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Allen Johnson: Here's hoping new smoking ban helps protect smokers from themselves

Sunday, May 24, 2009

(Updated 3:00 am)

By Allen Johnson
Staff Writer

If you got 'em, snuff 'em.

North Carolina lawmakers have finally agreed to a statewide ban on smoking in most bars and restaurants and Gov. Perdue cheerfully signed the legislation into law last week.

This is a big deal in the land of the golden leaf and was until recently about as likely around here as a blizzard in July.

Tobacco has meant a lot to this state. It still does.

But it is inherently dangerous, not only to smokers, but to those unlucky enough to be near them.

Smoking also is smelly, unclean and disgusting. How could anyone ever have considered inhaling noxious chemicals, then blowing them back into the faces of others, socially acceptable?

Even so, many smokers insist they've been burned. Nonsmokers have a right to choose where they eat and drink, they say. They can choose not to patronize hazy bars and eateries.

Smokers have a right to choose as well. Maybe now they'll choose to quit. Maybe the sheer frustration of finding somewhere to light up will make them throw up their hands ... give up, quit, desist. And stop standing alone in the cold, doing something they know is bad for them.

But even that part of the equation is a source of controversy.

At issue is an approach called "harm reduction."

Harm reduction proponents say one viable path to quitting smoking ought to be a lesser evil: smokeless tobacco products.

But can't smokeless tobacco kill you just as dead as cigarettes?

Well, yeah, they concede, but smokeless tobacco is less likely to be fatal. And smokers can wean themselves off cigarettes by switching to other products such as snuff and chewing tobacco.

Brad Rodu, an oncology professor at the University of Louisville, argued passionately in these pages that smokeless tobacco provides a nicotine fix without causing smoking-related diseases. "Unlike cigarettes, smokeless doesn't cause lung cancer, heart disease or emphysema," he wrote. "The health risks from smokeless are only about 1 to 2 percent those of smoking. Statistically, lifelong smokeless users have about the same risk of dying from that habit as automobile users have of dying in a car wreck."

Further, smokeless tobacco does not produce smoke, hence it eliminates the dangers of secondhand smoke.

Don't reach for that pouch of chew just yet.

Smokeless tobacco contains at least three known carcinogenic agents: N-nitrosamines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and radioactive polonium 210. It increases the threat of various oral cancers. It also has been associated with esophageal, pancreatic, prostate and kidney cancer, possibly even heart disease, says Dr. John Spangler of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

And when it does kill, it can do so with a vengeance.

Even for those who survive, it can leave behind scars and disfigurement, including the removal of all or part of the jaw and the loss of the ability to chew, smile, swallow or kiss.

Further, it already appeals to young people. According to the National Cancer Institute, smokeless tobacco use already is most common among adults ages 18 to 25.

Promoting it as a safe alternative could encourage even more use by young people.

Coincidentally, the company formerly known as Philip Morris, Altria Group, sees smokeless tobacco products as an integral part of its growth strategy. Altria Chief Executive Michael E. Szymanczyk told shareholders last week that the company's recent acquisitions and emphasis on smokeless products placed it in a "strong position" for long-term growth. Those alternatives include chewing tobacco and moist snuff known as "snus," some marketed under the popular Marlboro brand.

Forgive me if I'm not impressed.

Neither is Wake Forest's Spangler, who directs tobacco intervention programs at the medical school. "Those who argue in favor of smokeless tobacco as a means to quit smoking -- an 'alternative' to cigarettes, if you will -- ignore the fact that there is not a shred of scientific evidence showing, in a randomized, controlled clinical trial setting, that smokeless is effective in helping patients quit smoking," Spangler says.

"This is the level of evidence that the FDA requires before a drug company can market a drug. We should insist on that level of evidence before we start pushing a product that is already known to be unsafe."

Harm reduction can be an effective approach in some cases -- for example, providing clean needles to drug addicts to help control the spread of AIDS. But not in this instance, when other, safer alternatives such as nicotine patches are readily available.

Those who are considering going smokeless should chew on that first.

What do you think?

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Panacea

May 24, 2009 - 9:56 am EDT

Amen! I still can't believe Rodu could be so irresponsible.

And the tobacco companies are just setting themselves up for another fall when their victims realize they've been had and bring the same kinds of lawsuits that smokers did.

nerdovision

May 24, 2009 - 11:42 am EDT

The cigarette habit is the toughest to quit! i wish everyone luck who is trying to quit. there is a new safer alternative to smoking and they are called electronic cigarettes. for more info about electronic cigarettes you can go here and click "More Information About Electronic Cigarettes"
www.invisismoke.com

tonymo

May 24, 2009 - 11:48 am EDT

This is Fascism in a nutshell. The new Fascists feel the need to tell us how to live our lives, that they are just a little smarter than the rest of us, and they, of course, know better than us how we should live our lives!

