ms. McAvan said, adding that it was “worrying that they may try to abuse trade treaties.”
Photo
Electronic smoking devices Credit Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Drago Azinovic, president for European operations at Philip Morris International, said in a statement on Wednesday that the revision to European law “represents a worrying departure from the E.U.’s basic standards of proportionate, evidenced-based policy making, which will further erode intellectual property rights and undermine the E.U. charter where these rights are protected.”
The question of how — or even whether — to regulate e-cigarettes has divided the policy-making bodies of the European Union, just as it has the medical community. The devices deliver the addictive nicotine of tobacco via a vapor and without the tar and other toxic chemicals of regular cigarettes. Some people claim that e-cigarettes are effective in helping smokers to quit, but there is little reliable data.
The European Commission, the Union’s executive body, had originally called for a much tougher line on electronic cigarettes. That proposal had the backing of the 28 European Union member states. But in October the Parliament, one of the three main voices in European policy, voted to keep the products regulated as tobacco, after intense lobbying from the tobacco industry and tens of thousands of “vapers,” or people who smoke e-cigarettes.
Ms. McAvan said the question of whether e-cigarettes were classified as medicines or tobacco products was really beside the point. “We needed a framework to allow them onto the market so we can see how it works,” she said.
She noted that, in theory, the final agreement allows member states the option of classifying e-cigarettes as medicines if they choose to do so. But she said that would prove complicated in practice. E-cigarette companies could also choose to claim medical status for the devices, she said, which would allow them to be advertised as smoking cessation aids.
Despite the determined battle by industry players, the rules in Europe passed easily. The Parliament, which was meeting in Strasbourg, France, voted to adopt 500-63, with 60 abstentions.
Still, it was far from unanimous.
“This was a very bad agreement,” said Martin Callanan, a British Conservative Party politician who said he opposed e-cigarette regulation on the ground that the products help people stop smoking. “It’s a massive loss for public health in Europe.”
Mr. Callanan, who backed most of Wednesday’s tobacco law reforms, said the details on e-cigarettes were “still very murky” and added, “I’m sure a lot of this will end up in the courts.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/business/european-union-approves-tough-rules-on-electronic-cigarettes.html
FDA: "The Real Cost", Campaign Overview
On this page:
What It Is
Why It’s Important
Who It Targets
What It Will Do
How It Will Be Implemented
How It Will Be Evaluated
How You Can Get Involved
What It Is
FDA’s first youth tobacco prevention campaign, “The Real Cost,” targets at-risk youth aged 12-17 who are open to smoking or already experimenting with cigarettes. About 10 million youth in the United States currently fall into this category.1 The objective of the campaign is to educate these at-risk youth about the harmful effects of tobacco use with the goal of reducing initiation rates among youth who are open to smoking and reducing the number of youth already experimenting with cigarettes that progress to regular use.
“The Real Cost” campaign is launching nationally on February 11, 2014 across multiple media platforms including TV, radio, print, and online. The campaign will continue to air in more than 200 markets across the country for at least one year.
Why It’s Important
Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States, responsible for more than 480,000 deaths each year.2 But the consequences of tobacco use are not limited to adults. In fact, tobacco use is almost always initiated and established during adolescence.3 Every day in the United States, more than 3,200 youth under age 18 smoke their first cigarette —and more than 700 youth under age 18 become daily smokers—highlighting a critical need for stronger, targeted youth tobacco prevention efforts.4
Download, Print & Share
The Real Cost: Campaign Overview A thumbnail of the The Real Cost Overview PDF
Through “The Real Cost” campaign, FDA seeks to reduce the number of youth who experiment with tobacco use to ultimately reduce the number of future tobacco users and thereby diminish the harmful consequences tobacco use has on the health of our country.
Who It Targets
“The Real Cost” campaign targets at-risk youth aged 12-17, including youth who have never smoked a cigarette but are open to trying it and youth who have already smoked between 1 puff and 99
cigarettes in their lifetime and are at risk of becoming regular users. The target’s demographic, psychographic and key insights are embodied through the campaign’s at-risk persona, Pete (see box). Though the persona has been developed as a male, the target audience is evenly divided between male and female.
What It Will Do
“The Real Cost” campaign was developed using evidence-based best practices and multiple phases of research to identify promising messages. The campaign is specifically designed to affect at-risk youth who experiment with cigarettes but do not consider themselves smokers, do not believe they will become addicted smokers, and are not particularly interested in the topic of tobacco. Campaign messages are intended to make the target audience acutely aware of the risk from every cigarette by highlighting consequences that youth are concerned about, such as loss of control due to addiction and health effects like tooth loss and skin damage. Additionally, the campaign will include messages that specifically address the health consequences of menthol cigarettes as youth are more likely to report smoking menthol cigarettes.5
“The Real Cost” messages include:
Health Consequences: A focus on consequences that are aligned with what concerns teens, e.g., cosmetic consequences like tooth loss and skin damage. The “cost” is the main theme, getting teens to think about the range of costs associated with smoking, beyond money.
Loss of Control Leading to Addiction: A focus on how cigarettes can take away the control teens are just beginning to have in their lives. This theme portrays nicotine addiction as an unwanted presence in a young person’s life.
