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Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Government funds website to help smokers quit
Terri Theodore Thursday, November 18, 2004
VANCOUVER (CP) -- The B.C. government is using the Internet to convince more cigarette smokers to butt out.
The quitnow.ca website offers tips, quitting plans, peer support groups, and all the gruesome smoking statistics anyone may need to convince themselves to kick the habit.
"More than half a million people in B.C. over the age of 15 smoke and we know the majority of them want to quit," said Brenda Locke, the minister of state for addiction services.
The province has the lowest smoking rate in the country at about 16 percent, compared to 21 percent for all of Canada.
However Locke says there's an alarming trend of increased smoking for those in the 20 to 44-year-old category.
"I don't know the reasons behind that, but we're concerned," she said. "I think this initiative is one of those new tools for people in that age group."
Scott McDonald, executive director of the B.C. Lung Association, said he believes the increase may have something to do with more risk-taking among young people.
"Fast cars are back, the muscle car is back... all the various risk-taking that people do, and smoking may be one of those," he said.
McDonald said smoking is also reappearing on television and in movies and that has an influence on the way young people think.
He believes quitnow.ca is a good tool for those who want to quit.
"Smokers do better when they have help, whether its acupuncture, or the patch, or the pill, or group sessions, or now on-line," he said.
British Columbia spends about half a billion dollars every year treating tobacco-related illness, and still about 5,600 people die every year.
Statistics show over 50 percent of the people who quit do so the first time they try.
"So the 46 per cent of people who do have difficulty quitting generally (try) seven or eight times," said Veda Peters of the B.C. Lung Association.
Speaking to a tobacco best-practices workshop in Vancouver, Locke said she's worried about what she's seeing from young people at the local hockey rink.
"One of the concerns I have is tobacco use amongst hockey players. They're using plug tobacco. That's a new frontier that we have to look at."
Peters doesn't have figures on use of chew tobacco, but said it's been on the fringes since the 1960's when people were frightened of smoking.
"The dangers are different, but not really any less," she said.
The website, which cost about $100,000 to create, is being run with help from the British Columbia Lung Association.
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=5c17c835-f7a5-4cb0-a051-91ff857a0c9e
Puffing patients will be sent to the sidewalk
WebPosted Nov 22 2004 08:03 AM EST
FREDERICTON — Patients and staff of the River Valley Hospital Corporation will soon be forced to smoke on the street or the sidewalk.
The health corporation's board of directors have agreed to ban smoking on all its properties to set a good example for healthy living.
Smoking has long been banned inside provincial hospitals, and patients have coped by stepping outside to the parking lot to indulge their habit.
Patients puff in wheelchairs, or pulling along intravenous bags. On warm summer days, you might even see patients sitting outside in hospital gowns, having a cigarette.
At the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton, staff smoke in a little wooden gazebo enclosed with plastic to keep out the rain.
River Valley Health now wants to nudge those smokers a little further away.
Spokesperson Shelley Fletcher says the board has taken a first step towards banning smoking on all corporation property, from Fredericton to Plaster Rock. "As a health authority, part of their new strategic plan is to be leaders in health promotion and disease prevention, so this is right in line with that."
Smoker Darryl Peterson agrees with that philosophy, but says exceptions should be made for employees and terminally ill patients. "Great idea. People have to off the property to smoke that's the way it should be. This is a health centre, not a community place to get sick."
Fletcher says a committee of employees, management and patient representatives will work out the details of a policy during the next few months.
They'll have to take those recommendations for the smoking ban back to the hospital board for the final say on how and when to implement it.
http://nb.cbc.ca/regionalnews/caches/nb-hospitalsmoke20041122.html
The Adventures Of My Non-Gullible 2 Year Old Son
By Clinton P. Desveaux November 22, 2004
There I was playing with my son on the weekend, just him and I having a real good time together. I had just finished reading his book, “THE ADVENTURES OF JONATHAN GULLIBLE” by Ken Schoolland to him. In a few moments I was going to learn an important lesson when I grabbed his book out of his hands to go do something else with him. When I grabbed the book, he became very irate with me; children understand private property ownership rights precisely because basic fundamental human rights associated with freedom are so obvious. My son understood immediately that when I tried to grab his book, and take it away from him by force, without his voluntary choice that something wrong was occurring.
My son understood that morality has nothing to do with majority rule i.e. mom and dad have taken it away therefore majority rule trumps private property ownership rights. Majority rule is wrong if 50.01% decide to take away what is rightfully his, even if government attempts to tell him that majority rule conquers all, my son understands that man’s/woman’s natural rights don’t disappear simply because the tribe has spoken. Now in a few years time when the state attempts to use its coercive powers and relentlessly indoctrinate him (unless he is home schooled or goes to private schooling) he may simply concede to the thug who is more powerful then he. I think most adults when they are at their most passive understand this simple rule as well, unfortunately we (by “we” I mean others) as adults have begun to lie to ourselves in order to feel less guilty about our immoral behaviour that we impose onto others.
For example when someone has his or her income or property expropriated and confiscated by some foreign entity such as the state, we tell ourselves that theft isn’t really happening. Theft is still immoral therefore it is a form of evil. Just because it is the state taking away Angelus’s book by coercion, that somehow it is moral and just; simply because 50.01% of my neighbours feel that he should be deprived of his book doesn’t make it so. Now Angelus my 2 year old would never believe such foolishness being imposed on him by his neighbours, such utter contempt for the real world. It should be pointed out that no other child would buy into this either. The only people advocating this type of garbage would be the phuedu-intellectual whose role is to ensure the continued existence of the state, utter irrationality and reason gone amuck; intellectual dishonesty if you will.
Keep in mind however that this type of intellectual dishonesty is not unintelligent, it requires a well thought out plan, where great amounts of intelligence found in a fully mature mind are required to convince others that reality is not really what surrounds us as sovereign individuals everyday in our lives.
Once you have successfully indoctrinated and engrained young minds with things like Rocket Robin Hood found in Canada and other such nonsense in other places, maybe Angelus will buy into the notion that forced “consensus” is a means of magically turning theft into the public good. Many mature and intelligent minds will generalize the use of consensus to attack liberty and private property ownership rights. This belief allows you punish those who voluntary choose to watch or listen to foreign satellite programming, or open their business on a Sunday for example here in Nova Scotia, or smoke some pot, or even an owner of business lighting up a cigarette in a business he built with his very own hands.
Before one knows it you have successfully become immoral, and growing immorality becomes the norm through mob rule because the tribe has spoken through the use of state enforced coercion, which one could call the tyranny of the majority…
The best way to describe this type of state enforced “consensus” is human behaviour similar to psychopathology.
Everyday the adventures of my non-gullible 2-year-old son bring a smile to my face as he teaches me important lessons about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!
http://www.halifaxlive.com/gullible_11222004_2929.php
That city air will kill you
By Sharon Lem, Toronto SunMon, November 22, 2004
EVEN short-term increases in air ozone levels have been linked to an increased number of deaths, a new study shows. In one of the largest studies ever conducted on atmospheric ozone levels, researchers looked at average deaths associated with short-term ozone exposure in 95 U.S. cities from 1987 to 2000.
Dr. Michelle Bell of Yale University and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University found that a 10 parts per billion increase in the previous week's ozone level was associated with a 0.52% increase in the daily death rates and a 0.64% increase in cardiovascular and respiratory-related deaths.
People aged 65 to 74 years old experienced a death rate at 0.70%.
Manmade common outdoor air pollutants have been found to increase ozone levels.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2004/11/22/725445.html
Casino exempt, DeVillers says
Frank Matys: Orillia Today
Casino Rama is taking a "wait and see" approach to the province-wide smoking ban proposed by Ontario's Health Ministry.
"In general, businesses operating on a First Nations reserve are not necessarily bound by provincial legislation," said Sherry Lawson, vice-president of corporate affairs and public relations.
Simcoe North MP Paul DeVillers agrees.
"I think on legal grounds she is probably correct," DeVillers told Orillia Today.
Meanwhile, provincial health officials have yet to determine whether the controversial tobacco control bill would apply to the native-owned gaming facility, located east of Orillia.
"Part of what we are working on is specifically identifying what all those things mean," ministry spokesperson Dan Strasbourg said. "It is a little bit premature for us to say."
Yet, Health Minister George Smitherman this week promised casinos no relief from a ban on smoking in enclosed public places and workplaces.
"It is not a bill that will be characterized by exemptions," Smitherman said at Queen's Park.
However, according to DeVillers, constitutional law states that provincial legislation "can't bind something that is under federal jurisdiction.
Given that the casino is on a federal reserve, I suppose, legally, it wouldn't (apply)."
Lawson would prefer to study the details of the bill when they become available, rather than guessing at the impact it may have on her facility.
"It is really a legal question ... and the problem is neither of us have seen the legislation," she said. "We have to see what the law says and how it would apply to us."
She noted that the casino's poker room is already designated non-smoking, at the request of regular players, as are portions of restaurants and one floor of the hotel.
Some slot machines and gaming tables are also non-smoking, she said.
"Casino Rama really has no opinion either way," she added of the bill.
"We have always complied with all applicable legislation and will continue to do so.
"We are in a wait and see mode," she said.
- With files from Torstar
http://www.simcoe.com/sc/orillia/story/2359519p-2731300c.html
Nov. 22, 2004. 01:00 AM 
Return to free choice
Business owners should be able to post sign saying whether or not they offer smoke-free environment
The issue of smoking in public areas has been on the table for years. The idea of having designated smoking areas seemed to be a logical and workable solution. So, without a lot of fuss, people became accustomed to having to locate themselves in the area of their choice.
"Quit-smoking" aids were introduced and a great deal of educational media was released to inform all of the possible dangers of smoking. The results were positive, since the percentage of people who now smoke has greatly declined. Once again it was these individuals' choices to quit or at least attempt to quit. Good for them.
It sounded like smokers and anti-smokers were willing to work on this together and it appeared to have been effective. Well, apparently, not in the eyes of the anti-smokers. Now it's to a point of we've been given an inch, let's take a mile and ban smoking altogether.
We all need to be educated on the possible negative economical impacts of a smoking ban. We are already facing a rapidly shrinking rural economy. Please be open minded; what works for some does not work for all. Many small bars and restaurants will not only suffer but will, in fact, close. Many businesses cannot afford even the slightest decline in their consumer base. Many youth, sport and charitable organizations will lose huge amounts of revenue from fund raisers such as bingo.
Why don't we stop wasting taxpayers' dollars and allow choice to be the ultimate dictator, not the government at any level?
Business owners could simply be required to post a very inexpensive sign indicating: We do not offer a smoke-free environment or we do offer a smoke-free environment or we offer designated smoking areas. How much simpler can it be. As a bonus, business owners would then be relieved of the responsibility of enforcing a law they may not necessarily agree with.
Whether you are for or against smoking, as a consumer the locations you patronize become your choice. As a business, the consumer base you wish to attract becomes your choice, not that of government.
Thomas Laprade, Thunder Bay, Ont.
letter to the editor
Three Air Pollutants to be Declared Toxic Under CEPA
OTTAWA, May 3, 2002 - The Government of Canada is proposing to add three cancer-causing air pollutants to the List of Toxic Substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) following scientific assessments conducted by Environment Canada and Health Canada. Canadians will have 60 days to comment on the proposal to add the substances to Schedule 1 of CEPA before the government makes a final decision.
The three substances are ethylene oxide, formaldehyde and N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA). Ethylene oxide is used to produce ethylene glycol and in manufacturing other compounds. Formaldehyde is used in the production of resins, and is found in motor vehicle exhaust and tobacco smoke. NDMA is not used in Canada but is released as a by-product of the manufacture of pesticides, rubber tires, and dyes. NDMA has also been detected in drinking water and in automobile exhaust.
"Declaring formaldehyde, NDMA and ethylene oxide toxic is a critical step to cleaning up the sources of these three substances," said Environment Minister Anderson. "By working with industry to re-design industrial processes or by developing the use of alternative substances or processes, and by taking further action on automobile emissions, we can make tremendous improvements on air quality," he said.
"A number of recent studies have shown the correlation between air pollution and health effects," said Health Minister Anne McLellan. "That's why we are making air pollution an environmental priority, so that Canadians can live healthier and longer lives."
All three substances were selected for scientific assessment of their impact on human health and the environment in 1995 by an expert panel that made recommendations for substances to be included on the second Priority Substances List (PSL 2) under CEPA, to determine whether they pose a significant risk to the health of Canadians or the environment.
The release of final assessment reports for the three substances starts a two-year time clock for the development of preventive or control measures under CEPA. The government has a further 18 months to enact the measures under tough new deadlines for action on toxic substances in CEPA.
3122 Tobacco Mfg-.
Four-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Codes
3122 Tobacco Mfg.-
Four-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Codes
12 Tobacco Products Industries -
Two-digit 1980 Canadian Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Codes
>>Dosanjh, Health Minister, lawsuit filed when Premier of British Columbia, Imperial Tobacco court case, present position, reconciling, o.q., 836(16:1450-5)- Oct 27/ 04
Mr. Steven Fletcher (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, CPC): Mr. Speaker, three years ago the premier of British Columbia filed a lawsuit against the tobacco industry. He claimed that mild and light cigarette labels were misleading. Last week the former premier of British Columbia, the current health minister, sided with Imperial Tobacco and asked that a new deal dealing with the same issue be thrown out of the B.C. courts. This is blatant hypocrisy.
Why did the minister sue big tobacco three years ago and then side with it last week?
Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh (Minister of Health, Lib.): Mr. Speaker--
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
The Speaker: Order. How is the hon. member for Charleswood St. James—Assiniboia going to ask a supplementary question if he cannot hear the answer to the first one? There is so much noise we cannot hear the Minister of Health. He has the floor. We will hear the minister.
Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh: Mr. Speaker, this issue is before the courts. I want to tell the members opposite that we are not there of our own accord. It is Imperial Tobacco that brought us there. We need to make sure that we stand four square behind the public concern against tobacco damage.
Mr. Steven Fletcher (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, CPC): It is before the courts because you put it there.
The Speaker: The hon. member will want to address his remarks to the Chair.
Mr. Steven Fletcher: Mr. Speaker, I think the minister has been smoking some of that wacky tobacky. As a New Democrat he is against big tobacco; as a Liberal he is supporting big tobacco in the courts. This is mind-boggling.
I ask the former 2001 NDP premier of British Columbia who is now the 2004 Liberal Minister of Health, why the change of heart? Is it the change of teams?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
The Speaker: From all the accolades it is easy to tell that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, who has the floor, is very popular, but he is the one who is now going to have the right to speak.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/38/1/parlbus/chambus/house/debates/indexe/t-38-1_-e.htm
Tobacco investigation nets charges
KITCHENER, ON, Nov. 15 /CNW/ - Following a ten-month investigation, the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Kitchener Detachment, have charged two
Arthur men with three counts each under Section 32.(1) of the Excise Act.
An investigation was commenced following allegations that cheap tobacco
was being sold out of an Arthur business known as the Meroon Market. The RCMP
allege that tobacco products were sold to an undercover officer on several
occasions which led to the arrest of the above noted subjects on
September 10th, 2004.
Seized during the investigation were 562 x 200 gram bags of tobacco which
it is alleged, were not properly marked in accordance with the Excise Act, as
well as a 2002 GMC Yukon, which is alleged to have been used to transport the
tobacco. The Excise Act has set penalties for the sale / possession of tobacco
between $0.11 and $0.16 per gram if a conviction is registered.
Charged are:
Leyth JEJOU, 35, and Laheeb GEGGO, 32, both of Arthur, Ontario.
Each are charged with three counts of the sale/possession of manufactured
tobacco not stamped in accordance with the Excise Act and Departmental
Regulations.
The two men are due to appear in Guelph Provincial Court on
November 22nd, 2004.
The RCMP continue to investigate such matters, in cooperation with local
police, to provide safer homes and safer communities for all Canadians.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/November2004/15/c3260.html
Ministry seeks lobbying rules
22.11.2004
Public health groups celebrating one of their greatest triumphs, the ban from December 10 on smoking in bars and restaurants, are trying to resist moves by the Ministry of Health to curb their campaigning efforts.
Ministry-funded groups have until Friday to respond to draft rules on lobbying MPs, which the groups complain are overly restrictive.
The anti-smoking group Ash, along with other non-governmental organisations (NGOs), is proposing an alternative wording for the ministry's contract.
The ministry wants to stop NGOs using its funding to seek to influence MPs over specific legislation under consideration by Parliament or from lobbying MPs on the development or implementation of policy.
Making submissions to parliamentary select committees would also be outlawed.
Ash director Becky Freeman said the ministry was using too broad a definition of lobbying.
"NGOs just want the right to be able to give information on healthy public policy so that MPs are better informed and can make the right choice; that's all were saying."
Ash would go along with a lobbying ban if lobbying was defined as meeting members of Parliament on specific legislation by using methods that were secretive or partisan.
Ross Bell, the director of the Drug Foundation, said groups such as his were a small counter to the multinational liquor and tobacco industries.
"It would be very anti-democratic if NGOs were told they couldn't go to select committees.
"Every other New Zealander and interest group, including industry, are able to go to select committees. If NGOs didn't go, you don't get those other voices."
Act's Rodney Hide, whose parliamentary questions a year ago on NGO lobbying led to the ministry's proposed new rules, welcomes the draft.
"The good news is we've actually removed the opportunity for civil servants to explicitly use taxpayer money to contract to get their MPs, and indeed their own minister, to be lobbied by outside groups."
Hide first raised the issue when the smoke-free legislation that takes effect in December was being debated.
He drew attention to Health Ministry contracts with anti-smoking groups that required them to lobby MPs on the legislation.
"You had civil servants actually getting their minister lobbied using taxpayer money. That was the outrage. I'm surprised it wasn't a bigger outrage."
The Hospitality Association (HANZ), which is bracing itself for a fall-off in business when the smoking ban takes effect, also backs the proposed new lobbying rules.
"It's immoral in my view that the taxpayer should be funding lobby groups," says HANZ chief Bruce Robertson.
"If the taxpayer is funding one side of a discussion, that creates an impression with politicians that the weight of public opinion is very strong in one area," he said.
Mr Bell said NGOs accepted the lobbying clauses highlighted by Mr Hide were inappropriate, but he thought the attempt to revise them went too far. There was a suspicion that Mr Hide had got on to the issue at the urging of the tobacco industry.
"I think the tobacco industry might have thought it would be a good diversion ... and it has proved to be a good diversion."
A researcher in the University of Otago's department of public health, George Thomson, said tobacco industry involvement would be par for the course.
"My general theory is that the tobacco industry is in a long defensive path.
"Its process is to blunt change wherever it can and to make it as politically dangerous and risky as it can."
Mr Hide, however, took offence at the suggestion that he might have been put up by anyone to raising the issue. He said that asking such a question of an MP invited a complaint to the Speaker of the House for breach of privilege.
Ms Freeman, a Canadian, said New Zealand could consider adopting a North American system for keeping lobbying in the open.
"New Zealand doesn't have a lobby registering process for industry people.
"In North America, for example, most private sector people who employ lobbyists have to register them so that the public knows, and MPs know, who they're meeting and why," she said.
"I'd be happy to go on a register saying I'd met with MPs because I want the public to know. Without public support there's no way healthy policies [like the smoke-free legislation] will go through."
But Mr Robertson called that an impractical nonsense.
"Everybody has the same opportunity. I don't believe the level of resourcing has ever limited the level of access to our politicians, who are among some of the most available in the world."
The other side of the coin, said Progressive Party MP Matt Robson, was that liquor industry lobbyists were among the most influential visitors to Parliament.
"They're always here. They throw, with their PR consultants, quite expensive functions; quite a considerable number of MPs go."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3612483&thesection=news&thesubsection=general
Sick Kids researchers confirm that cancer stem cells initiate and grow brain tumours
TORONTO, Nov. 17 /CNW/ - Researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children(Sick Kids) and the University of Toronto (U of T) have confirmed that childhood and adult brain tumours originate from cancer stem cells and that these stem cells fuel and maintain tumour growth. This discovery has led to
development of a mouse model for human brain tumours and opens the door for new therapeutic targets for the treatment of brain tumours. This research is
reported in the November 18, 2004 issue of the scientific journal Nature.
