tobacco – Page 33 – Oral Cancer News

Snus news & other tobacco products

Source: snus-news.blogspot.com Author: blog post by tobaccowatch.org 2/28/09 Twenty-six of the United States' leading tobacco control researchers and policy experts have called for regulatory control of all tobacco products. They also called for policies that encourage current tobacco users to reduce their health risks by switching from the most to the least harmful nicotine-containing products. This group met in a two-year process they called The Strategic Dialogue on Tobacco Harm Reduction - members met four times between December 2005 and August 2007. Their vision: a world in which virtually no one uses cigarettes. But the group acknowledged that smokeless-tobacco products are an option for reducing health risks for tobacco users. They also called for policies that encourage current tobacco users to reduce their health risks by switching from the most to the least harmful nicotine-containing products. Paper: Mitch Zeller et al., The strategic dialogue on tobacco harm reduction: A vision and blueprint for action in the United States, Tob Control 2009 0: 200802731, Abstract.. We’re all for this safer alternative if distribution could be limited to inveterate tobacco smokers (smokers who are either unable or unwilling to quit). The harm reduction component envisioned by the American Association of Public Health Physicians would be part of a larger program, with "marketing" limited to satisfying the nicotine addiction of inveterate smokers at substantially less health risk than smoking. Let's be realistic it would be impossible to limit distribution of smokeless tobacco products to inveterate tobacco smokers. As Professor John Britton, Chairman of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-03-16T13:52:49-07:00March, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Landmarks in the History of Cancer Epidemiology

Source: Cancer Research, 10.1158/0008-5472 Author: Peter Greenwald & Barbara K. Dunn The application of epidemiology to cancer prevention is relatively new, although observations of the potential causes of cancer have been reported for more than 2,000 years. Cancer was generally considered incurable until the late 19th century. Only with a refined understanding of the nature of cancer and strategies for cancer treatment could a systematic approach to cancer prevention emerge. The 20th century saw the elucidation of clues to cancer causation from observed associations with population exposures to tobacco, diet, environmental chemicals, and other exogenous factors. With repeated confirmation of such associations, researchers entertained for the first time the possibility that cancer, like many of the infectious diseases of the time, might be prevented. By the mid-20th century, with antibiotics successfully addressing the majority of infectious diseases and high blood pressure treatment beginning to affect the prevalence of heart disease in a favorable direction, the focus of much of epidemiology shifted to cancer. The early emphasis was on exploring, in greater depth, the environmental, dietary, hormonal, and other exogenous exposures for their potential associations with increased cancer risk. The first major breakthrough in identifying a modifiable cancer risk factor was the documentation of an association between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. During the past four decades, epidemiologic studies have generated population data identifying risk factors for cancers at almost every body site, with many cancers having multiple risk factors. The development of technologies to identify biological molecules has facilitated the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-03-11T06:43:10-07:00March, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

The selling of tobacco to children

Source: Examiner.com Writer: Jan Potter Recent news articles have complained of recent marketing trends by the tobacco marketing women and girls. The cigarettes come packaged in an attractive and enticing pink package. This is not new, but every year, it appears that tobacco companies spend more and more money trying to draw in new smokers with these attractive packages. For years, many people were upset by candy cigarettes that were sold to children as “pretend.” These have almost disappeared in many markets, but there is a new problem though and that is the marketing of tobacco “drops” or other products that look exactly like candy. Parent may not even realize that the package contains a tobacco product because of its appearance. The marketing of this “candy” and other related products is considered very dangerous for children because of the friendly appeal of the packaging. This kind of product comes as small “candy” sized pieces, as “film” strips, or as toothpick sized sticks. Another product that has been around for several years is the tobacco “snus” (which rhymes with goose). Snus generally contain more nicotine than a cigarette but some consider them safer because they are not inhaled. They are, however, addictive. The snus is a small packet of tobacco powder meant to be put under the tongue. It is believed that they are dangerous because of the impact of the tobacco on the body. It might not mean lung cancer, but there is the [...]