How It Will Be Implemented
Advertising will focus on a multi-channel approach that surrounds teens with “The Real Cost” messages. The campaign includes traditional broadcast media such as television and radio ads, as well as advertising through a mix of other multimedia channels including the web, cinema, print publications and out-of-home advertising (e.g., bus shelters). The campaign seeks to maximize message impact by utilizing each channel’s strengths.
A critical factor in reducing youth tobacco use is to produce and maintain effective levels of campaign awareness within the target population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that new tobacco prevention campaigns that reach 75% to 85% of the target audience within one year can expect to produce attitude and behavior change within 2 years if the time in market is adequately sustained.6
FDA is positioned to sustain “The Real Cost” campaign at the reach, frequency and time in-market recommend by CDC to achieve behavior change and improve public health. The campaign will reach 90% of the target audience 15 times a quarter for a total reach and frequency of more than 9 million youth 60 times a year.
How It Will Be Evaluated
The campaign’s effects will be measured through a multi-year outcome evaluation to assess its effectiveness and identify areas for further refinement over time. Baseline collection for the evaluation began in November 2013 and consists of in-person, nationally representative data collection in 75 media markets across the country. The study design is longitudinal, meaning the study will attempt to follow the same 8,000 youth over a two year period. Evaluation results will be used to assess changes in key tobacco-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors over several years to measure the impact and effectiveness of the campaign. Ultimately, results will be used to determine if exposure to the campaign is associated with a decrease in cigarette smoking among youth aged 12-17—specifically, if we meet our expected goal of reducing the number of youth cigarette smokers aged 12-17 by at least 300,000 in three years.
How You Can Get Involved
Social Media Channels for Stakeholders We recommend that adults and stakeholder audiences use FDA's stakeholder resource page for campaign information and customizable resources such as posters, postcards and campaign flyers that can be shared through appropriate channels. For example, healthcare practitioners can make these materials available in waiting rooms and clinics frequented by teens. All materials are available for free download and many will soon be available for ordering through the campaign's clearinghouse.
FDA's goal is to keep “The Real Cost” campaign authentic through a peer-to-peer approach. Thus, “The Real Cost” campaign website (www.therealcost.gov) and social channels are intended for teens. Stakeholders should use FDA's social media channels to engage with us around the campaign—check out our list of suggested tweets. Organizations that work directly with youth can help extend the campaign by encouraging teens to share campaign messages with their peers. Stakeholders who do not work directly with youth can share our resources with youth-focused organizations. For more information, please contact CTPcommunications@fda.hhs.gov.
http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofMedicalProductsandTobacco/AbouttheCenterforTobaccoProducts/PublicEducationCampaigns/TheRealCostCampaign/ucm20041242.htm
FDA Launching Anti-Smoking Campaign Aimed at Youth
WASHINGTON February 4, 2014 (AP)
By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM AP Tobacco Writer
The Food and Drug Administration is using ads depicting wrinkled skin on youthful faces and teenagers paying for cigarettes with their teeth in a campaign to show the nation's young people the costs associated with smoking.
The federal agency said Tuesday it is launching a $115 million multimedia education campaign called "The Real Cost" that's aimed at stopping teenagers from smoking and encouraging them to quit.
Advertisements will run in more than 200 markets throughout the U.S. for at least one year beginning Feb. 11. The campaign will include ads on TV stations such as MTV and print spots in magazines like Teen Vogue. It also will use social media.
"Our kids are the replacement customers for the addicted adult smokers who die or quit each day," said Mitch Zeller, the director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products. "And that's why we think it's so important to reach out to them — not to lecture them, not to throw statistics at them — but to reach them in a way that will get them to rethink their relationship with tobacco use."
Zeller, who oversaw the anti-tobacco "Truth" campaign while working at the nonprofit American Legacy Foundation in the early 2000s, called the new campaign a "compelling, provocative and somewhat graphic way" of grabbing the attention of more than 10 million young people ages 12 to 17 who are open to, or are already experimenting with, cigarettes.
According to the FDA, nearly 90 percent of adult smokers started using cigarettes by age 18 and more than 700 kids under 18 become daily smokers each day. The agency aims to reduce the number of youth cigarette smokers by at least 300,000 within three years.
"While most teens understand the serious health risks associated with tobacco use, they often don't believe the long-term consequences will ever apply to them," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. "We'll highlight some of the real costs and health consequences associated with tobacco use by focusing on some of the things that really matter to teens — their outward appearance and having control and independence over their lives."
Two of the TV ads show teens walking into a corner store to buy cigarettes. When the cashier tells them it's going to cost them more than they have, the teens proceed to tear off a piece of their skin and use pliers to pull out a tooth in order to pay for their cigarettes. Other ads portray cigarettes as a man dressed in a dirty white shirt and khaki pants bullying teens and another shows teeth being destroyed by a ray gun shooting cigarettes.
The FDA is evaluating the impact of the campaign by following 8,000 people between the ages of 11 and 16 for two years to assess changes in tobacco-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.
The campaign announced Tuesday is the first in a series of campaigns to educate the public about the dangers of tobacco use.
In 2011, the FDA said it planned to spend up to $600 million over five years on the campaigns aimed at reducing death and disease caused by tobacco, which is responsible for about 480,000 deaths a year in the U.S. Future campaigns will target minority youth, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth and youth in rural areas.
Tobacco companies are footing the bill for the campaigns through fees charged by the FDA under a 2009 law that gave the agency authority over the tobacco industry.