"Now that we have confirmed that a small number of cancer stem cells initiates and maintains human brain tumour growth in a mouse model, we can
potentially use the mouse model with each patient's tumour cells to see if therapies are working to conquer that patient's tumour," said Dr. Peter Dirks,
the study's principal investigator, a scientist and neurosurgeon at Sick Kids, and an assistant professor of Neurosurgery at U of T. "A functional analysis
of the brain tumour stem cell may also give new insight into patient prognosis that may then warrant individual tailoring of therapy."
Dr. Dirks' laboratory was able to regrow an exact replica of patients' brain tumours in a mouse from the isolated cancer stem cells, or brain tumour
initiating cells. They were then able to study the growth of the human brain tumour in the mouse model using the advanced imaging technology in the Mouse
Imaging Centre (MiCE) at Sick Kids.
Brain tumours are the leading cause of cancer mortality in children and remain difficult to cure despite advances in surgery and drug treatments. In
adults, most brain tumours are also among the harshest cancers with formidable resistance to most therapies.
"Next, we are going to study the gene expression of the brain tumour stem cells. Once we have identified what genes are expressed in those cells, we
will then be able to target these genes using new drugs or genetic-type therapies," said Dr. Sheila Singh, the paper's lead author and Sick Kids
neurosurgery resident and U of T graduate student who is enrolled in Sick Kids' Clinician-Scientist Training Program. Dr. Singh was supported by a
fellowship from The Terry Fox Foundation, as well as by funding from the Neurosurgical Research and Education Foundation and the American Brain Tumor Association.
"We have shown that it is really worthwhile to invest further in studying brain tumour stem cells, as we will be able to determine if current therapies
are failing because they are not stopping the cancer stem cells," added Dr. Dirks. "It also looks like cancer stem cells play a role in other solid
tumours such as breast cancer, so we can all work together to develop new treatments for these cancers."
Other members of the research team included Dr. Cynthia Hawkins, Dr. Ian Clarke, Dr. Takuichiro Hide and Dr. Mark Henkelman, all from Sick Kids, Dr.Jeremy Squire and Jane Bayani from the Ontario Cancer Institute, and Dr. Michael Cusimano from St. Michael's Hospital.
This research was supported by the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Sick Kids Foundation (including support from BrainChild, the Jack Baker family fund and the Jessica Durigon family fund). MiCE is supported with funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Ontario Innovation Trust, the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund and Sick Kids Foundation.
The Hospital for Sick Children, affiliated with the University of Toronto, is Canada's most research-intensive hospital and the largest centre
dedicated to improving children's health in the country. Its mission is to provide the best in family-centred, compassionate care, to lead in scientific
and clinical advancement, and to prepare the next generation of leaders in child health.
For further information: Laura Greer, Public Affairs, The Hospital for Sick Children, (416) 813-5046, laura.greer@sickkids.ca; Chelsea Gay, Public Affairs, The Hospital for Sick Children, (416) 813-7654 ext. 1042, chelsea.ga at sickkids.ca
http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/November2004/17/c4344.html
Students' Risky Behavior Dropping Off
By:ELAINE JACOBS, Assistant Managing Editor November 21, 2004
Results of survey at Indiana show drugs, alcohol not as prevalent
Parents in the Indiana Area School District have been learning what a recent survey says about alcohol use and other risky behaviors among students.
But just as important, they're finding out what they can do to address and prevent those problems.
Dr. David Allen, psychologist for the school district, has been attending recent parent-advisory-group meetings to share the results of last spring's Youth at Risk survey and to compare the results with data from previous years.
The district has conducted this confidential survey among sixth, ninth and 12th-graders every three years since 1995.
Judging from last spring's survey, the risky behaviors tracked have decreased overall since 2001.
According to the survey, the number of 12th-graders who drink alcohol daily, weekly or monthly dropped from 53 percent in 2001 to 43 percent last spring. Lower grade levels, however, saw slight increases, with regular alcohol use increasing among sixth-graders from 3 percent to 6 percent and among ninth-graders from 27 percent to 28.7 percent.
Regular use of marijuana also decreased overall, from 13 percent to 11 percent among ninth-graders and from 22 percent to 12 percent among seniors. Use increased slightly among sixth-graders, from zero to 0.7 percent (two children).
But while alcohol and marijuana use may be on the slide, any use among young people is wrong, Allen said, for two reasons - it's illegal and it can damage their growing central nervous system. Substance abuse and other risky behaviors can also interfere with a student's ability to learn.
"There's no such thing as a social drinker with kids," Allen said Tuesday at a meeting of the Horace Mann Elementary School PTA.
According to Allen, the most abused substances among youth, in order of prevalence, are alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana.
The Youth at Risk survey also showed a decrease in cigarette use across the board, from 2.6 percent in 2001 to 2.5 percent in 2004 among sixth-graders, 19.3 percent to 17.6 percent among ninth-graders and 36 percent to 25 percent among seniors.
But while use of all the top-abused substances is relatively low at the sixth-grade level, surveys show those numbers only increase as students get older.
Students who use once or twice a month, "as they move on will continue patterns of drinking ... and at its worst become alcoholics and are using every day," Allen said.
He also used smoking as an example, saying cigarette use is more about appearance for sixth-graders, thinking, "What do I look like holding this cigarette?"
But 12th-graders "are not thinking how it makes me look. They think, 'I need a cigarette.' That is about addiction," Allen said.
Allen attributed the jump in substance use from sixth grade to 12th grade to increased freedom, mobility, independence and risk-taking, as well as having a larger pool of friends and older friends.
The loudest message against using alcohol and other drugs comes from teachers, who edged out parents, friends and the media, the survey said. Allen stressed the influence teachers can have.
"If their all-time favorite teacher makes a statement, maybe this time will be the time they hear it," he said.
And because having friends who drink is one of the main risk factors for using alcohol, communication among parents is an important step in stopping the spread.
Of the survey respondents who said they use alcohol, 38 percent of ninth-graders and 59 percent of seniors said they drank at a friend's home.
Four years ago, the Indiana school district and Communities That Care started the Caring Homes Campaign as a way to help families of friends communicate. To participate, parents sign a pledge form saying they will provide a safe environment in their home and give contact information to be included in a Caring Homes directory. If a child is going to a friend's house, his or her parents can use the directory to call the friend's parents to learn more about their home environment.
Just as stress, high blood pressure and a bad diet can increase a person's risk of heart disease, risk factors such as low self-esteem or an unsupportive home can increase a child's likelihood of substance abuse or other risky behaviors, Allen said.
He often refers to a list of 40 "developmental assets" believed to help young people grow up healthy, caring and responsible. The assets were identified by the Search Institute in Minneapolis, Minn., a nonprofit agency that does research on youth behavior.
The more of those assets a child has - such as valuing diversity, feeling safe at home and completing homework on time - the less likely the child is to exhibit risky behaviors, Allen said. Developing these assets in children is crucial.
"It's not rocket science," Allen said.
And it's not just parents and schools who are responsible for developing healthy young people - the community, too, plays a role.
In addition to reaching out to their own children, Allen suggests adults strike up a conversation with other young people they come across - "even if they're bagging your groceries or giving you change" in the check-out line - just to let them know someone cares.
The Survey
Taking part in the 2004 Youth at Risk survey were 281 sixth-graders, 238 ninth-graders and 234 12th-graders in the Indiana Area School District.
Various findings:
Using alcohol: 43 percent of 12th-graders, 28.7 percent of ninth-graders and 6 percent of sixth-graders.
Using marijuana regularly were 12 percent of 12th-graders, 11 percent of ninth-graders and 0.7 percent of sixth-graders.
Smoking cigarettes regularly were 25 percent of seniors, 17.6 percent of ninth-graders and 2.5 percent of sixth-graders.
Three sixth-graders, three ninth-graders and five seniors reported using cocaine.
12 seniors, 10 ninth-graders and four sixth-graders reported carrying a weapon to school.
Developmental Assets
The Search Institute in Minneapolis, Minn., a nonprofit agency that does research on young people, identified 40 assets that help young people grow up healthy, caring and responsible:
Support
Family support, Positive family communication, Supportive relationships with other adults, Caring neighborhood, Caring school climate, Parent involvement in schooling
Empowerment
A community that values youth, Youth used as resources, Service to others, Feeling safe at home, school, in community
Boundaries, expectations
Family has clear rules, consequences, School has clear rules, consequences, Neighbors also monitor behavior, Adult role models, Positive peer influence, High expectations from parents, teachers
use of time
Creative activities (music, arts, etc.), Youth programs (sports, clubs, etc.), Religious community, Spending time at home
Commitment to learning
Motivated to do well in school, Actively engaged in learning, Does homework, Cares about his/her school, Reads for pleasure
Positive values
Helps others, Values equality, social justice, Integrity, Honesty, Accepts, takes responsibility, Uses restraint with drugs, sexual activity
Social competencies
Plans ahead, makes decisions, Practices empathy, sensitivity, Knowledge of, comfort with other cultures, Can resist negative peer pressure, danger, Resolves conflict nonviolently
Positive identity
Feels in control of self, High self-esteem, Sense of purpose, Positive view of the future
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13410686&BRD=1078&PAG=461&dept_id=151025&rfi=6
(AP) -- New reports accuse another drug company of being too slow to pull a dangerous medication from the market and question the ability of the federal Food and Drug Administration to protect the public from such risks.
This time it's Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering statin that Bayer AG withdrew in 2001 after some who took it developed a severe and sometimes fatal muscle disorder. A new study found that the risks were far greater than had been believed.
The study concludes that today's top-selling statins are very safe, but could be risky when taken with other drugs called fibrates by older people with diabetes.
It also reveals that fibrates alone can be dangerous. These drugs lower triglycerides and often are taken by diabetics.
Six papers on the issue were to be released Monday and will be published Dec. 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Its editors called for a new, independent office separate from the FDA to monitor drugs after they're on the market.
"It is unreasonable to expect that the same agency that was responsible for approval of drug licensing and labeling would also be committed to actively seek evidence to prove itself wrong," they write.
Merck & Co. and the FDA have been accused of moving too slowly to stop sales of the arthritis drug Vioxx, which Merck withdrew in September after revealing it raised the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Some scientists claim that pain killers similar to Vioxx, especially Pfizer Inc.'s Bextra, also carry risks.
On Thursday, Dr. David Graham, associate director of science in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, told a Senate panel that the FDA was incapable of protecting the public, and that dangerous drugs are being sold now. Bextra and AstraZeneca PLC's statin, Crestor, were among the five he named.
Crestor wasn't part of the new study that Graham and nine other government and private scientists published Monday because the drug was only approved in August 2003 and their study started in 2001, just after Bayer withdrew Baycol.
They checked records from 11 large health insurance companies on more than 250,000 statin-users from 1998 to 2001. Statins lower LDL or "bad" cholesterol, and fibrates lower a different kind of fat in the blood, triglycerides. People often are prescribed both.
Those taking the top-selling statins Lipitor, Pravachol and Zocor had an extremely low risk of the muscle disorder. But it was five times more common in people taking a fibrate, and an additional two-fold greater in people taking both types of drugs.
The risk with Baycol was 10 times higher than for other statins, and astronomical when it was combined with a fibrate: one out of 10 patients taking these for a year would have developed the dangerous side effect.
"I can't think of another drug safety combination where the level of risk is this high," Graham said.
Some popular brand names of fibrates are Abitrate, Atromid, Lopid and TriCor. As for Crestor, the newest statin on the market, its label already warns that people over 65 and those with diabetes or kidney problems are at greater risk of the muscle disorder.
Bayer said it disclosed risks properly
Bayer added a similar warning to Baycol's label but not for more than a year and a half after it had evidence of the risk, Dr. Bruce Psaty of the University of Washington in Seattle and three other drug safety experts write in another article in the medical journal.
As proof, they cited published studies on Baycol and internal company documents that have become public as part of a lawsuit in Texas against Bayer over the drug.
There is a "striking asymmetry" between what the company knew within three months of putting Baycol on the market and what it told the public and physicians, they write. Companies have financial motives to keep such damaging information quiet, and should not be in charge of monitoring the safety of their own drugs -- an independent group needs to do this, they write.
A lawyer for Bayer, Joseph Piorkowski, wrote a response noting that Psaty and another author have been experts for people who unsuccessfully sued Bayer over Baycol. He also defended the company's actions, saying it labeled and disclosed risks appropriately.
In a separate article, Dr. Brian Strom of the University of Pennsylvania acknowledged the conflict of interest in allowing drug companies to monitor their own products, but said the solution is more support for the FDA and its work -- not another oversight agency.
Graham, the FDA whistleblower, said people taking statins or fibrates should watch for signs of the life-threatening muscle disorder, which can be treated if caught early. Patients should immediately tell doctors of any muscle pain, weakness, fever, dark urine, nausea or vomiting.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/11/22/risky.drugs.ap/
French gangland boss on trial for cigarette scam
MARSEILLE, Nov 22 (AFP) - "Mad Jacky," one of the most notorious gang-leaders in the 1960s French underworld, goes on trial in Marseille Tuesday accused of taking part in a scam to manufacture contraband cigarettes.
Jacky Imbert, 73, better known by his gang-land nickname "Jacky le Mat," has been in custody since October last year when he was arrested in a police raid on his home.
Described in a profile in Le Monde newspaper as "The Last Mobster," Imbert was suspected by police of starting a career as a contract killer in the early 1960s before sharing with Gaetan "Tani" Zampa control over the thriving Marseille crime scene.
After falling out with Zampa, he was gunned down in 1977 but survived to settle accounts in a grisly series of killings in the following months, Le Monde said.
Later he claimed to have retired from the underworld, but police say that a phone-tap of his home in February 2003 linked him to an operation being run by the Russian mafia to build a clandestine cigarette factory in a warehouse in a suburb of Marseille.
Imbert's lawyer Catherine Martini said that he denied any connection with the affair, and pointed out that he has never once been convicted of a crime.
In an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur magazine in 1993, Imbert said: "The cops always came to ask me about the jobs I didn't do. For the ones I did do, I never saw anyone."
Six other people were arrested in the police investigation. The trial is expected to last till Friday.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=14213&name=French+gangland+boss+on+trial+for+cigarette+scam
Community forum addresses harm done by smoking
By ANNA M. LEE Managing Editor November 22, 2004
Citizens and leaders of Brewton and East Brewton gathered Thursday night at D.W. McMillan Memorial Hospital to discuss the damage smoking does to individuals and the whole community.
Pediatrician Marsha Raulerson brought to the discussion some startling facts about the effects of secondhand smoke on children.
For example, children with respiratory illnesses almost always live with a smoker, the leading cause of asthma in children is secondhand smoke, and smoking is the No. 1 cause of low birthweight in babies, she said.
Also at the forum, Spike Maxwell, who has been in the insurance industry for 21 years, spoke about the additional costs smokers pay for insurance and his own personal experiences with loved ones who smoked.
"It's a scary thing, and you hate to see people you love walking around with oxygen tanks," he told the group. "If you know people who smoke and you love them, do what you can to influence them."
A respiratory therapist for 24 years, Lillian Heller is no stranger to the damage caused by smoking. She said that 85 percent of smoke produced by a cigarette is a particularly harmful form of smoke that contains smaller particles which reach deeper into a person's lungs and are harder to exhale.
"Young children are especially vulnerable to secondhand smoke because their lungs do not fully mature until they are teens," she said.
"For every eight smokers that the tobacco industry kills, it takes one non-smoker with them," Heller added.
Wendy Riley told the painful story of how her father -- who smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a day -- died of tongue and laryngeal cancer after a very long battle. She said her father had begun smoking at the age of nine.
Riley said her experience with her father has turned her into a hater of smoking. "I hope we can all work together, and I will do anything to make this a reality," she said of the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Escambia County's efforts to encourage East Brewton and Brewton to a public smoking ban.
Thursday's forum was organized by Tina Findley, Tobacco Prevention and Control Coordinator with the Alabama Department of Public Health. Findley said the Coalition has collected 1,200 signatures of people in the area who support a smoking ban.
http://www.brewtonstandard.com/articles/2004/11/22/news/news02.txt
*yes they archive
Europe: Where The Smoke Is Clearing
Many countries are finally getting serious about banning smoking in public place
It's pouring rain on Friday evening in Cork city center, and pub owner Gareth Kendellen is thrilled to have a hole in his roof. In fact, it has saved his business. When Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking in all workplaces, including bars and restaurants, on Mar. 29, Kendellen watched customers dwindle and sales plunge 30% at his Paddy the Farmer's pub. Then he hit on a radical solution, spending $25,500 to cut a hole in the roof and create a 50-square-foot room beneath it, open to the sky but separated from the rest of the pub by brick and glass walls. His Players-puffing patrons flocked back, secure in the knowledge that an outdoor smoke hole was just a step away. "Takings are back to normal, although we have to keep a stock of free umbrellas behind the bar," he says.
Looks like a lot more European bar owners are going to have to pull out the saws pretty soon. Under pressure from medical organizations and restive nonsmokers, national governments around Europe are finally getting serious about tackling tobacco. Norway and Malta have already followed Ireland's lead, and Sweden will join the club next summer. This month, Britain is expected to announce its own curbs, which industry observers predict will outlaw smoking in restaurants and pubs that serve food. Even in France, where restaurants and Gauloise seem as indelible a partnership as croissants and coffee, enforcement of a largely ignored restriction on indoor smoking has been stepped up.
The anti-smoking campaigns are starting to work. Cigarette sales in Europe, excluding heavy smokers Greece and Portugal, have fallen 6.3% in the past two years, says British research group Euromonitor International, and they are expected to drop an additional 6.4% by 2009. "There has been a recent shift in public opinion against smoking," says Zora Milenkovic, Euromonitor's head of tobacco industry research. "More people than ever are aware that passive smoking can kill, and I think more countries will start cracking down."
Ireland's example gives European bar owners and tobacco companies plenty to worry about. Gallaher Group LLC (GLH ), which holds half the Irish cigarette market and is Europe's third-largest tobacco company, says the ban helped push total cigarette sales in Ireland down 7.5% in the first six months of 2004. Gallaher is campaigning through the Tobacco Manufacturers Assn. for softer regulations in Britain, where it has 38% of the market. "We understand that restrictions need to be made, but I hope Britain stops short of pubs," says Tim Lord, chief executive of the Tobacco Manufacturers Assn.
GRUESOME PICS
Outright bans aren't the only weapons wielded by politicians. The European Union in October called on governments to put gruesome pictures of cancerous growths and blackened lungs on cigarette packs. Many countries are using tax hikes to suppress sales. Germany added 32 cents a pack in levies in March, 2004, bringing the average price of a pack of smokes to $4.90, and will hike taxes by the same amount in December and then in September, 2005.
But higher taxes don't always have the expected results. In France, tax hikes to cover a hole in the social security budget have raised the price of an average pack by 39% over the past two years, to $6.40. That has led to a 30% plunge in cigarette sales, but not an equivalent decline in smoking, as consumers turn to the Internet, cross-border, and black-market sources.
Perhaps harder-hit than the tobacco companies are Ireland's world-famous pubs. A survey by market-research firm Behaviour & Attitudes found that Dublin pub revenues fell by 16% in the first three months of the ban. Rural bars have seen receipts falling by a quarter. "I've seen countless pubs up for sale since March," says Seamus O'Donoghue, president of the Vintners' Federation of Ireland. An Ireland without pubs? Now that's an unintended consequence.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_47/b3909080_mz054.htm
Housing Location and Asthma
22 Nov 2004
Where is the best place for people with asthma to live?
It is often assumed that it is better for people with asthma to live in a rural area rather than in an inner city.
However, research has shown that even in the least polluted parts of the UK, such as the Scottish Highlands, the proportion of people with asthma is about the same as that elsewhere.
There is no best place to live for everyone with asthma.
Living somewhere where a person comes into contact with fewer of their triggers is a good idea, if they can be identified and avoided. (A trigger is anything that irritates the airways and causes the symptoms of asthma to appear.)
Some triggers can occur in any part of the country, eg viral infections or cigarette smoke, while others may vary locally, eg air quality or pollen.
More information on possible local triggers is available.
Air quality
Check local levels of air pollution by contacting the Air Pollution Information Service, run by the UK Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DeFRA), or on Teletext page 156.
Pollen
Pollens can blow for many miles but for general details send a SAE and a note of the area(s) you would like information about to the Pollen Research Unit.
