Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids

FDA Clears First Tobacco Product for Marketing

For the first time since it was given the power to regulate tobacco, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized marketing of a new product. The agency said that eight new smokeless snus products, to be sold in the United States under the "General" brand name by Stockholm-based Swedish Match AB, are now authorized under the premarket tobacco application pathway, which was established by the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Snus cannot be marketed as "FDA-approved," however. "Today's action demonstrates that the premarket tobacco application process is a viable pathway under which products can be marketed, as long as the public health can be protected," said Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, in a statement. This is the first time any tobacco maker has completed the rigorous premarket tobacco application review process at the agency; others have had products approved by proving they are substantially equivalent to what is already on the market. The agency said that Swedish Match provided evidence that "these products would likely provide less toxic options if current adult smokeless tobacco users used them exclusively." The agency also agreed with the company that snus' availability would not result in substantial new use, delay quit attempts, or attract ex-smokers. Swedish Match had been seeking separately to remove warnings that snus is harmful, but the agency has not yet ruled on that request. In that separate application, Swedish Match was seeking to have the 10 types of snus it [...]

Charlotte Parker2015-11-13T15:25:42-07:00November, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Boston votes to ban chewing tobacco from ballparks, including Fenway

Source: www.washingtonpost.comAuthor: Marissa Payne Baseball in Boston is about to change. On Wednesday, the City Council voted unanimously to make its baseball parks and stadiums, including historic Fenway, tobacco-free zones. And yes, the ordinance covers the kind of tobacco you chew, a longtime favorite of many MLB players. “This action will save lives by reducing the number of young people who begin to use smokeless tobacco because they followed the example of the Major Leaguers they idolize,” Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said in a statement sent to The Washington Post. “We thank Mayor Marty Walsh, the City Council and Boston’s health community for their leadership on this important issue.” Red Sox owner John Henry was also supportive of the legislation. “It’s a great thing,” Henry said (via Boston.com) when Mayor Walsh first proposed the legislation last month. “I’m very supportive.” The ban doesn’t just apply to players, but also fans, and it covers all stadiums from major-league to organized amateur games. Those found in violation of the ordinance face a $250 fine, Boston’s Fox affiliate reports. Boston is now the second major U.S. city to ban tobacco at its baseball stadiums. San Francisco, which banned the substance in April, was the first. Both cities had very good reasons to nix the chew. Smokeless tobacco, like cigarettes, contains the addictive substance nicotine and its users can become more at-risk for illnesses such as cancer, gum disease and heart disease, according to the Mayo Clinic. “You can call chewing tobacco by [...]

Charlotte Parker2015-09-04T10:57:51-07:00September, 2015|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 [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-02-05T15:27:10-07:00February, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Fifteen Years after Tobacco Settlement, States Falling Short in Funding Tobacco Prevention: Q&A with Danny McGoldrick

Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Published: December 10, 2013By: Danny McGoldrick On November 23, 1998, 46 states settled their lawsuits against the nation’s major tobacco companies to recover tobacco-related health care costs, joining four states—Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Minnesota—that had reached earlier, individual settlements. These settlements require the tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity, with total payments estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years. Yesterday a coalition of health advocacy groups released the latest edition of A Broken Promise to Our Kids, an annual report on state use of tobacco funds for tobacco prevention and cessation efforts. As in years past, the report finds that most states fall short in the amount of money they allocate to prevent kids from smoking and to help current smokers quit. The groups that jointly issued the report include the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Lung Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights. Key findings of the 2013 report include: • Over the past 15 years, states have spent just 2.3 percent of their total tobacco-generated revenue on tobacco preventionand cessation programs. • The states this year will collect $25 billion from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend just 1.9 percent of it—$481.2 million—on tobacco prevention programs. This means the states are spending less than two cents of every dollar in tobacco revenue to fight tobacco use. • States are [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-12-11T15:05:35-07:00December, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Most youth who use smokeless tobacco are smokers, too

