Smoke Screens: The Truth About Tobacco

4th April 2010

Text

The new fear: pigs blood in cigarettes

Here’s the original ‘story’: 

http://www.news.com.au/national/cigarettes-may-contain-pigs-blood/comments-e6frfkvr-1225847653290

• Cigarettes may contain blood - research 
• “Insight into world of cigarette manufacture”
• Likely to raise concerns for Muslims, Jews

University of Sydney Professor in Public Health Simon Chapman points to recent Dutch research which identified 185 different industrial uses of a pig - including the use of its haemoglobin in cigarette filters.

Prof Chapman said the research offered an insight into the otherwise secretive world of cigarette manufacture, and it was likely to raise concerns for devout Muslims and Jews.

Religious texts at the core of both of these faiths specifically ban the consumption of pork.

“I think that there would be some particularly devout groups who would find the idea that there were pig products in cigarettes to be very offensive,” Prof Chapman said today.

“The Jewish community certainly takes these matters extremely seriously and the Islamic community certainly do as well, as would many vegetarians.

The Dutch research found pig haemoglobin - a blood protein - was being used to make cigarette filters more effective at trapping harmful chemicals before they could enter a smoker’s lungs.”It just puts into hard relief the problem that the tobacco industry is not required to declare the ingredients of cigarettes … they say ‘that’s our business’ and a trade secret.”

Prof Chapman said while tobacco companies had moved voluntarily list the contents of their products on their websites, they also noted undisclosed “processing aids … that are not significantly present in, and do not functionally affect, the finished product”.

This catch-all term hid from public view an array of chemicals and other substances used in the making of tobacco products, he said.

At least one cigarette brand sold in Greece was confirmed as using pig haemoglobin in its processes, Prof Chapman said, and the status of smokes sold was unknown.

“If you’re a smoker and you’re of Islamic or Jewish faith then you’d probably would want to know and there is no way of finding out,” Prof Chapman said.

The Sydney office of British American Tobacco Australia was contacted by AAP.

A spokeswoman said a comment would be provided although it was not immediately available.

“Professor” Chapman obviously did not feel it necessary to disclose either the name of the Dutch researcher or the name of the paper.  His argument also hinges on extraordinary ignorance from the readers too.  For starters, haemoglobin being part of the filter does not mean cigarettes contain it.  Secondly, it is neither ingested through smoking nor harmful, and is used it beer, shampoo and bread, neither of which were mentioned by Chapman.  You would think bread or shampoo would be a bigger issue for the religious communities really. Thirdly, he claims the tobacco industry is secretive - wrong.  Ever since the Master Settlement Agreement their internal documents have been viewable by the public, and they openly list their ingredients for each brand on their respective websites for the world to see.  Each ingredient, by the way, is certified for usage in tobacco products.  Chapman also noticed “one” brand in Greece had haemoglobin, so hardly a major panic piece. 

After some digging around, I found this article http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/health/claims-of-pig-blood-in-cigarette-filters-coughs-up-a-cloud-of-controversy/367106

which again fails to mention a name or paper, and reveals that it has not been proved, but claimed in a book.  It is also revealed it has been used in Indonesia as a result of little to no control, rather than being used in more developed nations.  Finally, it has not been claimed that this is harmful or anything to worry about, but is instead being used as a gross-out factor with the aim of ‘encouraging’ smokers to quit.  If this were anything but, then bread, beer and shampoo companies would also be targeted.  Instead, the ‘evil tobacco industry is targeted because it’s fashionable and acceptable. 

25th March 2010

Text

Patrick Basham - The DoH is Wrong about Cessation

This is a report from Dr Basham’s blog at http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/03/17/patrick-basham-the-doh-is-wrong-about-cessation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+bmj/blogs+(Latest+BMJ+blogs)

I’m very disappointed in the section on cessation contained within the UK Department of Health’s new tobacco control strategy. There are several problems with the DoH’s ideas on cessation (and I’ll have more to say about them in future posts), but one of the most significant is its claims about how to quit smoking most successfully. 

The strategy document says, “Those who are most successful in quitting use a combination of behavioural and medicinal support.” (p. 11) The only support for this rather extraordinary assertion is an unpublished  report by West entitled, “The smoking pipe: a model of inflow and outflow of smokers in England.” But this source, which is a single page spreadsheet, provides little support for the claim about cessation. More troubling is that the DoH’s claim about the best way to quit smoking fails the most basic test of evidence-based medicine: it is contradicted by much of the published literature.