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Michael Felberbaum can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/MLFelberbaum.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/fda-launching-anti-smoking-campaign-aimed-youth-22354404
Ex-Marlboro Man Dies From Smoking-Related Disease
LOS ANGELES January 28, 2014 (AP)
By JOHN ROGERS Associated Press
Lawson, who portrayed the rugged Marlboro man in cigarette ads during the late 1970s, has died.
Lawson Family/AP Photo
When it came to portraying the rugged western outdoorsman who helped transform a pack of filtered cigarettes into the world's most popular brand, Marlboro Man Eric Lawson was the real deal.
Ruggedly handsome, the actor could ride a horse through the wide-open spaces of the Southwest, from Texas to Colorado to Arizona or wherever else the Phillip Morris tobacco company sent him to light up while representing a true American icon, the cowboy. And he really did smoke Marlboro cigarettes, as many as three packs a day.
Lawson was still smoking in 2006 when he was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He died of the disease at his home in San Luis Obispo on Jan. 10. He was 72.
For three years in the late 1970s and early '80s, Lawson portrayed one of the most iconic figures in both advertising and popular culture.
And for the past several years, Lawson had spoken out fiercely about the hazards of smoking, doing a public service announcement for the American Cancer Society in the 1990s, years before he was able to bring himself to quit.
"He tried to speak to the kids, telling them don't start smoking," his wife, Susan Lawson, told The Associated Press. "He already knew cigarettes had a hold on him."
Exactly how many rugged he-man types portrayed the Marlboro Man over the years isn't clear, although Lawson was one of dozens.
His wife said Monday he was friendly with some of the others, including Wayne McLaren, a former rodeo rider who died in 1992 of lung cancer that he blamed on his lifelong smoking habit.
Like Lawson, McLaren spent his final years advocating against smoking. So did David McLean, who died in 1995 of lung cancer that he also blamed on smoking. He was 73.
As the Marlboro Man, Lawson and the others helped turn a brand that had once been marketed as a mild women's cigarette into the ultimate symbol of American machismo.
Not every Marlboro Man was a cowboy — there were also pilots, hunters, weight lifters, miners and other macho characters. But cowboys were clearly the most popular and the most often used.
"The most powerful — and in some quarters, most hated — brand image of the century, the Marlboro Man stands worldwide as the ultimate American cowboy and masculine trademark, helping establish Marlboro as the best-selling cigarette in the world," the industry publication Advertising Age declared in 1999.
Part of the reason for the brand's success was that Phillip Morris' ad agency went to great pains to track down real cowboys, who not only looked rugged but could really do things like rope and ride.
"He had to go out and ride, he needed to prove himself as a cowboy," Lawson's wife recalled of her husband's audition to become a Marlboro Man.
By the time he got the job in 1978, cigarette advertising was no longer allowed on U.S. television, so Lawson appeared in print and billboard ads. His wife still has one from Time magazine.
The ads, often filmed in stunning, picturesque settings in the West always emphasized that it was a real man, not in any way a wimp, who smoked a Marlboro.
Lawson was perfect for the part. The veteran actor had appeared in such Western films and TV shows as "The Shooter," ''Walker, Texas Ranger," ''Tall Tale," ''Bonanza: Under Attack" and "The A Team."
Later, he also became a perfect role model who made a difference in the lives of the people he kept from smoking simply by pointing out what it did to him, said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.
"That's important," Seffrin said, "because people stop and think if that happens to Eric Lawson it could happen to me."
In addition to his wife, Lawson is survived by six children, 18 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
———
Associated Press Writer Daisy Nguyen contributed to this story.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/marlboro-man-dies-smoking-related-disease-22255807
Data and Statistics - Surgeon General's Reports
Smoking & Tobacco Use
2014 Surgeon General's Report: The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/50th-anniversary/index.htm
China, world's leading tobacco user, moves to ban indoor public smoking
By Madison Park, CNN
updated 1:58 AM EST, Thu January 9, 2014
Hong Kong (CNN) -- China, the world's largest tobacco consumer, is aiming to ban indoor smoking in public areas by the end of the year.
About one in three cigarettes smoked in the world is in China, according to the World Health Organization. And more than half of Chinese men smoke, according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey in 2010.
Although the nation's health ministry issued guidelines in 2011 to ban smoking in places like hotels and restaurants, they haven't been "strictly enforced," according to Xinhua, China's state-run news agency.
The China's National Health and Family Commission is now working on a tobacco control law with clear punishments, according to Xinhua.
China's smoking habit
The country's health authorities estimate over a million deaths from tobacco-related diseases every year. The WHO warns that if tobacco use is not decreased in China, these deaths will increase to 3 million by 2050.
Last month, Chinese government officials were told not to smoke in public places such as hospitals, public transport or schools to set a good example for the public.
The latest moves by the Chinese government on tobacco are "hopeful," said Dr. Judith Mackay, the senior adviser at the World Lung Foundation, who examines tobacco issues in China.
About 32 Chinese cities have passed their own rules to restrict public smoking, she added.
"China stands on its own in the magnitude of the problem," said Mackay. "Unless there is change in China, we won't proceed further in reducing the tobacco epidemic in the world."
Tobacco use in China has far-reaching consequences, she said.
