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tobacco

Smoking: More than just a vice

by Jacob Grier on January 19, 2012

horsebrass 021

“Something Not Unlike Research” is a health care blog I recently came across written by two university professors. One of them, Bill Gardner, wrote this week in defense of employers choosing not to hire smokers. He concluding by noting that “Smoking is a vice that benefits no one.” I took him to task for this last line on Twitter:

“Smoking is a vice that benefits no one.” — @Bill_Gardner Oh please. I like it. It benefits me! Arrogant assumption.

To my surprise, he responded in a new post:

My point is that I do not see a compelling argument against employers choosing not to hire them. By extension, we should have no public policies protecting access to employment for smokers (or bone lugers). This is, I believe, consistent with Mill’s view that

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

I do want to see smoking go away, and I think social pressure is what makes that happen. (”Social pressure” is not, I think what Mill means by “exercising power”.) To that end, I think it is legitimate to ban smoking in public places, and for employers to refuse to hire smokers if they judge that to be in the interest of their firms.

Having conceded that smoking may benefit Jacob’s subjective well-being, can I still say that “smoking is a vice that benefits no one”? I certainly can, if it’s understood that benefit refers to the long-term well-being of smokers, and those who depend upon them, rather than immediate subjective well-being. In that sense of benefit, there is nothing to be said for smoking or binge drinking.

(NB: The binge drinking reference is about the bone luge, which happened to be the top post on my site when he visited. The photo definitely makes his post more awesome but I’ll stick to the smoking discussion!)

I’ll elaborate in more than the 140 characters allowed by Twitter. To start, I agree with Bill that smokers shouldn’t be a protected class of worker. I think refusing to hire smokers is generally a silly policy but that’s something the market can sort out. Where we disagree is in our assessment of smoking. He says that smoking is “a vice that benefits no one” in the long term, that “there is nothing to be said for smoking,” and that “I do want to see smoking go away.”

I know where he’s coming from because I used to make the same assumptions. I grew up believing everything bad about smoking and made it through high school and college without taking a single puff from a cigarette. My interest in tobacco began shortly after I started working as a barista. In conversation with a cigar-smoking friend, I realized that he talked about his stogies the same way I talked about coffee. The varietal of the plant and the origin of the leaf mattered, a Cameroon wrapper tasting differently than one from Nicaragua. Flavors ranged from light sun-grown tobacco to deep, dark maduro, much as coffee roasts came on a spectrum from light to dark. And he suggested that there was just as much difference between the hand-rolled cigars he was smoking and the mass produced cigarettes of Big Tobacco as there was between Folgers and the small batch beans I brewed.

Perhaps, I thought, there was more to tobacco than I realized. When I eventually tried a cigar for the first time I took to it at once. Doing that required getting over my own prejudices that had led to me viewing smoking as pure vice, an unhealthy and addictive habit without redeeming qualities.

I am not addicted to tobacco. I go weeks and months without it. Of the three mood-enhancing drugs I enjoy — caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine — the last would be by far the easiest to never again partake of. It’s unlikely that my occasional indulgence in a cigar will have any significant effects on my health, though there is a small chance that it will. In exchange cigars have given me wonderful experiences, both in taste and in the friendships that have deepened over contemplative, smoke-fueled conversations. I expect that cigars are a net benefit in my life on both the short and the long view. Perhaps additional evidence could persuade me otherwise, but it can’t simply be assumed that I’m mistaken.

Admittedly I don’t fit the median profile of a smoker. However the value that smokers get out of smoking is almost never acknowledged by anti-smoking activists, who treat smoking as inherently wrong. Unlike them, and perhaps unlike Bill, I don’t want to see a completely smoke-free America. I want to see smoking substantially reduced. I’d like for people to smoke less and smoke better, using products other than cigarettes, which seem to be the most dangerous form of tobacco. (It’s also worth noting that the employment policies that inspired these posts are enforced via urine tests for nicotine, which wouldn’t discriminate between pack-a-day smokers and those who smoke rarely or those who are trying to quit with the aid of nicotine patches or gums.)

Semantics aside, activists’ unwillingness to consider the benefits of smoking leads to excessively restrictive policies. Let’s take smoking bans for example. Consider two businesses:

Business 1 is a tobacco shop with an attached lounge that offers beer and wine. Customers are allowed to smoke there. It’s a freestanding building with no immediate neighbors, so no one except customers and employees is affected by the smoking. Four people are employed serving drinks in the lounge. A smoking ban passes that forces the business to eliminate drink service. The day the ban takes effect those four employees lose their jobs.

