Psychiatric Patients Risking Lives For A Cigarette

Australia's involuntary mental health patients are so desperate to defy smoking bans they are poking electricity sockets with paper clips to get a spark and light up, The (Perth) Sunday Times reported.

The revelation based on a new report is being used by Western Australia's mental health watchdog, the Council of Official Visitors, to bolster its call for designated smoking areas for involuntary patients.

In its latest annual report, the watchdog warned one patient was soaking nicotine patches in tea "to get more of a nicotine fix" and it was "cruel" to force mental health patients to give up their addiction on admission.

It also highlighted "reports of patients using straightened paper clips in electricity outlets to obtain a spark to light a cigarette."

"It is not the right time to be asking people to go through the terrible nicotine withdrawal symptoms," the council wrote in the report tabled in parliament.

"The ban is also a further erosion of consumers' rights and not in accordance with section five of the Act which requires that people with a mental illness must receive care and treatment with the least restriction of their freedom and least interference with their rights."

But Australian Council on Smoking and Health president Mike Daube said the council's call was "misguided, retrograde and exaggerated."

He said the smoking ban, introduced on all public hospital sites in 2008, was "being very well implemented and there will always be one or two exceptions."

"There doesn't seem to be any concern about the physical health of mental health patients and we shouldn't just be worried about their health from the neck up," he said.

Cigarettes and Sinners

I'd rather be a Catholic than a cigarette company. Confessions are done in private, and priests (and God) are more forgiving of past transgressions than the Justice Department (and judges.) As Catholic On-Line explains it, "The basic requirement for a good Confession is to have the intention of returning to God like the "prodigal son" and to acknowledge our sins with true sorrow before the priest." Once a Catholic has confessed to a specific sin in the privacy of the Confessional, the appropriate punishment is imposed by the priest and the penitent can go on about his/her business confident that the transgression has been forgiven. The Pope's confessional is a kind of one stop shopping for forgiveness whereas the legal confessional, at least as interpreted by Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, more closely resembles Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter.

In 2006 Judge Kessler issued a final judgment in a civil RICO (Racketeering) case that the Department of Justice brought against the tobacco industry as a whole. She said tobacco companies violated civil racketeering laws and defrauded the American people by lying for decades about the health risks of smoking and their marketing to children. In her 1682 page opinion she said that:

"the Court will order Defendants to make corrective statements about addiction (that both nicotine and cigarette smoking are addictive); the adverse health effects of smoking (all the diseases which smoking has been proven to cause); the adverse health effects of exposure to ETS [environmental tobacco smoke](all the diseases which exposure to ETS has been proven to cause); their manipulation of physical and chemical design of cigarettes (that Defendants do manipulate design of cigarettes in order to enhance the delivery of nicotine); and light and low tar cigarettes (that they are no less hazardous than full-flavor cigarettes). Within sixty days of the issuance of this opinion and order, both parties will submit a proposal for the exact wording of these statements. After the Court approves particular statements, Defendants must publish such corrective statements in newspapers and disseminate them through television, Within sixty days of the issuance of this opinion and order, both parties will submit a proposal for the exact wording of these statements."
All the appeals have now been exhausted, Judge Kessler's opinion is final and the Justice Department has come up with proposed language that has been made public over the tobacco companies' objections.

Some of the Justice Department proposals as to what the cigarette companies must say in their ads and on cigarette packages are in the nature of a confession that might be heard by a priest in a confessional. One suggested confession says: "We falsely marketed low tar and light cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes to keep people smoking and sustain our profits. We knew that many smokers switch to low tar and light cigarettes rather than quitting because they believe low tar and lights are less harmful. They are NOT." Another says: "We told Congress under oath that we believed nicotine is not addictive. We told you that smoking is not an addiction and all it takes to quit is will power. Here's the truth: Smoking is very addictive. And it's not easy to quit."

Not all the suggestions are in the nature of confessions. Some simply describe the hazards posed by the cigarette. One, for example, says: "A federal court is requiring tobacco companies to tell the truth about cigarette smoking. Here's the truth: . . . Smoking kills 1,200 Americans. Every day." Another says: "Just because lights and low tar cigarettes feel smoother, that doesn't mean they are any better for you. Light cigarettes can deliver the same amounts of tar and nicotine as regular cigarettes." Another says: For decades, we denied that we controlled the level of nicotine delivered in cigarettes. Here's the truth: Cigarettes are a finely-tuned nicotine delivery device designed to addict people; We control nicotine delivery to create and sustain smokers' addiction, because that's how we keep customers coming back; We also add chemicals, such as ammonia, to enhance the impact of nicotine and make cigarettes taste less harsh; When you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain-that's why quitting is so hard." This last statement is so detailed that it is probably similar to what a murderer might come up with when confessing sins in a Confessional.

March 3 will have been an exciting day. That is the deadline for the tobacco companies to respond to the language proposed by the Justice Department. It is not often the sinner has a chance to weigh in on the kind of punishment that is appropriate. Priests do not ask confessors how many Hail Marys they think are appropriate for the sins to which they've confessed. My guess is Judge Kessler, like a priest, will not give the sinners' suggestions much weight.

