tobacco
cmonforton | October 2, 2012The Pump Handle is launching a new "Public Health Classics" series exploring some of the classic studies and reports that have shaped the field of public health. If you have a favorite Public Health Classic to recommend, let us know in the comments. And if you're interested in contributing a post to the series, email us at thepumphandle@gmail.com (send us a link to the report or study along with a sentence or two about what you find most interesting or important about it). As we add more posts to the series, they'll all be available in the "Public Health Classics" category.
A headline from…
oracknows | September 5, 2012Long, long ago, seemingly in a galaxy far, far away, I first encountered quackery on the Internet. Because I am a cancer surgeon, naturally I gravitated towards cancer quackery at first. Believe it or not, it was quite some time after that before I started to take an interest in what has become a major focus of this blog, the antivaccine movement and the misinformation it spreads. Both are equally damaging in their own way. True, these were back in the deep, dark days when I used to cruise various Usenet newsgroups, ranging from alt.revisionism (Holocaust denial), sci.skeptic (of course!),…
lborkowski | December 9, 2011By Kim Krisberg
Public health vs. tobacco. It's a David and Goliath kind of story. The kind in which the good guys win and everyone sleeps a little sounder knowing that the bigger, richer guys don't hold all the power.
Of course, the story isn't so cut and dry. While public health has been slowly and steadfastly winning the battle against smoking in the United States (though progress has slowed and disparities still exist), the opposition hasn't gone away -- in fact, it's still bigger, much richer and working harder than ever to hook new users and undermine successful anti-tobacco efforts. In…
lborkowski | June 17, 2011by Kim Krisberg
Don't mess with Texas. The iconic phrase was actually created as part of an anti-littering campaign more than 20 years ago, however it could be as easily applied to the state's notorious anti-regulatory attitude and penchant for bucking convention. But despite its reputation, the Lone Star State is poised to join 29 other states in passing a statewide restriction on indoor smoking.
With the Texas legislature now in special session, policy-makers are considering a bill (known as HB 46 in the House and SB 28 in the Senate) that would ban indoor smoking in bars and restaurants.…
lborkowski | May 3, 2011Tobacco use is one of the top risk factors for the non-communicable diseases the World Health Organization is targeting, and WHO has already done a lot of anti-smoking work over the past few years. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control entered into force in 2005, and its core demands include both price and non-price measures to be taken by signatory countries. Price measures include taxes to increase the per-pack cost of tobacco products, and non-price measures include protection from exposure to tobacco smoke and regulation of tobacco product content, labeling, and advertising.…
lborkowski | February 11, 2011A.G. Sulzberger reports in the New York Times about a new practice by some employers: refusing to hire smokers:
More hospitals and medical businesses in many states are adopting strict policies that make smoking a reason to turn away job applicants, saying they want to increase worker productivity, reduce health care costs and encourage healthier living.
The policies reflect a frustration that softer efforts -- like banning smoking on company grounds, offering cessation programs and increasing health care premiums for smokers -- have not been powerful-enough incentives to quit.
The new rules…
stoat | November 14, 2010 People have been trying to make me read Merchants of Doot for some time, but I still haven't (go on, someone, send me a copy for Christmas, me c/o CSR St Johns House will reach me :-). But TWD (in the midst of "turning serious") has a post on a particular tobacco-industry document apparently inspired by the GCC. Anyway, what *I* wanted to pick out(in some sort of law of conservation of silliness effect) was not the substance (off you go to WTD for that) but the wonderful terminology: see the doc, its page 17 for some wonderful acronyms, like Gongo and Bongo (Business-Orientated NGO, if you…
lborkowski | November 10, 2010Here at George Washington University this morning, Department of Health and Human Services officials unveiled a new strategy aimed at preventing new smoking habits and helping current smokers quit. One major component is the Food and Drug Administration's proposed rule requiring that all cigarette packages and advertising include one of nine health warnings (which will be larger and more noticeable than the current text on cigarette packs) and color graphic images that depict the negative health consequences of smoking.
The Tobacco Control Act that passed last year specified the nine text…
lborkowski | September 13, 2010The World Health Organization has declared that "tobacco taxes are the most effective way to reduce tobacco use, especially among young people and the poor," but Slate's James Ledbetter points out that in the US, there's a portion of the smoking population that keeps on paying them:
Over the last decade or so, several states and jurisdictions have experimented with massive cigarette tax increases, as much as 100 percent or more over the existing rate. California, for example, still has a relatively low state cigarette tax, but in January 1999, it ballooned from 37 cents a pack to 87 cents. In…
dblum | January 29, 2010In 1854, the essayist Henry David Thoreau published an ode to a morning fire: "Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird... Lark without song, and messenger of dawn." Scientists, of course, saw the hazing blue of wood smoke - or any smoke derived from burning plant material - as something less poetic. In particular, the smoke from dried leaves of the tobacco plant attracted serious attention from chemists by the end of the 19th century.
Victorian scientists had, for instance, calculated that cigarette smoke was about four percent carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas which directly interferes with the…
edyong | January 21, 2010
The partnerships between flowering plants and the animals that pollinate them are some of the most familiar in the natural world. The active nature of animals typically casts the plants as the passive partners in this alliance, but in reality, they're just as involved. That becomes particularly apparent when the animals renege on their partnership.
Nicotinia attenuata, a type of wild US tobacco, is usually pollinated by hawkmoths. To lure them in, it opens its flowers at night and releases alluring chemicals. But pollinating hawkmoths often lay their eggs on the plants they visit and the…
edyong | May 1, 2009For centuries, farmers have been genetically modifying their plants without even knowing it. That's the message from German scientists who found that grafting, a common technique used to fuse parts of two plants together, causes the two halves to swap genes with each other.
Grafting can involve fusing the stem of one plant (the scion) to the roots of another (the stock), or a dormant bud to another stem. There are many reasons for this - sometimes it's the most cost-effective way of cultivating the scion, sometimes the stock has properties that the scion lacks including hardiness or…
oracknows | February 20, 2009I knew it. I just knew it.
I just knew that when I finally decided to come back from my absence from this blog that something very unpleasant and sad would be waiting for me. True, there had actually been one very nasty thing that I simply had to deal with a few days ago, but that was a particularly vile and despicable human being who, believe it or not, was not John Best. That is not the case here, although the misinformation being pushed is truly disturbing.
Not surprisingly, what awaited me upon my decision to come back was posted earlier this week on that repository of antivaccine…
palmd | January 24, 2009...or so goes the refrain of the addict. I was going to put up a more substantive, well-researched post, but I wanted to give you a few weekend thoughts to chew on.
I deal with addictions a lot, but the most common and deadly one is tobacco. Tobacco is responsible for millions of serious illness and deaths every year in the U.S., all of which are preventable. But, like other substance use disorders, we don't really know how to talk about tobacco addiction (which is more properly "nicotine addiction"). There is no doubt that nicotine is powerfully addictive, and the health and social…
revere | November 25, 2008My students sometimes say of me that no horse is too dead for me to stop beating it, but when it comes to the tobacco industry there seems to be no way to stop its zombie like undead behavior. These folks are businesspeople, of course, and they are just carrying out their fiduciary responsibility to turn a profit for the shareholders. But they lead a double life. One as the respectable business person. The other as a cruel, vicious and cold blooded murderer. The US has led the world in anti-tobacco measures and now Europe is catching up. But it's a big world and the tobacco giants have just…