'Teens choosing health': Smoking hits a landmark low

Cigarette smoking among high school students in the United States has reached a landmark low in a survey health officials have been conducting every two years since 1991.
Just 15.7% of teens were current smokers in 2013, down from 27.5% when the survey began and 36.4% in the peak year of 1997, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. That means the nation has already met the government's official goal of getting teen smoking below 16% by 2020.
"I think the bottom line is that our teens are choosing health," CDC Director Tom Frieden said.
Frieden was referring not just to the progress on smoking, but to other gains in healthy behaviors picked up in the nationally representative Youth Risk Behavior Survey of more than 13,000 teens. Data for the report also come from state and local versions of the survey. The surveys are conducted at public and private high schools.
The data show teens are drinking less alcohol and fewer sodas, getting into fewer physical fights and having less sex with more birth control. Also, despite all the recent news about school shootings, the share of students threatened or injured with a gun, knife or other weapon on school property has dropped to 6.9%, from a peak of 9.2% in 2003.
But it's not all good news: Condom use among the sexually active (about one third of teens) is down to 59%, from a peak of 63% in 2003. Condoms remain essential for protection from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, but teens may not be getting the message, Frieden says.
Even the news on tobacco is mixed: A once-rapid decline in cigar use has slowed, leaving cigars as popular as cigarettes with high school boys. Cigars were smoked by 23% of 12th grade boys in the month before the survey. Smokeless tobacco use hasn't changed since 1999, holding at about 8%. Other surveys have shown increases in e-cigarette and hookah use. And the declines in cigarette use are uneven from place to place, reflecting varying tobacco control efforts, Frieden says.
"We're moving in the right direction," with the help of increased cigarette taxes, better educational campaigns and other measures, says Vince Willmore, a spokesperson for the non-profit Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, Washington, D.C. "But the fight against tobacco isn't over and it can't be over when you still have 2.7 million high school kids who smoke."
The survey, a treasure trove of data on more than 100 risky behaviors, "tells us what kids do but not why," says Stephanie Zaza, director of CDC's division of adolescent and school health. Among other details:
• 25% of students were in a physical fight in the year before the survey, down from 42% in 1991. Just 8% fought at school, down from 16%.
• 32% watched three daily hours of TV, down from 43% in 1999. But some of that time apparently shifted to computers, with 41% using a computer for non-school reasons at least three hours a day, up from 22% in 2003.
• 27% had at least one soda a day, down from 34% in 2007.
• 41% of those who drove admitted to texting or e-mailing while driving. CDC first asked about texting in 2011, but with a differently worded question, so it can't say whether rates are up or down.
• 2.3 % had ever used heroin, a number that has remained fairly steady through the years. But in some large urban school districts, use was much higher, up to 7.4%.

Danger that children are exposed to smoking

Education process is extremely important in sustaining the progress in tobacco control. Many tax or legislative interventions would have no result if people would not support, understand and ask for good changes in their lives.

Everybody understands how important is to reduce youth smoking. In countries like Japan, Argentina, Nigeria, India, and the Russian Federation 87 % of respondents agreed with the international efforts to establish certain regulations and rules to stop the tobacco usage.

Schools play a big role in teaching the children about the damages that smoking could bring to their health. They also can teach students to develop refusal skills regarding smoking. Some analyses were made and it was discovered that young people believe they would become smart, cool and fashionable.

One first step with these programs at school is to increase the number of persons who realize the danger that children are exposed to. It is also for changing intentions, attitudes and beliefs. But only this won’t change the entire society and their behavior.

A school tobacco control program must not allow the usage of cigarette smoking or other tobacco use at school events and facilities. By this way they will help staff and students to quit smoking. The tobacco industry in the last years became active in smoking prevention programs for young people. These programs show how smoking is an adult thing and teens have to wait until they are grown ups to take the decision of smoking.

Whole global tobacco

Tobacco is grown for centuries in over 125 countries, it can be found on over 4 million hectares of land and a third part of all of these hectares is in China alone. The whole global tobacco crop is worth almost US $20 billion, which represents a small fraction of the total amount that is coming from the sale of already produced tobacco products. Tobacco is grown on less than one percent of the world’s agricultural land, and on a very large variety of climates and soils.

