Stopping Smoking Is Not Without Challenge

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 by John Bancroft

When considering the occasion of past Great American SmokeOuts, my thoughts turn to the challenges of quitting smoking and my heart goes out to those who struggle with nicotine withdrawal and freedom from smoking. I know because I quit smoking a thousand times.

By now we all know there are personal health reasons to stop, and about the dangers of second hand smoke.

Not Smoking Alone: Think smoking is on the way out? The World Health Organization says there are 1 billion smokers in the world. The tobacco industry is thriving despite efforts to regulate it.

Suffering Farmers: In addition to the health hazards for smokers, there are substantial health risks for tobacco farm workers, from inhalation of pesticides and tobacco dust and from "Green Tobacco Sickness" caused by handling the plant's wet leaves.

Crime Spree: Cigarettes are the world’s most widely smuggled legal consumer product. In 2006, about 600 billion smuggled cigarettes were sold.

Emitting Pesticides: As much as ten percent of the pesticide applied to the tobacco crop can appear in the secondhand smoke and side stream smoke. The tobacco industry uses some 25 million pounds of pesticides a year. This means over 2 million pounds of pesticides in the air around us.

How Much Is That Professor in the Window? Tobacco companies fund university and lab researchers to study the effects of everything from stop smoking products to tobacco advertising to cancer drugs. Do you feel comfortable that results will be unaffected by the hand signing the check?

Hard on the Land: Pesticide and fertilizer runoff contaminate water resources, and the curing of tobacco leaf with wood fuel leads to massive deforestation. An often-cited, in-depth study shows that an estimated 200,000 hectares (about 772 square miles) of forest/woodland is lost to tobacco farming each year.

They Want Our Kids: Advertisers use Hollywood movies to target children and youth around the world to glamorize smoking, forget any quit smoking images you would like to see.

Quitting smoking is tough, but by rejecting an industry that is harming people and planet in the name of profit, you will be contributing to a healthier you and to a healthier world. Good luck to all the potential ex-smokers out there….you can do it! Whether you quit smoking or cut back on the amount of cigarettes you smoke …. the effort is worth the fight.

The rules have changed ... it's not just about help to stop smoking.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 by John Bancroft

It's tough to be a hard-core chain-smoker these days. And it's not necessarily the dangers of smoking or secondhand smoke that are leading that charge

Half of the U.S. population could care less about the consequences of smoking but are more interested in when and where they can light up because they live in areas where smoking is banned in workplaces, bars and restaurants.

More than 70% of Americans don't allow smoking in their homes, including about half of current smokers.

So forget your urge to smoke, that nicotine withdrawal, or quit smoking cravings the rules for finding your freedom from smoking have changed.

Making Cigarettes Safer and Reducing the Danger of Smoking

Thursday, December 3, 2009 by John Bancroft

Company Designs Filter to Remove Some Cigarette Toxins

A Hong Kong biotech firm has designed a filter that removes some of the toxic chemicals from smoking cigarettes and from secondhand smoke but leaves the tobacco flavor intact, Forbes reports in its upcoming Nov. 16 issue thus reducing the danger of smoking.

The company, Filigent, has developed the MicroBlue filter, which biochemically attracts and traps carcinogens in tobacco smoke reducing consequences of smoking. Research has shown that Filigent's Generation 3 filter removes 40-75 percent of the chemicals known to cause DNA mutations, for example.

"For years the public health community has just assumed that the smoke from cigarettes is all bad," said Scott Ballin, director for the Alliance for Health, Economic & Agriculture Development, a group funded by tobacco-state interests. "Now advances in basic science have given us a much more nuanced understanding of what's in that stuff -- what's harmful and what's mainly benign."

Only a fraction of smokers who try to quit smoking actually succeed, so smoking alternative products like MicroBlue could improve smokers' health without them really noticing. "People normally hate reduced-harm cigarettes. But this is different: It does not affect the flavor or the nicotine experience at all," said Canadian tobacco distributor Edward Roundpoint, a Filigent customer.

"We are in the business of saving lives," said Filigent CEO Melissa Mowbray-d'Arbela.

Worldwide, the cigarette filter business is worth $9 billion. The Fact brand of so-called 'harm reduction reduced risk' cigarette used a Filigent filter when it went on the market in 2005, but state attorneys general got the product pulled from the marketplace on charges of making unsubstantiated health claims.

Best Stop Smoking Aid? Ban Smoking...

Saturday, November 28, 2009 by John Bancroft

Related Companies, a national developer that owns 17 buildings in New York City, is banning smoking in some of its properties, saying the aim is to protect tenants from exposure to secondhand smoke, the New York Times reported Nov. 16.