During the summer look out for regional pollen counts in local media, or on Teletext or television or radio weather forecasts�� CONTINUES���.www.asthma.org.uk
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=16702
Court Asks for New Bail Ruling for Yemeni Delicatessan Owner -NY
by: Dave Debo, Producer 11/21/2004
An appeals court wants a federal judge to
reconsider his decision to jail a Yemeni-American businessman convicted of tobacco smuggling.
The U.S. second Circuit Court of Appeals has directed U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara to review a request to release Mohammed Abuhamra on bail.
The appellate judges expressed concerned about the use of secret government evidence in a bail decision, and returned the case to Arcara rather than overturning the decision.
Abuhamra is a former delicatessen operator from Lackawanna who's awaiting sentencing. He was one of five men convicted in March of taking part in a multi million-dollar contraband cigarette
case.
http://www.wgrz.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=24509
Posted at 12:26 am by looped_ca
Sunday, November 21, 2004
'I'm no health zealot'
Patrick Hennessy reports (Filed: 21/11/2004)
John Reid, the Health Secretary nicknamed Britain's 'nursemaid-in-chief', talks to Patrick Hennessy and Matthew d'Ancona about finding a balance between nannying and freedom of choice
Last week, the champions of the view that New Labour runs Britain as a nanny state were presented with their biggest victory since Tony Blair came to power.
In the space of a few days, Labour announced plans to ban smoking in offices, restaurants and most pubs, and to impose severe restrictions on the advertising of junk food, while MPs also voted to outlaw hunting with dogs.
"Nanny knows best," one headline thundered, while countless commentators took ministers to task over the abolition of a range of cherished freedoms.
John Reid, the Health Secretary and architect of Tuesday's White Paper on public health, found himself cast in the unlikely role of Britain's nursemaid-in-chief.
Stereotyped as an ex-Communist, Glaswegian bruiser, Dr Reid, who has a PhD in history from Stirling University, is the minister Tony Blair uses to sort out problems.
His Cabinet career has already encompassed stints in the Northern Ireland Office and as Labour Party chairman.
When The Telegraph met him on Friday, he immediately launched into an impassioned defence of his plans to curb passive smoking and help the nation develop healthier eating habits.
Dr Reid is clearly proud of the "compromise" formula in the White Paper that allows smoking to continue in private-members' clubs, as well as pubs that do not serve food - between 10 and 25 per cent of the total, according to various estimates.
He readily acknowledges that he has gone against the wishes of the health zealots who wanted a blanket ban, and that the new laws will see a different regime in England and Wales from that introduced in his native Scotland, where a total ban on smoking in public will apply.
"Most people are quite happy that I have gone further than they thought I would go, because I was portrayed in some of the media as being totally for a free market in cigarette smoking. Lobby groups can be very zealous.
They start off by saying, 'we want to ban it because of its effect on others, in workplaces and so on, so you have to smoke in the street or on beaches.'
Then, as the health minister in Sydney is saying, the big step is banning it in the open air and on beaches because of pollution. Then you get Bhutan in the Himalayas, where they want to ban it completely and imprison everybody, and so on.
"Now, I am not going there. I have to try to get the balance between protection and freedoms. This seems to me to be a sensible compromise."
Recent changes in Dr Reid's way of life act as a personal advertisement for his department's policies.
Once a heavy drinker, he was ordered off the booze by John Smith, the former Labour leader, shortly before his death in 1994.
In 2002, Dr Reid, who was a 60-a-day man, gave up smoking completely at the time of his marriage to his second wife, Carine Adler, a glamorous Brazilian film-maker.
"We were making arrangements to be married and, for the first time, it occurred to me that this was going to be a fairly short marriage because I was in my fifties and couldn't expect to live any more than 20 years," he said.
"Then a second thought struck me - no, that will be 10 years because I am smoking. It brought home to me that I was effectively making a choice between another 10 years of my life, probably, or another cigarette. So I decided to give up. It's as simple as that. This reinforced my view that, actually, people make their own decisions.
"Carine didn't like me smoking but she didn't nag me. She helped me come to the conclusion that I was cutting my life short. Since I enjoy my life, why put a 10-year limit on it?"
Dr Reid said that he started smoking at the age of 15 only because a teacher thought he could force a fellow pupil to give up.
On a school trip to Rome, the teacher caught the boy smoking and, to punish him, told him to finish the packet before the following morning and show him the stubs as proof.
The boy called on others, including Dr Reid, to help him, and the future Secretary of State for Health embarked on a 40-year habit.
Now, however, he is extremely conscious of the need at least to try to set a good example. In his office, on the fourth floor of the Department of Health in Parliament Street (a workplace in which smoking is already banned), can be seen a can of Diet Coke.
On a telephone table, there is a bowl of fruit, mirroring the Government advice to eat five portions a day - it contains an apple, banana, bunch of grapes, satsuma, and a plum.
Warming to his theme, Dr Reid went on to outline the first stages of a Government drive against chlamydia, which presents a severe threat to fertility, and other sexually transmitted diseases, a problem he describes as reaching "epidemic proportions", and one that must be treated in the same way as the then Tory government tackled the HIV-Aids crisis in the 1980s.
"I have no doubt that people will say I am nannying again," he said. "But all sensible people know that it isn't nannying, it's telling people the consequences of their own actions. You decide - but here's where this will lead you in terms of your own health."
What about the decision, also in the White Paper, to make food manufacturers adopt a "traffic-light" system for labelling their products? Isn't this nannying?
"People asked me for that. They say, and I can understand it, that the obligatory information that is provided at the moment on the back of packets in the supermarkets requires probably an hour and a PhD in biochemistry to understand. If you give people the information that we are introducing, it allows adults to make the choice. The nanny attitude is appropriate with children, not with adults."
The smoking "compromise" is one that Dr Reid regrets has not happened over hunting with dogs, which will be outlawed from February.
He has been a consistent supporter of the "middle-way" approach, also backed by the Prime Minister, to permit licensed hunting.
He admitted: "I am very much in a minority on this one. All the Liberals, all the Nationalists, many of the Tories and a huge number of my own colleagues, all feel that I am wrong. Tony went to extraordinary lengths to try to avoid this, but we're here seven years later. Sometimes you just have to say, 'look, however I try, it's the will of Parliament'."
In a wide-ranging interview, Dr Reid also took time to address the plight of the Conservative Party, which is trailing Labour by anything up to nine per cent in the opinion polls.
He claims that the Tories have not learned the lessons Labour did, seven years after its own traumatic landslide defeat on 1983. "I look at the Conservatives and I don't think they have made any advances at all."
Mischievously, he poses as an unlikely champion of the "moderate" Tories removed from the party's front bench by Michael Howard, including John Bercow, Julie Kirkbride and, most recently, Boris Johnson.
"Michael Howard seems to be modelling his strategic approach on Trotskyite Left groups. He is saying, 'we're going to take anybody who might be, by their very demeanour and character, a compromise with the electorate and the real world, and get rid of them."
During the protracted period of Tony Blair's "wobble", earlier this year, when, at one stage, it seemed likely that he would quit before the next election, Dr Reid emerged as one of the Prime Minister's biggest cheerleaders, declaring that there was "no vacancy" at 10 Downing Street.
Now that there is a vacancy, albeit not for some years, after the Prime Minister's announcement that he plans to step down after a full third term, would he join the race to succeed Mr Blair?
His answer falls firmly into the category of a politician failing to rule himself out of the running.
"I think there will be four years during which there will be endless speculation. I have no intention of setting another hare running."
He also had a disguised warning for Gordon Brown, a long-time political foe and the overwhelming favourite to inherit the crown.
"In that timescale in politics, where a week is a long time, at the end of that timescale there will be people we've never considered who will be candidates."
When the next Labour leadership election does come, few would bet against Dr Reid, the ex-Communist turned Blairite hardman, being a contender, even at the age of 60 (a landmark he will reach in 2007).
The postman's son, who started work as a labourer, has faced up to many challenges in his life and is highly unlikely to turn away from the biggest battle of all.
The good DR.REID
Study suggests Chernobyl resulted in 800 cancer cases among Swedes
By: MATTIAS KAREN - Associated Press
STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- More than 800 people in northern Sweden may have cancer as a result of the fallout that spewed over the region after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, according to a new study by Swedish scientists.
The figure is significantly higher than any previous estimate, and the study drew immediate fire from critics who said they doubted the accuracy of the results.
The radiation was released on April 26, 1986, when reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded and caught fire, contaminating an area roughly half the size of Colorado, forcing the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people and ruining some of Europe's most fertile farmland.
The study monitored cancer cases among the more than 1.1 million people in the northern parts of Sweden who were exposed to the radioactive fallout between 1988-1996, and found that the cancer risk increased in areas with higher levels of fallout, which was spread by winds.
Of the 22,400 cancer cases among the group, 849 can be statistically attributed to Chernobyl, said Martin Tondel, a researcher at Linkoeping University who headed the study. The findings were first published in this month's issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, a science magazine.
But Leif Moberg, a radiation expert with the Swedish Radiation Protection Authority, questioned the findings.
"The radiation dosage that we in Sweden got after the accident was too low to produce this many cancer cases," Moberg said, adding it was probably too early to see any definite results of Chernobyl. "Most cancer cases don't develop until 20, 30 or 50 years later," he said.
Tondel, however, said that although the increase of cases can't directly be attributed to Chernobyl, he could not see any other explanation.
"We've tried our best to explain it in other ways, but we can't," Tondel told the AP. "So then you have to believe your data."
Tondel said factors like increased smoking, population density and age had all been taken into account in the study.
"With every statistical method we used to look at it, we see an increase (in cases) across the board," he said. "That indicates that it's a Chernobyl effect."
The Swedish Radiation Protection Authority has previously estimated that the fallout will produce about 300 cancer deaths in 50 years.
Moberg said another factor that speaks against the study was that there was no significant increase in cases of leukemia or thyroid gland cancer, which are usually the most common among radiation victims.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/11/21/special_reports/science_technology/16_52_3911_20_04.txt
Chernobyl Link to Rising Cancer Rates
By John von Radowitz, PA Science Correspondent
Scientific evidence that fallout from Chernobyl may have raised cancer rates in western Europe has emerged for the first time.
Researchers in Sweden identified a suspicious increase in cancer incidence in parts of the country exposed to the radiation cloud from the nuclear disaster.
They said the trend, though not dramatic, was “somewhat unexpected”.
It showed a statistically relevant correlation between the degree of fallout and an observed rise in the number of total cancer cases.
This was despite a relatively short exposure time and low doses of radiation. An estimated 300 extra deaths may have occurred as a result of cancers acquired between 1988 and 1996, said the scientists.
Britain’s radiation watchdog, the National Radiation Protection Board (NRPB) is to study the research.
The explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986, was the world’s worst nuclear accident. It killed 31 people and released a plume of radioactive caesium that was blown across Europe.
In the Ukraine, 3.7 million people were affected by radiation and more than 160,000 inhabitants had to be resettled.
The radiation cloud drifted for thousands of miles. Several days after the explosion a blanket of poisonous caesium fell over England, Wales and the south and west of Scotland.
Restrictions were imposed on about 10,000 sheep farms, costing the British taxpayer an estimated £13 million in compensation.
Last year sheep on almost 400 British farms were still having to be monitored with radiation detectors before being sold for human consumption.
Fish were also affected. Three years after the accident, contaminated trout, pike and perch continued to turn up in British rivers.
The impact on human health emerged from studies in Belarus, Ukraine, and western Russia which showed dramatic increases in thyroid cancer incidence in children.
But the Swedish study is the first to produce evidence of illness linked to Chernobyl outside the former Soviet Union.
Five per cent of the radioactive caesium was deposited on northern Sweden by heavy rainfall on April 28 and 29, 1986.
The fallout was unevenly distributed and involved much lower exposure than occurred in eastern Europe.
A team of scientists led by Martin Tondel, from Linkoping University, divided the parishes of seven northernmost Swedish counties into six classes based on ground coverage of the radioactive isotope, Caesium-137.
Of a total of 450 parishes, 333 were affected by the fallout. One class, comprising 117 parishes, received no fallout and the people living there were used as a baseline comparison group.
Individuals up to the age of 60 who were resident in the parishes at the time of the disaster were included in the study.
Out of a total of 1,143,182 people, 22,409 cases of cancer were registered during the years 1998 to 1996.
Analysis of the data showed that cancer rates rose alongside elevated levels of radiation exposure.
A 0.11-fold excess risk was observed for every 100 kiloBecquerels of radiation per square metre.
The scientists, who took account of confounding factors such as smoking and population density, wrote in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health: “Unless simply representing a chance phenomenon, the findings in our study are somewhat unexpected indicating a possible cancer effect of the Chernobyl fallout in north Sweden despite a short latency period and low degree of exposure.”
The scientists said if the effect was real, it showed that the risk from low dose radiation may be greater than that predicted by international guidelines.
However they acknowledged that a “crucial question” was whether some unidentified risk factor for cancer might have swayed the results.
Another factor was that the trend only applied to total cancer rates, not the risk of individual cancers – including thyroid which is particularly sensitive to radioactive caesium.
Dr Mike Clark, scientific spokesman at the NRPB, which advises the Government on radiation issues, said: “We will look at this work carefully. They report an increase in general cancer rates in northern Sweden after Chernobyl but not in thyroid cancer.
“This is unexpected, given the definite increase in thyroid cancer observed in the former Soviet Union due to Chernobyl. The authors comment themselves on this rather odd result.”
He added that there was no clear increase in leukaemia rates, which might be expected if radiation was involved.
However no obvious impact on leukaemia has yet been seen in even the most heavily polluted areas of the former Soviet Union.
The association between leukaemia and radiation is based on the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War.
It has been suggested that the leukaemia danger might be unique to the very high-dose, short-duration radiation exposures experienced after a nuclear bomb blast.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3785239
'Hidden Killer' Claims 30,000 Lives Each Year
By Lyndsay Moss, PA Health Correspondent
A little-known but deadly respiratory disease kills 20 times more people than asthma each year, campaigners warned today.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which includes smoking-related conditions such as bronchitis and emphysema, is responsible for some 30,000 deaths a year in the UK.
But asthma, which enjoys a much larger public profile, causes just 1,400 deaths annually.
The British Thoracic Society warned there could be thousands of smokers living with the early symptoms of COPD without even realising it.
The condition is often called “the hidden killer” because of its lack of public profile.
Last week the Government announced a ban on smoking in most public places within four years in efforts to cut exposure to second-hand smoke and encourage more smokers to quit.
The ban, outlined in the long-awaited Public Health White Paper, will apply in all workplaces, betting shops, casinos, and all pubs which serve food in England.
But many campaigners condemned the move as a missed opportunity, saying a blanket ban across all public places would have ensured better protection from smoking for everyone.
The BTS COPD Consortium said that, although there are 600,000 diagnosed cases of COPD in the UK, this could be the “tip of the iceberg” because of a lack of awareness about the symptoms.
A regular chesty cough is one of the early-warning signs of COPD, with others including breathlessness on mild exertion, frequent coughs and colds in winter and persistent phlegm production.
More than five times the number of hospital bed days are spent treating patients with COPD compared to asthma.
A survey by the BTS found that one in five smokers aged 15 to 54 had a persistent smoker’s cough, but almost half (48%) did not realise this was an early warning sign of a potentially serious lung disease.
“COPD is the third-largest cause of respiratory death worldwide, and is expected to be the third most common cause of overall deaths worldwide by 2020,” said Dr David Bellamy, a GP from Bournemouth.
“Thousands of middle-aged smokers could be experiencing the early-warning symptoms of COPD but, due to their lack of awareness of the disease, are not getting it checked out.
“Going to your GP or practice nurse for a simple breath test is extremely important – the sooner we can catch this disease the better the health outcome for the patient.”
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3785242
Blowing smoke in the faces of the righteous
By Tim Luckhurst November 21 2004 at 07:56PM
Promoting Scotland's "comprehensive ban" on public smoking on a television programme, Rhona Brankin, Scotland's deputy health minister, declared: "One in four of all deaths in Scotland is directly attributable to smoking."
In a separate interview, she said: "One in four of all deaths is attributable to smoking. About 13 000 people die every year as a result of smoking."
The most recent statistics reveal that 57 382 people died in Scotland in 2001. If one in four of them died for the reasons Brankin offers, that would give a smoking-related death toll of 14 345, not 13 000.
So is the minister guilty of modest exaggeration in the service of a noble cause? The one-in-four statistic is more than that. It is an article of faith among anti-smoking campaigners, but it is not as straightforward as it sounds.
These are not just lung cancer deaths. Brankin's toll includes every Scot who has died of "smoking-related complaints". To get into that category, alleged victims of smoking do not need to have smoked. They are counted in on the basis that killers including heart disease, strokes and bronchitis can be caused by smoking. Nobody checks the lifestyles of the victims to ascertain if they smoked. Brankin's press spokesperson acknowledges the minister should have said "linked to" smoking, not "directly attributable".
Even that would have been tenuous. Some of these dead Scots did smoke but died at or beyond the average Scottish lifespans of 73 years for men and 78 for women. The same applies to many of the 140 000 Englishmen and women Britain's leading anti-smoking charity, ASH, asserts die each year as a result of smoking. ASH justifies including them on the grounds that deaths from smoking can follow years of painful disability and are thus worth preventing even if they have not technically shortened a life.
The issue here is not whether smoking kills, but whether it is legitimate to lie in the service of a good cause. Amanda Sandford, the head of research at ASH, offers an intriguing response.
"Smoking is the biggest single cause of preventable death and anti-smokers do not abuse statistics deliberately," she explains. "But I don't really want to be drawn into that. It isn't black and white."
Pushed to explain precisely what she means, Sandford says: "Epidemiology is not a direct science. Our business is promoting public health. It is possible that in certain cases some anti-smoking campaigners do exaggerate [she is adamant that ASH does not], but if statistics lied, it would be bad. There needs to be a justification for it. To deliberately distort would not be acceptable. If there is an element of doubt, we should express that. Scientists usually express their statements in terms of caution."
She acknowledges that figures like Brankin's 13 000 and ASH's 140 000 are sometimes "rounded up" but insists that any inflation is slight and is ironed out by annual variations in death rates. I acknowledge that ASH has excellent motives.
The problem is that the degree of exaggeration that has converted hostility to tobacco from a health cause to a neo-religious crusade does not look slight when it is exposed to careful analysis. It has created a very misleading impression about the real chance of a smoker dying from lung cancer.
Habitual, lifelong smokers face a 30 to 40-fold higher risk of contracting lung cancer than non-smokers. That sounds massive and many smokers are persuaded to quit because they believe it is. But, since the risk of lung cancer in non-smokers is minuscule, it does not amount to an objectively high risk.
Sandford admits: "Smokers are more likely to die of heart disease than lung cancer." And pro-smoking campaigner Joe Jackson argues: "Even if you're a heavy smoker, your chances of not getting lung cancer are still more than 99 percent."
Jackson's claim is based on Professor Sir Richard Doll's original research on smoking and lung cancer. It calculated that 166 smokers in every 100 000 die from lung cancer. Subsequent research has proved that conservative. One doctor says: "If you smoke 30 a day for 50 years you probably face a one-in-10 chance of developing lung cancer. It is a horrible way to die."
For that reason, the demonisation of tobacco companies as merchants of death does not offend me. Above the desk in my office, where I used to smoke 15 cigarettes a day until health concerns persuaded me to give up, hangs a reminder of the lies told in defence of a vicious business. It is a Camel advertisement from around the time of Doll's groundbreaking report. Beneath the question "How mild can a cigarette be?" it asserts that there has been "Not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking Camels" and supports this with the evidence of "noted throat specialists".
Cigarette manufacturers have murdered facts and perverted science to persuade consumers to continue smoking. When they first learned that cigarettes kill, they responded by deliberately advertising preposterous claims about health benefits. Smokers of my father's generation were told that the habit eased digestion by increasing the flow of digestive juices and the alkalinity of the stomach.
But as Scotland's devolved administration leads Britain towards a ban on the public indulgence of a dangerous but legal habit, it is worth recognising that the lies told by anti-smoking campaigners are substantial as well. Their intentions may be magnificent, but their tactics are not. If objective truth counts for anything, then the title "merchants of sanctimony" is too generous. Anti-smokers have allowed their moral antipathy to smoking to distort their scientific advocacy. In private, many scientists and some doctors acknowledge it.
