[Vision2020] NY Times: Nicotine Manipulation Confirmed

Tue Jan 23 15:50:40 PST 2007

Ted writes:

"The big tobacco companies have been able to use their power and influence to continue to avoid the most strenuous governmental efforts to reduce tobacco addiction, which most often starts before 20 years of age, the single largest cause of avoidable premature death on the planet. "

Just as the beverage and hospitality industry continues to oppose very successfully legal reformation to lower the toll in lives, vehicle ill-fortunes, dysfunctional individuals, and broken homes wrought by the immoderate use of alcohol.

W.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Ted Moffett 
To: Art Deco 
Cc: Vision 2020 
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] NY Times: Nicotine Manipulation Confirmed

Art Deco, et. al.

A few days ago outside the Moscow Safeway store I saw a group of young people, who looked decidedly under age, standing around smoking tobacco.  I had to restrain myself from approaching them to offer a little advice, if not to take the cigarettes out of their hands and crush them under foot.  I did give them a good look over, and their furtive eyes told me they knew they were engaged in "suspicious activity."  

Given how bold they were to stand in front of a supermarket in public and engage in addictive drug use, this was a statement on how tobacco continues, despite all the actions taken to reduce or marginalize tobacco use by youth, to be shrouded in a legal, cultural and law enforcement environment of implicit acceptance. 

I commented on what I just witnessed to another shopper entering the store... His response was "They'll pay for it later."

Indeed!

I recall when the effort during the Clinton Presidency to regulate tobacco as a drug by the FDA went to the US Supreme Court.  This would have given the FDA authority to regulate nicotine content, the subject of Art Deco's informational post.   I recall hearing an interview with former FDA head David Kessler on this effort.  The tobacco industry fought this regulatory action by the FDA, and won.  The US Supreme Court at that time ruled that this regulation was the province of the US Congress.  As Art Deco's post reveals, big tobacco appears to continue to be deliberately attempting to increase the addictive properties of their death dealing drug tobacco (nicotine), outside government controls. 

Info on the FDA David Kessler led attempts to establish FDA regulation of tobacco:

http://www.infact.org/fdarept.html

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/03/21/scotus.tobacco/index.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/august96/kessler_8-23.html

If there is any single issue that exposes the hypocrisy and absurdity of the approach to drug use dominant in our legal and enforcement system, it is in the approach to tobacco.  The big tobacco companies have been able to use their power and influence to continue to avoid the most strenuous governmental efforts to reduce tobacco addiction, which most often starts before 20 years of age, the single largest cause of avoidable premature death on the planet. 

The continuing easy availability of tobacco to under age youth, with minimal legal penalties for selling tobacco to this group, compared to the penalties for other controlled substances, makes a mockery of the "War On Drugs."  The potential impacts of tobacco addiction starting in youth can convincingly, factually and scientifically, pose as great a threat to health and life, indeed, more so compared so some other controlled substances, as other drugs which inspire far more aggressive efforts at prohibition and legal enforcement. 

When I hear that someone who sold tobacco to an under age smoker was given a multiple year penitentiary sentence, is when consistency between the dangers of addictive drug use, on a scientific medical basis, and the legal and law enforcement efforts to stop addictive drug use, are based on a rational and consistent assessment of the dangers posed by addictive drugs. 

Ted Moffett

On 1/23/07, Art Deco <deco at moscow.com> wrote: 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  January 23, 2007
  Editorial
  Nicotine Manipulation Confirmed 
  Any doubts that the tobacco industry has surreptitiously raised the nicotine content of cigarettes should be laid to rest by a study from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. They confirmed last year's discovery of the nicotine increase by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and went on to identify how the tobacco companies designed their cigarettes to accomplish this. 

  These manipulations were discovered because Massachusetts requires manufacturers to use a more realistic test to measure how much nicotine is deliverable to typical smokers and requires companies to report design features of their cigarettes. When Harvard researchers reanalyzed the data they found that the nicotine yield per cigarette rose by an average of 11 percent between 1998 and 2005, a conclusion contested by the industry. 

  Harvard researchers concluded that the companies managed this by using tobacco containing a higher concentration of nicotine and perhaps also by slowing the rate at which cigarettes burned — thus increasing the number of puffs per cigarette. The companies presumably hoped that additional nicotine would hook more new customers and keep old ones from breaking the habit. 

  Their continued bad behavior makes it imperative for Congress to grant the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products, including the power to reduce nicotine levels and demand extensive data from the companies. The Senate overwhelmingly approved such legislation in 2004, only to have House Republicans block it. With new Democratic majorities in both houses, it is time to rein in this rogue industry. 

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