Smokers (whether they want to quit smoking or not) who currently live in Related Companies buildings will not be evicted; however, new tenants in the developer's six buildings near Battery Park City and Chelsea must agree to stop smoking in thier apartments said company president Jeff Brodsky.

Another local developer, Kenbar Management, also plans to make renters stop smoking in all of the units and terraces in its new building opening in East Harlem in December. Smoking will also be banned on the sidewalks surrounding the building.

The move to ban smoking in residential buildings is gaining momentum across the country. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has recommended that public-housing agencies do so, and 50 public housing agencies have already banned smoking, said Betsy Feigin Befus, an attorney with the landlord trade group National Multi Housing Council.

Thomas A. Farley, M.D., New York City's health commissioner, has said the city does not plan to encourage public-housing developments to ban smoking, however.

Critics who oppose the smoking ban include Bryan Marx, 53, who has lived in a Related Companies building since 1999. "I think it's absolutely absurd," he said. "How about a little tolerance?"

Dale Smith, 41, who has lived in a Related Companies building for almost three years, said, "A policy that is in place because something has proven to be hazardous in eating establishments should be effective in the home."

A Truly Killer Crop

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 by John Bancroft

On the occasion of this past 2009 Great American SmokeOut, my thoughts turn to the challenges of quitting and my heart goes out to those who struggle to kick the habit. I know because I quit smoking a thousand times.

By now we all know there are personal health reasons to stop, and about the dangers of second hand smoke.

Sometimes it helps to look past the personal, to see ourselves and our actions in a larger context. Here are a few facts that go beyond the nasty pictures of scarred lungs, that may give even the most dedicated smoker pause:

Not Smoking Alone: Think smoking is on the way out? The World Health Organization says there are 1 billion smokers in the world. The tobacco industry is thriving despite efforts to regulate it.

Suffering Farmers: In addition to the health hazards for smokers, there are substantial health risks for tobacco farm workers, from inhalation of pesticides and tobacco dust and from "Green Tobacco Sickness" caused by handling the plant's wet leaves.

Crime Spree: Cigarettes are the world’s most widely smuggled legal consumer product. In 2006, about 600 billion smuggled cigarettes were sold.

Emitting Pesticides: As much as ten percent of the pesticide applied to the tobacco crop can appear in the secondhand smoke and side stream smoke. The tobacco industry uses some 25 million pounds of pesticides a year. This means over 2 million pounds of pesticides in the air around us.

How Much Is That Professor in the Window? Tobacco companies fund university and lab researchers to study the effects of everything from stop smoking products to tobacco advertising to cancer drugs. Do you feel comfortable that results will be unaffected by the hand signing the check?

Hard on the Land: Pesticide and fertilizer runoff contaminate water resources, and the curing of tobacco leaf with wood fuel leads to massive deforestation. An often-cited, in-depth study shows that an estimated 200,000 hectares (about 772 square miles) of forest/woodland is lost to tobacco farming each year.

They Want Our Kids: Advertisers use Hollywood movies to target children and youth around the world to glamorize smoking, forget any quit smoking images you would like to see.

Women Are Being Used! Doctor Thomas Glynn of the American Cancer Society notes the targeting of women by tobacco companies in an interview with Voice of America: "As an example, in China, about 4… 5… 6 percent of women across China are using tobacco," he says. "But yet in places like Shanghai where tobacco companies are focusing, we are starting to see figures like 20 or 25 percent."

You Wanna Smoke or Eat? Tobacco replaces potential food production on almost 4 million hectares of the world’s agricultural land, equal to all of the world’s orange groves or banana plantations.

Quitting smoking is tough, but by rejecting an industry that is harming people and planet in the name of profit, you will be contributing to a healthier you and to a healthier world. Good luck to all the potential ex-smokers out there….you can do it! Whether you quit smoking or cut back on the amount of cigarettes you smoke …. the effort is worth the fight.

NYC: The City That Never Smokes

Saturday, November 21, 2009 by John Bancroft

A proposal to ban lighting up in New York’s parks has exposed the puritanical agenda behind the crusade against smoking.

The truth about secondhand smoke is finally out.

Thanks to some unusual candour on the part of the anti-tobacco stop smoking brigade in New York City, we now have official confirmation that banning smoking in public has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the health of non-smokers from secondhand smoke, but everything to do with stigmatising both smoking and smokers. Closer to home, new evidence from the National Health Service (NHS) shows that the public smoking banning social smoking in England has made absolutely no positive difference in smoking or quit smoking rates, despite claims made by its champions that it would.

