Category: Tobacco

Dentistry

Graphic Anti-Smoking Ads Work – Increase Attempts to Quit

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Even with the controversy and court actions, this is good news – for every person who tries to quit = the better.

 Graphic and/or emotional television anti-smoking ads get more smokers to try to quit than less intense ads, according to a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“Harder hitting ads worked equally well, regardless of how much you wanted to quit, how much your income is and your level of education,” said Matthew C. Farrelly, Ph.D., chief scientist at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and lead author on the study.

The study evaluated the impact of anti-smoking ads run by the New York Tobacco Control Program from 2003 to 2011. Smokers were surveyed about their smoking habits, their recall of anti-smoking ads, their desire to quit and demographic information, such as income level and race. Researchers looked at media market data and determined that the survey participants were exposed to an average of three emotional or graphic anti-smoking commercials and three comparison ads per month during that period. Comparison ads advocated or encouraged quitting but without strong emotional content.

The survey found that current smokers who recalled seeing at least one emotional or graphic ad were 29 percent more likely to have tried to quit in the prior year. Exposure to comparison ads did not increase quit attempts. If the goal is to get smokers to try to quit, ads need to evoke a strongly negative reaction to smoking, the authors concluded.

Here is a video that has played on California television. It is shocking, but if it can prevent one more case of smoking induced cancer….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfhaGvQZb00&feature=share&list=PLC41FF76D6DD72070[/youtube]

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Dentistry

Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down Graphic Smoking Warnings

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Undoubtedly this smoking flap will be headed to the United States Supreme Court.

A US court on Friday shot down orders to slap graphic anti-tobacco messages on cigarette packs, saying the government overstepped its authority by trying to “browbeat” smokers into quitting.

In line with campaigns in several other nations, the United States planned from September 22 to require images on cigarette packs including a man smoking through a hole in his throat and a body with chest staples on an autopsy table.

In a 2-1 decision, the US Court of Appeals in Washington said that the images planned on cigarette packs were not necessarily false but they went beyond “pure attempts to convey information to consumers.”

“They are unabashed attempts to evoke emotion (and perhaps embarrassment) and browbeat consumers into quitting,” Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who was appointed by former president George W. Bush, wrote for the majority.

She also said that the US Food and Drug Administration “has not provided a shred of evidence” that graphic warnings directly reduced rates of smoking.

The graphic ads, as I have said before, don’t really bother me. I, also, don’t think anyone will be deterred from smoking because of them.

Hopefully, the entire flap will be moot as more and more Americans abandon the smoking habit/addiction.

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Dentistry

Oral Health America Slogan Contest Targets Youth Baseball and Smokeless Tobacco

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Photo courtesy of Matt McGee on Flickr

From the press release:

Attention all 2012 Little League baseball and softball players! Oral Health America’s (OHA) NSTEP® program (National Spit Tobacco Education Program) is teaming with Little League International to launch its eleventh annual slogan contest where players have a chance to win a trip to the Little League World Series! To enter, Little Leaguers ages 8-14 create a ten-word phrase that describes why spit tobacco is dangerous and deadly.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 2003 there has been a 36 percent increase in the rate of smokeless tobacco use among high school boys. This alarming statistic is what led parents of the 2011 slogan contest winner, John and Julie Lafakis, to participate with their son Lou. “In addition to being thrilled and proud of Lou’s slogan,” said John Lafakis, “we are equally delighted that the NSTEP contest provided an opportunity for our family to discuss the harms of tobacco use.”

NSTEP works with Little League International to educate families about the risks of spit tobacco use, including oral cancer, gum disease, tooth decay, and nicotine addiction. “The health and well-being of children has been one of Little League’s guiding principles since its founding in 1939. We are proud to partner with NSTEP to educate young people about the dangers of smokeless tobacco,” said Stephen D. Keener, President and Chief Executive Officer of Little League Baseball and Softball.

NSTEP is also part of a coalition of organizations that influenced the limit on use of smokeless tobacco in Major League ballparks. For the first time in history, players are unable to use smokeless tobacco products on field and in front of fans and cameras. “The new limits are a positive step toward reducing the damaging influences of smokeless tobacco,” said Beth Truett, President and CEO of Oral Health America. “NSTEP is proud to have helped influence the ban and will continue to help educate Americans about the dangers of tobacco use.”

To enter the slogan contest, visit www.oralhealthamerica.org. The most creative slogan participant will win an all-expenses paid trip to Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA plus a $500 cash prize. Oral Health America will also make a $500 donation to the player’s Little League organization.

There is no reason for baseball, America’s past time, to be any longer associated with spit or smokeless tobacco.

