smoking

Tobacco Control Hysteria Goes Global

by Christine Hall on November 15, 2010 · 1 comment

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty

The wars on tobacco and smokers have gone global, as evidenced by international bureaucrats from the World Health Organization meeting in Uruguay this week to debate anti-smoking initiatives.  A New York Times news story on government efforts to regulate cigarette packaging and advertising reveals the vast geographic scope of such campaigns:

Companies like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco are contesting limits on ads in Britain, bigger health warnings in South America and higher cigarette taxes in the Philippines and Mexico. They are also spending billions on lobbying and marketing campaigns in Africa and Asia, and in one case provided undisclosed financing for TV commercials in Australia.

The industry has ramped up its efforts in advance of a gathering in Uruguay this week of public health officials from 171 nations, who plan to shape guidelines to enforce a global anti-smoking treaty.

Now, smoking may be a simple pleasure, but it is clearly full of health risks. But it’s interesting that international bureaucrats resemble a simple tool — a hammer — with a tendency to regard all problems as nails.  That is, there is a presumption that the peoples of the world are incapable of deciding for themselves whether or not to smoke. How else to explain the proposed ban on flavored cigarettes, which the U.S. FDA has already done, and plans to envelope some 80 percent of cigarette packaging in warning labels,which the U.S. FDA has scheduled for next year? One doesn’t need to be pro-smoking to wonder where it ends: at what point does government stop trying to save us from ourselves?

Photo credit: dsevilla’s flickr photostream.

New York Bans Smoking in Central Park

by Kathryn Ciano on November 8, 2010

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty

…and all other public outdoor spaces. Soon there will be no smoking in any car-banned area of New York City, including Times Square, Central Park, and Coney Island.

Bloomberg, a “passionate anti-smoker,” fully supports this measure. Who can blame him? Giuliani rolled back the ghetto and ended NYC’s infamous ’80s crime wave. Rudy Giuliani actually paid homeless people to leave the city by offering one-way air fare wherever they wanted to go.

Bloomberg needs something for his legacy. Just: Who would’ve thought his chosen legacy would be to get New York City on the anti-choice wagon?

Here is a city so rife with carbon monoxide fumes that even Batman has fled Gotham to rest his lungs until the next crime wave. You remember the Bodies exhibit, where a smoker’s lung and a city-dweller’s lung are virtually identical. Why not have your cab and smoke break too, or at least let people decide for themselves?

Whatever happened to this New York, the Sidney Morgenbesser age of irony and intelligence and wit?

Morgenbesser was leaving a subway station in New York City and put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the steps. A police officer told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not entering it, and hadn’t lit up yet anyway. The cop repeated his injunction. Morgenbesser repeated his observation.

After a few such exchanges, the cop saw he was beaten and fell back on the oldest standby of enfeebled authority: “If I let you do it, I’d have to let everyone do it.” To this the old professor replied, “Who do you think you are, Kant?”

The word “Kant” was mistaken for a vulgar epithet and Morgenbesser had to explain the situation at the police station.

Menthol Cigarettes: In or Out?

by Nicole Ciandella on November 5, 2010 · 1 comment

in Nanny State

In 2009, President Obama–a semi-closeted smoker–signed the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.”  The law granted the FDA new powers to regulate tobacco advertising. It also banned vanilla, coffee, clove, and other flavored cigarettes.

But the law didn’t ban menthol cigarettes. Congress left that decision up to the FDA. Now the FDA is considering their options.

In this month’s issue of Cigar Magazine, CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman recounts the history of the racially-charged debate over whether or not to ban menthol cigarettes. Almost 80% of black smokers smoke menthols; now the NAACP is advocating for the FDA ban on menthols and the National Black Chamber of Commerce is campaigning against it. In “Menthol Wars,” Kazman addresses the popular anti-menthol argument that menthol cigarettes unfairly target minorities since menthol smokers inhale more deeply:

By some accounts, black smokers, who heavily favor menthol, seem to suffer more than white smokers from smoking-related illnesses.  But other analyses show that this difference becomes insignificant once socio-economic status is taken into account.  And biomarker studies on the levels of absorbed smoking by-products find no real differences.

Even if such differences in risk do exist, there would seem to be a simple regulatory fix—just change the warnings on cigarette packs and in ads to reflect the added risk.  Whether FDA has enough respect for smokers to entrust them with this knowledge is another question.

Kazman also debunks claims that menthol ads perpetuate a false impression that menthols are “healthy” cigarettes by using ad-words like “cool” and “refreshing”:

Decades ago, the industry expressly claimed that menthol was healthier, suggesting, for example, that non-menthol smokers switch in order to “combat a cough.” Over time, the argument goes, this approach slowly morphed into (in the words of the antismoking American Legacy Foundation) the use of “code words like ‘smooth’ and ‘refreshes’ and the colors of blue and green.”  The result is a “fraudulent health reassurance message” that continues to deceive people.

