Current tobacco reports show 50 years of progress

Source: the-scientist.comAuthor: Jef Akst  In 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General released the first report on the effect that cigarettes and other forms of tobacco have on human health, presenting strong evidence of the link between smoking and lung cancer, among other adverse consequences. During the last 50 years, significant progress has been made in terms of understanding how smoking causes various diseases and how to treat them, and educational campaigns have contributed to a drop in smoking rates from 42 percent to 18 percent of US adults. Nevertheless, more than 480,000 Americans still die from tobacco-related diseases each year, and additional health consequences continue to be linked to smoking. “Between now and mid-century, nearly 18 million Americans will die preventable avoidable deaths if we don’t do something to alter that trajectory,” Mitchell Zeller, the director of the Center for Tobacco Products of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said during a press conference held today here at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting in San Diego, California. To this end, the AACR released a compilation of peer-reviewed research and review articles, published across seven of its journals, covering basic scientific research on the molecular mechanisms of tobacco carcinogenesis, tools for the diagnosis of lung cancer and other tobacco-related diseases, and the impact of the original Surgeon General’s report on tobacco control. Ellen Gritz from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center helped put the new report together. “Together, these reports add to the broad reach of important tobacco-related [...]

2014-04-17T11:21:58-07:00April, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

FDA Efforts to Reduce Youth Smoking

Source: USA TodayPublished: February 4, 2014   WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration is launching the government's largest effort yet to curb tobacco use among at-risk teens. The $115 million media campaign stems from the FDA's new authority to regulate tobacco, granted by a 2009 law, says commissioner Margaret Hamburg. The ads will target the roughly 10 million American teens who are open to smoking or are already experimenting with cigarettes, she says. That investment "is one of the most important efforts in recent times in the effort to reduce youth smoking," says Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "The FDA has carefully researched which ads will have the greatest impact on at-risk youth. These were designed with the same scientific rigor that Madison Avenue uses to market its products." Many "at-risk" kids see smoking as a temporary coping mechanism to help them deal with the "chaos" caused by poverty, violence or family turmoil, said Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products. This ad dramatizes one of the real costs of smoking, namely that smoking can cause wrinkles that age you prematurely.(Photo: FDA) "We are not talking about happy-go-lucky kids," Zeller said. "They don't see themselves as smokers. They think they will be able to quit." Although the first round of ads will aim for a broad audience, later campaigns will target specific groups, such as gay teens and Native Americans, Zeller said. Ads from the campaign, called "The Real Cost," will run on [...]

2014-02-05T15:27:10-07:00February, 2014|Oral Cancer News|
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