Business 2 is a restaurant that serves Dungeness crab caught in the Pacific Northwest. Commercial fishing has one of the highest fatality rates of any occupation and crabbing in this region is often the highest of all. For comparison, the average annual fatality rate for all occupations is 4 per 100,000 workers. For fishing as a whole the rate is 115/100,000. For Dungeness crab fishermen in the Pacific Northwest the rate is 463/100,000. (Source here.) There are no proposals to forbid restaurants from serving Dungeness crab.

The comparison might seem silly, but why? Dungeness crab is delicious but it’s hardly a staple in the food supply. Fishermen are literally dying to put it on our plates. Though the level of risk associated with secondhand smoke exposure is in dispute, it would be astonishing if the danger of pouring beer in a smoky room was at all comparable to crabbing on a stormy ocean. So again, why the disparity in how we treat these workers?

The number of actual deaths resulting from Dungeness crabbing is low since it’s a small industry, but it provides a model for how we normally regulate occupational risk. We don’t ban dangerous jobs, we try to discover reasonable rules to make them safer. Safety regulations have apparently been successful in reducing the fatality rate among Alaskan Dungeness fishermen.

Let’s accept for the sake of argument that banning smoking in some places to protect patrons and employees is justified under Mill’s proviso. It’s much harder to argue that smoke-friendly businesses should be banned entirely. Our normal approach to worker safety would allow people to work in smoking venues, subject to reasonable rules about ventilation to minimize risk.

Yet exceptions to smoking bans are often unreasonably narrow, preventing consenting adults from making free exchanges with each other. This is because policy makers view smoking as inherently without value. The thought process goes something like this:

1) Smoking has no value.

2) Protecting workers has value.

3) Therefore it’s OK to ban smoking everywhere without worrying about smokers’ preferences.

This is why I vehemently object to statements such as Bill’s. They create an environment in which the rights of smokers, business owners, and workers are too easily violated. I’ve seen too many of my favorite places completely altered by smoking bans, to the dismay of owners, patrons, and employees. See my ode to one of them, the Horse Brass, in DoubleThink magazine. Business 1 above is another example; it’s an actual establishment outside of Portland.

In sketch form, here are two other arguments for how ignoring the benefits of smoking skews our thinking and leads to bad policy.

Electronic cigarettes — The view of many in tobacco control is that tobacco is inherently bad and that quitting should be smokers’ only goal. It would undeniably be a good thing if more smokers quit, but the obvious truth is that quitting is difficult and relapse is frequent. A new study concludes that even with increased use of nicotine replacement therapy and quitlines, the rate of successful cessation has remained unchanged.

E-cigarettes are a promising alternative for smokers who find it difficult to quit. They are undoubtedly safer than actual cigarettes and offer a substantial opportunity for harm reduction, whether used to quit entirely or just to reduce use of real tobacco. Their popularity is likely due in part to their similarity to cigarettes: their appearance, the ritual of lighting them up, the ability to manage nicotine levels through their use. They deliver many of the same benefits smokers’ get from cigarettes at a fraction of the health cost. Yet precisely for this reason they are treated with outright hostility by many in tobacco control, who blind themselves to e-cigarettes’ potential because of their puritanical view of smoking — including acts that mimic smoking — as inherently bad.

Flavored cigarettes — The legislation giving the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco included a ban on all flavorings except for menthol. The reprieve for menthol may only be temporary. Flavors are treated as dangerous additives but they’re essentially being banned because they make smoking more appealing and enjoyable. This is pure paternalism. If a consenting adult wants to have a clove cigarette, he should be allowed to buy a clove cigarette.

The preferences of smokers were never given a voice in this debate. Because smoking was simply assumed to have no value, smokers were dismissed as addicts who could only benefit from this legislation. Perversely, those of us who support consumer choice on menthol are accused of racism since menthol cigarettes are popular among African-Americans. It’s unclear at this point how FDA regulation may affect more artisanal forms of tobacco, but the industry is understandably worried: If the agency views tobacco as inherently bad, it’s unlikely to pass regulations in the interest of pipe and cigar consumers.

The costs of smoking are undeniably high, yet smoking has persisted even in the face of penalties as harsh as death. The habit is here to stay. Unfortunately, smoking has become synonymous with Big Tobacco and the lowly, lethal cigarette. There is much more to it than that, and more to say on its half behalf. But that will have to wait for a future post.

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Two years later, no heart miracle in Oregon

by Jacob Grier on November 2, 2011

I have an op/ed up today at The Oregonian addressing the question, “Whatever happened to Oregon’s heart miracle?” Oregon’s statewide smoking ban took effect in 2009 and was predicted by many advocates to result in a steep decline in the rate of heart attacks of 17% or more. I contacted the Oregon Public Health Division to see if hospital data bore this out. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t.

