vaping

Smoking hits new low; about 14 percent of US adults light up

Source: https://flipboard.com Author: Mike Strobbe, AP Medical Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Smoking in the U.S. has hit another all-time low. About 14 percent of U.S adults were smokers last year, down from about 16 percent the year before, government figures show. There hadn't been much change the previous two years, but it's been clear there's been a general decline and the new figures show it's continuing, said K. Michael Cummings of the tobacco research program at Medical University of South Carolina. "Everything is pointed in the right direction," including falling cigarette sales and other indicators, Cummings said. The new figures released Tuesday mean there are still more than 30 million adult smokers in the U.S., he added. Teens are also shunning cigarettes. Survey results out last week showed smoking among high school students was down to 9 percent, also a new low. In the early 1960s, roughly 42 percent of U.S. adults smoked. It was common nearly everywhere — in office buildings, restaurants, airplanes and even hospitals. The decline has coincided with a greater understanding that smoking is a cause of cancer, heart disease and other health problems. Anti-smoking campaigns, cigarette taxes and smoking bans are combining to bring down adult smoking rates, experts say. The launch of electronic cigarettes and their growing popularity has also likely played a role. E-cigarettes heat liquid nicotine into a vapor without the harmful by-products generated from burning tobacco. That makes them a potentially useful tool to help smokers quit, but some public health experts [...]

Charlotte Parker2018-06-20T10:10:36-07:00June, 2018|Oral Cancer News|

Teen E-Cig Users More Likely to Smoke

Source: www.newswise.com Newswise — As e-cigarette usage among high school students continues to climb, a recent study from The Journal of the American Medical Association reveals an unsettling trend: that adolescent e-cigarette users are more likely than their non-vaping peers to initiate use of combustible tobacco products such as cigarettes, cigars and hookahs. The reason may lie in a common denominator between e-cigarettes and their combustible counterparts: nicotine. While the study hints that more research is needed to determine if this association is merely casual, it’s important to note that while e-cigarettes don’t contain tobacco, the battery-powered devices do deliver nicotine in aerosol form. “Nicotine’s addictive properties are a risk for any age group, but with adolescents, the stakes are even higher,” says Dr. K. Vendrell Rankin, director of Texas A&M University Baylor College of Dentistry’s Tobacco Treatment Services. For teens, mental health as well as key emotional and cognitive systems are at stake. “Major cognitive functions and attention performance are still in the process of developing during adolescence,” says Rankin, also a professor and associate chair in public health sciences at TAMBCD. “Nicotine increases the risk of developing psychiatric disorders and lasting cognitive impairment and is associated with disturbances in working memory and attention. Reliance on nicotine to manage negative emotions and situations impairs the development of coping skills.” In addition to affecting the emotional and cognitive development of teens, nicotine is highly addictive. In fact, the younger a person is when they begin using nicotine, the more likely they [...]

Charlotte Parker2015-08-21T11:16:40-07:00August, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

The Debate Over E-Cigarettes Begins

Source: TIME.comAuthor: Mandy Oaklander The debate over the safety of e-cigarettes, and whether they will help smokers to quit, or simply make it easier for them to start or continue lighting up, heated up this week. On one side of the disagreement are those pushing for regulation. In 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) began a review of data on e-cigarettes and based on studies conducted so far, last month recommended tighter regulation of the devices to protect consumers’ health. But in a new article published in the journal Addiction, other scientists argue that the WHO misinterpreted the data in a “misleading” way and that the group’s advice for more stringent oversight is problematic. In the Addiction paper, the authors take issue with nine of WHO’s conclusions, some of which surround the safety of e-cigarettes, their toxin levels, and how likely younger people are to adopt them. They cite some of the same data as the original WHO review did, but interpret it differently, arguing that the benefits of e-cigarettes, especially as an effective tool in helping some smokers to quit, outweigh potential risks from the chemicals and nicotine used in the devices. Therefore, they say, e-cigarettes should be more accessible than the WHO recommendations would allow. “…The WHO’s approach will make it harder to bring these products to market than tobacco products, inhibit innovation and put off smokers from using e-cigarettes, putting us in danger of foregoing the public health benefits these products could have,” said Ann McNeill, lead author [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-09-10T09:57:34-07:00September, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Scientists say that E-Cigarettes and Snuff are not harmless

Author: Eliza GraySource: time.com New research casts doubt on nicotine's safety—even if you aren't smoking New research from the American Heart Association journal Circulation shows that patients who stopped using smokeless tobacco after a heart attack had improved life expectancy—similar to that of people who quit smoking. The finding offers new information about the dangers of smokeless tobacco, the risks of which are not as well understood as cigarettes’. “That was a big surprise for us,” said Dr. Gabriel Arefalk, lead researcher and a cardiologist at Uppsala University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. “For smoking, it has been known for decades now that people benefit from discontinuation, especially after having suffered a heart attack, but for snus we had no idea what to expect. ”The researchers reviewed data on 2,474 heart attack survivors under 75 in Sweden who used snus (oral snuff) from 2005 to 2009. About 675 quit. During the two years of follow-up, 69 of those who continued using snus died, compared with only 14 quitters. Based on this data, researchers determined that those who quit snus had almost half the mortality risk of those who didn’t quit, which is similar to the benefit of smoking cessation, according to a release from the American Heart Association. Dr. Arefalk, who is also a clinician, said the researchers wanted to study the problem because they didn’t know what to tell patients about the risks of using snus after a heart attack. He cautioned that the study was small and far from enough to [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-06-25T11:44:46-07:00June, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