Evidence does not support menthol restrictions, Altria says

The scientific evidence does not justify a ban or restrictions on menthol flavoring in cigarettes, a representative for cigarette maker Philip Morris USA told a government advisory panel Wednesday.

"The weight of the scientific evidence indicates that menthol does not change the inherent health risk of smoking," said Jane Lewis, senior vice president for tobacco regulatory and health sciences at Altria Client Services Inc., which provides support functions for Henrico County-based Altria Group Inc. and its subsidiaries, including top U.S. cigarette maker Philip Morris USA,producer of Marlboro cigarettes which sells several menthol cigarette brands.

Lewis spoke at a meeting of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, a 12-member panel appointed to study tobacco-related issues and advise the Food and Drug Administration on regulating the industry.

The advisory committee is scheduled to submit a report about the public-health impacts of menthol cigarettes to the FDA by March 23. The group could recommend banning menthol, but the FDA is not required to adopt the findings.

A draft copy of the panel's report released this week said the evidence is insufficient to conclude that smokers face higher health risks from menthol cigarettes compared with unflavored cigarettes.

However, the report said menthol flavoring may make it easier for young people to start smoking and may increase the likelihood of addiction.

Lewis told the panel that the impact of menthol on smoking initiation is a "complex issue" that needs more study. The weight of evidence, she said, indicates that menthol flavoring does not increase smoking dependence.

A ban on menthol could instead have the unintended consequence of creating an illegal trade in menthol cigarettes, Lewis said.

David T. Levy, a professor of economics at the University of Baltimore, told the panel that his research indicates a ban on menthol would reduce smoking rates enough to prevent between 323,000 and 633,000 deaths from smoking-related diseases by 2050. He said the research was funded by the American Cancer Society and the American Legacy Foundation, a tobacco-control group.

Menthol brands make up about 30 percent of the U.S. cigarette market, and about 80 percent of black smokers use menthols, research from the Federal Trade Commission shows.

Niger Innis, a national spokesman for the civil-rights group Congress of Racial Equality, also argued before the committee that a ban on menthol would create an illicit trade.

He said his group supports "rigorous and early education about the dangers of smoking in the schools," but not a ban on menthol.

"If the government is not going to ban all cigarettes, then the obvious question is why should it selectively ban those cigarettes that African-Americans tend to prefer?" he said.

The committee's chairman, Dr. Jonathan Samet, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California, said the report to the FDA would include research on the potential unintended consequences of a ban, such as an illegal, underground market.

Two of the nation's largest cigarette makers last Friday filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the FDA from relying on recommendations made by the scientific advisory committee.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington by Lorillard Inc. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., claims several members of the committee have a financial conflict of interest and bias because they have testified against tobacco companies in smokers' lawsuits or worked for pharmaceutical firms that make smoking-cessation products.

Altria Group is not part of that lawsuit, but the company has raised objections with the FDA about alleged conflicts of interest among members on the advisory committee.

Close flavoured tobacco loophole: NDP

It's time to close loopholes that let tobacco companies keep marketing flavoured products to kids, NDP health critic Megan Leslie said Tuesday.

Leslie introduced a private member's bill, C-631, to tighten the rules around the sale of flavoured little cigars.

Adult smokers are used to smoke regular cigarettes like Red&White cigarettes or Winston cigarettes but for kids it is very dangerous all the tobacco products.

The Conservative government tried to ban the sale of flavoured small cigars, which are thought by some to target teens, but the tobacco industry changed the size of the products slightly and removed the filters to comply with the new law.

Bill C-32 passed in October, 2009, and the law came into force last July.

"Despite the ban, you can still find flavoured cigarillos on store shelves today," Leslie said.

"Health experts agree that flavoured tobacco [products] are consumed by young Canadians as a stepping stone to consuming non-flavoured tobacco products ... these things target young people," she said.

Leslie pointed to the campaign slogan for the "Flavour…GONE" advocacy group: cancer shouldn't come in candy flavours.

"It's marketing to kids," she said.

Luc Martial, a spokesman for Casa Cubana, which distributes flavoured cigars, said most users of flavoured tobacco are legal smoking age, adding that the government's own numbers show fewer teens are using flavoured tobacco.

"C-32 without question is legislation that was based on an outright lie. Everything that was said about the flavoured little cigars, everything that was said about the industry was not based on fact at all."

Banning the flavours doesn't do anything to enforce laws against selling tobacco products to teens, Martial adds.

"The government's own data clearly showed the kids, unfortunately, were getting far greater illegal access in much greater quantities to non-flavoured cigarettes," he said.

"(But) truth doesn't matter in tobacco."

Martial says he fears the government will pick up the private members bill and push its own legislation, which is more likely to become law. He says several lawyers have approached Casa Cubana about going to court over the issue but they have so far passed on the offers.