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Funding Tobacco Control Programs: A Dollar Well Spent

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) identified tobacco use as the single biggest cause of premature death in every state in the U.S. They recommended in 2007 that New Jersey state government should spend $120 million per year on tobacco control ($13.75 per person per year, and 12% of total tobacco-related revenue to the state).

Here in New Jersey, our Comprehensive Tobacco Control Program (CTCP) started in 2000, with annual funding of just over $30 million via the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA). The program was set up to follow CDC guidelines to have components for media, evaluation, community activities, youth prevention, and smoking cessation. With the post 9/11 recession causing severe budget problems for the state, funding was drastically cut by 66% to $11 million in 2004 and then in 2009 it was cut again to around $8m. The state brings in approximately $1 billion per year from tobacco sources (MSA plus tobacco taxes) and so New Jersey has recently been spending around 1% of tobacco revenues on tobacco control. Despite being drastically underfunded, the New Jersey CTCP has had many noteable achievements. Here’s just a few. Read more »

This post, Funding Tobacco Control Programs: A Dollar Well Spent, was originally published on Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..

How To Get The Tobacco Industry To Stop Selling Cigarettes

The tobacco industry and its products (primarily cigarettes) has caused the premature deaths of over 13 million people in the United States since the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report which concluded that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Those health professionals, who are familiar with these statistics, and with the great lengths the industry has gone to to try to cover them up, have little sympathy for the industry’s current decline in the U.S. Many want nothing more than the annihilation of the tobacco industry. This is all the more understandable for those people who have seen patients and loved ones suffer and die from a smoking-caused illness. Some may feel that the tobacco industry and those in it do not deserve to continue to make money from such a deadly business. Read more »

This post, How To Get The Tobacco Industry To Stop Selling Cigarettes, was originally published on Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..

Will Nicotine-Free Cigarettes Be Mandated By The FDA?

In the previous posting I discussed the possibility of FDA requiring that no tobacco products be allowed to emit Carbon Monoxide. While appealing in its simplicity, such a strategy may have problems in that it could be interpreted as a ban on a whole class (or classes) of tobacco products, which the legislation does not allow.

Another strategy might be to reduce the harm from tobacco by lowering the nicotine content/delivery of cigarettes down to the level at which they are no longer addictive. A form of this strategy was proposed in the 1990’s by leading tobacco researchers Professor Neal Benowitz, and Professor Jack Henningfield. The FDA legislation singles out nicotine as the only chemical that cannot be reduced to zero, but this allows FDA the right to reduce the nicotine delivery of tobacco products down to a level just above zero at which they would no longer be addictive. Read more »

This post, Will Nicotine-Free Cigarettes Be Mandated By The FDA?, was originally published on Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..

Hydrogen Sulfide Gas (H2S) Suicides On The Rise

A year ago we wrote about a death of a San Jose teenager from poisoning by hydrogen sulfide gas, or H2S. At the time, I had hypothesized that the death might have been from an attempt at synthesizing methamphetamine gone awry.

But while one can mistakenly generate hydrogen sulfide gas from improper meth synthesis, I soon learned that intentional suicides with H2S is an increasing US trend imported from Japan. One can easily mix commonly-available consumer products to generate the gas and high enough concentrations can cause death. The gas acts in a manner similar to cyanide by binding to the heme in cytochrome c oxidase and inhibiting electron transport and ATP production by oxidative phosphorylation in the mitochondria. (Interestingly, small amounts of H2S are made in the body and is being investigated as a neurotransmitter and biological modulator.) Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*

Are E-Cigarettes Anything More Than A Theater Prop?

E-cigarettes continue to create a lot of media buzz and chatter among smokers and smoking cessation experts alike. Today, Professor Thomas Eissenberg of Virginia Commonwealth University published an important study demonstrating that E-cigarettes, despite claims on the packaging and advertising, deliver almost no nicotine to the user.

The study is published in the latest edition of the journal, Tobacco Control. Professor Eissenberg had 16 smokers abstain overnight, then come to the lab. on different days and (a) smoke two of their usual cigarettes (b) puff on two unlit cigarettes or (c) “smoke” 2 leading brands of E-cigarette using their “high nicotine” cartridge (16mg), each brand on a separate occasion. On each occasion he measured the blood nicotine levels before, during and up to 45 minutes after using the products. Read more »

This post, Are E-Cigarettes Anything More Than A Theater Prop?, was originally published on Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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