In September, Dr Thomas Farley, New York City’s Health Commissioner, proposed banning social smoking at all of the city’s parks and beaches (1). Dr Farley’s rationale for the ban has nothing to do with the risks that outdoor smoking pose to non-smokers, but rather with preventing people, particularly children, from having to see anyone smoking in public. Farley says, ‘We don’t think children should have to watch someone smoking’. Farley also defends the extension of the smoking ban to outdoor areas by arguing that it is ‘part of a broader strategy to further curb smoking rates’. New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, confirmed earlier this month that he would implement Farley’s proposal, arguing that the danger of smoking to the public is ‘overwhelmingly in favour’ (2).

Why have the champions of banning smoking everywhere, even in private accommodation, suddenly come clean about the driving force behind their crusade? The answer is that they have essentially won the war over public smoking. But why is this the case? The answer, sadly, is that for the past 15 to 20 years, the public has been bombarded with a carefully orchestrated government-funded anti-tobacco campaign to convince them – in contradiction of the scientific evidence – that smokers pose a deadly health risk to non-smokers, particularly children.

The scientific evidence has never supported the case against public or social smoking. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s seminal early 1990s report on secondhand smoke was severely flawed. Its critique of secondhand smoke was only sustained through a careful exclusion of non-confirming evidence and a non-traditional application of the statistical test known as confidence limits. The report was subjected to a scathing analysis by a US federal court, which rejected its scientific claims about the dangers of secondhand smoke, a finding that even on appeal was not reversed (3).

Moreover, a scientific study conducted by the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer found that there was no statistically significant association between smoking in the workplace and social smoking settings and lung cancer in non-smokers. Indeed, the majority of studies about secondhand smoke and lung cancer in non-smokers have found non-statistically significant associations both in workplace and domestic settings.

Of course, none of this startling lack of scientific evidence about the consequences of smoking has moved beyond the scientific journals and into the public domain, which means that the debate about public smoking is a non-scientific debate. And this means that it can proceed on virtually any grounds, unchecked by the need for careful and verifiable scientific evidence. The anti-smoking movement has always known that the evidence about the risks of public smoking, or private smoking for that matter, to non-smokers was marginal, at best, and nonexistent, at worst. But this was fundamentally unimportant.

Preventing people from smoking in social smoking settings puwas never about real health risks - that is, it was never about protecting non-smokers so much as it was about stigmatising smoking and smokers who do not want to quit smoking and making it difficult for them to smoke. So with the science of secondhand smoke now never discussed, the anti-tobacco movement feels confident in moving the argument forward and revealing the starkness of its real no smoking agenda.

There is no compelling evidence that secondhand smoke poses a health risk to anyone in open spaces like public parks and beaches, but that is beside the point. The new push seeks, first, to demonise smoking and, second, to exert a brazen paternalism in which it is made virtually impossible for smokers – for their own good, of course – to light up in any public space.

There are profound difficulties with both of these objectives. For one thing, where is the justification for banning unhealthy behaviours from the public square simply on the grounds that someone might see them? Or, indeed, what is the justification for banning unhealthy behaviours from public viewing full stop? This opens up substantial room for prohibiting an enormous range of other behaviours which are neither immoral nor illegal, but simply unhealthy.

For example, by parity of reasoning it could be argued that children should never have to see anyone eating unhealthy foods in public, or indeed see anyone who is fat in public. Surely, there must be some evidence that seeing someone engaged in unhealthy behaviour puts others at risk. But where is this evidence?

For another thing, there is the issue of whether such measures actually work. For example, the NHS recently released a study on the effectiveness of the public smoking ban (4). The fact is that certain groups, such as young males, are smoking more after the no smoking ban than before it. So, not only are such bans not supported by science, they are also not supported by the evidence on their practical effect in changing behaviour either to quit smoking or not to stop smoking.

Finally, any policy by which the government engages in stigmatising the legal behaviour of its adult citizens is repugnant in a democratic society. Fundamental to democratic government is the respect that it owes to its adult citizens’ choices about legal behaviour and, more fundamentally, how they choose to live their lives. Paternalistic interventions, whether through stigmatising or other means, can only be justified in the rarest of instances.

What the evolution of the debate over public smoking shows is how little science has to do with the anti-tobacco crusade, how disingenuous that crusade is about its real motives and goals, how easily the crusade on tobacco can be extended to other causes (most notably the war on obesity), and how fundamentally dangerous it is to a society both free and democratic.

26 October 2009
Basham and Luik

Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute and is a Cato Institute adjunct scholar. John Luik is a Democracy Institute senior fellow. They are co-authors of Hidden in Plain Sight: Why Tobacco Display Bans Fail.