"This isn't a health problem. It's a huge economic problem. There's all these things ranging from medical and health care costs, the costs to the families and there's the cost of secondhand smoke."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/09/world/asia/china-smoking-ban/
REMEMBER WHEN ....
1964 Surgeon General’s report on smoking was 'a landmark moment'
By Susan Perry | 01/08/14
CC/Flickr/Darko Pevec
A new study estimates that the anti-smoking efforts that followed the 1964 Surgeon General’s report have added almost 20 years to the lives of 8 million Americans.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health — a report that launched one of the most successful public health campaigns in U.S. history.
Indeed, a new study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) estimates that the anti-smoking efforts that followed the 1964 Surgeon General’s report have added almost 20 years to the lives of 8 million Americans.
You — or someone you care about — may be one of those 8 million people and not even know it. Perhaps the public-health efforts kept you from ever taking up smoking, or perhaps they encouraged and helped you to successfully quit the highly addictive habit.
Smoking was everywhere
Anybody who is a Baby Boomer or older can likely recall how ubiquitous — and accepted — cigarette smoking used to be. When that first Surgeon General’s report was released (and for a considerable number of years afterwards), smoking was permitted almost everywhere, including offices, restaurants, airplanes and elevators.
Etiquette books even instructed nonsmoking people to keep cigarettes in their homes for their smoking guests to enjoy after dinner.
In the 1960s, cigarettes were also cheap and easy to buy. Cigarette vending machines could be found in a wide variety of public places, including gas stations, convenience stores and shopping centers. And ads for cigarettes popped up everywhere — even during TV shows widely watched by children, such as “The Flintstones.”
No wonder, then, that in 1964, some 46 percent of American adults smoked.
Today, only 18 percent do so. That dramatic decline is a direct result of a multi-pronged public-health crusade that included educational messages, smoke-free laws, media campaigns, marketing restrictions, lawsuits (for deceptive and fraudulent practices by the tobacco industry), and the development of more effective smoking-cessation programs.
Without all those efforts, an estimated 50 to 64 percent of men and 38 to 52 percent of women would be smoking today, according to the JAMA study.
Extending life by 20 years
For the study, a team of researchers associated with the government-funded Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) used statistical modeling to better understand the effect of tobacco control interventions on U.S. smoking-related deaths from 1964 through 2012.
They estimated that 17.6 million smoking-related premature deaths had occurred during that 48-year period. That’s a troubling and tragic number. But it’s about 8 million fewer premature deaths (4.4 million before age 60) than would have occurred if tobacco control efforts had not gotten under way.
In all, some 157 millions years of life were saved — a mean average of 19.6 additional years for each smoker who quit.
The 1964 Surgeon General’s report was “really a landmark moment,” said Robert Moffitt, communications director for the American Lung Association in Minnesota, in a phone interview Tuesday. “Previously, surgeon generals had mentioned the harm caused by smoking, but the message wasn’t really connecting.”
Even doctors were reluctant to accept the evidence that smoking was potentially deadly. Moffitt recalls how a physician he saw during his childhood would give him shots for asthma and allergies while puffing on a cigarette.
The Minnesota connection
Luther Terry
Minnesota has something of a special connection to the 1964 Surgeon General’s report. Leonard Schuman, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, was among the 10 experts chosen by Surgeon General Luther Terry to serve on the committee that analyzed all the scientific evidence regarding smoking and health and drafted the final report.
“Interestingly, he was a smoker himself when he started the report, and by the time [it] was finished, he quit,” Moffitt said.
Minnesota also played several key roles in the nationwide tobacco control campaign that followed the Surgeon General’s report. It was the first state, for example, to restrict indoor smoking in the 1970s. And in 1998, the state settled a $6.1 billion lawsuit against the tobacco industry that has been called one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.
“That lawsuit had major implications, not just here in the state, but nationwide,” said Moffitt. “It opened up secret tobacco company documents, it banned tobacco billboards nationwide and it ended paid product-placement in movies, among other things. It was really a big deal.”
‘A hit-and-run approach’
Yet despite all the dramatic tobacco-related changes that have occurred in Minnesota and in the nation since the publication of the 1964 Surgeon General’s report, smoking remains the country’s major cause of preventable disease and death. Each year, smoking claims the lives of more than 440,000 Americans, including almost 50,000 from secondhand smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Minnesota, smoking is linked to about one in seven premature deaths.
“One thing we need to do is come up with a consistent approach to reducing youth smoking in this state,” said Moffitt. “We’ve kind of had a hit-and-run approach.”
Minnesota’s pattern, he explained, is something like this: A program is started. Smoking rates among youth go down. Funding problems arise. The program is ended. Smoking rates among youth start to go up again. A new program is begun, and the cycle repeats itself.
“What we need to do is make a commitment in this state that we’re really going to focus on youth smoking,” Moffitt said. “If we can get people to age 21 without smoking, the chance that they will ever pick up the habit is very low.”
Last year, the Minnesota Legislature raised the state tobacco tax by $1.60 per pack of cigarettes — an action that won strong praise from Moffitt and health officials.
“In this one instance,” said Moffit, “higher is better when it comes to taxes.” Research has shown, he added, that increasing the cost of cigarettes significantly reduces the number of young people who take up smoking.