It began with telling us to which school we can send our children. The progression of control over our lives is reaching critical mass. Now they want to tell us what kind of lightbulbs we can use, what kind of car we can drive, what kind of food we can eat, progressing further to which doctor we can see, which procedures we can have, which treatments we will get, all depending, of course, on whether or not we live live a lifestyle mandated by the Fascists.

The great MEN who founded this country to escape tyranny, would once again be preparing to fight a tyranncial government, much more controlling than the one they fought nearly 300 years ago! We have morphed from the founders, to the "Greatest Generation" that defeated Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, to the compliant generation that meekly stands by, or even aids those who want to control every aspect of our lives because they are smarter than us, and know what's best for us! We the sheeple have become a nation of spineless lemmings!

eclipse3

May 24, 2009 - 11:58 pm EDT

Your "harm reduction" theory is flawed as it relates to a free society.

Perhaps there is danger in secondhand smoke, who really knows? You would have to isolate a person for their entire life and test them to prove that and you know it. The very air we breathe has clouds of bacteria and who's to say that bacteria isn't the cancer causing culprit. Cancer's orgin has way too many variables to blame it on one thing. And you know it. Besides, in North Carolina a person has to be of legal age to purchase tobacco products. And yes, you know that too.

Now REAL harm reduction might be along the lines of banning alcohol. All alcohol. And, change the driving age to 21. I mean, putting a person under the influence or an inexperienced driver behind the wheel of a 3,000 missle and turn them loose on the highway at 65 mph creates a bit scarier visual for me than observing a smoker from the non-smoking section of a bar or a resturant. Let us all join together to ban sleeping pills too, they make people groggy the next day. And please, please, ban cheap perfume. And pets should NOT be allowed on public streets, parks or beaches. If you want to have a dog, keep him at home. They are smelly, noisy and cause allergy problems big time. Not to mention they bite and bark and leave droppings everywhere you take them.

These things are real. If we start restricting one privilige, where do we draw the line?

But don't worry, we'll make sure someone in Raleigh puts it on the "Ban List". You know the one, it started as a few things and now encompasses every privilige and pleasure that we have left. And some of you willingly hand them over, one by one, like sheep going to slaughter.

Get A Clue

May 26, 2009 - 11:00 am EDT

You can't protect the addict from the addict, you can only fashion laws that protect the rest of us from the addict. Treatment for the addiction is the only answer.
You also can't fix stupid, as demonstrated by the morons who go straight to 'fascist' language whenever common sense is applied to any situation.

THEFXR

May 27, 2009 - 7:07 am EDT

No clue brings forth a familiar new speak chant, painting any reference, no matter how valid, to Fascism as an automatic disqualification. If educated on what constitutes the power base of Fascism as described by Dr. Robert Proctor it was an incitement of the very worst of human nature. A crowd born mentality of pointing fingers at others who make choices concerning their lives, which do not coincide with our own. It is in fact the only government style which would embrace the current healthiest movement. The scolds and tambourine bangers who inspired best babies contests and racial segregation, are guiding the bigotry no longer able to practice in targeting traditional humanity divisions. Who more defenseless and easy to degrade exist, than the addicted or the obese? Perhaps expansions will include dwarf tossing contests and chasing wheelchairs with your car for sport in place of the politically corrected and boring Hockey games.

There are only two lines of thought concerning smoking If it is an addiction, as popular belief has it, creating a world which makes it as difficult for smokers as possible in hopes of forcing them to quit, creates an atmosphere where quitting is not an option and the instigator takes on a role, with as much empathy involved as someone who would kick a cripple demanding they walk or they will be kicked again. The other option would be a non belief smoking is an addiction but a choice, involving free will which places the initiator in the camp as described as a Fascist and a lowlife who lives in a false sense of reality, when declaring his government or community is free.

Second hand smoke was first described by Hitler and it took America 60 years to develop the science which allowed him the courage to describe it. Rules restricting science until recently would never have allowed that brand of science to be described as legitimate. Times they are changing.

CarolT

May 27, 2009 - 6:30 pm EDT

All this is happening because of ANTI-SMOKER SCIENTIFIC FRAUD. They deliberately use defective studies that are based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires to falsely blame tobacco for diseases that are really caused by infection. More than 50 studies have implicated human papillomaviruses as the cause of over 22% of non-small cell lung cancers. This equals over 30,000 cases, which is over ten times more lung cancers than the anti-smokers pretend are caused by secondhand smoke. Passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus, so the anti-smokers' studies, because they are all based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires, are cynically DESIGNED to falsely blame passive smoking for all those extra lung cancers that are really caused by HPV. A significant proportion of lung cancers blamed on active smoking are actually caused by HPV as well. Obviously, there is a corrupt, politically-motivated coverup of a far larger cause of lung cancer than radon or secondhand smoke!

http://www.smokershistory.com/hpvlungc.htm