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Government anti-smoking campaign cost just $480 per quitter, study finds

Source: www.washingtonpost.com Author: Lenny Bernstein At $48 million, the first government mass media campaign to convince cigarette smokers to quit would seem a pricey luxury, especially since that sum purchased just three months of television ads from March through June of 2o12. But a new study of its cost effectiveness, released Wednesday, determined that it cost just $480 for each smoker who quit and $393 per year of life saved. The graphic videos featured pleas from former smokers who had suffered amputated limbs, oral and throat cancer, paralysis, lung damage, strokes, and heart attacks. One of the most haunting showed Terrie Hall, a 52-year-old North Carolina woman whose larynx was removed after she was diagnosed with throat cancer. In the ad, she spoke with the help of an artificial voice box. Hall later died. The campaign and the analysis were both conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but Saul Shiffman, a University of Pittsburgh psychology professor who has spent decades studying smoking habits, said there is no doubt it was a tremendous bargain for the public and, especially, the smokers who quit or added years to their lives. One standard used in studying such interventions considers them cost effective at $50,000 per year of life gained--more than 100 times the cost of the campaigns. Medical interventions, such as heart and lung surgery commonly needed by long-term smokers are much more expensive than that, Shiffman noted. The money spent on the campaign "would pale next to the money [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-12-11T09:18:54-07:00December, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Smoking associated with elevated risk of developing a second smoking-related cancer

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: staff Results of a federally-funded pooled analysis of five prospective cohort studies indicate that cigarette smoking prior to the first diagnosis of lung (stage I), bladder, kidney or head and neck cancer increases risk of developing a second smoking-associated cancer. This is the largest study to date exploring risk of second cancers among current smokers. An analysis of five large, prospective cohort studies indicates that lung (stage I), bladder, kidney and head and neck cancer survivors who smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day prior to their cancer diagnoses have an up to five-fold higher risk of developing a second smoking-associated cancer compared to survivors of the same cancers who never smoked. The association between smoking and developing a second primary smoking-associated cancer was similar to the association between smoking and developing a first primary smoking-associated cancer (patients who smoked more than 20 cigarettes per day had a 5.41-fold higher risk of developing cancer than individuals who have never smoked). Notably, current smoking at any level increased the risk of overall mortality across all cancer disease sites. The study, published on November 10 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, affirms the 2014 Surgeon General report's conclusion that patients and survivors who smoke are at a higher risk of developing a second cancer. Clinicians term an individual's initial diagnosis a first primary cancer. A second primary cancer is one diagnosed at some point after the first diagnosis. Second primary cancers are not metastases of the first cancer but [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-11-12T06:41:24-07:00November, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Cigarette smoking caused 14 million serious diseases in 2009

Source: www.medscape.com Author: Larry Hand Cigarette smoking remains a major cause of preventable diseases in the United States, with at least 14 million serious medical conditions attributable to smoking in 2009, according to an article published online October 13 in JAMA Internal Medicine. "These estimates demonstrate that smoking accounts for millions of serious medical conditions in the United States that could be avoided in the absence of cigarette use," write Brian L. Rostron, PhD, from the Center for Tobacco Products, US Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, Maryland, and colleagues. "Our results also indicate that previous estimates may have substantially underestimated smoking-attributable morbidity in the United States." The researchers analyzed multiple sources of data from 2006 to 2012, including 2009 population data from the US Census Bureau, smoking prevalence and disease risk from the National Health Interview Survey of US adults for 2006 to 2012, and data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of US adults for 2007 to 2010. Current and former smokers were significantly more likely to have at least one smoking-attributable disease and multiple smoking-related conditions compared with never-smokers. Specifically, almost half of surveyed men and women (47.5% and 44.9%, respectively) aged 65 years and older reported having one or more smoking-related disorder, and almost 17% of men and more than 14% of women reported having multiple such disorders. In contrast, among never-smokers, 34.9% of men and 33.2% of women reported at least one such condition and 9.1% and 7.5%, respectively, reported two or more [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-10-14T07:24:18-07:00October, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Hard-to-watch commercials to make quitting smoking easier