An unfinished story
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently announced plans to launch a five-year, $600 million campaign to persuade teens to remain tobacco-free. The agency is up against some powerful pro-tobacco marketing headwinds, however. The tobacco industry will spend $8.5 billion on advertising and promoting its products in the United States this year alone, including almost $165 million in Minnesota.
“Tobacco control has been a great public health success story, but it is an unfinished one and requires continued efforts to eliminate tobacco-related morbidity and mortality,” stress the authors of the JAMA study.
http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2014/01/1964-surgeon-general-s-report-smoking-was-landmark-moment
Study: U.S. Tobacco Control Laws Have Saved 8 Million Lives Over 50 Years
Written by David Heitz | Published on January 7, 2014
But a half century after the U.S. Surgeon General first issued a report on the health dangers of smoking, more people than ever are lighting up globally.
Tobacco Control Laws
A half century after the U.S. Surgeon General first warned Americans about the hazards of cigarettes, 8 million lives have been saved by laws, taxes, and incentives designed to curb the deadly habit.
However, while on average tobacco control measures have extended these Americans' lives by two decades, more people than ever are lighting up worldwide, and modest declines in smoking prevalence in the U.S. have leveled off. One in five adult Americans continues to smoke today, and hundreds of thousands of people die annually from smoking-related illnesses, the researchers concluded.
Researchers reported these findings today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In one study, Theodore R. Holford from the Yale University School of Public Health analyzed actual smoking mortality data from 1964 to 2012. He contrasted it with estimates based on a model that presumed none of the intense anti-tobacco measures ever had been implemented.
See What Smoking Does to Your Body »
http://www.healthline.com/copd-smoking/anatomy-animations#1/the-toxic-brew-inside-each-enticing-puff
Smoking Deaths 'Inexcusable'
Vince Willmore, vice president of communications for Tobacco-Free Kids, told Healthline that the smoking rate in the U.S. has been slashed by more than half since 1965, from 42.4 percent to 18 percent in 2012, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
“The fight against tobacco has been one of our nation’s greatest public health achievements, but it is far from over," he said. "Tobacco remains the nation’s number one cause of preventable death and disease, and nearly 44 million American adults still smoke.”
He said it is “inexcusable” that more than 400,000 Americans still die each year from tobacco-related illnesses.
Willmore called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to aggressively exercise its powers to regulate tobacco, as well as electronic cigarettes. The federal tobacco tax must be significantly increased, he said. Provisions in the Affordable Care Act that require insurance companies to pay for smoking cessation programs must be enforced, he added.
He noted that only two states—North Dakota and Alaska—fund tobacco prevention and cessation programs at levels recommended by the CDC. “The states this year will collect $25 billion from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but are spending less than 2 percent of it to fight tobacco use,” Willmore said.
Learn the Many Good Reasons to Quit Smoking »
http://www.healthline.com/health/quit-smoking/reasons-to-quit
New Strategies Needed on the State Level
Dr. Jed Rose, director of the Center for Smoking Cessation at Duke University Medical Center, told Healthline that with smoking prevalence plateauing in the U.S., “The measures that worked in the past may not work in the future.”
Ray Niaura, associate director for science at the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the American Legacy Foundation, agreed.
“What tends to happen with campaigns of any kind is that there is small, incremental progress, which is good, but when the campaign ends, the progress or the momentum wears off,” he told Healthline. “We know that smoking is pretty strongly associated with being from a disadvantaged economic background or lower education level. How do we reach those smokers with effective messages and strategies? Is it just a matter of educating them, or do we need to do more?”
Find Medications to Help You Quit Smoking »
Middle-Income Countries Are Tobacco's New Frontier
In a second JAMA report, researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle did a global analysis of smoking trends from 1980 to 2012.
While smoking declined by 25 percent for men and more than 40 percent for women, more people than ever are taking a drag as the earth's population has exploded. Today, almost 1 billion people light up each day. Since 1980, the total number of cigarettes consumed has increased by 26 percent, the researchers found.
In some African countries, as few as 5 percent of women smoke. However, in countries like Indonesia, Armenia, and Russia, more than half of men do. Since 2006, smoking prevalence has spread like wildfire in China, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.
Other countries—including Canada, Mexico, Iceland, and Norway—have seen tremendous decreases of 50 percent or more in smoking prevalence since 1980.
Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Seattle institute, said tobacco control at the county level “has enormous potential to drive smoking rates even lower.”
Mexico's Success Story
Murray told Healthline that Mexico didn't really make tobacco control a priority until the early 2000s. He said the success of countries like Mexico, which banned tobacco advertising and smoking in public places while launching educational campaigns, shows that it takes a mix of strategies to effectively snuff out smoking.
Find Out How to Quit Smoking, Once and for All »
http://www.healthline.com/health/quit-smoking-aids
The authors call for increased tobacco control measures and intense monitoring of the policies' effectiveness. “Although in several countries substantial uncertainty remains in monitoring tobacco exposure and estimating the disease burden associated with it, there can be no doubt that both are large,” they wrote.
Worldwide, countries that have been successful at getting people to quit have taxed tobacco to the hilt and launched sometimes graphic campaigns about the health risks of cigarettes.
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/addiction-anti-smoking-laws-save-8-million-lives-in-50-years-010714
Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s Report
January 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/initiatives/tobacco/index.html
Fifty years after the release of the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, remarkable progress has been made. Since 1964, smoking prevalence among U.S. adults has been reduced by half.