For those who are curious, here is the age-adjusted rate of heart attack admissions for Oregon as provided to me by the state, with percentage change from the previous year in parenthesis:

2003 198.4
2004 181.2 (8.67)
2005 166.8 (7.95)
2006 166.6 (0.12)
2007 163.4 (1.92)
2008 152.5 (6.67)
2009 141.5 (7.21)
2010 137.1 (3.11)

And here is the same data in graph form:

oregonami

As I explain in the op/ed, the drop in 2009 is on trend with those in previous years and can’t be reasonably attributed to the smoking ban, and even under the rosiest interpretation it is still less than half of what ban advocates predicted.

The task of explaining this discrepancy fell to Ty Gluckman, director of clinical excellence for Providence Heart and Vascular Institute. It was Gluckman who wrote in 2009 that “[...] it’s highly likely that Oregon’s heart attack rates are already dropping as we near the law’s one-year anniversary. If we reduce the number of acute heart attacks by 17 percent, there will be at least 1,100 fewer hospital admissions in Oregon in just one year.” I said at the time that there was no way this was going to happen. You can read his entire response here.

Undaunted by contrary data, Gluckman suggests that Oregon’s less than stunning decline in heart attacks is due to two factors. One is that many bars were already banning smoking voluntarily before the ban. Another is that over this same period Oregonians were becoming more obese. However these confounding factors hold to some extent just about everywhere, which is why the only way to test the impact of bans is by 1) looking for increased rates of decline after implementation and 2) comparing these results with control populations that were not under a ban. This is essentially the method of the RAND study cited in my article, which found no impact.

The story in Oregon is consistent with that of other large populations that experienced no noticeable decline in heart attack rates following implementation of a smoking ban. See for example this New Zealand study, omitted from the meta-analysis Gluckman cites, or the publicly available data from many national governments.

Today’s article is my third Oregonian contribution on the subject of the state smoking ban. In 2008 I argued that the ban wasn’t actually about saving lives. In 2009 I argued that the its exemptions were unduly restrictive. Finally, also in 2009, I wrote for Doublethink about the last night of legal smoking at my favorite cigar hangout, the legendary Horse Brass pub.

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A toast to the Netherlands

by Jacob Grier on December 15, 2010

Today is a good day for small bars in the Netherlands:

From today smokers in Holland will be allowed to light up in small owner-operated bars that are less than 753.5 square feet in size and have no other staff.

The 280 cases currently going through court for pubs allowing people to smoke inside will be dropped.

UKIP MEP for the North West Nuttall said he was “very pleased that the Netherlands authority has allowed common sense to prevail” and relax the ban.

“We know the smoking ban has had a serious detrimental effect on pubs,” he said. “It is absolutely bonkers.

“The way the ban came in was very underhand.

“I hope the Government will take what has happened in Holland on board. I hope it will happen here.

“We should have the option for smoking rooms in the UK, it should be down to the licensee.”

You know what to do.

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What really happened in Starkville, revisited

by Jacob Grier on November 17, 2010

About a year ago I criticized a “study” from Mississippi State University alleging that implementation of a smoking ban in Starkville, MS caused a dramatic decline in heart attacks. The problem was that the study was in fact just a press release and the data from control groups hadn’t even been collected yet. Without control groups there was no justification for asserting that the decline in heart attacks was caused by the smoking ban rather than other factors. I challenged the authors, Dr. Robert McMillen and Dr. Robert Collins, on this point and they declined to respond, saying only that they would continue their research when more data arrived.

Now the data is in and they have released another study confirming their hypothesis. To their credit they have control groups this time. What they don’t have are tests of statistical significance. I’ll hand it over to Michael Siegel:

This study violates the most fundamental principal of epidemiology and biostatistics: you must evaluate any scientific hypothesis to see whether the results could be explained by chance. In other words, you must determine whether your results are statistically significant.

A persistent flaw in studies of this type is reliance on small population sizes to extrapolate an exaggerated effect. This one appears no different. Siegel again:

I did my own calculations based on the results reported in the study and based on a conservative estimate which maximizes the likelihood of finding a statistically significant difference, I found that the difference between the two rates of decline was not even close to being statistically significant. [...]

For these findings, which are exquisitely sensitive to a simple shift in one heart attack here and one heart attack there, one must not put any confidence in their statistical meaning. Clearly, the role that these are just chance differences cannot be ruled out given the small sample size. Nevertheless, the study goes as far as telling us the exact cost savings from the heart attacks averted due to the smoking ban.

McMillen and Collins are getting closer to doing real science. Close, but still no cigar!

