Testing It Up

An analysis of data from a 2010 survey found that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the support of many Americans should the agency decide to exercise its authority to lower nicotine levels in cigarettes.

Researchers at the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the Legacy Foundation said 47 percent of the respondents in the survey would support government-mandated reduction of nicotine levels in cigarettes; 16.6 percent opposed the action; and almost 36.8 percent had no opinion, HealthDay reports.

The study also revealed that smokers who considered quitting are more likely to support regulation than smokers who are not thinking of quitting. African Americans, Hispanics, and those with lower education levels were especially supportive of nicotine reduction.

“Nicotine reduction could be a promising tool to protect the population from the harm and death caused by tobacco products,” study lead author Jennifer Pearson, a Schroeder Institute research investigator, said in a news release. “This study shows us that such measures could be acceptable to a large number of Americans.”

Pearson added that their findings would be helpful for the FDA in determining public opinion if ever it decides to push such regulation.

According to the Centers and Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), smoking is responsible for about one in five deaths in the U.S. annually. Each day, more than 3,800 people younger than 18 smoke their first cigarette, and 1,000 persons younger than 18 begin to smoke on a daily basis. Those who smoke are at increased risk for cancer, heart disease, stroke, and lung diseases (including emphysema, bronchitis, and chronic airway obstruction).

Any male smoker who is looking for another reason to quit may add this one to the list: a new study determined that smoking, specifically for men, is bad news for the brain.

The results of a study indicated that men who smoke are more likely to have a more rapid mental decline, when compared against those who do not smoke. The effect, however, was observed only among male smokers. There was no similar link among female smokers.

The study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, involved an analysis of data from around 8,000 British civil servants, nearly 6000 of which were men. The study participants were given their first mental assessment at midlife – at an average age of 56 – to evaluate their thinking abilities.

The assessment consisted of five tests of memory, vocabulary, and verbal & math reasoning skills. These assessments were conducted two more times after the administration of the initial assessment, over the course of a decade.

The smoking habits of the study participants over a 25-year period were determined by looking at their current smoking status at the beginning of the study, as well as past history, including whether they had quit or relapsed.

The researchers were able to observe faster mental decline among middle-aged men who smoked, when compared against men who never smoked.

Men who had quit smoking only recently, on the other hand, had greater declines in “executive function,” a term used to refer to more complex thinking skills, when compared against men who never smoked.

The government has been a staunch advocate of smoking cessation, and among the strategies that it was able to conceive was to mandate that tobacco companies use gruesome photos that show the side effects of smoking on their cigarette packages. Now those companies are threatening to sue in order for them not to use the images.

Five tobacco companies, represented by their attorneys, pleaded their case before a federal judge on Wednesday. Noel J. Francisco, attorney of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., declared that the government could not compel businesses to serve as “unwilling mouthpieces” for its advocacy campaigns.

The lawyers of the FDA, however, shot back that their new packaging rules were legal and that they fulfilled a congressional mandate that pushes efforts to steer the youth away from smoking and to encourage smokers to quit.
A pair of the FDA warnings features a stitched-up corpse and a man smoking with a hole in his throat with the captions: “Warning: Smoking can kill you” and “Warning: Cigarettes are addictive.”

Mr. Francisco argued that the picture of a stitched up male corpse is an inaccurate portrayal of the effects of smoking. Apparently, medical examiners do not do autopsies if someone dies of lung cancer.

But Department of Justice lawyer Mark B. Stern, protested that all the FDA images show the effects of smoking. All nine of the pictures, which include a mouth with discolored teeth, diseased lungs and an ulcerated lip are needed because they highlight several warnings. “The goal is to get people to notice the message,” said Stern.

Tobacco companies are required to use the FDA warnings by September 2012.

Smoking cigarettes and using tobacco can literally kill you because the chemicals it contains can literally burn your lungs away, among other things. That is why the most striking and scariest advertisements promoting quitting smoking cigarettes and tobacco focus on death.

These advertisement materials usually contain few textual messages and are instead very visual in nature. They typically contain skulls and crossbones because these are the most common images associated with death and danger. There are many messages conveyed with these images, such as smoking is suicide, cigarettes are killers in packs and you can commit murder with smoking.

Among the strongest images in these advertisements are those that promote quitting smoking because of the inherent dangers of secondhand smoke. The proponents of these campaigns believe that while a smoker may ignore the dangers of smoking to his or her own body, the smoker will not be able to do the same when it comes to the health of his or her loved ones.

For full version of this article, please visit “Scariest Quit Smoking/Tobacco Signs and Promotional Materials“.

May 31st marks World No Tobacco Day, where an effort is made towards stressing the adverse effects of tobacco use to the health of people worldwide. On this day, people are enjoined to either spread the word about the ill effects of tobacco or, for those who are smokers, try to stay away from smoking at least for a day. This year, the commemoration focuses on warnings placed on tobacco products and the need for the inclusion of more graphic warnings on packages.

The American Lung Association is encouraging citizens to write to their respective senators about the inclusion of graphic labels on tobacco products. A pending legislation before the US Senate, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, will empower the US Food and Drug Administration and give them control over the marketing, manufacture and sale of tobacco products. This means that the FDA will also have the authority to modify warning labels to make sure that these remain effective.

The World Health Organization also sees the need to graphic warnings on packages. The agency said that “cigarette packages should include images of sickness and suffering caused by tobacco, along with written warnings.”

Tobacco is known as the leading cause of preventable death, and is responsible for the death of more than 5 million people worldwide annually. In the US, it is responsible for the deaths of more than 392,000 Americans each year. It is also the only consumer product that is legal that “kills when used exactly as intended by the manufacturer.” Normally, it is the other way around.

The drive for more graphic warnings stems from the fact that warning pictures have been known to be successful at helping smokers quit or preventing others from getting hooked. This observation is as true in the US, as indicated on the American Lung Association’s website, as it is in other places in the world. The WHO revealed consistent findings in studies of similar campaigns conducted in Brazil, Canada, Singapore and Thailand.