In 1960’s the bulk of production started to move to Africa and Asia from America. But there still remained some land in USA, Mexico and Canada dedicated tobacco growth. But in United Republic of Tanzania, Malawi and China the tobacco growth almost doubled.

The production of tobacco leaves has more than doubled since the 1960s, in total almost 7 million metric tons in 2000. A large usage of fertilizers and pesticides and a very good mechanization have lead to damage of the environment.

The problem is not ending with growing tobacco: the processes used in curing tobacco leaves cause massive deforestation. In the whole world are millions of tobacco farmers. Tobaccoindustry is very interesting. Because there is a problem between tobacco manufactures and tobacco control programs they decided to develop a partnership between public health community and farmers.

Smoking during pregnancy putting 50,000 babies at risk

Mothers-to-be who continue to smoke during pregnancy are severely increasing the chance of their baby being born with facial deformities, new research has revealed.

A report from the Office of the General Surgeon in the US suggests smoking during pregnancy gives women a one in two chance of having a baby with a failure of the upper lip or the palate that did not properly develop during the foetus’ development. 

Latest statistics from Health & Social Care Information Centre reveal more than one in ten (12.7 per cent) pregnant women are smokers at delivery. Given there were 694,241 births in England in the last year, more than 54,500 babies could be at risk from a facial deformity. Pall Mall Nanokings Blue Slims

Smoking during pregnancy has previously been linked to a number of health conditions, including heart defects, weight and size issues as well as lung conditions while tobacco use is also the leading cause of mouth cancer. Chief Executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, Dr Nigel Carter OBE, believes the research only adds to the calls for people to quit smoking.

Dr Carter said: “There is a wealth of evidence to suggest smoking during pregnancy achieves nothing but putting your baby in harm’s way. When you consider there are thousands of hazardous chemicals in a single cigarette, regularly smoking poses all sorts of risks.

“Any amount of cigarette smoking during pregnancy significantly increases the risk of having a child with health problems. Cigarettes aren’t an easy thing to give up. Research has shown this. However, if cigarettes expose unborn babies to harmful chemicals caused by smoking, it is something pregnant women must ditch immediately.
“Smoking cessation services needed to be targeted at women from poorer backgrounds who are more likely to smoke. Young boys as well as girls also need to be told about the risks of smoking, particularly during pregnancy, considering the UK still has a very high teenage pregnancy rate.

“If we are educating people on the risks posed by smoking, this could help to reduce the growing number of mouth cancer cases too. Tobacco use is the leading cause of the disease, and education remains the key. Latest figures show that it claims more lives than road traffic accidents do, so pregnant women are not only placing their baby’s health at risk – they are endangering their own.”

Interesting ad reminds you not to smoke

Yes, it is showing a very special smoking room where on ceiling, smokers will see themselves inside cemetery.

On the ceiling, one can see pastor and people with flowers like they are attending a funeral.

Mumbai based ad agency Everest Brand Solutions has designed this a couple of years back. Camel Filters

Here’s What it Looks Like When a Tobacco Company Says 'I’m Sorry'

After 15 years of fighting the federal government over lies to the public about the health risks of smoking, the nation's biggest tobacco companies are ready to apologize.

Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard, and Altria are preparing full-page ads to run in the Sunday editions of the country's top 35 newspapers, as well as online ads for those papers' websites and prime-time television spots to run for a full year on CBS, ABC, and NBC. The corporations are also required to run corrective statements on their websites and cigarette packages.

The self-flagellation stems from a 2006 federal court decision ordering the tobacco companies to correct the record on statements they made about the health effects of smoking. On Friday, the companies' lawyers and the Justice Department struck a deal on how they will issue the apology.