Unfortunately, tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States.
In 2014, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health.
Get Involved
Leading up to the 50th Anniversary of the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, the Office of the Surgeon General will be sharing highlights from the last 50 years of tobacco control efforts. You can be a part of the effort to share information on the dangers of tobacco use. Find resources to help promote the anniversary.
We also invite you to contact us at INFO2014SGR50@CDC.GOV if you have general questions or want to share your plans for promoting this historic anniversary. If you would like to receive updates related to the 2014 Surgeon Generals’ Report on Smoking and Health, send a message to the above address and put “subscribe” in the subject line.
Reflecting on 50 Years of Progress
The landmark report that Surgeon General Dr. Luther Terry released laid the foundation for tobacco control efforts in the U.S. Through the efforts of tobacco control professionals, advocates and researchers the work has continued to move forward. Learn about the progress of tobacco control in the 50th Anniversary on Smoking and Health Video and Podcast series, featuring interviews from key leaders in the fight against tobacco.
Featured Podcast: Clearing the Air
Cynthia HallettIn this podcast, Cynthia Hallett, Executive Director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, talks about her sense of urgency to clear the air of secondhand smoke so everyone is equally protected from the negative health effects caused by smoking in the workplace.
Clearing the Air -- Audio
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/initiatives/tobacco/SGR50th-challet-podcast.mp3
Transcript
Podcast: Clearing the Air
Narrator: 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s Report on smoking and health. This series of podcasts celebrates the progress made—and the work still to be done—to end tobacco-related disease and death.
Secondhand smoke causes immediate harm and hurts anyone who breathes it. It can cause lung cancer, heart disease, and sudden infant death syndrome, and there is NO safe amount of secondhand smoke.
Although great progress has been made to protect nonsmokers at work and at home, about 88 million nonsmokers are still exposed to secondhand smoke in the United States.
Today, Cynthia Hallett, Executive Director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, describes her sense of urgency to clear the air of secondhand smoke in all workplaces, so that workers will no longer have to make a choice between their health and a paycheck.
Cynthia Hallett: The issue of secondhand smoke is critical to us being able to continue to make progress on policy issues. This isn't something that the industry or anybody can criticize and say, well, it's an individual choice, it's an individual behavior. Secondhand smoke drifts, and it's an equal opportunity killer. That became very important because the nonsmokers' rights movement was the number one threat to the tobacco industry. And there's even this wonderful quote that the industry says, you know, what the smoker does to himself or herself is one thing, but what the smoke does to the innocent victims—the children, the elderly—is something quite else.
Narrator: Cynthia discusses the importance of giving a voice to victims who are suffering from secondhand smoke in their workplaces.
Cynthia Hallett: When we work on these smoke-free policy issues, it's critical that we bring the affected parties to the table to give them a voice. If you don't involve the victims who are getting sick from this unwanted exposure, people are thinking this is about individual rights, when really it's about everyone's right to have a safe, healthy, smoke-free workplace. So we really need to remember that there is a very large portion that still needs to be protected.
Narrator: One of Cynthia’s heroes is a former casino worker, Sheryl Wilkins.
Cynthia Hallett: We met her in February of 2011 when we were doing interviews with casino workers to tell us how challenging it was for them to work in smoke-filled environments. And she came to us because she had stage 4 throat cancer. And she couldn't speak very well, but she did tell us her story, and she really wanted to fight hard, because she was angry.
Narrator: Sheryl described her situation in a 2011 interview with Cynthia:
Sheryl Wilkins: I have always hated cigarette smoke. I’ve never smoked a day in my life. But in the casino business that’s what you put up with. I began to think well, 'how unfair is this?' that there are places that have nonsmoking for their employees but not for us. I just couldn't up and leave, I mean I still had my bills to pay, and a family, so I stuck with it. In 2006 I was not feeling good I had a lump on my neck and I kept getting tests done. And on September 18, 2007 I got a call from the doctor, and at that time they told me I had cancer.
Cynthia Hallett: Unfortunately, Sheryl lost her battle with throat cancer on August 3, 2012. And so she's my hero, because she said in that original interview, I can't talk anymore, be my voice, and that's my charge. That's why I do this work. For people like Sheryl, who can't.
Narrator: The opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Health and Human Services. This podcast is a production of the Office of the Surgeon General and CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. For more information, go to surgeongeneral.gov.
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/initiatives/tobacco/clearing-the-air-transcript.html
Past Reports (w/many imbedded links)
2010-present
2000-2009
1990-1999
1980-1989
1970-1979
1960-1969
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/initiatives/tobacco/index.html
Historic smoking report marks 50th anniversary
Mike Stobbe, AP Business Writer 7 a.m. EST January 5, 2014
On Jan. 11, 1964, the Surgeon General pronounced the health risks posed by cigarettes.
Story Highlights
~ The turning point in the nation's relationship with cigarettes was Jan. 11, 1964
~ U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released a report about the dangers of smoking
~ At the time, 42% of U.S. adults smoked; it has dropped to 18%
ATLANTA (AP) — Fifty years ago, ashtrays seemed to be on every table and desk. Athletes and even Fred Flintstone endorsed cigarettes in TV commercials. Smoke hung in the air in restaurants, offices and airplane cabins. More than 42% of U.S. adults smoked, and there was a good chance your doctor was among them.