Programs like this that increase awareness of the dangers of tobacco use should be encouraged.

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Centers for Disease Control

CDC Using Scary Graphic Ads to Combat Smoking – Today Begins Ad Campaign

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If the ads work on getting folks to either quit or not start in the first place, go for them!

Federal health officials are unveiling Thursday a $54 million national media campaign to get smokers to quit and prevent anyone else, especially children, from starting.

The campaign, called “Tips From Former Smokers,” is intended to educate Americans about the dangers of smoking through the stories and graphic pictures of ex-smokers who have suffered severe health consequences of tobacco use.

The former smokers profiled have suffered ailments like stroke-related paralysis, limb amputation, lung removal and heart attack. One breathes through a stoma, a surgically created hole in the neck through which a person who has undergone larynx or voice box surgery can breathe.

The ads are the brainchild of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health. The agency says smoking remains the country’s leading cause of disease and preventable death, resulting in more than 443,000 fatalities annually. More than 8 million Americans live with a smoking-related illness or conditions, according to the disease agency.

The combination of public service announcements and paid advertising for television, radio, newspapers and magazines, also spotlights the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke. The ads will also be featured on billboards, in theaters and online–including on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

You cannot ban tobacco smoking, but education campaigns that truthfully portray the results of smoking may be a way to reduce the amount of it.

Let’s hope these are successful – although I have my doubts that the shift will be huge, unfortunately.

The campaign includes eight television ads (one of them in Spanish); seven radio spots in 30- and 60-second versions; seven print ads and five billboard and bus stop ads.

The campaign marks the first time the CDC has run a paid, comprehensive national anti-tobacco advertising effort. The primary target is smokers ages 18 to 54, but public health experts also hope it will dissuade children from adopting the habit.

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Health

Substituting Smokeless Tobacco for Smoking Will Save Lives?

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Samples of smokeless tobacco

Apparently yes, according to a new study – e-cigarettes too.

Substituting smokeless tobacco products can save smokers’ lives, and there is a scientific foundation that proves it.

That is the message Brad Rodu, D.D.S., professor of medicine at the University of Louisville (UofL) School of Medicine and the Endowed Chair in Tobacco Harm Reduction at UofL’s James Graham Brown Cancer Center, delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Feb. 18. Rodu spoke at the session, “Harm Reduction: Policy Change to Reduce the Global Toll of Smoking-Related Disease.”

“Quit or die: That’s been the brutal message delivered to 45 million American smokers, and it has helped contribute to 443,000 deaths per year, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Rodu said. “The truth, however, is that total nicotine and tobacco abstinence is unattainable and unnecessary for many smokers.”

There is one interesting part of the study.

“Nicotine is addictive, but it is not the cause of any smoking-related disease. Like caffeine, nicotine can be used safely by consumers,” Rodu said.

And, the evidence?

Decades of epidemiologic research bear out Rodu’s findings. While no tobacco product is completely safe, smokeless products have been shown to be 98 percent safer than cigarettes. In the United Kingdom, the Royal College of Physicians reported in 2002 that smokeless tobacco is up to 1,000 times less hazardous than smoking, and in 2007, further urged world governments to seriously consider instituting tobacco harm reduction strategies as a means to save lives.

To see the proof of what tobacco harm reduction can do, look to Sweden, Rodu said. “Over the past 50 years, Swedish men have had Europe’s highest per capita consumption of smokeless tobacco as well as Europe’s lowest cigarette use. During the same time, they also have the lowest rate of lung cancer than men in any other European country.”

While I would not recommend my patients to start smokeless tobacco or e-cigarettes, the evidence is there that if they cannot quit using smoking cessation programs at least recommend that they switch to another nicotine delivery system.

Rodu is well aware of the controversy his research findings generate. Opponents of any use of nicotine delivery products maintain that smokeless tobacco puts the user at great risk for oral cancer, a position not supported by research.

“The risk of mouth cancer among smokeless tobacco users is extremely low — certainly lower than the risk of smoking-related diseases among smokers,” he said. “The annual mortality rate among long-term dry snuff users is 12 deaths per 100,000 and the rate among users of more popular snus, moist snuff and chewing tobacco is much lower. For perspective, the death rate among automobile users is 11 per 100,000 according to a 2009 report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Compare those to the rate among smokers: more than 600 deaths per 100,000 every year.”

“The data clearly show that smokeless tobacco users have, at most, about the same risk of dying from mouth cancer as automobile users have of dying in a car wreck.”

In summary, as far as far as death is concerned: cigarettes (smoked tobacco)> smokeless tobacco> e-cigarettes> or = car wreck.

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