Great American Smokeout

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by John Bancroft

Remember when smoking was everywhere? There were blue plumes of cigarette smoke curling up inside movie theaters and over lunch counters. Remember restaurants where your parents would no more leave without having coffee and a cigarette to quelch that momentary nicotine withdrawal than slip out without a tip?

Remember how it felt to hold a cigarette? How it fit between your fingers just right? This made me think of when my father would take us to the woods to shoot his gun, to show us the right way to handle firearms and make sure we respected what they could do. I remember the way the gun felt in my hands, Smoking was cool and hip intensely powerful, seductive with no thought given to the consequences of smoking.

Today it is terrifying when you factor in the danger of smoking and secondhand smoke.

Today it is easy to join the crowd and become one of those annoying anti-smokers. The world has become annoyingly anti-smoking, too demanding our participation as "Freedom From Smoking Fighters. Once quit smoking cravings permeated our brains and inhaling secondhand smoke was a pleasure that couldn't hurt you. Today maybe it is more about being forced to live with other peoples mandates and not all about personal choice.

New laws forced office smokers to huddle under overhangs in the rain and banished restaurant smokers to patios, not that we anti-smokers didn't sigh about them, too. You could see patients standing outside hospitals hooked to IVs, getting their nicotine fixes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while smoking rates have stayed steady in recent years — about 20 percent of us still puff away — states with smoke-free laws have the lowest rate of adult smokers. So maybe it's working. Me, I'm glad it's no longer a smoker's world and that we chide even the president for it, and not just because it leaves the rest of us with stinking clothes and hair.

Because here's the trick for the anti-smoker: How do you keep from sounding like you know what's best for the rest of the world? How do you explain that you might actually understand how tight the grip, how powerful the seduction, how personal the choice?

Do you want to quit for a moment? ... or forever? If you haven't made up your mind give smokerzchoice a try. Right now you can get a sample for FREE. Go to www.smokerzchoice.com.

The Dangers Of Inhaling Dubious Facts

Friday, November 6, 2009 by John Bancroft

Have the tobacco police gone too far?

I'VE been called a traitor," says Michael Siegel, a public-health doctor at Boston University in Massachusetts. "It's been a character assassination." And an odd approach to pointing out the consequences od smoking. This treatment seems surprising as, reading Siegel's CV, you'd think he was a poster boy for the stop smoking movement. He regularly publishes research on the harmful effects of secondhand smoke and passive smoking and has testified in support of indoor anti social smoking bans in more than 50 US cities.

Despite these credentials, Siegel has come under fire from colleagues in the field of smoking research and the dangers of smokig. His offence was to post messages on the widely read mailing list Tobacco Policy Talk, in which he questioned one of the medical claims about second hand smoke passive smoking, as well as the wisdom of extreme measures such as outdoor smoking bans.

Excerpted re-post by:01 April 2009 by David Robson 4/1/2009

Santa Cruz Says Quit Smoking Today!

Friday, November 6, 2009 by John Bancroft

Santa Cruz Bans Smoking on Downtown Streets and All City Parking Lots

According to an article on the web site of San Francisco's CBS television affiliate, the Santa Cruz City Council has enacted an ordinance that bans smoking in all city parks, in parking lots and on streets surrounding all city buildings, and on a number of downtown streets, including Pacific Avenue as well as Beach Street between the Municipal Wharf and Third Street.

According to the chair of the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition, this law is necessary because: "There is a danger of smoking that contributes to unsafe levels of exposure to secondhand smoke indoors or outdoors."

The Rest of the Story

Well, if there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke outdoors, then why only ban smoking on Pacific Avenue and on Beach Street between the Municipal Wharf and Third Street? Why not ban smoking on all streets, sidewalks, and parking lots in Santa Cruz? How can the City Council possibly justify allowing people to be exposed to secondhand smoke throughout the rest of the city if there is no safe level of exposure to this smoke? And how could the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition possibly support an ordinance which fails to protect people on the majority of the streets, sidewalks, and parking lots in Santa Cruz?

Moreover, how can the Santa Cruz City Council justify allowing people to be exposed to diesel exhaust in the city? There is no safe level of exposure to diesel exhaust, either inside or outside. Diesel exhaust contains known carcinogens and also causes heart and lung disease. Since there is no safe level of exposure to any carcinogen, there is no safe level of exposure to diesel exhaust in Santa Cruz.

There is also no safe level of exposure to radon, a proven carcinogen. Is the Santa Cruz City Council doing radon testing on all homes in the city and condemning those homes found to contain detectable levels of radon?