Lee et al (“Factors associated with successful smoking cessation in the United States,” American Journal of Public Health 2007), using data from the National Health Interview Survey 2000,  report that 76% of successful quitters (for 7-24 months) stopped at once or went cold turkey (without assistance), as compared with 12% who used nicotine patches or gum. Ferguson et al (“Unplanned quit attempts – results from a US sample of smokers and ex-smokers“, Nicotine and Tobacco Research 2009) found that most of those who quit smoking without planning didn’t use either behavioural or medicinal support, and, most crucially, these unplanned attempts to stop were twice as successful as planned attempts. In fact, even in studies where smokers were provided continuous pharmaceutical interventions (e.g. use of a nicotine patch for six months), Schnoll et al (“Effectiveness of extended-duration transdermal nicotine therapy,” Annals of Internal Medicine 2010) found the one year abstinence rate was only 0.8% of the sample. This compares with unaided quit attempts that yield one year abstinence rates of between 3 and 11%. (Gritz et al “Unaided smoking cessation: great American smokeout and New Year’s Day quitters,” Journal of Psychosocial Oncology 1989).

Finally, it is difficult to reconcile the DoH’s use of West to support its claims about how to stop smoking successfully given West’s own research published in the BMJ. West and Sohal, (“Catastrophic pathways to smoking cessation: findings from national survey,” British Medical Journal 2006) in a survey of English smokers and ex-smokers, report that “a substantial proportion of attempts to stop smoking are made without any previous planning and, surprisingly, that unplanned quit attempts have a greater chance of succeeding.”

Why is any of this surprising, particularly given the consistently dismal record of long term success from pharmaceutically-assisted smoking cessation? As the American Cancer Society observed before the incursion of Big Pharma into the nicotine business, “Over 90% of the estimated 37 million people who have stopped smoking in this country…have done so unaided.” (Amercian Cancer Society Cancer facts and figures 1986)

Despite the DoH and the pharmaceutical industry’s promotion of pharmaceutically-aided cessation, the evidence suggests that unassisted cessation, not behavioural and medicinal support, is the method used most often by those who quit smoking successfully. Perhaps, the only people who find this surprising or dismaying are those in the pharma-nicotine industry.

Both physicians and their patients have an unqualified right to expect that the DoH provide scientifically accurate and objective information about smoking and tobacco control policy. The DoH has failed both the profession and the public in its claims about smoking cessation.

Patrick Basham is author of “Butt Out! How Philip Morris Burned Ted Kennedy, the FDA & the Anti-Tobacco Movement” and is coauthor of the bestselling “Diet Nation.” He has taught tobacco regulation and other health policy courses at Johns Hopkins University and has spoken on tobacco policy at universities and conferences around the world. Dr Basham is founding director of the Democracy Institute and is a Cato Institute adjunct scholar.

22nd March 2010

Text

So now smoker’s are infectious?

Active smoke, passive smoke kills, third hand smoke will wipe out all children, smokers’ leave toxic chemicals lingering in rooms days after they leave like some chemical warfare, smokers’ shouldn’t smoke outside because children shouldn’t see it, smoking in films should be forbidden or force the film to carry an 18 sticker - but drugs, guns and sex can be seen by children. I’ve even heard that when smokers urinate, the toxins enter the water supply and cause cancer in people through drinking water (ok, this wasn’t from ‘research’ but a bit of a moron on a comment board, but he believes that as a direct result of the anti-smoking fanaticism). Oh, and NYC can distribute flyers educating people on the correct way to inject heroin. Hmm..

But now the next step is here. Not just is a lit cigarette harmful, but now an unlit cigarette may be harmful. Notice that the researcher hasn’t actually proven this yet, but that doesn’t stop spreading the fear in advance. No prizes for predicting that this will be ‘proven’ relatively soon.