By Anne HardingNEW YORK | Thu Aug 8, 2013 5:17pm EDTSOURCE: bit.ly/13INoAt Pediatrics, online August 5, 2013. (Reuters Health) - Most young people in the U.S. who use newer smokeless tobacco products are smoking cigarettes too, according to new research. "These findings are troubling, but not surprising, as tobacco companies spend huge sums to market smokeless tobacco in ways that entice kids to start and encourage dual use of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco," Vince Willmore, vice president of communications at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization, told Reuters Health in an email. "From 1998 to 2011, total marketing expenditures for smokeless tobacco increased by 210 percent - from $145.5 million to $451.7 million a year, according to the Federal Trade Commission," he added. Swedish-style "snus," introduced to the U.S. in 2006, and dissolvable tobacco products, introduced in 2008, are arguably less harmful than conventional chewing tobacco because they contain fewer nitrosamines, and have been promoted as safer alternatives. But public health experts have been concerned that these products could serve as a "gateway drug" to use of conventional smokeless tobacco and to cigarette smoking. To better understand the prevalence of smokeless tobacco use among young people, Dr. Gregory Connolly of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and his colleagues looked at data from the 2011 National Youth Tobacco Survey, which included nearly 19,000 sixth- to 12th-graders from across the country. Overall, the researchers found, 5.6 percent of young people reported using any type of [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-08-09T12:33:36-07:00August, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Big Tobacco Spending More Than a Super PAC to Defeat Cancer Research

Source: Livestrong.org My job requires me to be online all day keeping an ear to the ground on major issues related to cancer. I knew the Prop 29 fight in California was going to be fought against Big Tobacco, but I didn’t realize the scale of their funding machine. Why are LIVESTRONG, American Cancer Society, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and many other health organizations for this proposition? Because it keeps kids from smoking, funds much needed cancer research and prevention programs. So it won’t surprise you that Big Tobacco is the driving force against the cancer research prop. Although it is not surprising, the amount of money they are pumping into California is unreal. To date, Big Tobacco has funneled 40 million dollars into their anti cancer research initiative compared to Yes on 29 Coalition’s 8 million raised. What I find most telling is when it comes to where these funds are from. Check out this visualization from MapLight.org – a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that reveals money’s influence on politics. This news story was resourced by the Oral Cancer Foundation, and vetted for appropriateness and accuracy.

Charlotte Parker2012-05-17T09:52:34-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

New Report: States Slash Tobacco Prevention Funding by 36%, Spend Less than 2 Cents of Every Tobacco Dollar to Fight Tobacco Use

Source: TobaccoFreeKids.org WASHINGTON, DC – States have slashed funding for programs to reduce tobacco use by 12 percent in the past year and by 36 percent over the past four years, threatening the nation’s progress against tobacco, according to a report released today by a coalition of public health organizations. The states this year (Fiscal Year 2012) will collect a near-record $25.6 billion in revenue from the 1998 state tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend only 1.8 percent of it – $456.7 million – on programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit. This means the states are spending less than two cents of every dollar in tobacco revenue to fight tobacco use. Both the total amounts states are spending on tobacco prevention programs and the percentage of tobacco revenue spent on these programs are the lowest since 1999, when the states first received significant tobacco settlement funds. With nearly 20 percent of Americans still smoking, the report warns that continued progress against tobacco use – the nation’s number one cause of preventable death – is at risk unless states increase funding for tobacco prevention and cessation programs. The report also calls on states to increase tobacco taxes and, for states that have yet to do so, to enact strong smoke-free laws that apply to all workplaces, restaurants and bars. The report further calls on the federal government to launch a national tobacco prevention and cessation campaign, including a mass-media campaign and support for telephone quitlines, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-12-01T12:15:26-07:00December, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Kentucky Cancer Center Urges Smokers to Switch to Smoke-Free Tobacco. But is it Really a Better Option?