If this critique sounds squishy, that’s because it is squishy.  Just about every tobacco industry use of healthy-looking people and lush landscapes has been criticized as an attempt to conceal the risks of smoking.   Nonetheless, since the 1960s, federally mandated warnings on cigarette packs have made those risks clear to everyone.  Thus, you can hardly argue that every inviting portrayal of smoking constitutes fraud.  Are ads for ski slopes deceitful because they don’t show broken bones?

Read Sam Kazman’s full Cigar Magazine article here.

Human Achievement of the Day: e-Cigarettes

by Michelle Minton on March 19, 2010 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

Oh yeah, I’m going there. Cigarettes are a human achievement. Just like food items (i.e. chocolate) or beverages (i.e. wine) cigarettes are a consumable product that can enhance the enjoyment of the smoker’s life. Sure, it can cause a lot of problems for the smoker and irritate folks around him or her, but those are trade-offs that, as with many other things, one must account for when deciding whether or not to take a certain action. ecigs

All that said, quitting is a really good idea. The achievement this post seeks to praise is the device that shows great promise in helping smokers improve the quality of their lives while allowing them to continue behaviors that they find enjoyable.

Smoking in the modern age is not like it used to be. Gone are the days when you could light up anywhere, buy a pack for pennies, and expect the nonsmokers to “suck it up” so to speak. Almost anyone who has or continues to smoke understands that maintaining the habit is costly, time consuming, and hazardous to one’s health and psychology.

But quitting can sometimes be more difficult than living with the immediate frustrations of smoking. One major barrier to helping smokers quit is that most of them genuinely enjoy the act of smoking. Whether it’s the rush of nicotine or the habitual behaviors surrounding the process of lighting up, even those smokers who intellectually understand the dangers of smoking don’t want to stop.

The electronic cigarette, or e-cigarette might change all of that.

First developed in 2003 by a Beijing company now known as The Golden Dragon Group Ltd. the electronic cigarette is was approved by the FDA for sale in the US in 2008. These battery powered devices, which can look like cigarettes, cigars, or even pens, provide a dose of nicotine through the process of vaporizing a gel solution.

In addition to purported nicotine delivery, this vapor also provides a flavor and physical sensation similar to that of inhaled tobacco smoke, while no tobacco, smoke, or combustion is actually involved in its operation…They are battery powered, and create their effect by vaporizing nicotine which is dissolved in a solution of water and propylene glycol.

The question for some however, is whether or not these new electronic cigarettes really are safe. As one producer website noted, while the safety of the e-cigarette may not be exactly known, it is assuredly safer than smoking conventional cigarettes. For one, there is a definitive reduction in the risk of accidental fires as the e-cigs are battery powered and have no burning element.

E-smoking is almost identical to cigarette smoking. The major difference is that the e-cigarette is always “lit”. Most of them even have an LED on the end that lights up like a cigarette ember when you draw on it. You can put it down or pick it up at any time without worrying about burning anything. It is only on when you actually draw on it. How much you smoke is related more to how many puffs you desire rather than on the length of the cigarette.

But what about the health consequences of long-term e-smoking? Again, it isn’t exactly known how much safer e-cigarettes are than conventional smoking, but again, it is almost assuredly safer to smoke the vaporized nicotine solution than the tar-laced smoke of tobacco products.

Even if e-cigs are about ten times as harmful as smokeless tobacco, that still makes them about 1/10th as harmful as smoking. Smoking is just that bad.

First of all, there is no burning of any plant matter so all those combustion related carcinogens are no longer present. Of course, in most cases, nicotine is still present but, as we’ve written elsewhere, nicotine is one of the more benign elements in tobacco…All that remains is some uncertainty about the effects of propylene glycol with long term regular use.

Almost anything else that is not acutely toxic (and we know the e-cigs are not) will be safer. Even if e-cigs are about ten times as harmful as smokeless tobacco, that still makes them about 1/10th as harmful as smoking. Smoking is just that bad.

Predictably, the FDA sought to prevent the sale of e-cigarettes in the states, claiming that the effects had not been thoroughly studied. However, in January of this year Federal Judge Richard Leon ruled in favor of plaintiffs Smoking Everywhere and Njoy who filed a jurisdictional lawsuit against the FDA. In his concluding remarks Judge Leon commented:

This case appears to be yet another example of FDA’s aggressive efforts to regulate recreational tobacco products as drugs or devices under the FDCA. Ironically, notwithstanding that Congress has now taken the unprecedented step of granting FDA jurisdiction over those products, FDA remains undeterred. Unfortunately, its tenacious drive to maximize its regulatory power has resulted in its advocacy of an interpretation of the relevant law that I find, at first blush, to be unreasonable and unacceptable

According to Matt Salmon, president of the Electronic Cigarette Association (ECA) and former congressman, in the two short years since the product was introduced in the US there’s an estimated 300,000 e-smokers now.