Source: www.nytimes.com Author: Andrew Adam Newman Telling smokers that their habit shortens life expectancy by at least 10 years might seem like an effective way to get them to quit. But it turns out there is something even scarier: living with disfiguring disease. Dr. Tim McAfee, the director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was overseeing focus groups of smokers to help shape a smoking-cessation advertising campaign in 2011 when this became clear. “Telling smokers that you’re going to lose 11 to 12 years of your life expectancy if you continue to smoke, and that if you quit in your 30s you can gain 10 of those back, seemed pretty powerfully motivating to us,” said Dr. McAfee. But smokers’ response to such messages was that it would not happen to them, Dr. McAfee said. What they feared more than an untimely death, it turned out, was chronic illness. “They were less motivated by the fear of dying than the fear of suffering, of disability, of disfigurement, and of being a burden to those around them,” Dr. McAfee said. Introduced in 2012, the C.D.C. campaign, “Tips From Former Smokers,” by Arnold Worldwide in Boston, features people who did not quit until smoking had taken a grave toll. The ads ostensibly offer practical advice about how to function with smoking-related ailments, but the real message is to avoid such predicaments by kicking the habit. A new series of commercials includes one featuring Shawn [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-07-26T08:50:29-07:00July, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer survivors demand picture-based warnings on cigarette labels

Source: www.interaksyon.com Author: staff MANILA, Philippines -- More than 150 anti-smoking activists, including throat cancer survivors, marched to the Commission on Human Rights in Quezon City Thursday to urge government to fast-track the passage of legislation requiring tobacco firms to put graphic health warnings on cigarette packs. The “Right to Health Walk” is the third march organized by New Vois Association of the Philippines to push public health issues to the fore. “Ten percent of the world’s 1.3 billion smokers can be found in Southeast Asia where the Philippines belong. We are the second largest smoking population in this region with 17.3 million adults smoking. More than 87,000 Filipinos die every year because of smoking -- that’s more than the number of those who succumb to heart attack and stroke. This is clear and present danger that must be addressed at the soonest,” Emer Rojas, NVAP president, said. Rojas said graphic health warnings provide a clearer message about the harm smoking causes, especially to women, children, and the poor who are lured to the habit by the attractive designs of cigarette packs. The newly released Tobacco Atlas of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance showed the Philippines among the three countries with the most number of smoking women in the region. It is estimated that nine percent of Filipino women smoke. This is statistically more than Indonesia, which has the most number of smokers in the region. Only 4.5 percent of Indonesian women smoke. The Tobacco Atlas also estimates that [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-01-19T08:34:50-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

People ignorant of cancers caused by smoking

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: CancerResearch UK Cancer Research UK today reveals the shocking level of ignorance about smoking and cancer among the UK public in a comprehensive new survey of more than 4000 people. When asked to select cancers linked to smoking, more than 80 per cent of people did not know there was a link between smoking and eight different cancers. At least two thirds of the 4,099 people surveyed knew smoking caused cancers of the lung, mouth (oral) and throat (larynx and oesophagus). But less than 20 per cent knew tobacco was linked to leukaemia and cancers of the liver, pancreas, bowel (colorectum), kidney, bladder, cervix, and ovary. And less than 40 per cent knew that stomach cancer is linked to smoking. Cigarette smoke contains a toxic cocktail of more than 70 cancer-causing chemicals. When a cigarette is smoked, these chemicals can enter the bloodstream and travel around the body, increasing the risk of cancer in more than a dozen different locations. Professor Robert West, Cancer Research UK’s quit smoking expert, said: “Nearly everyone knows that smoking causes lung cancer. And smokers may often gamble with their chance of developing the disease. The addiction can lead people to reason that they might avoid lung cancer. But the odds aren’t good. And these alarming results show what could be a fatal level of ignorance about the toxic hit list from tobacco. There are only two options to eliminate illness caused by smoking: help smokers to quit and stop young people from [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-07-04T10:40:48-07:00July, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Court: Tobacco Health Labels Constitutional

Source: Reuters.com Combination picture of new graphic cigarette packages, released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration June 21, 2011, shows a varied collection of a man on a ventilator, diseased lungs and dead bodies were among the graphic images for revamped U.S. tobacco labels, unveiled by health officials who hope the warnings will help smokers quit. Credit: Reuters/U.S. Food and Drug Administration/Handout By Terry Baynes (Reuters) - A U.S. law requiring large graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging and advertising does not violate the free speech rights of tobacco companies, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday. Cigarette makers had sued to stop the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's new labeling and advertising requirements on grounds the rules violated their First Amendment right to communicate with adult tobacco consumers. But the Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld the bulk of the FDA's new regulatory framework, including the requirement that tobacco companies include large warning images on cigarette packs. The decision comes on the heels of a Washington, D.C., judge's ruling in a different, but related, case that rejected the FDA requirements and seems to set up a clash over the constitutionality of the FDA rules. Floyd Abrams, a lawyer for Lorillard, noted the difference in tone in the two rulings and said the 6th Circuit case, the Washington case, or both, would likely end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. The difference in the two cases is that the FDA had not introduced the specific [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-03-21T10:43:06-07:00March, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Judge Rules Graphic Cigarette Warning Labels Unconstitutional