Webmaster2009-03-02T10:56:08-07:00March, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Experts in government, public health, public policy and science outline blueprint for reducing death and disease from tobacco in the United States

Source: Bulletin Board of Oral Pathology Author: Dorothy Hatsukami et al. To further the goal of eliminating smoking as the number one cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., twenty six of the nation's leading tobacco control researchers and policy experts today called for regulatory control of all tobacco products. They also called for policies that encourage current tobacco users to reduce their health risks by switching from the most to the least harmful nicotine-containing products. This group of experts, who have devoted their careers to reducing tobacco use, met in a two-year process they called The Strategic Dialogue on Tobacco Harm Reduction (the Dialogue). Their vision: a world in which virtually no one uses cigarettes. Dialogue participants concluded that realizing that vision would have a profound impact on reducing death and disease from tobacco use. The Dialogue process was led by Dorothy Hatsukami, Ph.D., director of the University of Minnesota's Tobacco Use Research Center and Masonic Cancer Center's Cancer Control and Prevention Programs, and Mitchell Zeller, a former associate commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and currently a health policy expert with Pinney Associates. The Dialogue members' recommendations appear in the online version (posted February 25) of the peer-reviewed journal Tobacco Control. Their report recommends various ways to regulate tobacco products based on public health needs. It also recommends helping tobacco users who are unable or unwilling to quit to shift to the least harmful nicotine products. Prominent among the group's recommendations are: Regulation of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-03-01T21:07:22-07:00March, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Interaction between tobacco and alcohol use and the risk of head and neck cancer: pooled analysis in the international head and neck cancer epidemiology consortium

Source: Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-08-0347 Authors: Mia Hashibe et al. Background: The magnitude of risk conferred by the interaction between tobacco and alcohol use on the risk of head and neck cancers is not clear because studies have used various methods to quantify the excess head and neck cancer burden. Methods: We analyzed individual-level pooled data from 17 European and American case-control studies (11,221 cases and 16,168 controls) participating in the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology consortium. We estimated the multiplicative interaction parameter ({psi}) and population attributable risks (PAR). Results: A greater than multiplicative joint effect between ever tobacco and alcohol use was observed for head and neck cancer risk ({psi} = 2.15; 95% confidence interval, 1.53-3.04). The PAR for tobacco or alcohol was 72% (95% confidence interval, 61-79%) for head and neck cancer, of which 4% was due to alcohol alone, 33% was due to tobacco alone, and 35% was due to tobacco and alcohol combined. The total PAR differed by subsite (64% for oral cavity cancer, 72% for pharyngeal cancer, 89% for laryngeal cancer), by sex (74% for men, 57% for women), by age (33% for cases <45 years, 73% for cases >60 years), and by region (84% in Europe, 51% in North America, 83% in Latin America). Conclusions: Our results confirm that the joint effect between tobacco and alcohol use is greater than multiplicative on head and neck cancer risk. However, a substantial proportion of head and neck cancers cannot be attributed to tobacco [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-02-04T08:54:19-07:00February, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Smokeless tobacco ups oral cancer risk 80 pct – WHO

Source: in.reuters.com Author: staff Chewing tobacco and snuff are less dangerous than cigarettes but the smokeless products still raise the risk of oral cancer by 80 percent, the World Health Organisation's cancer agency said on Tuesday. The review of 11 studies worldwide showed people who chewed tobacco and used snuff also had a 60 percent higher risk of oesophagus and pancreatic cancer. The researchers sought to quantify the risk of smokeless tobacco after a number of studies differed on just how dangerous the products were, said Paolo Boffetta, an epidemiologist at the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer. "What we did was try to quantify the burden of smokeless cancer," he said in a telephone interview. "This has never been attempted in such a systematic way before." The researchers, who published their findings in Lancet Oncology, did this by looking at population-wide studies and trials of both humans and animals. They found frequency of use varies greatly both across and within countries, depending on sex, age, ethnic origin and economic background, and were highest in the United States, Sweden and India. They also found that while snuff and chew were less dangerous than smoking because they were not linked to lung cancer, getting cigarette users to switch was not good public policy. "If all smokers did this there would be a net benefit," Boffetta said. "The point is we don't know whether this would happen and there is no data to suggest these smokers would stop or switch."

