The Easy to Stop Smoking Center: September 2007

U.S. EXCERPTS: Tobacco addiction; advertising to children

Tobacco addiction

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A new study published last month in a medical journal for pediatricians found that adolescents reported powerful cravings for nicotine within as few as two days of inhaling their first cigarette. They showed signs of addiction after smoking as few as seven cigarettes a month, the study found.

Some smokers argue that the increasing restrictions on smoking in public infringe on their freedom of choice to use tobacco. This new study underscores, however, that freedom and choice have little to do with it once addiction takes hold.

When it comes to young people, adolescents who take tobacco’s bait can find themselves hooked like trophy fish a lot more quickly and easily than we used to believe.

Advertising to children

From The State, Columbia, S.C.

The decision by 11 of the nation’s biggest food and drink companies to limit the way they hawk obscene amounts of unhealthy food to children is welcome news.

But before we break out the Cokes and Ruffles, a bit of perspective is in order.

Most obvious: You could drive a Twinkie truck through the loopholes in the self-imposed restrictions. The companies won’t advertise unhealthy foods on “children’s” programming, but will advertise them during such “family” shows as “American Idol,” which draw far more prepubescent viewers than many cartoons.

Worse, the rules are based on government definitions that in many cases fall far short of healthy. As The New York Times pointed out, they mean no more Saturday morning ads for Trix, with its 13 grams of sugar per serving, but business as usual for the 12-gram-per-serving Cocoa Puffs.

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Men who smoke risk erectile dysfunction: study

SCIENCE NEWS
September 26, 2007


	Men who smoke risk erectile dysfunction: study A smoker lights up a cigarette near the Stade de Geneve in Geneva, August 22, 2007. Otherwise healthy men who smoke risk developing erectile dysfunction -- and the more cigarettes they smoke, the greater the risk of erectile dysfunction, according to a new study. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Otherwise healthy men who smoke risk developing erectile dysfunction -- and the more cigarettes they smoke, the greater the risk of erectile dysfunction, according to a new study.

Erectile dysfunction is the consistent inability to achieve or maintain an erection sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance. In a study of 4,763 Chinese men aged 35 to 74 years who were free of blood vessel disease and who reported that they had been sexually active within the last 6 months, the researchers found a significant statistical link between the number of cigarettes smoked and the likelihood of erectile dysfunction.

"The association between cigarette smoking and erectile dysfunction was found in earlier studies," said first author Dr. Jiang He of Tulane University School of Public Health, New Orleans. "However, most of those studies were conducted in patients with hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes and cardiovascular disease. What distinguishes this study is that it is the first to find this association among healthy men."

Overall, men who smoked had a 41-percent greater risk of erectile dysfunction than men who did not, the team reports in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

And there was a clear "dose-response" relationship, meaning that the more the men smoked, the higher was their risk of erectile dysfunction. Compared with non-smokers, men who smoked up to 10 cigarettes per day had a 27-percent greater likelihood of erectile dysfunction ; those who smoked 11 to 20 butts a day had a 45-percent greater likelihood of erectile dysfunction; and those who smoked more than 20 cigarettes daily had a-65 percent greater chance of suffering erectile dysfunction.

The investigators estimate that 22.7 percent of erectile all dysfunction cases among healthy Chinese men - or 11.8 million cases -- might be caused by cigarette smoking.

And even when cigarette smokers quit, their risk of developing erectile dysfunction did not decrease. The risk of erectile dysfunction was statistically about the same for former cigarette smokers as for current cigarette smokers, the authors found.

"This study really has a strong message for young men," He said. "It may get their attention if they know that smoking is associated with erectile dysfunction -- even in the healthy population."

"So the message is: Don't start."

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, October 1, 2007.

Smoking Makes You Stupid

Smoking in later life seems to be linked to intellectual impairment over the age of 65, suggests research in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Some previous studies have suggested that smoking may protect against of Alzheimer's disease and dementia, both of which are associated with ageing.