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Bloomberg bans again!

by Jacob Grier on August 30, 2010

Over at the Examiner I take a look at Michael Bloomberg’s latest attempt to make life worse for smokers, a ban in parks and beaches:

It’s no wonder that some non-smoking residents support the ban. They have nothing to lose and they’ve been hit with fear-mongering propaganda for years, such as Action on Smoking and Health’s dire warning that “If you can smell it, it could be killing you,”or even worse, uncritical reports about “thirdhand smoke,” the residue left behind on room surfaces when tobacco is lit. So firmly has the toxicity of tobacco smoke been in implanted in the public’s mind that activists no longer feel the need to demonstrate that it causes harm; the mere ability to detect its traces with fancy lab equipment is enough to raise a panic.

Whole thing here.

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Thirdhand smoke is real and insignificant

by Jacob Grier on August 2, 2010

This blog has previously chronicled attempts to scare people into persecuting smokers based on trumped up fears of “thirdhand smoke,” residue left on clothes and furniture after a smoker lights up. New research attempts to measure levels of this residue directly by artificially re-suspending particles left behind by a smoking device:

These quantitative data support the hypothesis of a resuspension from the cigarette smoke surface contamination. However, this airborne contamination through resuspension remains much lower (100 times) than that of secondhand smoke.

In other words, there’s nothing to worry about.

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FDA bans product for tasting good

by Jacob Grier on April 1, 2010

No, the headline is not an April Fool’s joke. This week the FDA began its inquiry into whether it ought to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes:

A scientific advisory panel that will advise the Food and Drug Administration on regulating tobacco opened a two-day meeting Tuesday and began reviewing hundreds of published studies on menthol cigarettes. The panel, largely made up of scientists, physicians and public health experts, has a year to make a recommendation to the FDA on menthol cigarettes, which are used by about 26 percent of smokers and make up almost one-third of the $70 billion U.S. cigarette market.

Throughout this process there will be allegations from anti-tobacco groups that menthol cigarettes are more addictive, more dangerous, and more likely to hook teenagers than unflavored cigarettes. These scare tactics neglect to mention that menthol itself is harmless. It’s not habit-forming like nicotine. It’s not dangerous and is used widely in medicinal, dental, and food products. Tobacco companies don’t put it in cigarettes as part of a dark conspiracy to addict people. They use it because it tastes good, is soothing, and consumers want it.

Because of these effects it’s possible that some of the charges against menthol cigarettes are true, statistically speaking. The FDA’s going to spend a lot of time and money sorting this out, but there’s no mystery as to why this is: When a product is pleasant, people consume more of it. They’ll smoke more of them or smoke each cigarette more intensively. They’ll have less reason to quit. Some teenagers will prefer them to unflavored cigarettes, just as about one third of legal adult consumers do. This doesn’t mean that menthols are especially toxic, it just means that people like them.

If this is accepted as a legitimate reason to ban menthol cigarettes there’s no limit to what the government could do next. It could ban other forms of flavored tobacco in cigars, pipes, chew, and hookahs — in fact, New York City has already passed a low doing almost exactly that. It could force cigarette producers to make their products so bland and heavily filtered that no one wants to buy them. It could kill premium pipe and cigar companies entirely, an industry whose purpose is to make tobacco that tastes good and is pleasant to smoke.

And that’s just tobacco. If menthol and other flavors can be banned for “masking” the harsh taste of cigarettes, why not ban flavors that “mask” the harshness of cheap vodka? Or the barrel aging that turns hot white dog into mellow whiskey? Or hops in beer, condiments in fast food, milk and sugar in a venti Frappuccino? As individual health increasingly becomes the public’s business, there’s no end to the unhealthy things we can reduce the consumption of by simply making them unpalatable.

If you read the press coverage of this debate in The Post for example, you’ll see quotes from anti-tobacco activists explaining why menthol needs to be banned. You’ll even see quotes charging that not doing so would be racially discriminatory on the grounds that menthols are relatively more popular among blacks than whites. What you won’t see are quotes from any of the millions of consumers who currently smoke menthols and may soon have that choice taken away from them. The opinions of smokers do not matter; they are assumed to be dupes or addicts incapable of making their own decisions. By portraying them as victims of the tobacco companies anti-smoking activists dodge the consumer rights aspect of this issue. They avoid answering the hardest question asked in opposition to their plan: If a consenting adult wants to purchase a flavored cigarette, why shouldn’t he be allowed to do so?

This is a dangerous road. It’s one thing to forbid sales to minors, to tax tobacco, to require warning labels, and to restrict the sorts of places where one can light up. It’s quite another to take a product off the market simply because many people prefer it. That is pure paternalism; take individual agency out of the picture and it’s a much smaller step to banning tobacco entirely.

This issue is going to drag on for a long time. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it here, but be sure to also follow the excellent coverage of Brooke Oberwetter starting with her most recent blog post.