A mock-up of an advertisement that could publish as a full-page ad in The New York Times reads, "A Federal Court has ruled that Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard, and Altria deliberately deceived the American public about designing cigarettes to enhance the delivery of nicotine and has ordered those companies to make this statement." Parliament Aqua Blue

 

It goes on to say that the industry "intentionally designed cigarettes to make them more addictive," and that nicotine "changes the brain," making it harder to quit.

The tobacco companies could appeal the language of the ads. But first, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler is scheduled to review the agreement about how to issue the corrective statements on Wednesday, Jan. 22, at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 26A of the U.S. District Court of D.C.

The Justice Department first brought the case against the tobacco industry in 1999, arguing that they knowingly and intentionally misinformed the public about the negative health consequences of smoking.

Kessler ordered the industry in 2006 to issue the statements after she found them guilty of violating civil racketeering laws and lying to the public about the dangers of smoking.

The judge required the statements to appear on television and in newspapers, as well as on the companies' websites and cigarette packages, and to contain language that the court had ruled that the companies "deliberately deceived the American public."

In finding the industry guilty, Kessler wrote, "[This case] is about an industry, and in particular these Defendants, that survives, and profits, from selling a highly addictive product which causes diseases that lead to a staggering number of deaths per year, an immeasurable amount of human suffering and economic loss, and a profound burden on our national health care system. Defendants have known many of these facts for at least 50 years or more. Despite that knowledge, they have consistently, repeatedly and with enormous skill and sophistication, denied these facts to the public, the Government, and to the public health community."

Philip Morris declined to offer a comment for the story.

The statements would correct misinformation about "the health effects of smoking, the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine, the false advertising of low-tar and light cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes, the designing of cigarettes to enhance the delivery of nicotine and the health effects of secondhand smoke," according to a press release from the American Cancer Society Action Network, one of the public intervenors that joined the case in 2005. The other national medical and advocacy organizations that joined the case are the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network and the Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund.

ACSCAN's associate director of federal relations, Gregg Haifley, called the case "a long legal battle" that has been "dragged out" by the industry.

"Millions of people who otherwise might have quit continued smoking because of blatant misrepresentations of the harm to their health," Haifley said. "The tobacco industry is an industry that never gives up. But we're one step closer to a final conclusion."

The agreement falls on the 50th anniversary of the surgeon general's first report detailing the public-health consequences of smoking. The landmark study prompted antismoking groups to pursue more-stringent public policy measures regulating the use of tobacco, which resulted in 8 million lives saved since 1964, according to a study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Roughly 44 million adults and 3.6 million children in the United States smoke, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smoking costs the U.S. roughly $193 billion annually in health care expenditures and lost productivity, the CDC reports. Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from a smoking-related disease.

“Precious Voice”

Beginning in the late ’20s, American Tobacco began a campaign to link smoking with sophistication, slimness, and “sonorous voices.”  Part of this campaign in 1927 was dubbed the “Precious Voice” campaign, which dovetailed nicely with the arrival of the both the talking motion picture and the rise of radio and its commercialization.  American Tobacco, in fact, spent tens of millions of dollars on radio programs that ran between 1928 and the mid-1950s; shows which also used the company’s celebrity tobacco ads.  But in the late 1920s, following the release of The Jazz Singer, as “talking pictures” became all the rage, American Tobacco sought actor endorsements for its cigarettes. Davidoff iD Blue
It also began actor and singer cigarette advertising that claimed Lucky Strike spared their throats and protected their voices.  And American Tobacco ads also used another tack in 1928 – this time featuring Lucky Strike cigarettes as an alternative to fattening sweets.  “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet” was the slogan that ran with this campaign in 1928-1929.  Al Jolson appeared in at least one of these ads  — as shown in the December 1928 ad at the top of this story.  That ad ran in popular magazines of the day.  Jolson is quoted in the ad’s headline saying: “I light up a Lucky and go light on the sweets.  That’s how I keep in good shape and always feel peppy.”  Part of the arrangement in such ads was also to have a tie-in with the film studio – in this case, for Jolson’s latest new film.  Near the Lucky Strike pack in the above ad, the text reads: “Al Jolson, as he appears in Warner Bros Vitaphone success, The Singing Fool.”