Dr Ken Denson of the Thame Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Foundation says: "I simply do not know where they conjure up their statistics. The statistics for passive smoking in particular would not be published or even considered in any other scientific discipline. Deaths from smoking in general have been grossly exaggerated, particularly in relation to heart disease."
Denson is a medical scientist. He has published peer-reviewed research in respected academic journals. He is not funded by tobacco companies.
Is he right? The method by which Brankin arrived at her "one-in-four" claim and ASH derives its 140 000 deaths categorises 16 diseases as "smoking related". Many of them are also caused by poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity and other poverty-related problems that are regrettably common in urban Scotland and similar post-industrial areas.
If you use cigarettes and are poor, fat and reluctant to eat vegetables, you are substantially more likely to die young than a smoker who is affluent, active and well fed. One-in-four includes people who would have died when they did without smoking a single cigarette. It also includes affluent smokers who die from heart attacks in their late 80s.
The evidence that passive smoking harms health, on which the Scottish and British governments both base their arguments for statutory restrictions, is even more inflated. Denson, whose work on passive smoking has been published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, says much of the evidence that passive smoking harms health "has been exaggerated, contrived or at worst falsified."
Even Sandford admits: "A lot of the studies that have been done on passive smoking produce results that are not statistically significant according to conventional analysis." But she still insists that passive smoking is a real health risk, made worse by the fact that it is involuntary.
There might appear to be no objective difference between overlooking conventional scientific method and deliberate distortion. But that is the problem with the modern debate about smoking. It is no longer conducted between good people who say smoking kills and liars paid to deny it. Now it involves an industry that has, belatedly, been forced to admit that smoking kills and campaigners who are simply not satisfied with that.
They want to convince the public that death is always the result and that every smoker and many non-smokers are at risk. They see no moral fault in lying to advance their case.
Perhaps they are right and the end does justify the means. But I suspect that their tactics may make the remaining minority of smokers still more determined to smoke.
The willingness of militant anti-smokers to corrupt a good case has turned the smoking debate from a laudable campaign to improve public health into a bitterly resented attack on the minority who choose to risk smoking.
One medical researcher suggests that over-enthusiastic anti-smokers should contemplate prevailing rates of smoking among young people born after the relationship between smoking and cancer was admitted by the tobacco industry and remind themselves what happened to the boy who cried wolf. - Foreign Service
This article was originally published on page 15 of Sunday Independent on November 21, 2004
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=14&click_id=117&art_id=vn20041121104638658C777760
Opponents of smoking ban complain about vote -WY
By W. DALE NELSON Star-Tribune correspondent Sunday, November 21, 2004
LARAMIE -- The Nov. 2 vote by which an ordinance making Laramie a smoke-free city was approved should be annulled because the election was held too hastily and marred by irregularities, six voters told Second District Court.
A complaint filed on the voters' behalf Friday by attorney Janet Tyler said that in at least three polling places ballot boxes were not sealed as required by law and had no lid. In at least two polling places, required instructions for voting were not posted, the complaint said.
"The haste with which this special election was held likely contributed to it not being conducted in accordance" with state law, Tyler argued, "but such regulations are designed to insure every vote is an informed, legal vote. The special election was not so conducted."
City Attorney Peggy Trent said the city had not been served with a copy of the complaint and would have no comment. She said a response would be filed promptly. Tyler said the case was being put on an expedited docket, to be heard as soon as possible.
The ordinance, prohibiting smoking in enclosed public places including restaurants, bars and private clubs, was approved by a 6-3 vote of the City Council in September. Opponents obtained the required number of signatures to place it on the ballot as a referendum, but there was disagreement about when the election should be held.
Supporters of the measure favored having the voting on Nov. 2 along with the balloting for president and for state legislature and city council seats, arguing that this would insure wide participation by voters. Opponents favored having the no-smoking measure appear on the ballot all by itself in an election later in the year.
In an affidavit supporting the complaint, voter Ralph Burchell, who voted at Indian Paintbrush elementary school, said that "when I went to put my city ballot in the ballot box, there was no lid or cover on the ballot box and no slot through which to put the ballot."
"The box was open for anyone who would want to remove any ballots," Burchell said. "The ballots in the ballot box were viewable and obviously not secret since not folded." He said he was not told his ballot should be folded and was not provided with voting instructions.
Rachel Michael, who voted at the Albany County Public Library, said that "when I was handed a city ballot, the ballot box was sitting on a woman's lap" and "when I went to put my city ballot in the ballot box, the ballot box was on the floor." Michael, too, said the box was open and she was not told or instructed to fold her ballot.
Burchell and Michael were joined in the complaint by Richard Poledna, Patricia Davis, Marsha Lais and Sherri Derenzis.
According to the complaint, these voters understood that Slade School and Linford School, two precincts where the majority voted against the ordinance, "ran out of special election ballots, thus preventing electors in the City of Laramie from voting on the referendum."
The complaint said 1,714 people who voted in the general election, or four times the margin of victory for the ordinance, may not have been given the opportunity to vote on the referendum because of the shortage of ballots.
The plaintiffs also challenged the ballot summary of the ordinance, which said it would "prohibit smoking in enclosed areas to which the public has access and places of employment, including but not limited to restaurants, bars and private clubs." Some voters may have voted for the ordinance in the belief that it applied only to such places, and might have voted against it had they known it could apply to private offices, they said.
The ordinance would make Laramie the first smoke-free city in Wyoming. A similar measure passed by the Casper City Council was overturned by voters in 2000. Unless the referendum vote is overturned by the court, the Laramie ordinance will go into effect 270 days after its adoption by the council, which would put into effect this coming spring.
How the ban can go wrong again
Bracelet controversy in Connecticut
WINDSOR-- Some Connecticut convenience stores are cashing in on a fundraiser that was supposed to help fight cancer.
Stores are selling rubber bracelets with the word "livestrong". They are being made to look like the ones being sold as a fundraiser by the Lance Armstrong Foundation, but they are fakes.
Jerry Katz owns a gas station in New Haven. Since he started selling rubber bracelets with the "livestrong" logo ten days ago, he says they have been a major seller. He pulled them off his shelves on Saturday when he realized some of his customers might be confused into thinking they were paying one dollar and ninety-nine cents to fight cancer.
"If I decide to sell them again, I'm going to put a sign, these are not authentic and I don't see anything that myself or other convenience stores are doing wrong by just selling a bracelet", says Katz.
However not everyone agrees.
"It's not the real thing. It's a cheap knockoff. One could also worry about if the money is going to the right place", says one customer.
Many store owners say they too thought their bracelets were helping the cause. The best bet to make sure you get the real thing: check the packaging. It must specifically say the sale benefits the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
All those bracelets cost the same price, one dollar.
http://www.wfsb.com/Global/story.asp?S=2595801
Reluctant landowners buy former silo plots -MO
Published Sunday, November 21, 2004
WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE (AP) - Warnings against digging more than two feet into the ground because of cancer-causing chemicals haven’t kept people from buying 130 of the 150 former missile silo plots in Missouri being sold by the federal government.
The Air Force removed missiles and imploded the silos years ago, but that left polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, buried beneath the ground, along with other contaminants such as asbestos and fuel.
Besides the digging restrictions, buyers of the plots can’t install water wells or build structures without permission from the government.
Much of the property is being bought back by farmers who owned the land before the government took it 40 years ago to install the Cold War-era Minuteman II silos. Some farmers said they purchased the plots - at what some believe are priced too high because of the restrictions - because they didn’t want someone else having them.
"I didn’t really want to buy it back, but it has a frontage on a blacktop road that is well-traveled," said Mary Gorrell, who bought a plot on her farm near Sedalia. "We were afraid someone would buy it and it would become a public nuisance."
Retired farmer Eugene Wells, who leases his Johnson County farm for grazing, declined the offer to buy property.
Besides the price of $2,200 for 2.8 acres of land, Wells said the contract and deed restrictions raised questions for him. Among his concerns is a stipulation that the buyer and all future owners of the land could not make any claims against the government if the ground were disturbed and required cleanup.
"Why should I be responsible?" Wells asked. "The government is the one that contaminated the land."
Military officials said as long as the land is not disturbed, the contaminants should not be hazardous to humans or animals. But a state agency wants the government to do more to monitor hazardous-waste sites in the future, especially as the land changes hands.
"We increasingly learn that the risks, at least the urgent risks, are not so much an immediate and acute health risk," said James Werner of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. "The health risks are more long term."
Werner said Missouri has asked the military to help pay for a state registry to track the sites and inspectors who could check the property each year.
The General Assembly is expected to debate a bill next session that would require monitoring of hazardous-waste sites such as the missile silos for hundreds of years.
The military began dismantling and imploding Minuteman II sites in Missouri and South Dakota in the early 1990s, and later in North Dakota. Each state has about 150 silos.
PCBs were found in waterproof coatings on the silos and underground fuel storage tanks near Whiteman and near Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, S.D., in 1994.
When no problems were found after five years of monitoring the sites, the silos went up for sale last year.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2004/Nov/20041121News022.asp
Anti-smoking group fires up campaign -MS
By ARCENIA HARMON of the Tribune’s staff November 21, 2004
The Boone County Coalition for Tobacco Concerns is firing up a campaign to pursue a city ordinance that would ban smoking in Columbia bars and restaurants.
On Monday, the year-old coalition honored about 100 eateries in the city that went smoke-free. The move was an effort by the coalition to publicize the smoke-free establishments and counter the claim made by some business owners that going smoke free would slow business.
Second-hand smoke, the group says, is dangerous to customers and employees, and nonsmoking sections are little consolation.
"Second-hand smoke is full of Group A carcinogens," said coalition co-chairwoman Kim Waters, a health educator with at the University of Missouri-Columbia Student Health Center. "There is no safe level of exposure."
Columbia has no organized opposition to tighter smoking restrictions, but some opponents of smoking bans say they limit individual freedoms.
George Liggett owns Grand Cru Restaurant and the tobacco-vending Nostalgia Shop. He said lighting up a cigar at the end of a meal is part of the dining experience at his restaurant, which is also a cigar bar.
Liggett believes an ordinance isn’t needed because customers can choose to be in smoke-free establishments.
Liggett said he doesn’t know what effect a ban would have on his businesses. Many of his employees are smokers.
"I don’t have any employees who regret working in my establishment," he said. "Cigar smokers eat better, drink better and tip better."
Coalition members are laying the groundwork for a public campaign. They give presentations about the dangers of second-hand smoke whenever they can. After Thanksgiving, the coalition plans to conduct a phone survey of the city’s registered voters to gauge public opinion on smoking.
The coalition presented its views in September to the city’s Substance Abuse Advisory Commission.
"We wanted to hear what their approach was, what their thoughts were," said commission chairman Dan Vinson.
Vinson said the commission has not taken a position on a smoking ban for restaurants. "I don’t think it will be an issue we’ll address further in the foreseeable future."
But the coalition, which includes the Columbia/Boone County Health Department, Ellis Fischel State Cancer Center and the city’s Energy and Environment Commission, plans to have a proposal for the Columbia City Council to consider early next year.
"This is happening all across the country," Waters said. "Columbia should not be last in that respect."
Three other Missouri cities, Springfield, Maryville and Arnold, have ended smoking in restaurants. Eight states have also legally ended the practice, and Ireland recently initiated the first nationwide smoking ban in pubs and restaurants.
Columbia’s first ordinance to regulate smoking passed in 1987, banning smoking in public places except for restaurants that hold fewer than 50 people and from public places with a designating smoking area.
In 1996, Columbia ended most designated-smoking areas, effectively banning smoking from most public places.
In 1999, smokers were required to be at least 20 feet from the entrance of nonsmoking facilities - a restriction that had been rejected three years earlier.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2004/Nov/20041121News009.asp
Study on magnetic fields and cancer
By Nick Butterfly November 22, 2004
SCIENTISTS will study electrical magnetic fields in homes amid concerns exposure could be causing cancer in children.
The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency will conduct a survey of Extremely Low Frequency fields in Melbourne homes next June.
The regulator aims to follow up with a much larger, more comprehensive national inquiry.
While not conclusive, studies in the US and UK have linked electrical fields from household appliances and overhead powerlines with childhood leukemia.
Dr Lindsay Martin, manager of ARPANSA's electro magnetic division, said a device built to measure magnetic field strength would be placed in living rooms and bedrooms of randomly-selected homes for a day.
The study would not tell scientists about the effect of ELF fields, only what average Australian exposure levels were.
"There is a statistical link between these fields and childhood leukemia, but it is not very strong at the moment," Dr Martin said.
"No one has come up with an explanation but there would appear to be an association."
Studies overseas showed about 10 per cent of US homes suffered "dangerous" levels of electro-magnetic exposure
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11457544%255E421,00.html
Chernobyl Responsible For Cancer Spike: Study
November 21, 2004
A new study suggests more than 800 people in northern Sweden developed cancer as a result of the radioactive fallout caused by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.
Swedish scientists at Linköping University said radio active emissions were carried by the wind to Sweden and heavy rain caused a large amount of Cesium-137 to fall on northern and central Sweden.
The Swedish study suggests a statistical correlation between the degree of fallout and an observed rise in the number of cancer cases.
The scientists said the "Chernobyl effect" was the only likely explanation for 849 cancer cases they came across.
However, their findings met some skepticism from some experts do not believe the radiation fallout caused such a rise in cancer cases.
The scientists analyzed cancer data from more than 1.1 million people exposed to radioactive fallout in northern Sweden between 1986 and 1996.
Lead researcher, Martin Tondel, said that, of 22,400 cases of cancer, 849 could be attributed to Chernobyl.
The Swedish study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
http://www.healthtalk.ca/cancer_spike_11212004_2893.php
Posted at 5:00 pm by looped_ca
Saturday, November 20, 2004
If bans are Wanted Why is there such Protests?
Environmental Tobacco Smoke at Work in Ontario, 2003
In 2003, 81% of the Ontario workforce reported that smoking was either completely banned or
restricted to outdoor areas at work. This is the first substantial increase in mandated protection from
environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) since 1997, when the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
(CAMH) Monitor started tracking restrictions on smoking at work (Fig. 1). From 1998-2003, there
has been a 21% increase in the proportion of workers who apparently work in smoke-free
environments.
Fig 1. Daily Exposure to ETS at Work, Age 18+, Ontario 2003
Source: CAMH Monitor
However, not everyone who reported that smoking was officially restricted at work was actually
free of ETS: almost one quarter (22%) of people who worked where smoking was banned reported
that they were exposed to cigarette smoke. Overall, almost one third of workers (30%) reported
recent exposure to ETS at work in 2003. While this is down from a high of 39% in 2000 (Fig. 1), it
still represents about 1.8 million working Ontarians.
Exposure Varies Across Ontario (graph)
Exposure to ETS at work varied widely according to gender, age, and region. Male workers were
twice as likely as female workers to report exposure (41% and 19%, respectively). Workers age 18-
34 were more likely to report exposure (36%) than those 35 years of age or older (27%). Among
Ontario health planning regions, ETS exposure at work ranged from 26% in Central West to 40% in
Northern Ontario, albeit differences were not statistically significant. The group with the highest
reported exposure to cigarette smoke at work was trade and farm workers, at 44%.
Support for Restrictions on Smoking (graph)
Large numbers of Ontario adults, including many smokers, believed smoking should be outlawed at
work, in restaurants and bars, and even in homes and cars when small children are present. Indeed,
almost a third (31%) would outlaw smoking altogether.
Eighty-eight percent of Ontario adults thought that smoking at work should not be allowed, either
by banning it entirely (55%) or restricting it to designated rooms with separate ventilation (33%).
Support for a complete ban was particularly strong among women (61%) and university graduates
(65%), but even a third of current smokers (36%) were in favour of a ban. (The survey did not
determine whether those who support DSRs believe them to be effective in ensuring clean air.)
In 2003, support for a total ban on smoking in restaurants and bars reached the highest levels since
these opinions were first monitored (Fig. 2). During the same period, support for designated
smoking rooms in restaurants and bars stayed fairly consistent (in the case of bars) or declined (for
restaurants)
Fig 2. Support for Restricting Smoking in Restaurants and Bars, Ontario adults Age 18+,
1998-2003
Note: DSR = designated smoking room
Source: CAMH Monitor, 2003
Opinions on protection from ETS are evolving rapidly: since 1998, support has grown substantially
for bans in bars and for bans in restaurants. Considering bans and DSRs together, a very strong
majority of Ontarians supported curtailing smoking in restaurants (85%). Support was strong even
among smokers (69%). There was less support for bans and DSRs in bars, but together, these too
were endorsed by most Ontarians (52%). One third of smokers (33%) supported bans (8%) and
DSRs (25%) in bars.
http://www.otru.org/pdf/updates/update_me_aug2004.pdf
Workplace Restrictions on Smoking: Are They Good for the Smoker, Too?*
A condensed version
http://www.otru.org/pdf/updates/update_oct2004.pdf
Workplace smoking ban study
WATERLOO, Ont. -- Employees in workplaces with no smoking restrictions smoke almost five more cigarettes daily than those whose workplaces completely ban smoking, says a study by the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit (OTRU).
The unit, based at the University of Toronto, is co-sponsored by the University of Waterloo with two of the principal investigators, Prof. Paul McDonald, Health Studies and Gerontology, and Prof. Steve Brown, Statistics and Actuarial Science.
"Usually, the reason given for banning smoking in the workplace is to benefit non-smokers and this is a valid and important reason," says OTRU's Dr. Thomas Stephens. "What this study shows is that the bans also have health benefits for smokers themselves.
"A lot of people assume smokers in smoke-free workplaces compensate for being without cigarettes while at work by smoking more at lunch, during breaks or after work but overall they don't. People are more likely to cut down or to give up cigarettes."
Using data from Statistics Canada's comprehensive 2001 Canadian Community Health Survey, the study determined that 24 per cent of employed adult Canadians are daily smokers who consume an average of 17 cigarettes daily.
In workplaces where smoking is banned, 18 per cent of workers smoke daily and their average consumption drops to 15.4 cigarettes per day. By contrast, when there are no bans, 40 per cent of workers are daily smokers and average 20.1 cigarettes daily.
The OTRU study results, presented recently at the International Congress of Behavioral Medicine, apply to adults between the ages of 20 and 64, regardless of age, sex, occupation, education or income. The results were not affected by work stress, depression or attempts to quit smoking within the past 12 months.
Stephens says the data ( www.otru.org) have particular impact because they apply to "workers in all kinds of occupations and conditions and it's recent data that's Canadian." In Canada, two provinces (Manitoba and New Brunswick) and two territories (Northwest Territories and Nunavut) have recently introduced comprehensive legislation banning smoking in all indoor enclosed workplaces. In Ontario, smoking in the workplace is restricted to a lesser extent by the Smoking in the Workplace Act, the Tobacco Control Act and a variety of municipal bylaws. The Ontario government has promised to introduce province-wide legislation restricting smoking in public workplaces and public places.
The Ontario Tobacco Research Unit (OTRU) is a multi-centred research unit established in 1993 with funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health to foster and conduct research, monitoring and evaluation contributing to programs and policies to eliminate tobacco-related health problems in Ontario. The Principal sponsor is U of T's Department of Public Health Sciences. The Unit's co-sponsors include the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the University of Waterloo and the University of Ottawa.
BACKGROUNDER
Workplace Restrictions on Smoking: Are They Good for the Smoker, Too? The issue Adult smoking behaviour is known to be associated with restrictions on smoking and this is true in both public places and workplaces. In the general adult population, the more extensive the restrictions on public smoking, the fewer the smokers and the less the amount consumed by those who still smoke. Moreover, these associations are true regardless of sex, marital status and education levels. This study asks if the extent of workplace restrictions affects smoking among a general population of workers.