In a community survey of an area of North London, the research team from the Institute of Psychiatry, London, studied over 650 people aged 65 and over. Smoking and drinking habits were recorded at the beginning of the study. Their intellectual powers were also assessed. After excluding those who already had evidence of intellectual impairment, everyone else was followed up a year later to see if there was any evidence of a decline in intellect. The test used was similar to those used to screen for dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Of the 417 people who could be retested at the end of the 12 month period, one in 16 had suffered significant intellectual decline. After adjusting for factors known to affect brain function in older people-depression, general health, alcohol use, and educational levels-the researchers found that smokers were up to four times more likely to have evidence of significant intellectual decline than either non-smokers or former smokers. Moderate drinkers before the age of 65 were marginally less likely to experience a decline in mental powers than either heavy, or non-, drinkers.

Smoking contributes to vascular disease and atherosclerosis, conditions which narrow and harden the arteries and impair blood supply to all parts of the body, including the brain, say the authors. They conclude that the lower risk among ex-smokers suggests that right through to older age, people should be actively encouraged to stop smoking to stave off mental decline.

Seeking Savings, Employers Help Smokers Quit

October 26, 2007

By MILT FREUDENHEIM

Corporate America has made big strides toward the smoke-free workplace. Its next goal: the smoke-free worker.

Many businesses are seeking to reduce their medical bills by paying for programs to help employees stop smoking. A decade ago, such programs were rare. But recent surveys indicate that one-third of companies with at least 200 workers now offer smoking cessation as part of their employee benefits package. Among the nation’s biggest companies, the number may be nearly two-thirds of employers.

“Tobacco cessation has been the hot topic for the last year,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, which includes more than 200 large employers.

The programs are yet another example, along with various other corporate wellness efforts like weight management and diabetes control, of how private employers are taking health care reform into their own hands, even as politicians continue to debate proposals and tactics in Washington and on the campaign trail.

For businesses, it is a bottom-line calculus. Spending as much as $900 or so to give a participant free nicotine patches and drugs to ease withdrawal, as well as phone sessions with smoking addiction counselors, can more than offset the estimated $16,000 or more in additional lifetime medical bills that a typical smoker generates, according to federal health data.

That federal figure does not count the costs of absenteeism or the drain on productivity when smokers periodically duck outside for a cigarette.

Smoking’s toll goes well beyond the financial, of course. Even though the percentage of adult smokers has dropped to just above 20 percent, compared with more than 40 percent in 1965, there are more than 44 million smokers in the United States.

The habit is blamed for 435,000 premature deaths in this country each year, and it adds more than $75 billion to annual spending on health care, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With business employers accounting for about $650 billion of the nation’s $2 trillion annual medical bill, companies have a big monetary incentive to get workers to kick the tobacco habit.

Research has shown that smoking cessation programs, when they include counseling, have long-term success rates of 15 to 35 percent, said Dr. Michael Fiore, a University of Wisconsin professor of medicine who is also chairman of the federal Public Health Service’s guidelines panel on smoking cessation.

“For a number of smokers, it takes multiple tries before they can achieve long-term remission,” he said.

United Parcel Service, which has a work force of nearly 428,000 and spent $2.6 billion on employee health care last year, began offering a smoking cessation program in February to the estimated 13 percent of its employees who use tobacco.

“We decided this was the time to do this,” said Judy Pirnie Smith, a registered nurse who is a health and productivity manager at U.P.S.

Another employer, the Union Pacific railroad, which has 50,000 workers, credits a smoking cessation program it adopted two years with helping cut the smoking rate to about 17 percent of its work force, compared with 40 percent as recently as the 1990s.

Participants often say they need the help an employer program can provide.

“The day my dad passed away, I started praying for a solution, a way to quit smoking,” said Monte Hall, a 43-year-old cargo handler with U.P.S. in Louisville, Ky. His father, who smoked a pack and a half a day, died from lung disease a few years ago.

The solution came in the form of the company’s program. Mr. Hall got advice and encouragement from counselors, read articles they suggested and used nicotine patches. He says he has not had a cigarette since Feb. 24.

U.P.S. belongs to the National Business Group on Health, which surveyed 58 of its biggest members and found that nearly two-thirds offered stop-smoking programs as part of their health plans. That was a sharp contrast with the mid-1990s, when companies rarely covered smoking cessation, according to Ms. Darling.