The turning point came on Jan. 11, 1964. It was on that Saturday morning that U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released an emphatic and authoritative report that said smoking causes illness and death — and the government should do something about it.
In the decades that followed, warning labels were put on cigarette packs, cigarette commercials were banned, taxes were raised and new restrictions were placed on where people could light up.
"It was the beginning," said Kenneth Warner, a University of Michigan public health professor who is a leading authority on smoking and health.
It was not the end. While the U.S. smoking rate has fallen by more than half to 18%, that still translates to more than 43 million smokers. Smoking is still far and away the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. Some experts predict large numbers of Americans will puff away for decades to come.
Nevertheless, the Terry report has been called one of the most important documents in U.S. public health history, and on its 50th anniversary, officials are not only rolling out new anti-smoking campaigns but reflecting on what the nation did right that day.
The report's bottom-line message was hardly revolutionary. Since 1950, head-turning studies that found higher rates of lung cancer in heavy smokers had been appearing in medical journals. A widely read article in Reader's Digest in 1952, "Cancer by the Carton," contributed to the largest drop in cigarette consumption since the Depression. In 1954, the American Cancer Society announced that smokers had a higher cancer risk.
But the tobacco industry fought back. Manufacturers came out with cigarettes with filters that they claimed would trap toxins before they settled into smokers' lungs. And in 1954, they placed a full-page ad in hundreds of newspapers in which they argued that research linking their products and cancer was inconclusive.
It was a brilliant counter-offensive that left physicians and the public unsure how dangerous smoking really was. Cigarette sales rebounded.
In 1957 and 1959, Surgeon General Leroy Burney issued statements that heavy smoking causes lung cancer. But they had little impact.
Amid pressure from health advocates, President John F. Kennedy's surgeon general, Dr. Luther Terry, announced in 1962 that he was convening an expert panel to examine all the evidence and issue a comprehensive, debate-settling report. To ensure the panel was unimpeachable, he let the tobacco industry veto any proposed members it regarded as biased.
Surveys indicated a third to a half of all physicians smoked tobacco products at the time, and the committee reflected the culture: Half its 10 members were smokers, who puffed away during committee meetings. Terry himself was a cigarette smoker.
Dr. Eugene Guthrie, an assistant surgeon general, helped persuade Terry to kick the habit a few months before the press conference releasing the report.
"I told him, 'You gotta quit that. I think you can get away with a pipe — if you don't do it openly.' He said, 'You gotta be kidding!' I said, 'No, I'm not. It just wouldn't do. If you smoke any cigarettes, you better do it in a closet,'" Guthrie recalled in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
The press conference was held on a Saturday partly out of concern about its effect on the stock market. About 200 reporters attended.
The committee said cigarette smoking clearly did cause lung cancer and was responsible for the nation's escalating male cancer death rate. It also said there was no valid evidence filters were reducing the danger. The committee also said — more vaguely — that the government should address the problem.
"This was front-page news, and every American knew it," said Robin Koval, president of Legacy, an anti-smoking organization.
Cigarette consumption dropped a whopping 15 percent over the next three months but then began to rebound. Health officials realized it would take more than one report.
In 1965, Congress required cigarette packs to carry warning labels. Two years later, the Federal Communications Commission ordered TV and radio stations to provide free air time for anti-smoking public service announcements. Cigarette commercials were banned in 1971.
Still, progress was slow. Warner recalled teaching at the University of Michigan in 1972, when nearly half the faculty members at the school of public health were smokers. He was one of them.
"I felt like a hypocrite and an idiot," he said. But smoking was still the norm, and it was difficult to quit, he said.
The 1970s also saw the birth of a movement to protect nonsmokers from cigarette fumes, with no-smoking sections on airplanes, in restaurants and in other places. Those eventually gave way to complete smoking bans. Cigarette machines disappeared, cigarette taxes rose, and restrictions on the sale of cigarettes to minors got tougher.
Tobacco companies also came under increasing legal attack. In the biggest case of them all, more than 40 states brought lawsuits demanding compensation for the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses. Big Tobacco settled in 1998 by agreeing to pay about $200 billion and curtail marketing of cigarettes to youths.
In 1998, while the settlement was being completed, tobacco executives appeared before Congress and publicly acknowledged for the first time that their products can cause lung cancer and be addictive.
Experts agree the Terry report clearly triggered decades of changes that whittled the smoking rate down. But it was based on data that was already out there. Why, then, did it make such a difference?
For one thing, the drumbeat about the dangers of smoking was getting louder in 1964, experts said. But the way the committee was assembled and the carefully neutral manner in which it reached its conclusion were at least as important, said Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At the same time, he and others said any celebration of the anniversary must be tempered by the size of the problem that still exists.
Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and 8.6 million live with a serious illness caused by smoking, according to the CDC.
Donald Shopland finds that depressing.
Fifty years ago, he was a 19-year-old who smoked two packs a day while working as a clerk for the surgeon general's committee. He quit cigarettes right after the 1964 report came out, and went on to a long and distinguished public health career in which he wrote or edited scores of books and reports on smoking's effects.
"We should be much further along than we are," the Georgia retiree lamented.