Methods The data analyzed in this study are from the 2001 Canadian Community Health Survey, the very large national household survey conducted biennially by Statistics Canada. This analysis was limited to working persons age 20-64. The sample size was 66,112, which has a margin of error of plus-minus 0.5 per cent 95 times out of 100. The sample included 17,700 daily smokers and accurately reflects the Canadian population of working people living in households. Results Among employed Canadian adults in 2001, both the proportion of whom were smokers and the amount smoked daily varied widely according to the level of restrictions at work (Table 1). Table 1. Prevalence of smoking and amount smoked daily, according to workplace smoking restrictions, employed persons age 20-64, Canada, 2001
Daily smokers (%) Cigarettes per day (#)
All working persons (n=66,112) 24.4 17.0 Smoking completely banned
(n=38,054) 17.6 15.4 Smoking confined to certain areas (n=18,522) 33.3 17.5 Smoking unrestricted (n=9,536) 40.4 20.1
- 24.4 per cent of employed adult Canadians were daily smokers and these smokers consumed an average of 17.0 cigarettes daily.
- Workers in unrestricted settings were 2.3 times more likely to be daily smokers than those who worked where smoking was totally banned. The chances of a worker being a daily smoker is, on average, 23 percentage points higher in a workplace without restrictions than one where there is a complete ban on smoking.
- Among those workers who were daily smokers, the amount smoked daily was 4.7 cigarettes (30.5 per cent) more if there were no restrictions on smoking at work compared to complete restrictions.
Even more importantly, these strong associations of smoking behavior and workplace restrictions were independent of age, sex, occupation, education and income. They held across levels of work stress, depression and whether or not there were attempts to quit smoking in the previous 12 months.
Discussion The principal rationale for smoke-free policies is to protect non-smokers from the well-documented harmful effects of passive smoking. At the same time, it is clear that restricting smoking in public places and workplaces leads to a decline in the number of smokers and, for those who do not quit, a decline in the amount smoked daily. This association has been demonstrated with ecological and longitudinal studies of individuals, among young and older smokers, and for both sexes.
The present study replicates these results among the working population in Canada and extends them by looking at three levels of smoking restriction rather than the usual two. While the survey data used here are cross-sectional and cannot be used to conclusively establish cause and effect, it is clear from these analyses that there is a strong association between smoking behaviour and workplace restrictions.
The implication of this study is that strengthening smoke-free legislation in the workplace will result not only in better protection for non-smokers, but will also serve as an inducement to workers who smoke to quit or reduce their consumption.
Contact:
Dr. Thomas Stephens, Ontario Tobacco Research Unit,
(613) 692-6092; tom.stephens at magma.ca
Elaine Smith, U of T Public Affairs, (416) 978-5949; elaine.smith at utoronto.ca Jim Fox, UW Media Relations, (519) 888-4444; jfox at uwaterloo.ca Release no. 193 -- October 28, 2004
2004-10-28 12:02:32
* comments submitted to me about the report.
A couple of observations off the top:
- Why look at adults 20 - 64? Why not 18 - 64?
- They say number of cigs smoked per day 'drops' in places where smoking bans are in place. In actuality the comparison isn't between before and after but rather it's a comparison between places with bans to those without bans.
- Study results 'apply to adults between the ages of 20 and 64, regardless of age, sex, occupation, education or income. The results were not affected by work stress, depression or attempts to quit smoking within the past 12 months.' All of these have been previously identified as factors that do affect smoking. Why not in this study?
- And the 'not conclusive' statement followed by call for more workplace bans because it 'will' work.
' While the survey data used here are cross-sectional and cannot be used to conclusively establish cause and effect, it is clear from these analyses that there is a strong association between smoking behaviour and workplace restrictions.
The implication of this study is that strengthening smoke-free legislation in the workplace will result not only in better protection for non-smokers, but will also serve as an inducement to workers who smoke to quit or reduce their consumption.'
This Bulletin article does not mention:
1 - The authors' caution that this study 'cannot be used to conclusively establish cause and effect'. Heck, the author seems to forget this!
2 - A major potential source of bias - The Ontario Tobacco Research Unit (OTRU) was established 'to foster and conduct research, monitoring and
evaluation contributing to programs and policies to eliminate tobacco-related health problems in Ontario.'
3-The heading for the article is misleading. Forcing smokers to cut back is a far cry from 'helping' them cut back.
4- The 'health benefit' Stephens assumes from an inconclusive study couldn't possibly justify additional calls 'strengthening smoke-free legislation in
the workplace.'
5- Besides, there are far more effective ways to achieve greater health benefits in the working adult population. Ban vending machines, coffee/donut
shops and unhealthy foods. As a bonus we'd alienate another 60% of adult workers.
The real question is: Who should be making the decisions about what legal items you or I consume?
Smoking ban good for inmates: advocate
WebPosted Nov 16 2004 07:49 AM NST
CORNER BROOK — A new study says inmates in the province's prisons are seeing some benefits from a ban on smoking.
The province's adult correctional facilities went smoke-free in May.
Although inmates were generally opposed to the ban, a new study by the John Howard Society shows there's some support.
"Some of them, albeit a small number, felt that it was the start they needed in order to quit a habit that many of them had been wanting to quit for years," says Terry Carlson, executive director of the John Howard Society in this province.
"Many of them felt much better in terms of their health, in terms of the air being cleaner, and this type of thing."
The study's findings, which include suggestions from inmates on how to help them cope with the smoking ban, have been forwarded to the province's justice department.
http://stjohns.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=nf_prison_smoking_20041116
*in their web site they don't have results posted. http://www.johnhowardnl.ca/about.HTM
British government plans smoking ban that would bar lighting up in most pubs
Beth Gardiner Wednesday, November 17, 2004
LONDON (AP) - Four hundred years after King James I denounced tobacco as "loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs," the British government announced plans Tuesday to ban smoking in most public places, including restaurants and any pub that serves food.
Anti-smoking activists declared a partial victory, criticizing Health Secretary John Reid for letting smokers continue lighting up in some pubs and bars.
Nonetheless, it's a big step for a country that's had a long love-hate affair with tobacco. Britain's smoky pubs are at the heart of the nation's social life, and the trend in recent years toward "gastropubs" that serve meals as well as booze means the proposed ban will affect many drinking establishments.
Reid said only 20 per cent of pubs and bars would be exempt from the ban, which would only apply in England, because they serve no food. Private social clubs are also exempt.
If approved by Parliament, the ban would be phased in over four years, affecting pubs last, by the end of 2008.
"I think it's great and hopefully it will help me quit," said Dawn Benstead, having a cigarette in London's Covent Garden neighbourhood.
At the Lamb and Flag pub nearby, though, smoker Steven Thomas predicted a ban would turn many voters against the government.
"I think a lot of people are sick of the nanny state," he said.
If Reid's proposal becomes law, Britain would be one of a handful of European countries to outlaw smoking in many public places.
Ireland became the first country to ban smoking in all enclosed workplaces this year, and Norway and Sweden have followed suit. Last week, Scotland's government proposed banning smoking in all enclosed public places by 2006.
Officials in Wales have said they will seek authority from the central government to impose similar restrictions; no ban has been proposed in Northern Ireland.
Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories recently introduced legislation banning smoking in all indoor enclosed workplaces.
In Ontario, smoking in the workplace is restricted to a lesser extent by the smoking in the Workplace Act, the Tobacco Control Act and a variety of municipal bylaws.
The Ontario government has promised to introduce provincewide legislation restricting smoking in public workplaces and public places.
New York City made headlines with a strict ban last year.
Announcing the plan to the British House of Commons, Reid said the measure was a fair compromise that respected people's right to make unhealthy choices, but not to harm others.
"This is a sensible solution, I believe, which balances the protection of the majority with the personal freedom of the minority in England," he said. "We will see smoke-free environments becoming the norm both at work and at leisure."
Health advocates, while they praised the plan as a step forward, faulted it for not going far enough and taking too long to get there.
"It makes no sense to allow smoking in some pubs," said Dr. James Johnson, chairman of the British Medical Association. "What about the health and lives of employees who work in them?"
The British Beer and Pub Association, a pub owners group, warned a ban could prompt many to stop serving food, possibly causing customers to drink more.
"We're concerned that we could see a reversion back to the drinking dens we used to have 30 to 40 years ago, when all we served in pubs was alcohol," said Christine Milburn, an association spokeswoman.
As part of the government's effort to further reduce the number of Britons who smoke - now 26 per cent - the government also plans to require "hard-hitting" picture warnings on cigarette packs and new restrictions on tobacco advertising, Reid said.
Andrew Lansley, the opposition Conservative Party spokesman on health, dismissed the proposals as "gimmicks and a nanny state" and said they could lead smokers to light up more frequently at home, endangering their children's health.
He said voluntary anti-smoking measures by restaurant and pub owners would have been more effective than a government ban.
"The government's approach simply risks delaying progress," he said.
Reid's plan was part of a broad policy paper on public health, which also included measures to reduce obesity and alcohol abuse and boost sexual health.
He said the government would consider tougher rules on alcohol advertising and urge manufacturers to warn of the dangers of drinking.
Officials will ask the food industry to voluntarily limit advertising junk food to children and develop a labelling system to give consumers clear information on products' fat, sugar and salt content.
http://www.canada.com/travel/story.html?id=bc66c86b-7af5-4b87-bbb5-2547d6d18862
Gatineau will wait for Quebec to ban smoking -QC
Nov 18 2004 10:13 AM ESTGATINEAU, QUE. - Gatineau has decided not to ask the Quebec government for the special powers it needs to enact a smoking ban for bars and restaurants.
Gatineau Mayor Yves Ducharme and one of the councillors leading the campaign for a smoking bylaw met Wednesday with the province's health minister.
After talking with Philippe Couillard, Ducharme says he's confident Quebec will go ahead with a province-wide law restricting smoking in public places, making a Gatineau bylaw unnecessary.
The city has been debating smoking restrictions since Ottawa passed its non-smoking bylaw.
The province would have had to change the city charter to allow such a bylaw. Gatineau councillors also had been concerned about how they would enforce a smoking ban.
A poll says people in the city do want a ban. However, some bar owners are concerned they'll lose the business they gained when Ottawa forbade smoking in bars.
Quebec's 1998 tobacco law banned smoking in most workplaces. But bars and restaurants are excluded from the law.
Quebec has one of the highest smoking rates in the country.
Couillard has hinted Quebec could have a province-wide ban on smoking that covers restaurants and bars by the end of next year.
So far, Manitoba and New Brunswick are the only provinces to pass such a law.
http://ottawa.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=ott_gatineau041118
N.B. bar owners protest anti-smoking law
Friday, November 19, 2004
About 40 bar owners in northern New Brunswick say the province-wide smoking ban is killing their business.
The owners want the government to reverse the law.
Bar owner Patsy Richard of Bas-Caraquet says her profits have dropped by 40 per cent since the no-smoking law came into effect October 1.
Richard says the crowd outside her bar, puffing on cigarettes, is now as large as the crowd inside cradling drinks.
Health Minister Elvy Robichaud says the issue is not up for debate.
Robichaud says there are no plans to change the law.
Richard says her business may have to close if smokers aren't allowed back inside.
http://www.canada.com/maritimes/news/story.html?id=056a9965-c581-42d7-8e93-8a5a245bb89c
Demonstration disgusts pupils Lung, butts argue against smoking -CT
By Will Siss Saturday, November 20, 2004
NAUGATUCK -- Naugatuck High School ninth-graders couldn't agree on which part of Maryellen Bolcer's anti-smoking demonstration Friday was most effective.
Or most repulsive.
There was the bag that contained a bloated, diseased lung that Bolcer let students stare at and touch. There was the dark brown tar that sluiced around in a bottle she held up for all to see. And there was the jar of old cigarette butts she coaxed five students to inhale from.
"It really burned my lungs," Alyssa Stafford said a few minutes after sniffing from the jar twice. "It smelled so gross."
Bolcer, who directs Bridgeport-based St. Vincent's Medical Center's Teen SmokeStoppers program, did more than shock and appall during her 45-minute demonstration. She gave the 24 students reasons not to start smoking, and to encourage others to quit.
"Everyone has a weak link," she said. "For some it's their lungs. Others can develop cancers or emphysema. The first time you smoke, you activate that weak link."
The former two-pack-a-day smoker said she lost her mother and father to smoking-related cancer, and that she is going through a "breast cancer scare" herself.
Bolcer talked about how inexpensive it is for cigarette makers to produce their products: about 16 cents for a pack that costs $4.80. She also estimated that it could cost each potential smoker in the room $75,000 to support a habit over a lifetime.
For those students who have already started smoking, Bolcer said they had advantages over older generations, since their their 14-year-old bodies would rid themselves from nicotine in about three days and tar in about a year. "But you've already done damage to your lung capacity," she said. "You've stunted the growth of your lungs."
The jar of butts seemed to bring all her statistics home. She lined up three boys and two girls and -- after asking them to promise not to go to the nurse later -- had them inhale deeply from its top.
Mike Andolena came away with red, watery eyes. "It smelled like the inside of my sisters' cars," he said about 10 minutes after the experience.
Jeff Russell got a pounding headache from his whiff. "It lasted for maybe two minutes," Jeff said. "It was scary."
Jeff, who said he has never smoked and has never considered it, said he was surprised at how smelling the old butts made him feel. "I never thought it would affect the body so fast. It was a good presentation."
Alyssa said most students in Naugatuck start smoking in their early teens, and that about a quarter of her class smokes. "I've tried it, but it's just bad," she said. "It makes you not be able to breathe."
Bolcer has presented her prevention program -- partially paid for by Swim Across the Sound, an organization that raises money to fight cancer -- to about 47,000 teens since she created it in 1996.
She said she's also helped about 3,750 teens quit smoking through she smoking cessation program.
"I believe in quitting cold turkey," she said.
"I think the step-down method just prolongs the agony."
http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=12717
Fargo's Smoking Ban Challenged In Court -ND
Nov 18, 2004 10:40 am US/Central
Fargo, N.D.(AP) Two days before it was scheduled to take effect, Fargo's workplace smoking ban was challenged in court.
Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar, which has two locations in Fargo, and three of its employees filed a federal court lawsuit Wednesday, seeking an order to stop the ban.
Chris Wentzel, of Moorhead, Minn., and Al Dimmer and Jay Svir, both of Fargo, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, claim the smoking ban approved by city voters Nov. 2 is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit also claims Fargo's election ballot was confusing to the average voter, which could have skewed the outcome.
The ordinance, approved by 57 percent of the city's voters, would eliminate smoking in all public, indoor workplaces except truck stops and enclosed bars that restrict people under 21.
That ban prevailed over two other smoking ban proposals.
"All parties are saying the ordinance, as enacted, is unfair," said Fargo attorney Craig Campbell, who represents Buffalo Wild Wings and three employees. "They have different reasons for saying it."
Svir, listed as a smoker in the lawsuit, and Dimmer say they were confused by the ballot.
"Had the ballot provided all relevant information to voters, there is a substantial likelihood that (the) outcome of the vote on the initiated smoking ban ordinances would have been different," the lawsuit said.
Fargo City Attorney Garylle Stewart said the ballot's wording followed the requirements of the city's Home Rule Charter, and could not have been changed even if the city had wanted to change it.
http://wcco.com/localnews/local_story_323114332.html
Posted at 8:09 pm by looped_ca
Friday, November 19, 2004
Canadian women warned to beware of lung disease
CTV.ca News Staff
The Lung Association says the rate of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is rising largely unnoticed among Canadian women, and the only chance of helping them is with a test many don't realize they should have.
"We need to take action now," says Dr. Dennis O'Donnell, The Lung Association's medical spokesperson and international expert on the incurable lung condition, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
"Over half of the people living with COPD remain undiagnosed. Many hospitalizations could be prevented and the mortality rate decreased if Canadians were more aware of the COPD symptoms."
Suzanne LaChapelle knows those symptoms too well. Due to years of smoking cigarettes, she has COPD. And the fact there's no known cure for the condition has left her mortified.
"It has damaged my lungs and the damage is irreversible," she told CTV. "It's terrifying not being able to breathe."
LaChapelle is just one of at least 714,000 Canadians who are believed to be affected by COPD -- most of them women between the ages of 35 and 54.
"COPD is on the rise for this group of women," says O'Donnell, noting that some 26,000 women have been diagnosed with the condition in the last three years.
"If you are female and have smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for over 20 years, you should get a spirometry test -- a very simple breathing test, that should be as routine as a mammogram."
Doctors estimate as many as 80 per cent of those who should have the test never get it. That means there could be as many as half a million Canadians who are in the early stages without even knowing it.
According to Dr. Anna Day of the Sunnybrook & Women's Health Sciences Centre, the statistics should trigger alarm bells.
"These numbers tell us we're not doing enough to prevent the disease, to improve the health of these people and decrease the cost of treatment."
COPD is a lung disease largely caused by smoking. The lungs' airways are tightened, making breathing difficult and putting the lungs more at risk of infection. COPD gets worse over time resulting in frequent flare-ups if left untreated.
Radio personality Peter Gzowski died of the illness in January 2002.
Anyone who smokes cigarettes, or has smoked in the past, may be at risk of developing COPD. Anyone regularly exposed to second-hand smoke is also at risk.
Non-smoking related causes are rising throughout the world, the Lung Association says, including exposure to environmental pollutants.
Symptoms include frequent coughing, coughing up phlegm, wheezing, shortness of breath and frequent colds. Women are particularly at risk of COPD because their airways are smaller.
While COPD can't be cured, it can be treated with medications to slow its progression. The Lung Association says early diagnosis is one of the keys to slowing the progression.
LaChapelle, 48, was diagnosed eight years ago.
"When I recognized the symptoms and was diagnosed by a doctor, I knew that I had to make the commitment to arresting this disease," she says.
"Through regular exercise and medication I am now able to do many things that I couldn't before -- simple things like going to the grocery store and attending day trips with my family."
Buoyed by her new lease on life, LaChapelle believes testing for the increasingly prevalent disease should be mandatory for all smokers.
COPD flare-ups are one of the top reasons for hospital admissions and often leave patients ill for weeks. Managing the illness will decrease the possibility of flare-ups requiring hospital visits and admissions, says Dr. O'Donnell.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1100631864627_3/?hub=Health
Cig-ban foes raising $$
By Staff Fri, November 19, 2004
A group of rural hotel owners are trying to raise upwards of $50,000 to mount a court challenge against the Manitoba-wide smoking ban. "We have to make sure we have the finances to push this thing through to the end," said Gary Desrosiers, owner of the Brunkild Bar and Grill and leader of the butt ban rebels.
Desrosiers said the money raised will help pay the legal bills of Robert Jenkinson, the Treherne hotelier who was the first Manitoban charged with violating the ban on indoor smoking.
The plan to fund his defence was hatched Wednesday night when 45 frustrated rural business owners met in Brunkild, Desrosiers said. Meanwhile, hoteliers appear willing to comply with the smoking legislation, he said.
Healthy Living Minister Theresa Oswald said the smoking ban would stand a constitutional challenge.
Desrosiers said donations have been pouring in, though he couldn't provide a figure as to how much money has been raised.
Jenkinson is scheduled to appear in a Portage la Prairie court on Nov. 29.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/WinnipegSun/News/2004/11/19/720759.html
Bar owners protest anti-smoking law
Broadcast NewsNovember 19, 2004
About 40 bar owners in northern New Brunswick say the province-wide smoking ban is killing their business.
The owners want the government to reverse the law.
Bar owner Patsy Richard of Bas-Caraquet says her profits have dropped by 40 per cent since the no-smoking law came into effect October 1.
Richard says the crowd outside her bar, puffing on cigarettes, is now as large as the crowd inside cradling drinks.
Health Minister Elvy Robichaud says the issue is not up for debate.
Robichaud says there are no plans to change the law.
Richard says her business may have to close if smokers aren't allowed back inside.
http://www.canada.com/national/story.html?id=056a9965-c581-42d7-8e93-8a5a245bb89c
Friday, November 19th, 2004
Province refuses to back down on butt ban
Health issues trump business complaints
Friday, November 19th, 2004
By Mia Rabson
HEALTHY Living Minister Theresa Oswald said yesterday the government will not back down on its provincewide smoking ban, despite growing pressure from rural hoteliers and restaurant owners.
"This is a very important health issue, and we are going to stay the course," she said.
Oswald said businesses have to recognize the climate is changing around the world and it's time to adapt. She said her government is willing to do anything it can to help them adapt but will not make changes to the legislation.
"We need to remember an all-party task force went out and the vast majority of Manitobans said loud and clear this is what they wanted," Oswald said.
As of Oct. 1, smoking became illegal in all indoor public and work places, and on some outdoor patios, right across the province. The only exemptions are in federal buildings, such as the Winnipeg downtown post office, and on First Nations.