There is no safe level of exposure to arsenic, another carcinogen. However, the Santa Cruz city water supply was found to have levels of arsenic of up to 2.5ppb in 2008. And tetrachloroethylene, another carcinogen, was also detected in the Santa Cruz drinking water supply in 2008. The treated drinking water in Santa Cruz was reported to have trihalomethane levels of up to 87 ppb in 2008. Many of these compounds are considered carcinogenic, and there is therefore no safe level of exposure.

Is the Santa Cruz City Council notifying its residents that there is no safe level of exposure to the city's water supply?

You see, this is the problem: when the only justification for banning an exposure is that you believe no person should ever have to be exposed to any level of that substance, then you open yourself up for this kind of criticism. This is why it is important to be able to justify stop smoking bans based on actual evidence of substantial exposure and significant health effects. But if all you can fall back on is that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke outdoors - even a whiff of it - then you are no longer acting in a consistent and justified manner and advise pontificate about the consequences of smoking in a discrimenatory fashion.

Perhaps Santa Cruz should send its residents a warning noting that there is no safe level of exposure to drinking water in the city. Then they could use diesel trucks to bring in bottled water to any and all.

Bans on Social Smoking?

Monday, October 26, 2009 by John Bancroft

Just who's freedom from smoking is it anyway? Stop smoking bans have been popping up across the United States for over a decade now. There is evidence on both sides regarding the harmful affects of secondhand smoke. Some studies show that secondhand smoke is detrimental to those around the smoker and some studies have shown that with proper air ventilation, secondhand smoke is not an issue.

Smoking bans are just disguised as ways to take away the freedom to smoke, but also present a great problem to the free market where these bans are literally dictating what a business owner can and cannot do in their own private business. These bans are beginning to filtrate into private homes and cars.

Smoking is an adult behavior. Just as drinking alcohol and engaging in sexual activity are considered adult behaviors. But as we have learned over the years, shielding children from being educated in making responsible choices once they become adults, only causes children to make irresponsible choices while they are children.

So what do smoking bans really accomplish? Do they really accomplish a greater sense of public health? Do they create a distaste for “big government”? Are smoking bans backwards? Do they really help you to quit smoking?

Let’s look at the history of smoking bans, in a nutshell of course. At first, anti-smoking advocates were against smoking inside because of the compact conditions and poor air movement quality. Their concern was that non-smoking workers and patrons could not get away from secondhand smoke as it does have a tendency to “sit” in the air. The argument was that workers do not have a choice of where they work so they need to be protected from side effects of smoking and nicotine. So they fought to have all smoking pushed outside.

It is here that the private business owners began to feel an infringement upon their rights. The local government is now telling them that they can’t allow the use of a legal product in their privately owned, adult only business.

Smoking then went outside. And business owners reluctantly complied, setting up smoking areas for their patrons, outside and at their own expense.

Then, a few years later, these same advocates were tired of having to walk through the smoke to get into non-smoking establishments so they decided to go after smoking outside. Now, not only are private business owners lacking in their rights, but smokers were also being told that as a smoker, somehow their rights are not equal to those who are non-smokers.

Now, for the non-smoking advocate who may be reading this, please don’t get upset. We definitely see your side of this. Why should someone who has no desire to be engulfed in cigarette smoke have to put up with secondhand cigarette smoke? Why should parents have to run quickly through clouds of smoke with their children in order to get past the front doors of one establishment? And for those who have quit smoking and struggle every day with the urge to smoke and to stay on the wagon, why would one want to be subjected to such temptation? Recovering alcoholics are lucky because if they don’t want to go into a bar, they simply don’t have to.

But what would have happened if the anti-smoking advocates had done the exact opposite? What would have happened if their original smoking bans were to restrict all smoking on public streets and only to allow smoking in private businesses that had proper ventilation systems and were physically marked on the entrance that this is a “smoking establishment”? Would we be having the heated debates today that we are? As for the workers in such an establishment; in America they have the right to choose where they work.

College Students Exposed

Monday, August 10, 2009 by John Bancroft

Study finds college students exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke

WINSTON SALEM, N.C. - Going to college introduces more than just higher education and different lifestyles to students.

It also is exposing them to high levels of secondhand smoke, according to a study at 10 North Carolina universities conducted in the fall of 2006 by Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

According to researchers, 83 percent of the 4,223 students said they had been exposed at least once in the previous week to secondhand smoke, primarily in social settings such as restaurants, bars, Greek houses, off-campus housing and automobiles.

The study, released yesterday, is the first to provide evidence of the high rates of secondhand smoke exposure among U.S. college students, the school said.

Mark Wolfson, the lead author on the study, said that researchers “were really shocked” to see that level of secondhand smoke exposure.

“That said, we don’t know if the exposure was at a nuisance level or at a level that might influence health,“ said Wolfson, the top official for the Section on Society and Health in the Department of Social Sciences and Health Policy at the medical school.