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Yes, tobacco taxes really do kill business

by Jacob Grier on March 18, 2010

A sad story out of Utah where new tobacco taxes are causing at least one tobacco shop, which has been in business since the 1940s, to close its doors. The increased taxes would be bad enough, but the kicker is that they don’t apply just to new stock. Retailers will have to apply the higher rate to all of the inventory they own, even though they purchased it at the old tax rate. In the case of Jeanie’s Smoke Shop that will add up to about $125,000 due in July. Unable to sell their inventory or raise that much cash by then, they’ll be closing their doors instead. Read the full story here.

One Republican state senator supports the tax and comes up short in the sympathy department:

Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, who fought for years to raise Utah’s tobacco tax, said he understood that distributors would have to pay the bill, not retailers. But Charlie Roberts, Utah Tax Commission spokesman, said retailers indeed must pay the higher tax and yes, it will come due when the law takes effect this summer.

“If that’s the way it is, then so be it,” Christensen said. “I’m sorry for some of the businessmen the law will impact, but they’re selling a deadly product.”

He also predicted Jeanie’s Smoke Shop and other retailers “will somehow come up with that money anyway.”

Governor Gary Herbert can still veto the bill, but he probably won’t.

[Via @NoCigTax.]

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Why debunking junk tobacco science matters

by Jacob Grier on March 4, 2010

In the past year alarmist studies about “thirdhand smoke,” the particles left behind from tobacco combustion, have proliferated. There’s no evidence such residuals are actually causing cancer but that hasn’t stopped anti-smoking activists and journalists from running with the story. Michael Siegel has recently spotted a couple ways this research has been abused to discriminate against smokers. First there’s the “sniff test” policy now in place at Kimball Physics, a technology company in New Hampshire:

No tobacco-residuals emitting person, article of clothing, or other object is allowed inside any Kimball Physics building. This restriction also applies to anyone or anything emitting characteristic tobacco odors. Anyone who has used a tobacco product within the previous two hours is automatically to be turned away, unless measures have been taken such that residuals-sensitive persons are not exposed. The determining factor, regarding allowable residuals levels and/or exposure durations, is whether anyone is either significantly bothered, or even worse, made ill.

This is an absurd policy and it should come as no surprise that the person who created it is a board member of the extremist anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health. Nonetheless it creates a precedent that less fanatical employers might decide to follow.

Speaking of ASH, Siegel also catches them advocating bans on smokers adopting or fostering children. From ASH’s press release:

Midlothian Council in the U.K. is just the latest entity to prohibit smokers from adopting or providing foster care for children, a step Portsmouth, Hants, in England and other jurisdictions took several years ago, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Anyone wanting to care for a child under the age of five will be required not to have smoked for at least six months, even if they only smoke outdoors. [...]

… thirdhand tobacco smoke, what the New York Times called “the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing,” has just been reported by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to combine with a common indoor air pollutant to form very potent cancer causing substances. This, the researchers say, places children at serious risk, even if parents smoke only outside the home, because they carry the residues inside with them.

I criticized that Times article when it came out last year for taking such a credulous approach to the “thirdhand smoke” study it covered, buying into the researchers’ hype despite the fact that the study consisted of nothing but a phone survey. At the time the author couldn’t have known that her words and the reputation of the paper would be used to deny children foster care, but that’s how low the anti-smoking movement has sunk. Reporters need to realize that today’s anti-tobacco researchers should be treated with just as much skepticism as the Big Tobacco-funded scientists of the pre-Master Settlement days.

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Recent reading: A trio of tobacco books

by Jacob Grier on February 23, 2010

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reading related to tobacco policy in preparation for some upcoming writing projects…

Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking, Christopher Snowdon — I link to Chris’ blog of the same name frequently here. He’s one of the best critics of paternalist excesses writing today and one of the few journalists exposing the shoddy science put out by many anti-tobacco researchers. His book-length review of the anti-smoking movement goes back all the way to Columbus and is essential for putting the current movement in historical context. His coverage of secondhand smoke and bibliography of ETS papers is also very valuable. Highly recommended and lively written.

Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris, Richard Kluger — A 700+ page doorstop of a book chronicling the history of the American cigarette business. Though a little dated by its publication prior to the Master Settlement Agreement, the book presents a remarkably balanced view of the players involved. Though by no means a tobacco apologist, Kluger manages to portray Big Tobacco executives with enough sympathy to make them human and sometimes admirable businessmen working in an embattled industry. Reformers, too, are shown in a balanced light. (Only John Banzhaf appears completely without redeeming qualities; he manages to come off as an ass no matter who is profiling him.)