Under the law, individuals can be fined $500 and businesses $3,000. Thus far two businesses -- one in Selkirk and one in Treherne -- have been charged.
The province has logged 38 complaints and issued 24 warnings since Oct. 1.
Wednesday, about 45 rural hotel and restaurant owners met in Brunkild to plan an attack on the legislation. They say the ban is going to put them out of business because smokers are staying home. They estimate about 30 per cent of their business comes from smokers.
Oswald said the province made some effort to alleviate the economic hit from the ban by allowing rural hotels and lounges to run VLTs on Sundays. She said she is willing to discuss other ideas, but said there
has been no talk of direct compensation.
She has met with the head of the Manitoba Hotel Association and discussed ways to help the industry.
Oswald said she has not had any requests for meetings with any hotel owners, nor has her office staff been handling many angry calls.
"It has not been an issue causing the phone to ring off the hook," she said.
She noted many of the calls that have come in are from people happy with the butt ban.
The rural business owners are targeting the provincial
Conservatives as well, the party that holds most of the seats outside of Winnipeg. The Tories were the first party to back the idea of a provincewide ban, and supported the legislation when it passed earlier this year.
Tory Leader Stuart Murray acknowledged yesterday that some of his MLAs are fielding a lot of angry phone calls but he said he's not
worried about political fallout for his party.
Instead, he is demanding Premier Gary Doer meet with the rural hotel and restaurant owners to discuss some form of compensation. He said he'll even set up the meeting.
" need a long-term solution and he is the one with the power to do that," Murray said
www.winipegfreepress.com
Odds of Quitting Smoking Double for Some Government Workers
What Quitters Need
Article date:2004/11/18
What a difference a day makes for the 66,639 employees of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
On November 18, in recognition of this year's Great American Smokeout, the agency begins paying for stop-smoking medicines for any worker who uses tobacco and does not already have health insurance coverage for the medicine. Then on Jan. 1, 2005, HHS will ban any type of tobacco use anywhere on the agency's property.
The drug bupropion (Zyban) and nicotine products like skin patches, gums, and inhalers double the odds of a smoker quitting for good. But due to a lack of information, the cost (about $3 a day for patches), or misplaced fears, most people trying to quit don't use any medicine.
The fact that stop-smoking medicines and other quit methods aren't used more widely is a great frustration to Corinne Husten, MD, MPH, director of the government's Center for Smoking and Health, a division within HHS.
"Most people use the least effective strategy: They try to quit on their own. And there are so many things available to help like telephone quitlines and medicines," said Husten.
Research shows quitters use more than one technique, such as counseling from a quitline, bupropion, and gum for difficult cravings, are even more likely to succeed than those who use just one form of support.
"There's this sense that you should just do it on your own and it's so wrong," said Husten. "If a person broke his leg, we would not expect him to just hobble along. We'd give him a cast, pain medication, crutches…."
Smoke-Free Properties Support Quitters at HHS and Other Workplaces
The HHS decision to strictly ban tobacco use on agency property is also designed, in part, to help employees quit smoking by removing the tempting sights and smells of other people using tobacco, reinforcing a smoke-free "social norm" or culture, and of course, making it inconvenient to quickly find a place for a cigarette.
RESOURCES:
Kick the Habit
What's Your Tobacco Tally?
Smoke-free Communities
Smokeout Activities Near You
"Most people who use tobacco are addicted. That makes it very, very difficult to quit," said Husten. "The whole environment around the person is critically important because it gives very strong cues to smoke. It can be very hard for them to maintain abstinence."
Rules to make workplaces and other public areas smoke-free are considered a key element in tobacco control, the movement to reduce the suffering and death caused by tobacco use. "What starts as a single puff can become a death sentence for millions of Americans," said HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson in his announcement of several new anti-smoking initiatives, including a revamped Web site, smokefree.gov, and a national phone number to help coordinate many Quitlines (1-800-QUITNOW). (This provides tobacco users another toll-free option for telephone counseling, in addition to the long-standing American Cancer Society Quitline at 1-800-ACS-2345).
Other key elements for controlling and reducing tobacco use in a population include: counter-marketing, education (particularly for children and teens), price increases, and the enforcement of smoke-free rules and laws banning tobacco sales to minors.
1,800 Smoke-Free Communities and Counting
The main reason to limit public smoking is to protect the health of non-smokers. And as evidence rolls in about illnesses caused by breathing someone else's tobacco smoke, more towns are putting smoking bans in place. American Cancer Society figures show that more than 1,800 communities have now enacted a smoke-free ordinance.
In New York City, where workplace smoking restrictions were expanded in 2002 to cover restaurants and bars and protect the health of those workers, the restrictions have reportedly helped cut adult smoking rates throughout the city's 5 boroughs by 11%. ten would be thrilled to see smoke-free workplace laws cover all of the US. "We do know interventions work at the community and individual levels. We just haven't [completely] implemented what we know works," she said.
"We've made a lot of progress; adult smoking rates have come down," she said, noting that the latest figures show a drop from 2002 to 2003 of about half a percentage point to 22.1%. And in Utah the smoking rate for adults has dropped to just 12%. But Husten believes the nation can snuff out tobacco use much more quickly.
"There's this disconnect between the extent of the problem and what society is putting in to solve it. Society at large needs to understand the problem. People think it's solved, and yes, we've made progress, but so much more can be done."
Animated Web Site Shows Tobacco's Trail of Destruction
Earlier this year, a report from Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, MD, MPH, FACS added 9 serious diseases to the list of illnesses caused by tobacco use -- and his office launched an animated Web site that shows tobacco's trail of destruction through the human body. Huston said Americans need a better understanding of how bad smoking is for their health and she offered the statistics below to outline the problem:
*of those who continue smoking, a tobacco-related disease will kill 1 out of 2.
*For those who started smoking as teens, the risk of dying from a tobacco-related disease
may be as high as 2 out of 3. "There aren't many things that bad for you. It affects every organ of the body."
*Half of the deaths caused by tobacco occur in middle-age, that is, before age 64 or 65.
*For all those who die, there are 20 others who are ill with a smoking-related disease.
The Limits of Will Power
Smokers who try to quit without help often believe it's a matter of will power and personal integrity. And when a quit attempt fails, they're likely to blame themselves or give up, when research shows that a failed attempt is the best prediction of future success. A few people can quit alone, said Husten, but for most people nicotine is calling the shots. "It's not really a choice. This is an addiction."
"People think they'll stop before they get sick," she said. "By the time they say, 'I want to quit,' they're addicted." Husten is quick to add that you're never too old to quit and see marked improvements in health and longevity … "but it's never too early to quit either."
"I was a clinician in medical practice before going into public health. It was the people with [lung disease that] made me fear for my relatives who smoked. The folks with COPD were so short of breath, and you couldn't do anything. Should you put them on a respirator? They suffer for years. And most of those illnesses are totally preventable," said Husten. >"The time to quit is right now."
this is how they think
Roger Franklin: Bar's still smokin' -NY
2.11.2004
COMMENT
Like a lot of New York's straight-off-the-boat Irish barmen, Brian - "no surname, thanks" - has a problem with authority; one that means keeping a weather eye on the door of the unfashionable watering hole where he slings suds from 6pm until closing time.
As an undocumented alien with a visa that expired more than three years ago, the immigration authorities have always been his chief concern. These days, though, especially after midnight when the cigarettes come out, there is another threat to his livelihood: the Big Apple's smoking police.
"It's a [expletive] crime," he said, "the way those bastards behave."
The regulars at Brian's bar, half-a-dozen smoke-stained rumpots and this reporter (on the premises purely for purposes of journalistic research) agreed.
The talk last week had been of the front-page picture on the New York Post. It was a close-cropped headshot of a young GI in Fallujah, face smeared with fatigue and camouflage paint, a thin smear of what closer examination revealed to be a splatter of dried blood down the bridge of his nose.
The face of battle, yes, but it wasn't the 10,000m stare of eyes fresh from combat that had the regulars' attention. It was the just-lit cigarette dangling from the young soldier's cracked lips.
"So that's how it works," quipped Brian. "Shoot a [expletive] sand goblin, win a [expletive] fag."
The regulars chuckled, as Americans always do at that imported word, which means gay, and only gay, on this side of the Atlantic. But they got his drift, and one of the patrons wondered if the soldier and his M-16 might not find fruitful employment on New York's home front.
"Mr Mayor, you son of a bitch," he began, making a gun with index finger and upraised thumb, "you're dead."
Then, in defiance of the Big Apple's draconian smoking laws, he lit another cigarette and exhaled a plume of ostentatious rebellion toward the yellowed ceiling.
That's the way it works these days in allegedly smokefree New York, where the city's two-year-old smoking ban has ushered in an entirely new social ecology.
At the chic bars and eateries, the ones that depend on high-volume turnover, even an unlit cigarette raised to the lips will bring an immediate warning to get the hell outside and light up on the sidewalk. With fines running as high as $2000 a violation, no eatery manager will risk the penalties.
But in the little neighbourhood joints, the ones that depend on regulars and locals, well, that's a different matter altogether.
At first, the hole-in-the-wall joints tried to uphold the ban. Trouble was, it proved financially ruinous.
One bar, Fiddler's Green on West 48th St, had survived for decades through blackouts, crime waves and even an armed holdup. But the smoking ban did it in.
Liquor sales were down 60 per cent, the staff was out of pocket for want of tips and the stools stood mostly unoccupied after midnight. Six months ago, the shutters came down for the last time.
"Drinkers smoke, and the people who complain about smoking don't drink - not a lot anyway," is the way Brian summed it up.
So, after weighing the risks, Brian followed the example of barmen in scores of other low-rent joints and began distributing saucers to his late-night regulars. They have to be saucers because, under New York's smoking-cessation bylaws, the mere presence of an ashtray - even a clean one - is taken as proof positive that illegal activities have been going on. Then the violations are written up and the fines issued.
No one is safe these days. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, a diehard smoker and one of New York's premier arbiters of the chic and cool, was bailed up in his office and fined by two little men from the Health Department, not once but three times.
In office buildings, the presence of a single squashed butt in a stairwell is taken as proof that law-breaking goes on and the landlord is slapped with fines.
When former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was rooting out serious crime, opponents often criticised him for a too-literal interpretation of the law. Now that muggings, rapes and murders are down by as much as three-quarters on the figures of a dozen years ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has adapted the zero-tolerance approach to "crimes" that never previously raised an eyebrow.
These days, New Yorkers have been fined, if you can believe it, for sitting on a milk crate, riding a bicycle without both feet on the pedals, and resting their bags on subway seats.
The locals can live with all that. The ambient annoyances of daily life - misfiring car alarms, beggars, maniacal cabbies, kamikaze cyclists and sardine-style bus rides - are par for the course, and preserving a mental balance demands a talent to shrug them off.
But smoking in bars is a pleasure devotees of the weed won't surrender.
When Bloomberg, a former smoker with a convert's loathing for his former vice, hiked sin taxes in the Five Boroughs, tobacco sales soared in neighbouring Long Island and New Jersey, as did "buttlegging", with truckloads of cigarettes shipped into town from Indian reservations, where there are no paleface taxes.
Barman Brian doesn't care about politics, despite the picture of John F. Kennedy over the bar. But he fully comprehends the way the world works.
"I want to pay my rent, same as everyone," he said. "Here, let me give you a light."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3612119&thesection=news&thesubsection=dialogue
RESTAURANTS CLEAR THE SMOKE FOR 1 DAY -AR
By Wilson Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Pine Bluff diners are used to cigarette smoking at most area restaurants. For a while Thursday, that changed in several places.
Thirteen eateries that usually allow smoking snuffed out the cigarettes for the American Cancer Society's 28th annual Great American Smokeout.
Thursday also marked the seventh year the Jefferson County Tobacco-Free Coalition participated by putting up comment boxes and collecting comment cards at restaurants, said Naomi Summerville, program director for the coalition.
"It's grown from three restaurants to 59 percent of the restaurants in Jefferson County, which says a lot," Summerville said.
Forty-two percent of restaurants in Jefferson County are smoke-free year round, Summerville said.
Lybrand's Bakery and Deli is the only restaurant in Jefferson County that has participated in the smokeout for seven consecutive years, she said.
Charro's Mexican Food also removed ashtrays from dining tables Thursday.
"We had two customers that came in today just because we were participating in the smokeout," said Karla Duley, owner of Charro's.
Duley said most of her lunchtime patrons were receptive to the no-smoking environment but the restaurant hasn't become totally smoke-free because they don't want to offend their smoking customers.
"We're hoping one day that they will ban smoking in all public places," Duley said.
Other restaurant owners and managers said they were happy with breathing the fresh air but becoming totally smoke-free could hurt business, especially at bars.
"Personally, I'm not a smoker," said Brad Thomas, manager of Harbor Oaks restaurant. "But coming from a business standpoint, having a smoke-free bar would hurt the restaurant.
"But as far as an environment, I like it," Thomas said.
Completely smoke-free eateries are 16 percent more profitable than those with separate smoking and non-smoking sections, Summerville said, quoting from statistics gathered by the coalition.
Meanwhile, 33 smoke-free restaurants in Pine Bluff also marked the annual day of tobacco awareness by asking customers to comment on their clean air eateries.
The smokeout was launched by the American Cancer Society in 1977 and is locally sponsored this year by the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Stamp Out Smoking and the Jefferson County Tobacco-Free Coalition.
Last year, more than 8.3 million of the estimated 46.2 million smokers in the country took part in the smokeout, a national survey found.
Arkansas currently ranks third in the nation in the highest number of tobacco-related deaths. One hundred Arkansans die each week from smoking-related causes, according to the American Cancer Society.
http://www.pbcommercial.com/articles/2004/11/19/news/news1.txt
PORTLAND, Maine - A year-old Maine law designed to block mail-order tobacco sales to minors is under challenge by the world’s largest package delivery company.
UPS said the law requiring that people delivering tobacco products make sure that each named buyer signs for the package and can prove he or she is 18 or older is so burdensome that the company has halted even legal tobacco deliveries in Maine.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, UPS and other members of regional motor transport associations said such regulations should be made only at the federal level so they can operate with a consistent system in each state.
In arguments Wednesday before Judge D. Brock Hornby, Assistant Attorney General Paul Stern said the court should balance what he called a minor disruption to UPS’ business against the state’s duty to keep tobacco away from children.
Stern said UPS reported $2 billion in profits last year and the new restrictions impose only small costs on the company.
Financial information on the tobacco-delivery portion of UPS’ business is in a sealed portion of court records. Part of Wednesday’s arguments were made behind closed doors.
As states have raised taxes on cigarettes, smokers have increasingly turned to the Internet for bargain smokes. The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids says Internet vendors sold about 2 percent of all cigarettes smoked nationwide in 2002 and that number is projected to triple by next year.
Maine is one of 16 states that have passed laws restricting home delivery tobacco sales. Stern said the state requires online sellers to meet the same standards as store clerks who sell tobacco.
Before making a tobacco shipment to a Maine address, the seller must find out the age of the buyer, and indicate on the outside of the package that it contains tobacco.
On delivery, only the named buyer can sign for the package, and he or she must show proof of age with a photo identification.
A lawyer for UPS said that other states have different rules. Some states allow any adult to sign for a package instead of the named buyer. Some regulate only cigarette sales, and exempt cigars and pipe tobacco.
The different rules create "a patchwork" system of regulations that burdens interstate businesses.
"Maybe UPS could end up with 50 different tobacco delivery systems," said Lawrence Katzin of Morrison & Foerster, a San Francisco firm representing the carriers.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/11192004/maine/49329.htm
Smoking banned from Albany hospitals -GA
November 18, 2004
Albany-- Two hospitals ban smoking on their campuses. Oncologist Dr. Terry Kraus says, "I think hospitals have to send a message first and the message is we won't tolerate smoking in public places."
Palmyra Medical Centers and Phoebe Putney Hospital chose today to enact their smoking bans. That's because today is the Great American Smokeout, an American Cancer Society Initiative asking millions to go cold turkey for one day. But, for these two hospitals this smokeout is permanent and it's a tough pill for some to swallow.
For Tim Aultman, this smoke is his only stress relief, "It is a good friend, you are on edge, you don't know what is happening, a lot of times the doctors can't tell you something right away and your nerves are on edge."
On edge, because Tim's wife has been at Phoebe Putney Hospital a month. She is being treated for lung cancer. Now, to get a little relief, Tim has to walk a long distance.
Assistant Vice President of Oncology, Tom Bell, says "Smoking really can't happen here. This is an area of health, this is an area of healing, and we want to encourage everything that contributes to health and healing."
Across Phoebe Putney, signs advertise the new smoke-free campus. Employees are even wearing special "smoke-free" pins, a change this long time oncologist supports. Dr. Krauss says "We can decrease cancer in general, not just cancers of the lung, but cancers in general by 70 percent if we will just simply stop smoking."
But, for people like Tim, quitting is too difficult right now, "I am eventually going to quit smoking anyway because she has lung cancer and to support her I will have to do that but that is my choice."
"It is a highly addictive substance and I can understand how that fellow feels. It is not the stress, that poor soul is addicted to nicotine," says Dr. Krauss.
An addiction that won't be supported by the hospital any longer. The benches where smokers use to congregate are gone now--only a few cigarette butts remain.
For the last three months, Phoebe Putney has offered support programs to help their employees quit smoking, even handing out nicotine patches.
Major hospitals in Tifton, Valdosta, Thomasville and across Southwest Georgia have already enacted the smoking ban.
http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=2585578&nav=5kZQTK24
Youth urge peers not to smoke -WI
(picture)Governor James Doyle shows off his orange American Cancer Society 'Live Free-Smoke Free' bracelet during the Great American Smoke Out event at Bay Port High School Thursday (photo by H. Marc Larson).
Governor joins the fight
By Anna Krejci News-Chronicle
Gov. Jim Doyle gave parents good news on Thursday - fewer of their children are smoking. Thirty-eight percent of Wisconsin high school students smoked in 1999 only 21 percent of high school students smoke today, Doyle announced at Bay Port High School in Howard.
The numbers come from the 2004 Wisconsin Youth Tobacco Survey which polled 1,443 high school students. According to the survey, 28 percent use any tobacco product and 52 percent have smoked cigarettes.
During the presentation, Doyle told students that no one has ever heard of a 25-year-old deciding to take up smoking because adults know it is a bad choice. He said more than 80 percent of smokers begin before they reach 18 years of age.
"The fact is, they've (tobacco companies) gotta get you early, and that's what they're trying to do," he said.
Doyle's announcement coincided with the launching of two anti-tobacco industry commercials that are the result of the state's partnership with American Legacy Foundation. The foundation has matched the $1 million that Wisconsin has spent on smoking prevention.
The backdrops for both Crazyworld ads - part of a campaign Doyle began in Wisconsin in July - are a busy New York city sidewalk opposite an office building of a tobacco company.
One ad counters a Virginia Slims slogan, "Get your voice." A female throat cancer survivor speaks into a microphone with the robotic tone of her artificial voice box, saying, "Is this the voice you wanted me to get?"
Claire Cortright, president of FACT Youth Empowerment Movement, said the ad is powerful. "They realize that that could be them someday if they take up smoking, and become sick because of it," she said.
The other ad asks the companies why they do not manufacture fire-safe cigarettes in other states besides New York.
There are already three other ads in the campaign series that have been aired in Wisconsin. "Some of the information given in the ads is really shocking," Cortright said, citing cigarette ingredients as an example.
Doyle was accompanied by students who are members of the Brown County FACT Youth Empowerment Movement and representatives of the Brown County Tobacco Free Coalition and the American Lung Association.
Maria Blohoweak, a Bay Port High School senior, said the ads will impact some students. "I'm really amazed at the high school, or the youth (smoking) rate dropping," she said, but added there is still work to be done in persuading students to stop smoking.
That the state happens to be participating in anti-smoking campaigns is positive, she added. Claire Cortright, president of the Brown County FACT Youth Empowerment Program, believes in the ads' effectiveness.
David Gundersen, tobacco prevention coordinator, said the ads will debut statewide Monday. The public knows smoking is harmful, so the ads try to portray the tobacco industry as manipulating young people into using their products, Gundersen said.
"What these ads do is target the kids that don't like to be manipulated," he said.