Wolfson said that Wake Forest was not among the eight public and two private universities that participated. The universities ranged in undergraduate population from 2,500 to 16,000.

However, Wake Forest is instituting a smoke-free policy in residence halls this fall, said Kevin Cox, the director of media relations for the university. Winston-Salem State halted smoking in residence halls last year.

Cox said he did not know what prompted the change. “I am told by our residence life and housing staff that smoke-free residence halls are common at other ACC schools,“ he said.

According to a report on the American Lung Association’s Web site, secondhand smoke causes almost 50,000 deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.

“Knowing what we know about secondhand smoke, lowering the rates of smoking is definitely something we should be seriously looking at on college campuses,“ Wolfson said.

Researchers asked students about their drinking and smoking habits, demographics, where they lived and secondhand smoke exposure.

“Social smoking played a big role in the amount of secondhand smoking,“ Wolfson said.

Other factors associated with increased exposure to secondhand smoke included being female, being white, having parents with higher education levels and attending a public vs. private school.

“While some college campuses are smoke free, others have virtually no restrictions on smoking, not even in the residence halls,“ Wolfson said. “There is a growing national movement to move away from that, but it still very much varies by campus.“

The study comes at a time when advocacy efforts, spearheaded by the N.C. Health and Wellness Trust Fund, have led 31 colleges, universities and community colleges to adopt tobacco-use policies as of July 1. The fund has contributed about $3.4 million to programs geared toward preventing and reducing tobacco use among college students.

Four schools in the UNC system - Elizabeth City State University, UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Pembroke and Winston-Salem State - do not permit smoking within a 100-foot perimeter of a campus building. Cox said that Wake Forest has a 50-foot perimeter.

The other 27 colleges and community colleges, including Davidson County and Guilford Technical community colleges, have adopted 100 percent tobacco free campus policies.

The Wake Forest study, along with previous studies, expressed concerns that many first-time smokers are attracted by tobacco marketing focused on restaurants and bars near campus. They also said some students turn to cigarettes as a coping mechanism as they adjust to the stresses of college life.

“It’s concerning that after all the efforts for making our public schools 100 percent tobacco free that some students are taking up smoking in college, or being exposed to secondhand smoke for the first time in college,“ said Mark Ezzell, the tobacco-free campus director for the fund.

Wolfson said that debates about smoking restrictions, especially on college campuses, often revolve around considerations of individual choice.

“However, the issue of secondhand smoke exposure brings in the rights of all to a healthy environment,“ Wolfson said. “This is an issue which is beginning to resonate with many college administrators.“

With a statewide smoking ban in bars and restaurants taking effect Jan. 2, Wolfson said he is hopeful that the exposure rate to secondhand smoke will decline significantly.

“We’re going to conduct studies this fall and the fall of 2010 to determine whether the exposure to secondhand smoke drops or just goes to a different location, such as student residences,“ Wolfson said.

The study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. It will appear in the July 23 issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research.

By Richard Craver, Media General News Service, July 22, 2009. Richard Craver writes for the Winston-Salem Journal.

Big Tobacco Guilty of Fraud

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 by John Bancroft

Cigarette Companies Committed Fraud, Appeals Court Agrees

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has upheld a district court's finding that major U.S. tobacco firms intentionally misled the public about the health hazards of cigarettes, as reported by Bloomberg News.

"The district court found -- permissibly in our view -- that the enterprise had the common purpose of obtaining cigarette proceeds by defrauding existing and potential smokers," the appeals court said in a 3-0 decision in upholding U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, who in 2006 ruled that Big Tobacco firms engaged in racketeering and were likely to do so again in the future.

In her ruling, Kessler ordered tobacco companies to stop using terms like "light" and "low tar" to market cigarettes. The appeals court agreed with Kessler's demands that the companies also be forced to publicly acknowledge their past lies about nicotine addiction and the health hazards of smoking and secondhand smoke, manipulation of nicotine levels in cigarettes, and the fact that so-called "light" and "low-tar" cigarettes are as dangerous as "regular" cigarettes.

Cigarette makers Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco said they would appeal the latest ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The court's conclusions are not supported by the law or the evidence presented at trial, and we believe the exceptional importance of these issues justifies further review," said Murray Garnick, a lawyer for Philip Morris parent company, Altria.

The U.S. Justice Department, which sued the tobacco industry under federal racketeering laws, called the latest ruling "a victory for the American people that bans the use of misleading terms such as 'light and low tar,' and provides the government with the ability to pursue these companies should they continue with their deceptive practices."