Kluger fairly describes the progress of science, from when tobacco companies could legitimately claim skepticism of cigarettes’ health effects to when their denials became absurd. Similar scrutiny is given to the overblown claims of secondhand smoke by their opposition. In the final pages he even comes close to predicting the MSA, though in the details he fails to guess how the tobacco companies would use it to raise prices and create a legally protected cartel.

Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, Gene M. Heyman — The title is a bit off-putting, suggesting that the book accuses addicts of choosing to have their disorder. That’s inaccurate. Heyman, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, is actually offering an economic model of addiction, explaining substance abuse in terms of individual decisions and the way they can be distorted by addictive substances. Specifically, addictive substances tend to offer immediate benefits and long-term costs (exacerbated by withdrawal symptoms), to induce intoxication, and to undermine the value of more productive activities, all making habitual use hard to break.

Heyman is primarily concerned with illegal drugs but cigarettes do get a mention as a partial exception to the pattern. They don’t intoxicate the user and don’t interfere too much with other valuable activities, making the choice to smoke in any given situation very easy. This suggests that a useful approach to treating cigarette addiction would be to develop safer products that fill the same niche. This perspective is of special interest now given the development of e-cigarettes and research suggesting that nicotine alone can only partially explain cigarette addiction.

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Reuters hypes thirdhand smoke fears

by Jacob Grier on February 8, 2010

Reuters reporter Maggie Fox buys into the thirdhand smoke scare:

Old tobacco smoke does more than simply make a room smell stale — it can leave cancer-causing toxins behind, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

They found cancer-causing agents called tobacco-specific nitrosamines stick to a variety of surfaces, where they can get into dust or be picked up on the fingers. Children and infants are the most likely to pick them up, the team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California reported.

“These findings raise concerns about exposures to the tobacco smoke residue that has been recently dubbed ‘third-hand smoke’,” the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, available here.

Of course there are policy implications:

James Pankow, who also worked on the study, said it may raise questions about the safety of electronic cigarettes, or “e-cigarettes.” which produce a nicotine vapor but not smoke.

The researchers said regulators who have cracked down on second-hand smoke with smoking bans may decide to consider policies on third-hand smoke.

That nicotine works on surfaces in this way is interesting from an abstract, scientific point of view. What the article fails to mention is that there is essentially no evidence that anyone, anywhere, has ever suffered from exposure to so-called “thirdhand smoke.” The reason these carcinogens are so deadly to cigarette smokers is that smokers inhale them deeply through their mouths directly into sensitive lung tissues dozens of times per day. Exposure from surfaces or from dust inhalation through the nose is going to be far less substantial.

Nonetheless, you probably shouldn’t wrap your infant in smoky blankets. Fair enough. But spreading paranoia about thirdhand smoke has significant negative consequences. We’ve already seen employers discriminate against smokers using these fears as justification. And if this research is used to back legislation against e-cigarettes — devices that are unequivocally safer to smoke than actual tobacco — that will be a blow to public health.

Unfortunately journalists tend to be extremely credulous of any research that condemns tobacco and its related products. Last year The New York Times gave significant coverage to a thirdhand smoke study that consisted entirely of conducting a telephone poll of random people. Soon after Scientific American published an uncritical interview with the study’s author, Jonathan Winickoff, who said in an unmeasured words, “Smokers themselves are also contaminated…smokers actually emit toxins.”

If reporters are going to cover these sorts of stories, they owe it to readers to put the actual risks in proper perspective.

[Via Lene Johansen's Twitter feed.]

Update: Since writing this some debate has gone back and forth on Twitter among science writer Lene Johansen, Jeff Stier at the American Counsel on Science and Health, and Reuters health editor Ivan Oransky. Since Twitter isn’t the most conducive format for extended comments I thought I’d clarify here why I object to the article.

The problem is not that this is junk science or that it shouldn’t be covered. The problem is that people reading the article aren’t interested in the abstract question of how nicotine reacts with other chemicals on a household surface. What they want to know is whether tobacco residue presents a real health hazard to them and whether there are policy implications stemming from the research.

A layman reading about all the carcinogens mentioned in the article would conclude that the health hazard is real. Given the dosages involved this belief is likely false and is certainly unproven. As science journalism, the article fails to give readers the context they need to make sense of the research.

As for policy, the article itself notes that the research is bound up with political goals. The findings may be used to justify such measures as employment discrimination, bans on e-cigarettes, and further restrictions on smokers. This makes providing the proper context doubly important. There are plenty of reputable skeptics of these measures and at the very least the article could have quoted one.

Update 2/9/10: Chris Snowdon’s lengthy debunking of thirdhand smoke fears from last year is worth rereading.