FDA proposes rules to disclose e-cigarette ingredient information and ban sales to children

Source: usatoday.comAuthor: Wendy Koch As electronic cigarettes soar in popularity, the U.S. government Thursday is proposing historic rules to ban their sale to minors and require warning labels as well as federal approval. Three years after saying it would regulate e-cigarettes, the Food and Drug Administration is moving to control not only these battery-powered devices but also cigars, pipe tobacco, hookahs (water pipes) and dissolvable tobacco products. Currently, the FDA regulates cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless products such as snuff. The proposed rules won't ban advertising unless the products make health-related claims nor will they ban the use of flavors such as chocolate or bubble gum, which public health officials say might attract children. "This is an important moment for consumer protection," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, noting tobacco remains "the leading cause of death and disease in this country." The rules will require manufacturers to report their ingredients to the FDA and obtain its approval. They also ban free tobacco samples and most vending-machine sales. "Some of these regulations will be very restrictive," said Ray Story, founder of industry group TVECA (Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association), who added he obtained his own pre-release copy of the rules. He said they could be costly for smaller businesses and slow the growth of a product that advocates say has helped many smokers kick the habit. Still, Story said, consumers might benefit, because "it provides them a product that will be consistent." E-cigarettes contain varying ingredients and levels of nicotine that are [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-04-24T15:19:30-07:00April, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

The global battle over e-cigarettes

Source: SALONPublished: December 26, 2013By: Lynette Eyb, GLOBALPOST FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2013 file photo made with multiple flash exposures, a model pulls on an electronic cigarette backstage before the Chado Ralph Rucci fashion show in New York. New York City is considering legislation that would include electronic cigarettes in the city's ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and other indoor public spaces. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) (Credit: AP) BORDEAUX, France — As more smokers take to electronic cigarettes, the debate about the impact “vaping” — as using the products is called — could have in the fight against tobacco smoking is becoming more acute. On one side, the head of one of Europe’s leading electronic cigarette industry groups has slammed the World Health Organization (WHO) for its lack of support for the booming e-cigarette market. Katherine Devlin, president of the Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association, whose members represent some 60 percent of the British market, said the WHO’s reluctance to endorse e-cigarettes is putting millions of lives at risk. “WHO has led a campaign against smoking which has led to the denormalization not only of smoking, but also of smokers, many of whom now feel like social pariahs,” she said in an interview. Vaping, she said, is a cleaner way of ingesting nicotine. “Our hope is that by normalizing vaping, we can help to further underline the message that smokers need to stop setting fire to tobacco sticks and inhaling [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-15T17:00:20-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

University of Kentucky Cancer Center is Off Its Rocker: Testifies that Smoking is No More Harmful than Vaping

Source: tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.comDate: September 10, 2013 According to a press release issued Monday, the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center testified before the state legislature that smoking is no more harmful than vaping. Yes, you read that correctly. The University of Kentucky Cancer Center apparently testified that smoking - which kills 400,000 people each year in the U.S. - is no more hazardous than vaping, which involves no tobacco and no combustion and merely involves the vaporization of nicotine from a solution containing propylene glycol and glycerin. According to the press release, which appears to have been issued by Kentucky Lung Cancer Research Program, the University of Kentucky Cancer Center director - Dr. Mark Evers - told a state legislative panel that e-cigarettes may be "every bit as dangerous" as smoking tobacco. The Rest of the Story Let's be very straight about this: if the tobacco companies said exactly the same thing before the legislature, they would probably be facing criminal charges for perjury, as well as civil liability charges for fraud. For any tobacco company to defraud the American public by undermining the health consequences of smoking by stating that they are no more harmful than electronic cigarettes would be unheard of in 2013, and no tobacco company would ever do such a thing. They wouldn't be caught dead making such an outright lie. Apparently, this is not so for the University of Kentucky Cancer Center, which stepped into territory that used to be occupied by Big Tobacco, lying before [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-09-11T17:04:55-07:00September, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

E-Cigarettes Are in Vogue and at a Crossroads

By LIZ ALDERMANPublished: June 12, 2013Source: NY Times PARIS — On a recent day in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, a line of 20 people spilled onto the sidewalk of a trendy new boutique, eager to get a taste of its latest gourmet offerings. Olivia Foiret, the manager of ClopiNette, demonstrates filling an e-cigarette for a client. A sign in the window promoted piña colada as the store’s flavor of the month. A woman wearing a Chanel jacket said she wanted to try peach. But this was no temple of gastronomy. It was one of scores of electronic cigarette shops that have been springing up by the week in Paris as well as in numerous cities across Europe and the United States. Inside the ClopiNette boutique, shoppers can choose from among more than 60 flavors of nicotine liquid — including Marlboro and Lucky Strike flavors — all in varying strengths and arranged in color-coded rows. (ClopiNette is a play on “clope,” French slang for a cigarette.) “It’s like visiting a Nespresso store,” said Anne Stephan, a lawyer specializing in health issues at a nearby law firm. What’s driving her into the store is a desire shared by many: they want to give up smoking tobacco but don’t want to kick the smoking habit. After smoking 20 cigarettes daily for 25 years and failing to quit, Ms. Stephan said she had cut down to one a day in the three months since she began puffing on a so-called e-cig. Using [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-06-13T12:19:06-07:00June, 2013|Oral Cancer News|