However, the appeals court turned down a government request to impose other sanctions against the industry, such as a counter-marketing plan and a nationwide smoking-cessation program, which Kessler had denied in the original trial.

Secondhand Smoke Is A Danger To Pets

Thursday, July 23, 2009 by John Bancroft

If you are trying to convince a smoker you know to quit, it may help to tell them they’re harming their pet’s health. A study published in the journal Tobacco Control hows a significant percentage of pet owners who smoke would make an attempt to quit if they were told that secondhand smoke was a danger to their pets.

Researchers from the Henry Ford Health System’s Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention asked some 3,293 adult pet owners to fill out a survey on the internet. 21 percent of those who took part in the survey said they were currently smoking and another 27 percent lived with at least one smoker.

40 percent of both smoking and non-smoking pet owners who took the survey said that if they were told about the dangers of secondhand smoke to pets, they would either try to quit smoking themselves or they would ask the smoker they live with to quit or to smoke outdoors.

Secondhand smoke is indeed dangerous for pets. A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found dogs who live in a house with a smoker have a 60 percent greater risk of lung cancer. Long-nosed dogs like collies and greyhounds are twice as likely to develop nasal cancer when they live with a smoker. And a study by veterinarians at Tufts University found cats who live with a smoking owner are three times as likely to develop lymphoma.

Pets face risks from tobacco not only by breathing it in, but also by ingesting particles lodged in their fur as they groom. Tobacco smoke can cause allergic reactions in dogs and skin and respiratory problems in birds. And pets who find and eat discarded cigarette butts can be poisoned by the tobacco.

Veterinarians recommend pet owners who smoke do so outside. Use air filters inside to help keep the air free of tobacco smoke. Regular house cleaning and bathing of your pet can help remove toxic tobacco particles from the places where your pet sleeps and plays and from their fur. And be sure to discard your cigarette butts in receptacles your furry friends can’t ingest them.

Originally Posted By Angela Hursh

A Rant From The Smoking Section Rush Sings Cumbaya

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 by John Bancroft

Communist Housing Complex Bans Indoor Smoking

RUSH LIMBAUGH:

"We finally have a communist idea that's not coming out of Washington. This is from the Leader-Telegram. I'm not sure where this is. Oh, it's in Wisconsin. It's not just indoor public places in Eau Claire where lighting up is prohibited. OH the bane of the Secondhand Smoke will kill you advocates. Now residents of a south side, owner-occupied housing complex will have to snuff out smoking (does this mean stop smoking?) in their homes, the most recent sign of public anti-smoking sentiment that forces people to quit smoking. Members of the Fairfax Parkside Homeowners Association [last] Wednesday voted to outlaw social smoking inside residences that are part of the 34-unit development. The ban also prohibits smoking in shared spaces, such as porches and garages, but does allow it in yards and on patios. Now, stop and think of this. Freedom from smoking? Or interventionist lobbying by government bent on using the danger of smoking as a way to promote a political agenda? This is not a way to help you quit smoking.

A homeowners association is making you quit smoking inside your own house and pushing a "not to smoke" message. It's a communist idea that's, finally, not coming from Washington. That's how this stuff is spreading. But you can smoke outside. HA! Now, which is more likely to reach your neighbors and kill them? Secondhand smoke inside your house? Remember, now, we're talking Wisconsin. In wintertime the windows and doors are going to be closed. You can go outside and smoke all you want. What's more likely to drift around and kill your neighbors, the secondhand smoke, from inside or outside? Not to mention the fact... (laughing) Do you realize what the budget deficit is going to be if they actually succeed in snuffing out smoking everywhere? We are going to see tax increases like you can't believe. You don't know what the tax on secrets is if you don't smoke, the tax on cigars if you don't smoke. It's outrageous, and the money is being used to pay for health care "for children," the S-CHIP program and so forth."

Stop Smoking for Fido

Friday, July 17, 2009 by John Bancroft

Smokers Might Quit for Pets

Some smokers may be willing to quit smoking if informed that secondhand smoke is causing harm to their pets, MSNBC reported Feb. 9. Researcher Sharon Milberger of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit and colleagues found that 28 percent of pet owners who smoke said they would attempt to stop if they knew that secondhand smoke from cigarettes caused health problems for their pets.

The researchers found that 11 percent of 3,293 pet owners said they would think about quitting, and 16 percent of nonsmoking pet owners who lived with someone who smoked would ask the smoker to quit (24 percent would ask the smoker to smoke outside).

Secondhand-smoke exposure may increase a pet's risk of developing lung cancer, allergies, eye and skin diseases, and respiratory problems. Roughly one-fifth of the 71 million American pet owners are smokers.