The tobacco in cigarettes hosts a bacterial bonanza — literally hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, a new study finds.
“Nearly every paper that you pick up discussing the health effects of cigarettes starts out with something to the effect that smokers and people exposed to secondhand smoke experience high rates of respiratory infections,” notes Amy Sapkota of the University of Maryland, College Park. The presumption has been that smoking renders people vulnerable to disease by impairing lung function or immunity. And it may well do both.
“But nobody talks about cigarettes as a source of those infections,” she says. Her new data now suggest that’s distinctly possible.
If these germs are alive, something she has not yet confirmed, just handling cigarettes or putting an unlit one to the mouth could be enough to cause an infection.
The idea that tobacco might contain viable germs isn’t just idle conjecture. Several research teams have isolated bacteria from tobacco that they could grow out in petri dishes. Those earlier investigations tended to hunt for — and, when found, attempted to grow — only one or two species of interest, Sapkota says.
What’s novel in her study: She and her colleagues probed for genetic material from any and every bacterium in a cigarette’s tobacco. Under sterile conditions, the researchers opened up cigarettes and then performed a series of tests on the leafy bits. For instance, they isolated all of the ribosomal material and then homed in on its long, species-specific stretches known as 16S regions. These genetic segments were then compared to 16S patches characteristic of known bacterial species.
Sapkota’s team had 16S probes for close to 800 different bacteria and found matches to many hundreds in the four brands of cigarettes screened: Marlboro Red, Camel, Kool Filter Kings and Lucky Strike Original Red. These cigarettes are “among the most commonly smoked brands in Westernized countries and represent three major tobacco companies,” Sapkota notes. All were purchased in Lyon, France, where she was completing her postdoctoral studies.
Among the large number of germs whose DNA laced these cigarettes were: Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning and Guillain-Barre Syndrome; Clostridium, which causes food poisoning and pneumonias; Corynebacterium, also associated with pneumonias and other diseases; E. coli; Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, all of which are associated not only with pneumonia but also with urinary tract infections; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie the most common and serious hospital-associated infections.
Sapkota’s team lists many of these — including the most prevalent bacteria in the tobacco they studied — in a paper published early, online in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Some people have criticized the idea of infectious cigarettes, arguing that as tobacco burns, it would kill any germs present. But Sapkota is not so sure that’s true. The tobacco farthest from the burning tip might be a balmy temperature, from a bacterial point of view. And here’s “a really wild idea,” she says: What if the smoke particles traveling through the still-unburned part of a cigarette pick up some germs and then ferry them deeply into the lung, where they’re unlikely to be cleared? Wouldn’t that be the prescription for disease?
Of course, there’s also plenty of chances for a smoker to become exposed prior to lighting up. And, of course, the potential for highest oral exposure would come from chewing tobacco — and nasal exposures from snuff.
Sapkota, an environmental health scientist, plans to follow up her preliminary data to see which types of tobacco are most likely to host viable germs, and whether those bacteria are transported into the body, either during smoking or by the insertion of unburned tobacco products (including chewing tobacco) into the mouth.
Several thousand potentially toxic chemicals have been isolated from cigarettes. Sapkota says that it’s not hard to imagine that the number of germs hosted by tobacco products could rival that of the carcinogens and other poisons residing in or produced by burning tobacco.
How so, when she’s only found genetic material indicting hundreds of germs? Owing to the bacterial probes available when Sapkota began her tobacco work, she was only able to screen for 700-odd species. But newer probes on the market can now screen for the bacterial 16S genetic material of 5,000 or more germs. And if she used such huge batteries of probes now, she said she fully expects she could turn up at least 1,000 hitchhiking bacterial species in tobacco products.

Tagged: cigarettesinfectiousheroinanti-smokers

22nd March 2010

Text

Report of TICAP

Here is Michael McFadden’s summary of the TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition) conference. For those who don’t know, McFadden is the author of Dissecting Anti-smokers’ Brains and he was also fortunate enough to edit my book ;) Check out his website at www.antibrains.com