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Now they come for the pipe smokers

by Jacob Grier on January 25, 2010

This was only a matter of time:

On January 13, 2010, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) and co-sponsor Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) introduced bill H.R. 4439 to congress to raise the federal pipe tobacco tax from $2.8311US per pound to $24.78US per pound and “To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose the same rate of tax on pipe tobacco as is imposed on roll-your-own tobacco.”[...]

If this bill passes, the average increase to your favorite blends will be about:
$2.43US per 50gr
$2.74US per 2oz
$4.86US per 100gr
$10.98US per 8oz
$21.95US per 16oz
$24.15US per 500gr
These prices would be added onto the price you are currently paying for those amounts of pipe tobacco. So with the average price of 100gr tin McClelland Frog Morton being about $13.20US, the new price would be $18.06US! That is outrageous!

The motivation for the tax increase is to stop producers of roll-your-own tobacco (RYO) from repackaging their product as pipe tobacco, which is taxed at a lower rate. The two products are very similar and in the past were taxed at the same rate of $1.10 per pound. SCHIP created a huge disparity by raising the tax on pipe tobacco to $2.81 and the tax on RYO to an astronomical $24.62. RYO producers predictably reclassified their products just to keep their companies alive.

The congressmen introducing this bill are correct that the two types of tobacco should be taxed equally, but the solution is to lower the tax on RYO, not to tax both products at the insane new rate.

[Hat tip to the ever-alert Jan!]

Previously:
SCHIP tax avoision
Children, say “thank you for smoking”

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War on flavor continues

by Jacob Grier on October 16, 2009

Hot on the heels of the FDA’s ban on flavored cigarettes (menthol excluded, of course), other governments are taking even more drastic steps against flavored tobacco. First Canada:

Canada has banned the manufacture, importation and sale of most flavored cigarettes and small cigars, which have been slammed as little more than an enticement to get children to start smoking. [Again, menthol excluded.]

The law, which came into effect on Thursday, was backed by both government and opposition lawmakers. It also bans tobacco advertising in newspapers and magazines, closing a loophole that had allowed ads in publications that claimed they were read only by adults.

Then New York City:

The council, by a count of 46-1, voted to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco in the city, with the exception of tobacco used in pipes and hookahs. This goes a step further than the recent FDA ban, which banned flavored cigarettes (including cloves, but not menthol), because it bans flavored little cigars and chewing tobacco. Mayor Bloomberg has 10 days to decide to sign or veto the measure. If signed, the ban could go into effect in 120 days.

These bans are, in essence, forbidding the processing of tobacco to make it taste good. This sets a dangerous precedent for premium cigars. Might cask-aged cigars be next? Why allow leaves to be cured at all? After all, the aging process “masks” the harsh flavors of tobacco just as surely as adding a dollop of fruit-flavor does.

And after we do that, why not ban the flavoring of any other product that can be unhealthy?

[Via The Stogie Guys.]

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Smoke your cloves if you got ‘em

by Jacob Grier on September 8, 2009

The AP reports on a troubling new trend:

The nation’s top distributor of clove cigarettes is offering fans a new way to get their fix after the spice-flavored cigarettes are banned at the end of this month—cigars.

The new filtered cigars—close to the size of a cigarette and flavored with clove, vanilla and cherry—allow Kretek International Inc., which imports Djarum-brand tobacco products from Indonesia, to avoid new federal laws banning flavored cigarettes other than menthol.

The ban on flavored cigarettes, which critics say appeal to teenagers, doesn’t include cigars.

The difference? Cigarettes are wrapped in thin paper, cigars in tobacco leaves. While the cigars also are made with a different kind of tobacco, the taste is similar. The cigars come 12 to a pack, rather than 20 for cigarettes, but cost nearly half as much.

Why is this troubling? Not because people will continue smoking killer cloves. Not even because cigar shops may now be filled with their powerful aroma. No, it’s troubling because it will attract the government’s attention to cigars:

Whether the cigars are truly different or just an attempt to circumvent the ban by making superficial changes is in the hands of the FDA, said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

“The key is the legislation gives the FDA the authority to respond to these types of frankly totally irresponsible actions,” Mr. Myers said.

Mr. Myers joined executives from the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and the Amercian Legacy Foundation late last month urging the FDA to take a closer look at the issue.

Regulation of cigars is currently fairly light, allowing for the development of new brands and competition among them. And as an essentially pure agricultural product — they’re just rolls of cured leaves — that’s the way things ought to be. If the FDA or Congress starts turning its attention to cigars there’s no telling what harm they could to the industry.

I wrote about the pseudoscientific absurdity of banning flavored tobacco here.

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NYT gets Big Tobacco wrong… again

by Jacob Grier on September 7, 2009

The New York Times editorial page leads today with a screed against tobacco companies for their lawsuit challenging advertising restrictions in the new FDA law. The board alleges that the companies are challenging the law so that they can surreptitiously market to minors. Leaving aside the authors’ cavalier dismissal of First Amendment rights, this is yet another example of how the board completely misunderstands the current state of tobacco regulation.