Moveon.Org’s Disinformation Smear Campaign

by Marlo Lewis on February 11, 2010 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

Moveon.Org is running a series of TV ads accusing Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NB), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) of “working to roll back the Clean Air Act.” The ads tell the Senators to “Leave it [the Clean Air Act] alone,” because “Many Americans are already smoking the equivalent of a pack a day just from breathing the air.”

As I show here, Moveon’s attack ads are a triple whopper, piling falsehood upon falsehood upon falsehood.

(1) The Senators are not working to roll back the Clean Air Act. Rather, they are working to stop non-elected bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges from ‘enacting’ climate policies not authorized by the people’s elected representatives. It is the Senators’ defense of regulatory accountability — of democracy — that Moveon vilifies.

(2) Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions do not form smog or soot, history demonstrates that we don’t need CO2 controls to clean the air, and EPA currently does not regulate CO2 emissions. Hence, it’s complete bunk that stopping EPA from setting climate policy for the nation ‘rolls back’ the Clean Air Act.  

(3) No American smokes the equivalent of a pack a day, or even one cigarette a day, just from breathing the air. Pope et al. (2009), a study published by the American Heart Association, finds that a pack-a-day smoker gets a daily dose of 140 to 240 milligrams of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), whereas a non-smoker living in a city with high PM2.5 levels inhales 0.44 to 0.56 milligrams per day. The pack-a-day smoker’s dose is hundreds of times greater. In fact, smoking just one cigarette delivers roughly 12 to 27 times as much PM2.5 into the lungs as does breathing the air in a city with high PM2.5 levels.

Moveon should promptly do three things: (1) Apologize to Sens. Lincoln, Nelson, and Landrieu for subjecting them to a smear campaign. (2) Apologize to their members for peddling disinformation. (3) Return every penny to anyone whom the ads angered or frightened into making a financial contribution.

FDA to Smokers: Drop Dead

by Hans Bader on August 3, 2009 · 3 comments

in Healthcare, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony

The FDA is now moving towards banning a smoking alternative that could save many lives. Every year, millions of smokers like my wife try and fail to quit, because they are nicotine addicts. Many later die of smoking-related illnesses, which are caused by the smoke, not the nicotine. The obvious solution is to give smokers access to less hazardous products that provide the nicotine they crave without the deadly smoke, like chewing tobacco, or, better yet, electronic cigarettes or snus. (Electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes, deliver nicotine in a vapor instead of much more harmful tobacco smoke).

The FDA is now moving towards banning e-cigarettes, reports syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum. Cigarettes, which contain lots of toxins and cancer-causing agents, aren’t banned, but the FDA wants to ban e-cigarettes, which contain infinitely-smaller amounts of carcinogens, complaining that e-cigarettes contain “detectable levels of known carcinogens and toxic chemicals to which users could potentially be exposed” (emphasis added).”

As public-health expert, and tobacco-industry critic, Michael Siegel notes, this is terrible reasoning by the FDA, since all tobacco replacement products now on the market contain small but “detectable” amounts of known carcinogens. The FDA used to be more reluctant to block smoking alternatives that have small or imaginary risks, but that seems to be changing over the last year.

A bill supported by the nation’s largest cigarette maker that was signed into law earlier this year by Obama will keep producers of smokeless tobacco from truthfully telling smokers about the fact that smoking is more dangerous to their health than smokeless tobacco. That will harm public health, as advocates like Bill Godshall of Smoke Free Pennsylvania have noted.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) wants to ban e-cigarettes even if the FDA does not. Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, is appalled: “This is about as idiotic and irrational an approach as I have ever seen in my 22 years in tobacco control and public health,” he wrote on his blog. “A public policy maker who touts himself as being a champion of the public’s health [is] demanding that we ban what is clearly a much safer cigarette than those on the market, but that we allow, protect, approve, and institutionalize the really toxic ones.”

This isn’t the only thing bad happening on the public-health front. The opportunity for meaningful health-care reform is being squandered.

One of Obama’s own advisers says the Obama Administration’s health-care plan will harm people with insurance while raising their taxes. CNN says Obamacare will take away 5 freedoms. It will also destroy many affordable health-care plans while breaking Obama’s campaign promises.

The health-care “reform” bills backed by the Administration perversely exempt illegal aliens from the health-insurance taxes and obligations imposed on citizens, effectively giving them preferential treatment. The bills’ drafters do not deny that they would exempt illegal aliens from such taxes and obligations. However, they do claim that illegal aliens also would also not be eligible for the bills’ “public option” health-coverage plan. That reassurance is illusory, since the bills’ drafters blocked the only effective means of verifying whether beneficiaries are in fact illegal aliens. Even the liberal Houston Chronicle has noted the “lack of a mechanism for verifying” eligibility by illegal aliens.

While America’s health-care system is very expensive, it is much better at treating and detecting common forms of cancer than most European health-care systems. The Administration’s health-care proposals put these successes in jeopardy, yet they would increase health-care costs even further, while failing to provide health-care coverage as cheap or as universal as in Europe.