March 16, 2010
The Conference was a great success!   We had participants from Pennsylvania and California, and from Wales, Scotland, England, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France, and perhaps one or two other countries I’ve lost track of. 
The facility was impressive and sported high tech video cameras that automatically zoomed in on people as they spoke.  The courtyard outside was reserved for our breaks and was surrounded by towers from, I believe, the 16th century.  The tea and coffee service was superb… although the tray of crackers left a bit to be desired… at least to my tastes (There were NO chocolate cookies!)  The room was perfect: we had planned to be comfortable with anywhere from 25 to 100 and we ended up with about 50 which fit comfortably and allowed for inter-session discussions which were productive without being overwhelming!
From 8:30 to 9:30 conference participants were warmly welcomed by the Chairman of TICAP, John Gray. We started up promptly at 9:30 with Mr. Maessen delivering the Welcome Address with a PowerPoint presentation.  Michael Marlow presented an incredibly detailed presentation also assisted by PowerPoint on the economic effects of bans and covered some of the twistings and turnings of antismoking propagandists with regard to the after-ban health claims they like to conjure up with cherry picked studies. Patrick Basham followed with a carefully prepared spoken presentation showing the dangers ahead for the hospitality industry after their fall to the smoking bans and demonstrating why this particular fight is so important to wider freedoms everywhere. Maryetta Ables was faced with the daunting task of trying to summarize a detailed 21 page report on threat of UN and WHO “advisors” as they relate to individual governments that seem to have been all too willing to give up claims to fundamental principles of sovereignity in signing the FCTC (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control) treaty.  While they would never have signed away such rights on issues like arms control or fundamental human freedoms, the “tobacco issue” appeared harmless enough to them that they opened their doors to a future where many of them may be sadly surprised. Maryetta boiled her 21 pages down to a well-organized extemporaneous presentation that included having a few conference participants come up front to link arms in various positions showing the growing influence of international interests over national directions. We had a welcome unscheduled addition to the conference after Maryetta in the person of Gawain Towler, press officer of UKIP, who offered his strong support and belief that our work will pay off legislatures around the world.
Their presentations were followed by a lively question and answer session and then a lunch break at a wonderful outdoor cafe where we were all trying to order in different languages while bicyclists pedaled by.  While it’s a bit uncertain whether we all got what was ordered, everyone seemed happy when we arrived back at the conference.
The afternoon session started out with a prensentation by a Dutch MP of the VVD, Halbe Zijlstra, 
 a spokesman for their Public Health and a nonsmoker who nonetheless sees the threat to our freedoms as being worthy of more concern than whatever slight or imaginary threat may be posed by wisps of smoke in businesses that desire to allow smoking on their premises.   Zijlstra was warmly applauded and was then followed by a 20 minute pre-recorded video by Dave Goerlitz, “The Winston Man” who once worked for Big Tobacco, then worked for the Antis, and then left the Antis when he got disgusted with their interest in money more than the kids he was trying to communicate with.  Dave had been hit by debris from a truck in a highway accident early this year and had just had an unexpected operation that kept him from coming to the conference but he made a noble effort to boil his ideas down into a video presentation and I believe he was successful and appreciated.  Dave was followed by a detailed presentation from Kamal Chaouachi on how the hookah culture has been unjustly attacked and on the corruption of science by Antismokers hell-bent on stamping out ALL forms of smoking… even if they have to discredit legitimate research and researchers while creating brand new excuses to lump hookah smoking in with their arch-enemy of cigarette smoking.  Kamal was followed by myself with another PowerPoint presentation with my main thrust being the need to hit the Prohibitionists at their weakest point: their lies.
After a break we came back for a final Q&A session chaired quite ably and helpfully (as was the first) by author-historian Christopher Snowdon.  Some interesting questions were asked and answered and several of the day’s presenters added a bit to their formal presentations.  As the day’s session ended Maryetta Ables gave a warm eulogy for Gian Turci, remembering his history and efforts, perfectly capped by his success in bringing about the creation of TICAP and the first TICAP conference held last year in Brussels.  Gian worked tirelessly for no gain in any personal sense at all other than satisfaction in knowing that he was fighting against something that was huge and was wrong.  He was a Don Quixote fighting against truly dark windmills that were fueled not by breezes but by immense amounts of money, and TICAP is carrying on his vision in our fights around the world!
After the formal conference we retreated to one of The Hague’s “Dens of Defiance” where participants were able to exchange thoughts and camaraderie in a more informal atmosphere well into the evening. 
To the future…  We have the truth and the facts on our side, while the power of the antismoking industry is based only on money and lies.  We CAN beat them! Keep on fighting!
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
Mid-Atlantic Director, Citizens Freedom Alliance
Board of Directors, The International Coalition Against Prohibition

Tagged: TICAPanti-smokersmichael mcfaddenmichaelsmokingprohibitionconference