Burning Issues Newsletters

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by Kamlesh Asotra, Ph.D.,

A “virtual”ly harm-free cigarette?
The tobacco industry, always looking out for their customers’ welfare, has just introduced the latest in its “harm-reduction” offerings, the electronic cigarette. The product uses a battery-operated heating element or ”atomizer” to vaporize nicotine from liquid containing nicotine together with several chemicals and menthol. It’s allegedly “the healthiest alternative smoking product you will ever get!” Thus dawns a new era of nicotine addiction courtesy of the ever-innovative tobacco industry.
http://e-cig.com/shopping/shopcontent.asp?type=Home

Where the harm is in harm reduction cigarettes
In the meantime the original “harm reduction” product, “light” cigarettes, long-touted by the tobacco industry as being less harmful than regular cigarettes, are actually as much or more harmful. Just-published research by TRDRP investigator Professor Prue Talbot and her colleagues demonstrates that smoke solutions from so-called “light” cigarettes were “as potent if not more potent” toxicants than that of a traditional brand in their assays on mouse embryonic stem cells.
(Human Reproduction, 1(1): 1-12; 2009).

San Francisco kicks butts
Cigarette butts comprise one fourth of the trash from city sidewalks and gutters, and its removal costs the city a whopping $10.7 million each year. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom would propose a 33-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes sold in the city to cover the cost of picking up cigarettes butts from city streets. Mayor Newsome may really kick some butt if his proposal is approved by the Board of Supervisors.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=40346)

Nicotine increases cancer risk
A recent study by Dr. Muy-Teck Teh and colleagues from the Queen Mary University of London, UK reported that interaction of a gene called FOXM1 in oral lesions with nicotine from nicotine gum or lozenges increases the risk for developing mouth cancer (PLoS ONE 4(3): e4849. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004849). Increased expression of FOXM1 or nicotine exposure alone do not by themselves trigger cancer. This is the first comprehensive study ascribing a cancer-inducing role to nicotine.
http://oralcancernews.org/wp/2009/04/cancer-risk-of-nicotine-gum-and-lozenges-higher-than-thought/

Purse packs for women
Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds have initiated an aggressive marketing campaign to lure women and girls to smoking. The Phillip Morris USA announced in October 2008 repackaging of Virginia Slims as “purse packs” of “superslim cigarettes” that have historically appealed to women’s perception as a means of weight control. Correspondingly, R. J. Reynolds launched Camel No. 9 in black boxes with pink and teal borders. A coalition of several public health organizations has issued their own warning: “Deadly in Pink: Big Tobacco Ups Its Targeting of Women and Girls” http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/reports/women_new/.