Source: Yourlife.USAtoday.com In the smoker-heavy state of Kentucky, a cancer center is suggesting something that most health experts won't and the tobacco industry can't: If you really want to quit, switch to smoke-free tobacco. The James Graham Brown Cancer Center and the University of Louisville are aiming their "Switch and Quit" campaign at the city of Owensboro. It uses print, radio, billboard and other advertising to urge smokers to swap their cigarettes for smokeless tobacco and other products that do not deliver nicotine by smoke. Supporters say smokers who switch are more likely to give up cigarettes than those who use other methods such as nicotine patches, and that smokeless tobacco carries less risk of disease than cigarettes do. "We need something that works better than what we have," said Dr. Donald Miller, an oncologist and director of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, which supports the effort along with the University of Louisville. "This is as reasonable a scientific hypothesis as anybody has come up with and it needs to be tried." The campaign runs counter to the prevailing opinion of the public health community, which holds that there is no safe way to use tobacco. Federal researchers, however, have begun to at least consider the idea that smokers might be better off going smokeless. The National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health says on its website that the use of all tobacco products "should be strongly discouraged," and that there is "no scientific evidence that using [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-10-31T10:04:54-07:00October, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

New Study Indicates Tobacco Industry Was Aware of Their Own Products Dangers

Source: USA Today Tobacco companies knew for decades that cigarette smoke was radioactive and potentially carcinogenic but kept that information from the public, according to a new study. The tobacco industry began investigations into the possible effects of these radioactive particles, identified as polonium-210, on smokers as early as the 1960s, says the study by UCLA researchers who analyzed dozens of previously unexamined industry documents. "I've not seen a document before that's specifically cited the industry's own internal research finding that sufficient levels of polonium-210 can cause cancer," says Matt Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. He says the study reinforces the need for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to scrutinize tobacco products. This week, the FDA began requiring tobacco companies to disclose detailed information about new products and changes to existing ones. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, suggests the FDA make removal of the radioative particles from tobacco products a top priority. "We used to think that only the chemicals in the cigarettes were causing lung cancer," said Hrayr S. Karagueuzian, lead author of the study. Now, Karagueuzian said, the industry's own research shows that polonium-210, absorbed by tobacco leaves and inhaled by smokers, is dangerous. He said UCLA researchers found that the radioactivity could cause 120 to 138 deaths for every 1,000 regular smokers over a 25-year period. Karagueuzian said tobacco companies have declined techniques that could help eliminate polonium-210 from tobacco because of concern that smokers might lose the "instant [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-09-30T22:15:38-07:00September, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Stephen Strasburg attempts to quit smokeless tobacco

Source: www.washingtonpost.com Author: Adam Kilgore Like any other high school kid, Stephen Strasburg wanted to emulate the major league baseball players he watched on television. He mimicked their actions down to the last detail. He rolled his pants up to reveal high socks, wore wristbands at the plate and, during downtime, opened tins of chewing tobacco and pinched some in his lower lip. Years later, having developed a powerful addiction, Strasburg regrets ever trying smokeless tobacco. Last fall, Tony Gwynn - his college coach at San Diego State and one of those players he grew up idolizing - began radiation treatments for parotid cancer, a diagnosis Gwynn blamed on using smokeless tobacco. In the wake of Gwynn's cancer diagnosis, Strasburg has resolved to quit smokeless tobacco while he recuperates from Tommy John surgery. He doesn't want to face the myriad health risks borne from tobacco use, and he doesn't want kids who want to be like him to see him with a packed lower lip. Strasburg conflates many activities with dipping, and he has yet to eradicate the habit. But he is determined he will. "I'm still in the process of quitting," Strasburg, 22, said. "I've made a lot of strides, stopped being so compulsive with it. I'm hoping I'm going to be clean for spring training. It's going to be hard, because it's something that's embedded in the game." Smokeless tobacco has long been entrenched in baseball. In the 1980s, wads of it bulged in batters' cheeks. More recently, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-01-31T19:50:01-07:00January, 2011|Oral Cancer News|