A survey by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that smoking programs are offered by one in three companies with more than 200 workers. Among smaller firms, that was one in 12.

The number of employers sponsoring the programs “is going up even while firms are cutting back on medical benefits” in general to limit costs, said Dr. Steven A. Schroeder, director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California, San Francisco, which promotes stop-smoking programs nationally.

The number of people who enroll in the programs and then slip back into smoking in the first three months is high, said Bruce C. Kelley, a senior executive with the Watson Wyatt Worldwide benefits consulting firm in Minneapolis. But “for people who quit for 12 months,” he said, “the recidivism rate is very low.”

Reaching that milestone is the challenge. “I could start again, any time,” a 47-year-old warehouse worker worried aloud during a recent phone counseling session, his third, after 10 days without a cigarette. “I really need some time to feel comfortable with doing it,” he said.

His coach, Ryan Crawford, replied soothingly: “I completely agree, it does take time. It’s a process.” A reporter listened to a recording of the conversation on condition that neither the worker nor the employer be identified.

Mr. Crawford is a counselor for a Seattle firm, Free and Clear, whose services include operating phone lines 18 hours a day to help workers stop smoking. The firm’s clients include 104 employers, including Boeing, Caterpillar and nearly 30 other companies among the nation’s 500 largest.

Free and Clear, the leader in its field, also runs smoking cessation programs for 16 states, financed in part by the sweeping 1999 settlement of lawsuits against tobacco companies. In the last 12 months, Free and Clear has enrolled 165,000 participants. That is nearly 60 percent more than a year earlier, and it translates to about 700 new participants a day, said Sean Bell, a Free and Clear executive vice president.

Typically, Mr. Bell said, employers do not know who the smokers are. Often his firm sends information to all of a client’s employees, inviting them to join the program. In other cases, invitations go only to employees who identify themselves as smokers on health questionnaires.

Under federal health care privacy law, a few officials in an employer’s human resources and accounts payable departments may be authorized to know who is participating. But it is illegal for them to share that information with others in the company.

Some employers go beyond invitations to apply financial pressure to motivate people to stop smoking. This month, for example, the Tribune Company, the big media business, asked employees to indicate if they or family members were smokers when they sign up for the 2008 health plan. Smokers will be penalized a $100 a month unless they join a company-paid cessation program run by Free and Clear.

“It’s an honor system,” said Gary Weitman, a Tribune spokesman. “We believe employees will volunteer.”

Other smoking cessation specialists include Healthways, a disease management company based in Nashville, whose services include an online program called QuitNet.

I.B.M. is a customer, providing the QuitNet program and access to online counselors to any of its 350,000 employees who feel the need. Seven states and two Canadian provinces are also customers of QuitNet, which has a free Web version — without the counseling service — that draws 1,500 to 2,000 visitors each day, said Jim Purvis, a QuitNet executive.

Small employers often do not have the time or money for wellness programs. But Buffalo Supply, a hospital equipment wholesaler based in Lafayette, Colo., offers $2,500, along with payment for nicotine patches or gum, to employees who quit smoking for 30 days and promise to stick with it. Two have collected.

Harold L. Jackson, the company president, said none of the nonsmokers had suggested that rewarding smokers for quitting might be unfair. “We have a very family atmosphere,” he said. “We try to look out for each other and everyone’s welfare.” Buffalo Supply has 25 employees, including 5 who still smoke, Mr. Jackson said. “I would like it to be zero.”

The Easy to Stop Smoking Center

Flintstones Cigarette Ad

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Thanks, Tobacco: You Killed My Mom

You Don't Always Die From Tobacco

SMOKE! SMOKE! SMOKE! (THAT CIGARETTE)

Respiratory System - Short and informative

every cigarette is doing you damage

Graphic Australian Anti-Smoking Ad

Listen to Them Talk

Lung Cancer Bronchoscopy

Whistleblower Protection Hearing: Jeffrey Wigand Testimony

The Insider - Movie Trailer

50's Cigarette Ad

Steve McQueen Cigarette Ad

U.S. EXCERPTS: Tobacco addiction; advertising to children

How the brain fools itself

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Men who smoke risk erectile dysfunction: study

Smoking Makes You Stupid