It’s easy to test whether the Times‘ charge has merit since there are basically just two reasons that firms pay for advertising. One is to introduce new consumers to a product they don’t currently use, which is what the Times believes Big Tobacco wants to do with young people and cigarettes. The other is to lure existing consumers of a product away from competing producers. This lets us make different predictions based on which motive we think is dominant.

If the Times is right and it’s the former, all tobacco companies would benefit from overturning the advertising restrictions and would present a united opposition to the law. If it’s the latter, only the smaller tobacco companies would challenge it; the largest firm would favor the law as a means of restricting competition.

Is the Times right? Bloomberg provides the answer:

Reynolds, the second-largest U.S. cigarette maker, and third-biggest Lorillard Tobacco Co. sued after opposing the legislation that gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration oversight over tobacco products. [...] Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA, which makes half of the cigarettes sold in the U.S., supported FDA regulation and endorsed the law.

This doesn’t mean that the smaller companies don’t want to target youth too or that Philip Morris won’t eventually join in, but Philip-Morris’ ambivalence is telling. The anti-competitive effects of the law were clearly one of the main factors at work in its passage.

Reading the Times’ editorial you would never know that the nation’s single largest producer of cigarettes isn’t part of the current lawsuit. This is the same error of omission they made with their opposition to Senator Kirstin Gillibrand, discussed at length here. Time and again the board’s anti-tobacco zealotry has caused them to misunderstand how tobacco regulation has changed after the Master Settlement Agreement. Big tobacco companies, and Philip Morris especially, now view the government as a partner they can use to protect their market share. By consistently misconstruing the effects of new regulations and neglecting to mention the industry’s hand in writing them, The New York Times has become the best mouthpiece Philip Morris could ever hope for.

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PCC goes ultra PC

by Jacob Grier on August 18, 2009

Portland Community College, the largest higher education institution in the state, already cordons smokers off into smoking-permitted ghettos. Now it’s banning all forms of tobacco use on its campuses, indoors and out. This includes chewing tobacco. Why? Take it away, Preston Pulliams:

“This was the right thing to do,” said President Preston Pulliams in a prepared statement. He said research findings on the risks of exposure to secondhand smoke are “too compelling to not act.”

Meanwhile, Crispy co-blogger Baylen got a not-so-warm reception at his new digs at the University of Arkansas:

I was informed the other day, while walking on a sidewalk with a cigarette in hand on the University of Arkansas campus, that such an act–or chewing tobacco–is subject to a $500 fine. That’s smoking. Outside. Not near any person or building. $500.

People, there’s no evidence, compelling or otherwise, that passing a smoker on a sidewalk is going to do anybody any harm. There’s definitely no evidence that passing a person chewing tobacco is dangerous. Yet academic institutions around the country have bought into this nonsense in their zeal to harass students whose lifestyle they disapprove of, and in doing so they introduce thousands of young people to the idea that merely seeing a person smoking a cigarette is an infringement on their rights. We deserve better from the supposedly open-minded environment of academia.

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CA bill bans sales of e-cigs to minors

by Jacob Grier on August 14, 2009

A bill introduced in California would ban the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors. While it’s not clear that there are a significant number of minors buying the products anyway, nobody wants to get kids hooked on nicotine. This is a much more sensible approach than that pursued here in Oregon, where the AG is strong-arming stores to take them off shelves.

To put the issue in clearer perspective, be sure to read Jacob Sullum’s post (linked in the sidebar too) about a new study on the effects of smokeless tobacco (as in snuff and snus, not e-cigs). The conclusion:

This comparison highlights the absurdity of the main “public health” objection to promoting smokeless tobacco as a harm-reducing alternative to cigarettes. Opponents of this strategy claim to be worried that it could lead to more tobacco-related mortality in the long run if it attracts nonsmokers to smokeless tobacco. But Lee and Hamling’s numbers indicate that if a significant percentage of smokers switched to oral snuff, the tobacco-related death toll would be smaller than it is now even if every nonsmoker in America started using oral snuff too. By the professed standards of public health, which seeks to minimize morbidity and mortality, this is a no-brainer. As with the opposition to electronic cigarettes, something else is going on here: a moralistic crusade to conquer sin disguised as a scientific quest to conquer disease.

For a variety of reasons, cigarettes are by far the most dangerous form of tobacco/nicotine. Occasional pipe and cigar use, snuff, and e-cigarettes are all safer by varying degrees, but the moral crusade of public health has placed discussion of these alternatives off limits.

[Thanks to Jan for the link!]

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