He summarized the ads' messages, "If you're really a rebel you don't smoke, because if you smoke then you're really just a stooge of the tobacco industry," he said.
While tobacco companies are accused of marketing their products to youth, Philip Morris, the maker of Virginia Slims, states on its Web site that, "As the manufacturer of a product intended for adults who smoke, that has serious health effects and is addictive, we have a responsibility to help prevent kids from smoking."
In 2003, cigarette sales amounted to $293.6 million in tax revenue for the state and in 2004, taxes on sales brought in $291.3 million. There was no change in the tax rate and the money is not earmarked especially for tobacco prevention, according to the governor's office.
The Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line is available to smokers 7 a.m.-11 p.m. by calling 1-877-270-7867. The program is sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services and run by the University of Wisconsin Medical School. The presentation highlighted the American Lung Association's youth smoker quit program, Not-On-Tobacco, or N-O-T, as a nonpunitive option for 14-19-year-olds.
http://www.greenbaynewschron.com/page.html?article=128650
Fur restaurants try smoke-free -OH
Smokeout Day spurs efforts By Kevin Eigelbach
Post staff reporter
Did you kick some butts on Thursday?
Four local restaurants did. They went smokeless for the American Cancer Society's 28th annual Great American Smokeout. They teamed with the Society's local chapter and with the Hamilton County General Health District to help people trying to quit.
"One of the biggest barriers to quitting smoking is being around smoke," said the chapter's Health Promotions Manager Marianne Beard.
This year, the downtown restaurants Bella Luna and 5th and Vine, plus the Symmes Township restaurant The Melting Pot and Ferrari's Little Italy and Bakery in Madeira participated.
General Manager Chris Reed said Thursday afternoon that Ferrari's doesn't usually have that many smokers, and had none at all during lunch.
Last year, three restaurants went smokeless for the day, and two of them later decided to stay smoke-free permanently.
It wasn't an easy decision, said Hyde Park Hitching Post co-owner Frank Kahsar.
"Being a small business, we were very concerned about losing business," Kahsar said. The restaurant seats 78.
If the restaurant had a bar, the decision would have been more difficult, Kahsar said, because people who buy alcoholic drinks often want a cigarette with them.
As they did Thursday, last year the sponsors surveyed patrons to get their opinions about eating in a smoke-free restaurant.
Some non-smokers said they would frequent the Hitching Post more often if it were smoke-free, Kahsar said, and most of the smokers said it wouldn't stop them from coming in.
After a test run on a Sunday morning, the restaurant's busiest time, management decided to go smoke-free last spring.
The decision hasn't cost the restaurant any business, Kahsar said, but it hasn't increased business significantly either.
"We thought the trade-off was pretty good, in that you are promoting a smoke-free environment, and a good percentage of the population would prefer that," he said. <>Of the approximately 1,700 restaurants in Hamilton County, 500 already are smoke-free, said Susan Schaefer, a health educator for the district.
The district publishes the names of those restaurants in a smoke-free dining guide, which it just put online Monday at www.hamiltoncountyhealth.org/smokefreerestaurants.
She said Thursday that the site had already received 300 hits, and that the district had mailed out 500 copies of the guide.
The district says that secondhand smoke is the third-leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
Second-hand smoke causes 35,000 to 40,000 deaths from heart disease every year. Smoking directly contributes to approximately 400,000 deaths each year in the U.S., federal health officials say.
http://www.cincypost.com/2004/11/19/smoke111904.html
$1M smoking-cessation program launched -NY
Groups and hospital running state-funded campaign over 5-year period
By LISA SCHNEIDER Friday, November 19, 2004
Almost a third of Staten Islanders smoke, and surveys show that more than half of them want to quit.
To help them kick their disease-inducing addiction, a group of community organizations yesterday launched a $1 million smoking cessation program, to be funded by the state Health Department over a five-year period.
"Smokers need to quit, and we will be there to help them," said Elena Deutsch, director of tobacco control for Cicatelli Associates Inc. -- an organization heading the program with St. Vincent's Hospital, West Brighton.
The initiative -- launched on the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout -- includes the following partnering organizations: Camelot of Staten Island, Staten Island Mental Health Society, and Project Hospitality.
When a counselor or health care provider steps in to help, a smoker is 30 percent more likely to be successful in their efforts to quit, said Dawn Gideon, executive director of St. Vincent's, West Brighton.
About 27 percent of borough residents smoke, compared to 22 percent citywide. Staten Island has the highest death rate from lung cancer, compared with the other boroughs.
"It's startling to hear the incidence of smoking on Staten Island," Ms. Gideon said.
With $200,000 per year from the Health Department, counselors, nurses and doctors will be trained to help smokers quit by using various methods -- including asking them their smoking status, advising them to quit, assessing whether they're ready to quit, helping them find services and setting up appointments.
St. Vincent's aims to train its nurses in outpatient, inpatient and behavioral health clinics on how to help people break their nicotine addiction. It also plans to start a program to aid pregnant women kick the habit, said Patti Lamberson, coordinator of the tobacco cessation program at St. Vincent's Hospital, Manhattan.
Some of the people trained as part of this initiative work at centers for addiction abuse, where a high percent of patients smoke. While cigarettes might seem relatively minor when compared with an addiction to crack, cocaine or alcohol, studies show that patients have more success when they attempt to kick all of their addictions at once, Ms. Deutsch said.
In the past, counselors might have felt guilty taking a cigarette from a patient since nicotine was treated as a reward, Ms. Lamberson said.
"It's a big culture change. Now, instead of going on smoke breaks, they'll go on fresh air breaks," Ms. Deutsch said.
At Camelot, workers have seen patients recover from their drug addictions only to be diagnosed with lung cancer or heart disease as a result of being bound to nicotine.
"Smoking can be more crippling to them than the drugs," said Ruth Rivero, director of multi-services at Camelot.
At Staten Island Mental Health's teen center, more than half of the 120 teen-agers battling substance abuse use tobacco, said Michael Zampella, program director.
"Tobacco is the gateway drug in many cases," he said.
A pack of cigarettes now costs about $7 in the city, which can strip a poor family of half its income, said the Rev. Terry Troia, executive director of Project Hospitality.
"Tobacco takes away much needed funds from clothes and food," she said.
Almost half of all smokers will die prematurely as a result of their addiction, losing an average of 14 years of life, according to the state Health Department.
Nationally, more than 90 percent of smokers wish they had never started, according to Cicatelli Associates. http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/1100875549181690.xml
Shrinking band of hardy outlaws defy smoking ban -IRELAND
By ANNE MCHARDY 20.11.2004
Sean O'Huigan stubs out his cigarette on the brick wall behind his local bar and grins. "Okay, so tonight I smoked it out here. But there's many a night when I smoke it in there."
He jerks a thumb back at O'Rourke's bar, with its burgundy painted sign.
The pub, on the border of County Louth and County Armagh, where the Gardai patrol only intermittently, is in the sort of countryside where the one-year-old Irish ban on smoking in public areas operates only sporadically. But it does still operate.
On a cold, rainy night, O'Huigan might be tolerated in a corner of the bar. Other times, the moral majority turns on him.
The ban - a joke, it seemed, when the Irish Government imposed it in this stereotypically hard-drinking country of heavy smokers - operates better the nearer Dublin you are. And better in main-street, well-lit restaurants than in backstreet bars, even in Dublin.
The smarter the establishment, the more willingly it is observed. Give or take, that is, the Dail, the Irish Parliament, where the hard-bitten smoking MPs who passed this legislation almost came to grief when the licensing authorities pointed out that the Parliament's bars were not exempt.
There were threats of court cases - until the parliamentarians took to smoking in the open air as their constituents have to.
The advocates of the ban will tell you it is a miracle and that smokers are giving up in their droves. And, indeed, that seems to be how the majority have treated the ban. But others tell a different story.
Bar operators, except in the most remote country areas, report a 20 per cent drop in custom - enough to be pushing many to closure.
Two of Dublin's most famous cafe chain, Bewleys, are closing, and have attributed some blame to a 10 per cent drop in trade following the smoking ban.
But restaurants are holding out well - particularly those with a family clientele.
Ireland is a rich country now, part of the European mainstream, and even in O'Rourke's County Louth the pavements are crowded with joggers. Which is why, when Scotland announced in the summer that it, too, was banning smoking in public places, it pointed to an Irish success story.
The Scots ban, like the Irish, extends to all public establishments - and in that is more stringent than the projected English one, which was announced only in proposed legislation this week.
The English are contemplating a ban on smoking in all pubs and bars that serve food, but not in drinking-only bars. Private clubs - including the exclusive gentlemen's clubs in the centre of London - will still be allowed to decide whether their clients can smoke.
The Government - which this week stopped a plan by London Mayor Ken Livingstone for a citywide smoking ban on the Irish and Scots model - has an oddly ambivalent attitude.
Frank Dobson, who was Health Secretary in the first Tony Blair government seven years ago, and was sacked by Blair for his outspoken, left-wing criticism, said that the partial English ban would allow the working class, who are less likely to use restaurants, to continue smoking and killing themselves, thus widening the health gap between the rich and poor.
It is a theme that is much discussed - more so than the fact, true of both Britain and Ireland, that smoking continues to hold sway among the young.
In both populations it is less common, generally, than it was a decade ago. But it is on the increase among the young, who smoke both tobacco and cannabis in increasing quantities. < href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3612120&thesection=news&thesubsection=world">http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3612120&thesection=news&thesubsection=world
Give us more police and clean streets -uk
editorial@islingtonexpress.co.uk
19 November 2004
NAG'S Head shoppers want more police, pedestrian crossings and street cleaners, according to a survey by Islington's Conservatives.
Most people questioned said the area's biggest problem was cigarette sellers and illegal traders while 15 per cent put dirt and rubbish top of their list.
Nicola Talbot, Islington North's Tory parliamentary candidate said: "I call on the council to make sure that its A1 Borough money is not frittered away on superfluous decoration and the north of the borough gets its just desserts after decades of neglect.
they want more rules
Hospitality leaders attack Government smoking ban fudge -UK
NEWS; Stub Out Smoking; Pg. 6
By Jessica Gunn November 18, 2004
Hospitality industry leaders have slammed the Government's plans to ban smoking in the workplace as a botch.
In its long-awaited White Paper on health, published on Tuesday (16 November), the Government announced that smoking would be banned within four years in all enclosed public places that serve food, including restaurants, cafés, pubs and bars.
Pubs and bars that don't prepare or serve food and private membership clubs – an estimated 20% of licensed premises – will be exempt from the ban. Smoking at the bar will be outlawed altogether.
Announcing the White Paper, Health Secretary John Reid told the House of Commons: "We intend to shift the balance significantly in favour of smoke-free environments."
But industry leaders have hit back at Reid's proposals, branding the White Paper as confusing and lacking in detail, adding that exemptions undermined its justification as a public health measure.
Bob Cotton, chief executive of the British Hospitality Association, welcomed the Government's national approach to a smoking ban, but condemned its logic. "Why is the health of employees in hotels and restaurants more important than that of those in pubs?" he asked.
Nick Bish, chief executive of the Association of Multiple Licensed Retailers, said he was "disappointed and perplexed" at the new regulations. "Why should food be the arbiter of a smoke ban?" he said. "Why should the health of someone eating a cheese sandwich be more important than that of someone drinking a pint?"
A spokesman for the British Beer and Pub Association said the plan seemed "designed to drive us back to drink". He claimed the rules would "create a confusing patchwork for customers" and warned that many pubs would walk away from serving food in an attempt to protect revenue from smokers.
Reaction from pub operators was similarly disgruntled. "Cut out the fudge and smudge and ban smoking in all pubs," said a spokesman for JD Wetherspoon. "There appear to be too many compromises in this White Paper, especially around the issue of exclusions for pubs that don't serve food."
Anti-smoking group ASH welcomed the Government's concession that smoking in workplaces was a bad thing, but a spokesman added that it could split the pub trade and threaten the livelihood of small publicans.
"This is a disaster for the pub trade. Pubs that continue to allow smoking will have to set minimum health and safety standards for their staff which could prove prohibitively expensive."
Political opinion was also divided. Labour peer Baroness Helene Hayman, who until recently was chairman of Cancer Research UK, condoned the Government's move but added: "We would have preferred a simple ban and for it to come in more quickly.
Paul Burstow, shadow health secretary for the Liberal Democrats, said: "If the health secretary admits that passive smoking kills and that there is no safe level of smoke, then there can not be any exceptions for a ban on smoking in enclosed public places. Dr Reid must understand that smoking still kills even when you are not eating food."
The ban and what it means
Jessica Gunn
Countdown to the ban
End of 2006 – all Government departments and the whole of the NHS will be smoke-free
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=616&topicId=12552&docId=l:241449925&start=14
Romanian journalist freed on bail - Bulgaria
19.11.2004
Romanian journalist freed on bail
George Buhnici of the privately-owned Romanian TV station Pro TV, who was arrested by the Bulgarian authorities on 16 November for using a concealed camera to film in a duty-free shop on the Romanian-Bulgarian border, was released on bail of about 2,500 euros today. Buhnici must stay in Bulgaria until the prosecutor's office decides if he is to be tried for using a concealed camera without permission, for which he could be jailed for up to three years.
See : 18.11.2004
Journalist faces three years in prison for using concealed camera
Reporters Without Borders today called for the immediate release of Romanian journalist George Buhnici of the privately-owned TV station Pro TV, who was arrested by the Bulgarian authorities on 16 November for filming with a concealed camera in a duty-free shop on the Romanian-Bulgarian border. He faces up to three years in prison under Bulgarian law, which views use of a hidden camera as spying.
"This journalist is the victim of an absurd and archaic law which stipulates a punishment of utterly disproportionate severity for the use of a hidden camera, which is nonetheless a common practice by investigative journalists, Reporters Without Borders said in a letter to Bulgarian chief prosecutor Nikola Filchev.
"We call on you to do everything possible to secure Buhnici's immediate release," the press freedom organisation added.
Buhnici was arrested along with his driver, Ovidiu Pavel, on the afternoon of 16 November on the border between Giurgi in Romania and Ruse in Bulgaria.
Pro TV said Buhnici used a hidden camera to film a cigarette trafficking in the duty-free shop. Bulgarian customs officials seized the camera and the video recording. The driver was released a few hours later, but Buhnici was placed in police custody in Ruse.
The Sofia prosecutor's office is examining the confiscated material in order to decide what charge will be brought against him. Article 339 (a) of Bulgaria's criminal code says anyone using "tools of espionage to acquire secret information" without specific authorisation is liable to up to three years in prison. A concealed camera is regarded as such a tool.
Buhnici's detention was extended for another 72 hours yesterday evening to give the prosecutor's office time to decide if he will be charged with "espionage."
mania's consul in Sofia, Victor Bojin, who has been able to see Buhnici, told Reporters Without Borders that his rights were being respected and that he hoped to be released. His lawyers said they expected that he would be fined and would be able to return home very soon.
http://www.categorynet.com/fr/cp/details.php?id=60088
By Alan Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) - BAR boss David Richards will leave the Formula One team after Honda agreed to buy a 45 percent stake in it.
Owners British American Tobacco (BAT) said in a statement on Friday that they and the Japanese car giant, BAR's engine partner for the past five years, would form a joint venture company to replace the existing ownership structure.
No financial details were available but BAT will be left with a 55 percent controlling stake in a team that has been the revelation of the 2004 season.
The two companies have made an offer to buy three small shareholders' 10 percent stake and are waiting for their response.
BAT said that if the shareholders refused to sell, BAT would seek the appointment of administrators to the holding company.
"The new joint venture company then expects to acquire, from the administrator, the shares in British American Racing GP Ltd which operates the team and which is the holding company's principal asset," it said.
"The day to day activities of the team will not be affected by this process."
Richards, a former Benetton team boss and founder of the Prodrive company that has run BAR since 2001, was effectively ousted although all sides put a positive gloss on his departure.
He will leave one year before the end of his contract and will be replaced by Nick Fry, a close assistant who becomes chief executive and will act as team principal.
"We were brought in by British American Tobacco to turn the team around and secure its long-term future and that is what we have done," said Richards.
"I am immensely proud of what Prodrive has achieved in a shorter time than anticipated. I believe that BAR Honda is now in a very healthy position to continue its pursuit of the world championship," he added.
BUTTON SUCCESS
BAR's Jenson Button was often the only rival to the dominant Ferrari drivers in the 2004 season when BAR finished runners-up in the constructors' championship.
However, despite the Briton finishing second four times, BAR have yet to win a race.
The team was formed in 1997 by Craig Pollock, Reynard Racing Cars and British American Tobacco, who provided the bulk of the financing. After buying the Tyrrell team, they made their Formula One debut in 1999.
Pollock is one of the three minority shareholders targetted by BAT and Honda. The others are Reynard and Rick Gorne.
Racing at first in the livery of BAT's 555 and Lucky Strike cigarette brands, while the team's motif was a speeding tobacco leaf, they failed to score any points and squandered resources in a tough first season.
Honda came on board in 2000, the Japanese carmaker returning to Formula One and stepping up its involvement in the team two years later with a new agreement that included chassis development.
In 2003, Honda became an official sponsor of the team as well and this year their partnership with BAR was extended until at least the end of 2007.
"This is a natural extension of our relationship with BAR and is an important step for both partners," said Honda Motor Company Managing Director Takanobu Ito on Friday.
Five of the 2004 Formula One teams -- Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, Jordan and BAR -- were substantially backed by cigarette brands this year.
A European Union law bans tobacco advertising from mid-2005 with a worldwide ban due to be enforced by the end of 2006.
The different dates for the bans have caused confusion in Formula One where some sponsorship contracts go beyond 2005.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=sportsNews&storyID=624201§ion=news
Cigarette consumption is your genes: Study :
Health India > London, Nov 18 : A new study, by researchers at the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development, has found that the number cigarettes a person smokes in a day and their nicotine dependency is decided by the genetic make up of the person.
The researchers say that although, when a person starts smoking depends on his environment, the number of cigarettes he smokes will depend on his genetic disposition and also people who are more genetically inclined towards smoking find it the hardest to quit.
On studying more than a thousand pair of twins, researchers also attempted to zero in on the genes responsible for the habit of smoking.
They found that chromosomes 6 and 14 contain regions involved with taking up smoking. On chromosome 3 there is a region involved in the number of cigarettes that somebody smokes per day.
Chromosome 10 contains a region that plays a role in both the number of cigarettes smoked per day as well as the chance that somebody takes up smoking. (ANI)
http://www.123bharath.com/news/index.php?action=fullnews&id=37917
Friends Keep Teens From Smoking -WI
By Sarah Thomsen
Millions of smokers hope Thursday's "Great American Smokeout" will get them started on the path to kicking the habit. It appears fewer teens need to stop smoking -- because they never start.
A new study released Thursday afternoon says almost half as many high schoolers smoke compared to five years ago. Since the study deals specifically with kids, Action 2 News went to the source to find out why fewer of them are smoking.
Green Bay Preble High School health teacher Rod Leadley has a "tar jar," a prop he uses to show teens the effects of smoking by showing them what smoke deposits in their lungs. He admits, sometimes the message doesn't sink in.
"It's hard for us to stand up here and try to tell them what to do, because they don't like to hear that a lot of times," Leadley acknowledged.
What does work? Their friends.
"I want to be like my friends," one student named Austin said.
It's peer pressure but with a positive result. When friends decide not to smoke, others follow their lead.
"Your friends, when you hear them say this stuff like, you're like, it's not cool any more, really shouldn't do it," sophomore Marie Puissant said.
The trend of recent smoking bans in many area cities backs that theory.
"There might be a time in your near future when you're going to be descriminated against in regard that you will not be able to smoke wherever you want to," Leadley said.
Leadley hopes that might be enough to keep teenagers from starting a habit that keeps them out of the "in" crowd.
Students also said the anti-smoking ads aimed at teenagers have had a big influence on whethe they smoke.
Governor Doyle visited Bay Port High School in Howard on Thursday to debut a new anti-smoking campaign. It includes a television ad called "Q and A" which features teenagers asking questions to cigarette companies and not receiving any answers.
The governor says it's important to target teenagers because that's when people often decide to start smoking. "Have you even heard of a 25-year-old who never smoked but who's sitting there and saying, 'I'm thinking it over now?'" he remarked.