In this Thursday, April 14, 1994 file photo, heads of the nation's largest cigarette companies are sworn in before a hearing of a House Energy subcommittee which was holding hearings on the contents of cigarettes on Capitol Hill in Washington.(Photo: John Duricka, AP)
Some key events in the fight over tobacco during the last 50 years:
1964: U.S. surgeon general report concludes smoking causes lung cancer.
1965: Warning labels required on cigarette packs.
1971: TV and radio commercials for cigarettes banned.
1972: Airlines told to provide no-smoking sections.
1987: Aspen, Colo., becomes first U.S. city to ban smoking in restaurants.
1988: Smoking banned on short domestic airline flights.
1998: Forty-six states reach $206 billion settlement with cigarette makers.
2000: Smoking prohibited on international flights.
2009: Food and Drug Administration authorized to regulate tobacco products.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/01/05/historic-smoking-report-marks-50th-anniversary/4318233/
World No Tobacco Day 2013: India takes a close look at tobacco companies
World Health Organization and activists are criticizing tobacco companies' efforts at corporate social responsibility as thinly veiled marketing schemes on its 26th annual World No Tobacco Day, May 31.
By Shivam Vij, Correspondent / May 31, 2013
New Delhi
When the founder of the city of Lucknow's Red Brigade, a vigilante anti-sexual harassment organization, was awarded the Godfrey Philips National Bravery Award earlier this month in Delhi, she didn’t realize she might have been taking part in a public relations stunt by big tobacco in India.
Usha Vishwakarma says she felt proud of her organization when she was presented the award and a check for nearly $1,000 by a veteran Bollywood actor and a top minister.
Ms. Vishwakarma, however, is now in the awkward position of being urged by friends to return the award. "I didn't even know that Godfrey Philips was a tobacco company," she says. "If I did I would not have accepted the award."
Indeed, a casual visitor to the company’s award website would have to look in the fine print, under “terms of use” to find one sentence that implies the bravery awards have something to do with a tobacco company.
That conflict comes as the World Health Organization and activists attempt to draw attention to tobacco’s advertising, promotion, and sponsorship with its 26th annual World No Tobacco Day on May 31.
This is "a classic example of how tobacco companies are using corporate social responsibility (CSR) to clean up their image," says Bobby Ramakant of the Vote for Health campaign in Lucknow. He adds, "If Godfrey Philips must do corporate social responsibility they must stop selling tobacco, because tobacco products are the main risk factor for noncommunicable diseases, which in turn are responsible for two-thirds of health-related deaths."
Some 2,500 people die daily in India because of tobacco-related health issues, according to the National Organization for Tobacco Eradication. That high number is attributed in part to the glamorization of smoking and constant advertising, say experts.
Godfrey Philips India Ltd., which manufactures Marlboro cigarettes in India, is the country's second largest cigarette company. From 1990-2003, the company named its bravery award after its Red & White cigarette brand. In response to protests that the awards were surrogate advertising, however, they changed the name to Godfrey Philips National Bravery Award in 2004.
A 2004 World Health Organization report criticized tobacco companies efforts at corporate social responsibility as thinly veiled marketing schemes. A year earlier, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a first of its kind global health treaty, urged countries to prohibit tobacco advertising and sponsorships, including indirect advertising.
India is one of 175 countries to ratify the health treaty, which a court in the Karnataka state in 2010 used to stop the government-owned Tobacco Board from sponsoring a meeting of global tobacco owners in Bangalore.
A United Nations award for corporate social responsibility at the Rio+20 summit last year to the Indian Tobacco Company, which has the largest market share in cigarettes in the country, had caused an uproar among tobacco activists.
"There needs to be greater awareness about the WHO Framework Convention so that people know that CSR is a smart PR outlet for tobacco companies," says Mr. Ramakant of Vote for Health campaign.
A spokesperson for Godfrey Philips India did not respond to request for comment. The corporate social responsibility section of their website reads, "We ... not only recognize the importance of being a responsible corporate citizen but our identity as a cigarette manufacturing Company ... imposes even a greater responsibility upon us to take it further."
RECOMMENDED: How well do you know India? Take the quiz.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0107/How-well-do-you-know-India-Take-the-quiz/City?nav=677657-csm_article-promoLink
Is Indonesia, one of big tobacco's last frontiers, closing?
Tobacco's Growing Global Road
In Indonesia, smoker warnings help a tobacco giant
Thailand takes lead in global tobacco fight
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0531/World-No-Tobacco-Day-2013-India-takes-a-close-look-at-tobacco-companies
"Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs,
and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembles the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."
James I
.
NEW CIGARETTE HEALTH WARMINGS
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64505422
AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION, State of Tobacco Control, check your state: http://www.stateoftobaccocontrol.org/
Smoking curbs: The global picture, Updated 3 February 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11845158
ASH - Action on Smoking and Health, A National Charitable Antismoking & Nonsmokers' Rights Organization: http://ash.org/
MEDLINE PLUS ~~ In Depth smoking info. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/smoking.html
A Report of the Surgeon General, 2014 - The Health Consequences of Smoking —50 Years of Progress:
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/reports/50-years-of-progress/full-report.pdf
Full Report: A HALF CENTURY OF AVOIDABLE DEATH, 2014 -- A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON TOBACCO IN AMERICA
http://ash.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/US-TOBACCO-REPORT_FNL-WEB.pdf
AI