Webmaster2009-01-28T15:29:47-07:00January, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Developing smokeless tobacco products for smokers: an examination of tobacco industry documents : February 2009 (Volume 18, Number 1)

Source: Clove Cigarettes News Blog Objective: To investigate whether development of smokeless tobacco products (SLT) is intended to target current smokers. . . . Conclusions: Heavy marketing of new SLT products may encourage dual use and result in unknown public health effects. SLT products have been designed to augment cigarette use and offset regulatory strategies such as clean indoor air laws. In the United States, the SLT strategy may provide cigarette companies with a diversified range of products under the prospect of federal regulation. These products may pose significant challenges to efforts by federal agencies to reduce harm caused by tobacco use. Internal documents show that tobacco manufacturers, including cigarette and SLT companies, have developed and targeted new SLT products to exploit cigarette smokers. Cigarette manufacturers recognised the importance of entering the SLT market especially in light of health, social and legislative changes influencing the cigarette market and shifting demographics of traditional SLT users. Cigarette manufacturers were initially focused on developing alternative smokeless products for smokers who would otherwise quit because of the changes in the cigarette market. Over time, the cigarette companies appear to have focused their efforts on products designed to augment cigarette use when smoking is not possible, thus offsetting regulatory strategies such as clean indoor air laws. Major cigarette companies’ marketing of new SLT products under established brand names may be aimed at increasing the appeal of SLT to smokers, who are not necessarily interested in quitting smoking. At the same time, SLT companies have aimed [...]

Webmaster2009-01-26T13:07:36-07:00January, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Dissolvable tobacco products?

Source: www.wgnsradio.com Author: Scott Walker Dissolvable tobacco. What took the cigarette companies so long to come up with that? Made by R.J. Reynolds, the Camel Orb will debut in a few select markets next month before wider distribution. Rob Dunham with R.J. Reynolds says that the aspirin-sized tobacco product meets the needs of smokers because there’s no smoke, spit or litter to contend with. Meanwhile, the Altria Group, the owner of tobacco giant Philip Morris USA, is as pleased as punch with Marlboro Snus, which are smokeless pouches that take the place of chewing tobacco. While cigarette sales are dropping between two to three percent annually, Altria spokesman David Sutton says that smokeless products are booming sales-wise at a rate of six to eight percent each year. All of this news is disturbing to Greg Connolly of the Harvard School of Public Health. Connolly claims smokeless products are designed to enhance the social acceptability of tobacco and it’s apparently working, judging by the healthy sales. And while the Camel Orb and Marlboro Snus present fewer health risks, Connolly says they’re insidious because they keep people hooked and are appealing to youngsters.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-12-30T21:18:19-07:00December, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Tobacco “Orb” lozenge new threat to teens

Source: MetroSource News Author: staff A new lozenge made from tobacco hits some stores in January. "USA Today" says R.J. Reynolds, the maker of Camel cigarettes, is calling the melt-in-your mouth product "Orb." It's designed for smokers who can't light up in restaurants or at the office. But public health officials fear it'll end up in school lockers and backpacks too. One official from Harvard's School of Public Health called it, quote, "a wake-up call." Gregory Connolly said, quote, "These products are designed to enhance social acceptability of tobacco." He likened them more to food and said that while sucking on an Orb may be less dangerous than smoking a Camel, it's still addicting. The Orb is the latest smoke-free tobacco product, following on the heels of "snus," or pouches that sit in the mouth and aren't spit out. A spokesman for Philip Morris, which makes snus, said smokeless tobacco sales are growing annually by between six and eight-percent, while cigarette sales are falling by about two to three-percent a year. The Orb makes its debut in Portland, Oregon, Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis in January.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-12-29T20:27:28-07:00December, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer to be world’s top killer by 2010, WHO says

Source: news.myway.com Author: Mike Stobbe Cancer will overtake heart disease as the world's top killer by 2010, part of a trend that should more than double global cancer cases and deaths by 2030, international health experts said in a report released Tuesday. Rising tobacco use in developing countries is believed to be a huge reason for the shift, particularly in China and India, where 40 percent of the world's smokers now live. So is better diagnosing of cancer, along with the downward trend in infectious diseases that used to be the world's leading killers. Cancer diagnoses around the world have steadily been rising and are expected to hit 12 million this year. Global cancer deaths are expected to reach 7 million, according to the new report by the World Health Organization. An annual rise of 1 percent in cases and deaths is expected - with even larger increases in China, Russia and India. That means new cancer cases will likely mushroom to 27 million annually by 2030, with deaths hitting 17 million. Underlying all this is an expected expansion of the world's population - there will be more people around to get cancer. By 2030, there could be 75 million people living with cancer around the world, a number that many health care systems are not equipped to handle. "This is going to present an amazing problem at every level in every society worldwide," said Peter Boyle, director of the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer. Boyle spoke at [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-12-09T12:05:31-07:00December, 2008|Oral Cancer News|