Study: E-cigar a ‘gateway to addiction’

Swapping regular cigarettes with electronic cigarettes is not a safer option among young people as e-cigars are a potential gateway to addiction, claim scientists at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

According to a new study, e-cigarettes, though promoted as an aid to quit smoking as well as a safer cigarette, deliver nicotine that pose particular risks to developing organs and brains in children.

Dean E. Schraufnagel, MD at the UIC, provides a detailed look at the composition and varieties of electronic cigarettes and what makes them so appealing to youths.

He described electronic cigarettes as a potential “gateway to addiction,” as they are often the first tobacco product a youngster tries, with nicotine dependence a common lead-in to abuse of other addictive substances.

Mary Cataletto, MD, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, State University of New York at Stony Brook said that pediatricians play a critical role in the education of children and families, and are considered an important and reliable source of healthcare information.

This review provides practitioners with comprehensive information about the dangers of electronic cigarettes and highlights the vulnerability of children to both the intense marketing surrounding e-cigarettes and their pharmacologic effects.

The review article ‘Electronic Cigarettes: Vulnerability of Youth’ is published in a peer-reviewed journal Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology.

Source: TheNewsReports

Read more ...

How do much does a smoker lose?

Source: India Today

Read more ...

Tobacco indeed causes cancer: Kerala medical community

Amid widespread shock and anguish over misinformed statements on tobacco’s association with cancer, Kerala’s medical community have rebuffed these and have stated that tobacco use indeed causes cancer. Public pronouncements mooted by self-contained interests cannot dispel years of revalidated study and research by scientific and medical community, they say.

Kerala’s medical community have also congratulated the Hon’ble Prime Minister for his timely intervention in keeping up to the commitment of the 15 October 2014 notification requiring tobacco companies to devote 85 per cent of all tobacco product packs including bidis, cigarettes and smokeless to pictorial warnings.  

Dr Paul Sebastian, well-known surgical oncologist and Director of Regional Cancer Centre here said, “No less than the World Health Organisation has categorically said that tobacco causes cancer. Independent research conducted by Indian organisations has only strengthened this.”

He points out to the cohort study in Karunagappally taluk started in the late 1980s to study the potential health effects of high background radiation. 

“The study that covered 65,829 men aged 30–84 however showed an elevated lung cancer incidence among bidi smokers, strengthening the association of lung cancer risk with bidi smoking,”

“Karunagappally is known for high background radiation from thorium-containing monazite sand and the study set out to explore the lung and other cancer risks increased by exposure to high-level natural radiation, and the synergistic effect between radiation and other factors including bidi smoking. However, our cohort study showed that the relatively high lung cancer incidence in this area is unlikely to be due to high-level natural radiation,” 

Dr Sebastian added.

Eminent oncologist and Founder Director of Regional Cancer Centre Padma Shri Dr M Krishnan Nair said, “The Prime Minister’s assurance that the Government will go ahead with 85 per cent pictorial warnings is reassuring. It sends out a clear message that tobacco is indeed to harmful to health and it speaks volumes of the Government’s commitment to reducing tobacco consumption.” Dr Nair also remembered the Prime Minister’s tweet on World No Tobacco Day 2014 about working to “reduce tobacco consumption in India.”

“Baseless statements that tobacco does not cause cancer cannot take away from established facts of science, and collective efforts of the scientific and medical fraternity. Reports of the National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP) have a dedicated chapter on tobacco related cancers. The 2011 Report shows 45.4 per cent tobacco related cancers among males and 16.8 per cent among females in India,” Dr Nair added.

The Indian Council of Medical Research with a network of cancer registries commenced the NCRP across the country in December 1981 to generate reliable data on the magnitude and patterns of cancer.

Dr. VP Gangadharan, pioneer medical oncologist and HoD of Medical and Paediatric Oncology, Lakeshore Hospital, Kochi said, “Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death and disease and strategies such as large pictorial warnings can save one million precious Indian lives every year. Tobacco snatches away the best years of a user’s life, hampering productivity and social well-being. Pictorial warnings of 85 per cent can go a long way in preventing youngsters, migrants, and illiterates from getting addicted to tobacco products.”

Citing a 2014 report of the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and the World Health Organisation on the economic burden of tobacco use, he added, “Tobacco use not only impairs health of individuals; it also badly affects the health of the economy. The economic burden for four specific diseases including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, tuberculosis, and respiratory disease in Kerala for the year 2011 was Rs 545 crores.”

Twenty-eight-year-old tobacco control crusader Ms Sunita Tomar, who made a public appeal for large pack warnings through the online campaign #LivesBachaoSizeBadhao, succumbed to oral cancer on April 1 – the same day when large-sized pack warnings were to be implemented in India. Sunita has made a dying request to the Prime Minister for 85 per cent pack warnings.

As many as 38,735 persons including doctors, tobacco victims, bidi workers unions, international and national public health experts and youth across the country had appealed to the Union Health Minister to implement 85 per cent pack warnings. 

Read more ...

History of pictorial warnings on tobacco products in India

The issue of pictorial warnings on tobacco packets is not one which is troubling a government at the centre for the first time.

The latest controversy is following BJP MP Dilip Gandhi's comments that there were no Indian studies to substantiate the claim that usage of tobacco could cause cancer. Gandhi, heads a Parliamentary panel subordinate legislation examining the provisions of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, which has asked the government to keep plans of increasing pictorial warnings on tobacco products to 85% in abeyance.

It was in 2006 that India’s health warnings policy was first drafted. But there was no consensus on how severe the warnings should be, and after two sets of revisions in 2006 and 2007, the first set of health warnings were approved by a Group of Ministers led by Pranab Mukherjee in 2008.

The warnings shown below, was approved initially, then toned down dramatically in 2008.

In spite of toning down the warnings, they were not implemented for months. After postponing the implementation of warnings seven times, it was finally done on May 31, 2009.

And after years of discussion and debate, one would have expected that the warnings would be worth it, but one of the three pictorial warnings was the picture of a scorpion, though it was meant to be a crab.

(Hippocrates used the terms carcinos and carcinoma to describe non-ulcer forming and ulcer-forming tumors. In Greek, these words refer to a crab, most likely applied to the disease because the finger-like spreading projections from a cancer called to mind the shape of a crab. The Roman physician, Celsus (28-50 BC), later translated the Greek term into cancer, the Latin word for crab.) Source- Cancer.org. 

Two other pictorial warnings from that period on cigarette packets show corroded lungs in one and an x-ray image of damaged lungs in a picture which lacked in clarity.

The Congress in 2009 had defended its stand of toning down the warnings. A CNN IBN article quotes Congress leader Oscar Fernandes, "If we’re talking about making the pictures harsher, we may as well shut down the industry. There are several districts in West Bengal where poor bidi workers earn their livelihood from this.”

It had also been reported then that as Pranab Mukhejee won from the Jangipur constituency, that has a sizable population of bidi workers, this was one of the reasons why the government was not keen on harsh warnings.

The tobacco packets between 2011 and 2013 though contained graphic images of people ridden by oral cancer which were visible distinctly.

The warning on cigarette packets during the same phase were controversial for another reason altogether. They carried a doctored picture of the then English football captain John Terry with corroded lungs. After Terry found out and threatened to sue the government at the start of 2012, another picture, with just his head taken off, was used for another year.

Between 2013 and 2015 again, the warning on cigarette packets concentrated on the lungs again, not looking to focus on oral cancers or those of the throat. Packets of tobacco did not change during this period either though.

The images that were proposed to be put on tobacco packets from April 1, 2015 were these

Courtesy: Newsminute

Read more ...