Source: Time Magazine- Healtland The government’s effort to put graphic warning labels about the dangers of smoking on cigarette packs hit another legal snag on Wednesday. A Washington judge declared unconstitutional a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandate that would force cigarette makers to use the labels, which include images of a corpse of a smoker, smoking-damaged teeth and gums and diseased lungs, saying that it violated cigarette makers’ freedom of speech under the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon wrote in his ruling that the images “were neither designed to protect the consumer from confusion or deception, nor to increase consumer awareness of smoking risks; rather, they were crafted to evoke a strong emotional response calculated to provoke the viewer to quit or never start smoking.” SPECIAL: FDA Unveils Final Cigarette Warning Labels That’s been the argument of cigarette makers, who say that the images go beyond merely informing the public to forcing the manufacturers to advertise the government’s anti-smoking agenda, with the purpose of convincing smokers to give up the habit. Leon’s ruling fell in line with his previous decision in the case in November, when he issued a temporary injunction blocking the new labeling effort. That decision has already been appealed by the government. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 gave the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco products for the first time. Under that law, the FDA required cigarette makers to cover the top half of the front and back of cigarette [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-03-01T14:10:43-07:00March, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

“Through With Chew 2012”

Source: LeaderAdvisor.com “Through With Chew 2012” is designed to raise awareness about the variety of new smokeless tobacco products (SLT), dangerous especially to young people, not only because the amount of nicotine absorbed from these products is substantially higher than the amount absorbed from a cigarette, but also because of the aggressive marketing of these new products by the tobacco companies. Some of the latest tobacco industry innovations include tobacco dispensed in oral pouches, dissolvable tobacco (orbs) and the electronic cigarette. Aggressive marketing includes the fact that the five largest tobacco manufacturers spent $547.9 million on SLT advertising and promotions in 2008, up from the previous year by 34 percent (www.cdc.gov). A goal of the education campaign this year is to educate parents, teachers, administrators and coaches about these new products, that the packaging often resembles candy packaging, and that they are actually tobacco-containing products. Tobacco industry documents themselves indicate that SLT products are aggressively marketed toward youth, and that the industry has a strategy to progressively move youth from candy or fruit flavored products to more robust varieties for the nicotine dependent user (www.tobaccofreekids.org). Because so many people die per year due to tobacco-related illness, the tobacco companies need to find replacement users for their products. Tobacco use, no matter what form, remains the leading cause of death in this country annually. Just as in cigarettes, the leading cancer-causing agents in SLT are the tobacco-specific nitrosamines, which are formed during the growing, curing, fermenting and aging of tobacco leaves. [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-02-15T10:49:15-07:00February, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Obama hits Big Tobacco over labels opposition

Source: www.cbsnews.com Author: staff President Obama — pronounced tobacco-free in his latest medical checkup — has tough words for cigarette makers. Some tobacco companies, he says in a new White House web video, are fighting new cigarette warning labels because "they don't want to be honest about the consequences." The video, provided to The Associated Press in advance of its release, observes Thursday's 36th "Great American Smokeout" by the American Cancer Society. Mr. Obama says the country has made progress in reducing the number of Americans who smoke, but notes that 46 million are still addicted. "The fact is, quitting smoking is hard," he says. "Believe me, I know." Mr. Obama has fought the habit by chewing nicotine gum, and his last medical report, issued Oct. 31, declared him tobacco-free. "Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable early deaths in this country," Mr. Obama says in the video. "We also know that the best way to prevent the health problems that come with smoking is to keep young people from starting in the first place." In 2009, Mr. Obama signed legislation to help keep young people from lighting up. In June, the Food and Drug Administration approved new warning labels that companies would have to place on the top half of cigarette packs. Some of the labels are powerfully graphic and include images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat, the corpse of a dead smoker, diseased lungs and a smoker wearing an oxygen [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-11-18T09:13:15-07:00November, 2011|Oral Cancer News|