"For tobacco-control advocates, on our team we can now have vets and kennels and pet supply stores," Millberger said. "So, for example, when someone takes Fluffy in to the vet, the vet can ask them about their smoking behavior and whether they allow smoking in their home."

The findings were published online Feb. 10, 2009 in the journal Tobacco Control.

And Another No-Smoking Ordinance Takes Away Freedom From Smoking

Wednesday, July 8, 2009 by John Bancroft

While they won’t be voting on it, Conroe City Council members will today “revisit” an ordinance to prohibit smoking in public places that originated in 2006 but went nowhere. Now the pressure to quit smoking is back on the table.

According to agenda information for today’s workshop meeting, Mayor Webb Melder requested the istop smoking issue be brought back before council. No action, however, will be taken during Thursday’s regular council meeting.

City Attorney Marcus Winberry has included three no smoking ordinance draft proposals from 2006 with council members’ meeting information “in order to pick up the discussion,” according to the information.

Neither Melder nor Winberry returned calls for comment, and members of Breathe Free Conroe, who requested the smoke free ordinance in 2006, say they have “no idea” where the request to bring stopping smoking back up or where it came from.

“It just showed up out of the blue,” said Dr. Mark Stephenson, a Conroe dentist who brought concerns to the council in November 2006. “I’m excited about it.”

The first of the three no smoking ordinance proposals from 2006 would have banned smoking in most enclosed public areas, including all restaurants; a second would have permitted smoking in designated areas of restaurants, so long as they were separate and enclosed and served by a separate HVAC system that directed exhaust from the smoking area to the outside.

The third proposal would have stopped smoking only in buildings owned or operated by the city.

After initial discussion of the proposal prohibiting smoking in all restaurants, council members in 2006 were prepared to vote on former Mayor Tommy Metcalf’s recommendation that the proposal allow restaurants and other businesses to establish their own guidelines. The council, however, declined to adopt any of the three proposals.

Members of Breathe Free Conroe plan to be at today’s workshop meeting, Stephenson said.

“They (members) were asking me, ‘Was this your idea?’” he said. “I said ‘No.’

Stephenson, whose father died of cancer caused by second-hand smoke, said “many, many studies” have been done testing the blood of nonsmoking restaurant patrons who go into a restaurant that allows smoking.

“They come back out and test their blood and find second-hand smoke in their blood,” he said. “I have surveyed pretty much all the restaurants in town. They would like the City Council to put the ordinance in.

“In every restaurant I ask, the no-smoking section is never full and the waiters and waitresses hate it. They come out smelling like smoke.”

But John Phillips, owner of Dixie’s Bayou Victuals, understands why some restaurants allow smoking.

“The competition (for small restaurants) is so stiff,” Phillips said. “We’re fighting an uphill battle every day.”

He banned smoking in his restaurant for several months after his wife was diagnosed with and died from lung cancer two and a half years ago, he said. The ban, however, caused him to lose loyal customer who do not choose to quit smoking.

“I lost so many customers who said they didnt want to quit smoking and if they couldn’t smoke they wouldn’t come here,” he said. “It was significant enough to have me reverse my decision.

“It was a difficult choice, but when you’ve got kids to feed, your choices become very limited.”

Phillips does, however, feel an ordinance affecting all restaurants in the city would level the playing field.

“I don’t see smoking as a moral issue, some smokers dont want to quit smoking, but I would never allow people to smoke around my kids,” he said. “I do believe second-hand smoke is dangerous, but in what concentration, I don’t know. There are people who are sensitive to second hand smoke and are looking for freedom from smoking. If those people wouldn’t come to my restaurant because we allow smoking, that bothers me a lot.”

Not allowing smoking in his business from the day it opened did initially hurt business at the Corner Pub in downtown Conroe, owner Rodney Pool said.

But “Joyce (his wife) and I decided we would open it as a nonsmoking establishment,” he said. “I felt like there are a lot of people who like a place to go where they can enjoy good food and good music and not walk out smelling like smoke.”

Wanting to compensate smokers, Pool does put tables outside the Pub where smoking is allowed, said Pool, who called his decision to quit smoking 25 years ago “one of the smartest things I ever did.”

“It’s what your customers get used to,” he said. “I would make the same decision if I had to do it today.”

An effective ordinance is “truly needed,” said Chrissie West, chair of Breathe Free Conroe.

“An ordinance that would truly protect all workers is the heart of the issue,” she said.

She would like to see an ordinance that prohibits smoking in all public establishments, she said, including bars.

“It’s a health issue,” she said. “There are often economic concerns, but statistics show prohibiting smoking increases revenues.

“It’s good for health, it’s good for business and it’s good for the public.”

Secondhand Smoke