The governor said every day 20 people die in Wisconsin from tobacco-related illnesses.
http://www.wbay.com/Global/story.asp?S=2586627&nav=51s7TItM
National day urges students to stop smoking
alanna kaufman November 19, 2004
Penn collaborated with the American Cancer Society and the anti-smoking campaign thetruth.com yesterday to promote the 27th Great American Smokeout. Efforts were directed at the 1/3 of Penn students who have either smoked in the past or smoke actively, according to Director of Health Education Susan Villari.
The event, which takes place annually on the third Thursday of November, encourages smokers of all ages to either begin smoking less or quit completely. The Office of Health Education and the Social Planning and Events Committee hosted a van from thetruth.com -- which targets youths -- and set up tables with information to attract smokers who are looking to quit.
Despite extensive campaigns by organizations like thetruth.com and efforts within the Penn community, smoking is a serious issue on campuses, Villari said.
"The studies that I've been reading show that one-fourth of high school seniors smoke, and most people begin to smoke before they are 21," Villari said.
In an endeavor to change this statistic, student a Posted at 10:34 pm by looped_ca
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Ont. may ban smoking around all public buildings
CTV.ca News Staff
Ontario smokers could find themselves way out in the cold, if the province goes ahead with a plan for sweeping, no-smoking zones around all public buildings.
CTV's Toronto affiliate, CFTO, has learned of draft legislation that could leave people in the province very few options on where to light up. The only choices left could be in their homes, their cars, and far away from any public building.
A senior source in the McGuinty government told CFTO the proposed ban would likely follow the same guidelines already in place outside hospitals -- where smoking isn't allowed within nine metres of any doorway.
The Liberal government of Premier Dalton McGuinty is expected to table the legislation before Christmas, CFTO News reported on Wednesday.
Long-time smoker Don Lalonde admits lighting up "is a dirty, no-good habit," but he said the idea being floated is still too much.
"I think they're carrying it a little bit too far."
Other smokers, however, said they supported the move.
"I'm okay with it, actually," said Glen Hofman. "I'm fine with it."
Ontario's minister of health, George Smitherman, would not confirm the report of the draft legislation, but did repeat his commitment to getting citizens of his province to butt out.
"We ran on a platform of a 100 per cent ban on smoking in public and work places and we're going to fulfill it," Smitherman said.
As well, CFTO says the Health Minister will get support from Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara. He is said to be onside with efforts to raise cigarette taxes in the province to bring them closer to the national average.
"I have to balance between taxes that discourage smoking -- and that works -- and making sure our taxes are not a catalyst to a black market that doesn't serve anybody," Sorbara said.
Citing data from 2004, Statistics Canada estimates there are just over 1.7 million smokers in Ontario. That figure amounts to just under 17 per cent of the population.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1100736075404_64/?hub=Health
Alberta Tories blamed for petrochemical layoffs
Canadian Press
SHERWOOD PARK, Alta. — Workers facing layoffs at a petrochemical plant told Alberta Premier Ralph Klein on Wednesday that his government's policies threaten their industry's future.
"We want (Klein) to support the petrochemical industry and right now we don't see that happening,'' said Mike McKinney of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union.
About 10 union members tried to confront Klein on the issue at a Tory-friendly event in Sherwood Park, just east of Edmonton, as he campaigned in advance of Monday's election.
Starting next year, between 250 and 300 workers will lose their jobs when Celanese Canada shuts an Edmonton plant that has produced cigarette filters for the Chinese market.
The union says those jobs will be transferred to plants in Mexico and Belgium and will eventually be located in a new plant being built in China.
Although some analysts suggest the jobs are being moved so the plant is closer to its markets, the union says Conservative policies have also played a role.
It says allowing the Alliance pipeline to ship natural gas through Alberta without stripping out liquids used for petrochemicals cost the province its competitive advantage.
"This is Alberta. This is where natural gas comes from,'' McKinney said. "Over half our natural gas gets shipped down the pipe to Chicago.''
Greg Stringham of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers explained that before the Alliance pipeline from British Columbia to Chicago opened on Dec. 1, 2001, those liquids were removed from the gas in Alberta.
"There was no way to get them out (of the province) before the Alliance pipeline,'' said Stringham.
Because the liquids were stranded, there was an abundant supply of petrochemical feedstock in Alberta and that kept prices low.
When the bottleneck was removed, Alberta petrochemical producers were forced to pay North American prices for raw materials.
"That makes us a high-cost producer, therefore taking away our advantage,'' said McKinney.
"The petrochemical industry across the province is in trouble here because of these policies.''
Klein said the energy department is studying the issue.
"I've already asked officials to rethink the so-called ethane policy to ensure that we're able to strip liquids that go to support the petrochemical industry to make sure that we get our fair share.''
He said the policy has been changed because the government decided the pipeline's value and the jobs it would create outweighed the petrochemical industry's need for cheap ethane.
"We need to relook at the policy,'' he said.
After a hastily arranged meeting with Energy Minister Murray Smith, McKinney said officials with the government, union and company will meet to examine ways to keep the plant open.
"We would be looking for alternative products we could make or investments of that nature,'' McKinney said.
Stringham said the Alberta industry retains some advantages.
Most competitors get their feedstock from oil, which is even more expensive than gas, he said.
As well, Alberta plants pay minimal transportation charges to get raw materials.
That doesn't help workers faced with losing jobs, said McKinney.
"We've got 400 families that have been upset because of these policies and we need some action here,'' he said. "We need Ralph to care about that.''
Also on the campaign trail Wednesday, Liberal Leader Kevin Taft told a radio talk show Alberta needs to begin building hospitals immediately to help an over-burdened health system.
Taft said hospitals in Calgary and Edmonton are functioning at over-capacity.
NDP Brian Mason teed off on Klein's Monday promise to stay in office for at least 33/4 years if re-elected. That promise, he said, was worth 10,000 votes for the New Democrats.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1100740270673_106/?hub=Canada
Top Judges Have Doubts on Tobacco Penalty
By Peter Kaplan Wed Nov 17, 2004 05:01 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A divided U.S. federal appeals court panel on Wednesday expressed skepticism about whether the government had the power to force cigarette makers to pay billions of dollars in past profits as part of its racketeering case against the industry.
Hearing a legal argument that could be crucial to the $280 billion racketeering case, two of three appeals judges raised doubts about a lower court ruling that permitted the government to seek $280 billion in penalties from the industry.
"This RICO law was issued with all sorts of testimony about racketeers and Mafiosi. I've seen the government using it in court against everybody except racketeers and Mafiosi," Appeals Court Judge David Sentelle said.
Before the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is a motion by the industry challenging the government's bid for "disgorgement" of some of their past profits in the case that went to trial in September.
The motion was denied in May by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, who concluded that the government may ask for disgorgement under a provision in civil racketeering law that seeks to "prevent and restrain" future violations.
The case is in its ninth week of trial before Kessler, but industry lawyers appealed Kessler's ruling while the case continues.
Targeted in the lawsuit are Altria Group Inc. and its Philip Morris USA unit; Loews Corp.'s Lorillard Tobacco unit, which has a tracking stock, Carolina Group ; Vector Group Ltd.'s Liggett Group; Reynolds American Inc.'s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco unit and British American Tobacco Plc unit British American Tobacco Investments Ltd.
Stocks of tobacco companies were mostly higher. The S&P tobacco index closed Wednesday up 5.14 percent to 280.12.
CONSPIRACY CASE
The government charges cigarette makers lied and tried to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking as part of a 50-year industry conspiracy.
The tobacco companies deny they illegally conspired to promote smoking and say the government has no grounds to pursue them after they drastically overhauled marketing practices as part of the 1998 settlement with state attorneys general.
The industry's lawyers have argued that any potential sanctions must be limited to money that would be used to perpetuate any racketeering violations in the future.
During Wednesday's arguments, industry lawyer Michael Carvin told the judges that if the government wanted to force the industry to give up past profits, it should have filed suit under the criminal section of the racketeering statute.
The government's interpretation of the racketeering laws "would make nonsense of the statute," Carvin said.
Sentelle was receptive to that argument, demanding to know how the government could "wedge" its $280 billion disgorgement claim into the "prevent and restrain" wording in the law.
"It says what it says, and I don't see why you're not stuck with that," Sentelle said.
Sentelle and Stephen Williams both challenged the government's reasoning and questioned whether the government's disgorgement request would bankrupt the industry.
Government lawyer Michael Dreeben countered by citing past cases and said judges in racketeering cases should have "an arsenal of remedies" at their disposal to "change the economic incentives to say crime is not profitable."
That argument got a sympathetic hearing from one of the other judge on the appeals panel, David Tatel.
The judges also asked about another issue raised by the government: whether the appeals court may be barred by judicial procedures from ruling either way on the disgorgement matter at this point in the case.
The government has argued that the appeals court has no grounds to rule on the matter at this point because cigarette makers had a chance to appeal an earlier disgorgement ruling by Kessler but declined to do so.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=6845700
BUFFALO, N.Y. A media campaign aimed at getting people to quit smoking is taking its show on the road -- to Buffalo.
The "Bob Quits" campaign was developed by the Washington-based American Legacy Foundation and was inspired by reality T-V shows. So far, it has only aired in New York City and Washington.
Today it was launched in Buffalo, where television and radio spots follow the efforts of Queens sheet metal worker Bob Teicher (TYE'-sher) as he tried to give up cigarette smoking.
The campaign also features outdoor advertising on buses and elsewhere, with messages like "Quit, Bob, Quit."
The Buffalo campaign kicks off a day before the Great American Smokeout, when smokers are urged to kick the tobacco habit.
On the Net:
www.BobQuits.com
New York State Smoker's Quitsite: www.nysmokefree.com
http://www.wstm.com/Global/story.asp?S=2579544
Airman offers Great American Smokeout advice
by Senior Airman Sarah Kinsman
15th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
11/17/2004 - HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AFPN) -- According to the American Cancer Society, more than 46.5 million American citizens are in a private prison. Afflicted with worsening health, financial shackles and being publicly ostracized, these prisoners have their cell in their possession, but they can break out.
All they have to do is quit smoking.
The society started the Great American Smoke Out in 1977 to challenge people to stop using tobacco and raise awareness of the many effective ways to quit for good.
Tech. Sgt. Joanne Reed, assigned to the Pacific Air Forces protocol office here, quit smoking in 2001 during the Great American Smokeout and has not turned back.
“I started [smoking] when I was 17, so I had been smoking for 10 years at a rate of one to two packs per day,” she said. “It was not my first attempt at quitting, and I didn’t know if it would be my last either. It seems to take us smokers five to six times before we get quitting right. I was due to get it right this time.”
There were several reasons why she decided to quit smoking.
“I was tired of the stigma, the lectures, the smell, the cost and my health,” she said. “I was a medic. I was supposed to be leading the pack and setting the example. Instead, I was a complete hypocrite.”
Having attempted quitting several times before 2001, there were some changes Sergeant Reed made to help her remain tobacco-free.
“I adopted several gradual lifestyle changes when I successfully quit,” she said. “First and foremost was to quit smoking. Once I achieved that goal for myself, I slowly incorporated diet and exercise. Running became a successful outlet for me. I viewed it as swapping one addiction for another.”
This year’s Great American Smokeout, the day set aside each year to have smokers stop smoking for a day and hopefully for the rest of their lives, is Nov. 18. Sergeant Reed offers a few tips to smokers wanting to quit.
“Hang in there is the best tip I can offer,” she said. “Quitting is not easy. It takes a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of effort. Don’t beat yourself up if you fall off the wagon. We don’t succeed by berating ourselves into achieving. Get up, dust yourself off, give yourself a pat on the back and jump on again. In the meantime, you are gaining the skills you need in order to be successful when you do [quit].”
Smoking cessation is not just about stopping the act, but changing the lifestyle.
“For me, quitting smoking affected my social contacts and my daily routines,” Sergeant Reed said. “I had to change my thinking and behaviors regarding my eating and exercise habits.
“Everyone has their reasons for smoking: to cope with stress, to relax, curb appetite, peer pressure, boredom. ... Some people don’t quit because they fear the weight gain, the mood swings associated with nicotine withdrawal, they’re unable to find alternate ways to cope with stress, and some may not quit because consciously or unconsciously, they’re afraid of failing,” Sergeant Reed said.
“The most important step is making the commitment to quit,” she said. “Individuals can start by gathering the tools and resources -- seek information, join a support group, attend a smoking cessation class. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about quitting, I guarantee you will gain at least one new resource to add to your toolbox to be a successful quitter.
“Anyone can quit, anyone. It’s up to the individual,” Sergeant Reed said. “All it requires is commitment.”
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123009203
Online cigarette purchases are hurting the state -OR
The legislature and state pinned a lot of their budget promises on cigarette smokers.
Health, anti-smoking groups seek to revive cigarette tax
The Associated Press November 17, 2004
SALEM - Health care industry and anti-smoking groups plan to seek reinstatement of a 10-cent-a-pack cigarette tax that was snuffed out when voters rejected an $800 million tax hike earlier this year.
The groups say raising the cigarette tax would discourage smoking among young people by making cigarettes more expensive and provide more money for health clinics for low-income people.
But the move is likely to encounter strong resistance from House Republicans who say Oregonians have made it clear they don't want higher taxes.
The 10-cent cigarette tax was enacted by the 1993 Legislature to help pay for the Oregon Health Plan, and lawmakers had renewed the increase every two years since then with little controversy.
However, the cigarette tax died because lawmakers included it in their $800 million tax hike plan, most of which would have come from an income tax surcharge, trounced by voters in February.
The result of the February vote was that Oregon's cigarette tax dropped from $1.28 a pack to $1.18 per package.
With the 2005 Legislature set to begin on Jan. 10, the groups seeking reinstatement of the 10-cent tax are prepared to make the case that voters didn't mean to kill the tax.
Ken Rutledge, president of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, said reinstating the tax would generate $28 million in the next two-year budget cycle.
It's a bad time of year for Oregon's Department of Revenue to run out of money. Some say the Internet is to blame.
The legislature and state pinned a lot of their budget promises on cigarette smokers. But smokers in Oregon have decreased and more are going on-line, avoiding the tax.
Department administrator Randy Evers said they need to cut $20 million. "We would have to start curtailing operations after the first of the year. That's income tax season . . .so that's not a good scenario."
The department is asking for an emergency infusion of $15 million.
http://www.kxl.com/arDisplay.aspx?SecID=1&ID=43568
Smoking ban 'puts 2000 jobs at risk' -UK
NEARLY 2000 jobs could be lost in the licensed trade in Scotland through the Executive’s proposed ban on smoking in public places, it was claimed today.
Customer numbers could fall by 6.3 per cent and profits could slump by more than £13 million, it was claimed.
The figures came in research commissioned by accountants BDO Stoy Hayward for a UK-wide "impact study" on the effects of a smoking ban. It estimates the ban could cost the trade 1800 Scots jobs.
The findings run counter to claims by the Scottish Executive that a ban in Scotland could mean more customers, not fewer, for the country’s pubs and restaurants.
The Executive has pointed to a research by Aberdeen University which suggests a ban would lead to a net economic benefit to Scotland ranging from £26 million a year to as much as £376m a year.
In England and Wales, where Westminster is proposing a smoking ban in pubs that serve food, the study claims the licensed trade industry could see 32,000 jobs lost, a 7.6 per cent drop in customer numbers, and a £230m fall in profits.
The biggest job losses would in the south-east of England, where 12,140 jobs could be at threat, said the study.
David Hill, business recovery partner at BDO Stoy Hayward in Scotland said:
"Those in the licensed trade will need to think hard as how to preempt and recoup any potential loss in revenue."
He said the proposed ban did not mean bad news for all affected businesses, but losses would be felt by those businesses who did not prepare sufficiently.
http://business.scotsman.com/media.cfm?id=1326052004
Student Government Creates Controversial Smoking Ban Survey A closer look at the proposal -CA
by Daniel Hug Hornet Asst. News Editor
November 17, 2004
The Associated Students Senate is elected by the student body to serve as their voice in how Fullerton College is operated. On the whole, the students and faculty expect their student government representatives to make honest and rational decisions based on the will of the campus community.
Last week, AS put the issue of a campus-wide smoking ban in the hands of the people they represent in the form of a survey given to students and faculty members. Reasonable enough, but a closer look shows that the survey is composed in such a way that a smoking ban seems inevitable.
Sample questions included "Do you agree that second-hand smoke is dangerous to your health?", and "Do you agree that cigarette butts are a hazard to the environment?"
Survey respondents could choose one of four answers: strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree.
Another question asked students if they would attend FC if the campus went smoke-free.
AS got students and faculty to participate in the survey by offering them a free sandwich. A few hungry souls get to decide the fate of smokers on campus.
The AS President has endorsed a smoking ban, and most of the AS Senate agrees with him. With the consensus of the Student Senate firmly behind this proposal, one fears that a "strongly agree" vote in one manner will cancel out a "no" vote in another.
We all know that second-hand smoke kills, and that cigarette butts are a hazard to the environment, so why bother asking? Most people go to FC for an education, not to avoid inhaling smoke.
A better way of making this choice is to put the issue to a vote open to the entire student body and faculty (no free food, or anything that otherwise might taint the vote). It should come down to a simple question, do you approve of a campus-wide smoking ban, yes or no? A true campus-wide survey would also serve as a boon to AS, regardless of the final tally. This current administration was elected with a unified goal to increase student participation in school activities. They can achieve this by allowing an open discussion of such serious issues that will affect the entire campus.
Granted, not everyone will be interested in offering their opinions, but the Fullerton College community should have easy access in offering input to their elected leaders.
The decisions regarding how this campus is run should not be up to AS alone. If students and faculty members will be affected by a change in any of the rules, it is important to let them have a fair say in such matters. Student government should not be "loading the dice" by asking complex questions of the community they represent.
http://www.fchornet.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/11/17/419c152dd27c2
State Sees Increase In Cigarette Black Market After Tax Hike -WY
Riverton, Wyo.
Associated Press
A state revenue official says higher state tobacco taxes imposed 16 months ago have contributed to increased black market trading of cigarettes in Wyoming.
Dan Noble of the Wyoming Department of Revenue says his agency recently seized two-thousand cartons of contraband cigarettes that had come into Wyoming and were about to be sold without the required Wyoming tax stamp.
The 2003 Wyoming Legislature raised the excise tax on a pack of cigarettes from 12 cents to 60 cents. The higher tax took effect July first, 2003.
Noble says his agency may revoke two or three wholesale tobacco licensees because of violations of state law.
http://www.kgwn.tv/home/headlines/1197481.html
Study shows how KY cities subsidize rural areas
A new economic study shows how much Louisville and other urban areas subsidize rural parts of the state.
And it argues the process has to stop if Louisville is to attract the new jobs of the 21st century.
The report is aimed at state lawmakers, who have talked about reforming state taxes, but haven't acted on it.
It claims Kentucky ranks in the bottom five of the 50 states in attracting the hottest jobs today - those in the office economy. And those jobs are in the cities.
Louisville, Lexington and the northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati generated
more than four billion dollars for the state government in 2002 and 2003, with not quite three-billion spent in the urban areas for things like public schools and road improvements.
The rest, about 1.4 billion, went to outstate Kentucky. And just how much comes back to Louisville? About 59 cents of every dollar, according to the study.
It gives new ammunition for Greater Louisville, Inc., and other urban interests to convince the state to send more money back to those who make it. And in turn, the cities would spend the money to shift from depending on an economy of building and moving things, to one of creating and owning things.
The study also recommends state lawmakers consider eliminating or lowering the income tax, raise cigarette and liquor taxes and consider expanded gambling.
It also says rural communities should think about raising their own taxes, including starting their own occupational taxes, like Louisville's, to raise money at home.
No one likes to talk about raising taxes. And Governor Fletcher and some legislators will argue the state's urban areas should subsidize the rural reas. But the study argues the changes are needed so Kentucky can bring in new jobs. It's already going out to city and state leaders, if nothing else, as food for thought.
http://www.fox41.com/news/news_detail.asp?id=19522§ion=2
News from the Pennsylvania General Assembly
* ONLY RELEVANT PORTION COPIED
CIGARETTE SALES: Companies who sell cigarettes by mail order or over the Internet would have to verify that their customers are old enough to buy their products legally under a bill passed unanimously by the House and sent to Rendell.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13387349&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6
Posted at 1:40 am by looped_ca
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