Non-smokers can get lung cancer, too

I cannot begin to tell you the void this has left in my family. I have to admit, I didn't give much thought to the disease in the past. I, along with so many others, thought of it as a "smokers' disease" and left it at that. After doing some research, I have learned that this very smoking stigma has done an incredible disservice to many cancer patients. That's why I am trying to change that perception. Please mark your calendar for Aug. 1, the first worldwide Lung Cancer Survivors Day!

Lung cancer, often referred to as the "invisible disease", is generally asymptomatic and often goes undetected or misdiagnosed, while advancing to a late incurable stage. Only 15 percent of patients diagnosed in the late stages will survive five years. By the time my own dad was diagnosed, he was already at Stage 4. He lasted less than a month. Although early detection screening has been a topic of great concern and study, the established guidelines continue to leave a large percent of the population ineligible for screening. Remember, anyone can get lung cancer. Over 60 percent of newly diagnosed patients have never smoked or quit years ago (according to LUNGevity.org).

My dad for instance, had been smoke-free for 26 years before he was diagnosed. Lung cancer claims 160,000 lives annually. This is almost 10 times the amount of lives lost to AIDS (18,000 annually) and this is more than breast, colon, kidney and melanoma cancers ... combined. Yet despite these staggering statistics, lung cancer receives less research funding (per death) than any other type of cancer. It boggles the mind, doesn't it? Lung cancer patients face the same physical, emotional and financial hardships as any other cancer.

They battle the same fears, depression, losses and grueling treatments. Yet due to the smoking stigma, those battling receive minimal recognition and support from our society. Lung cancer is bad ... its victims are not. Like AIDS, alcoholism, obesity, drug abuse and a myriad of diseases that can be "rooted in causes," lung cancer patients deserve support, not shame and blame. For more information, please visit Lung Cancer Survivors Foundation on Facebook, and please, hug a cancer patient today.

Will social change help reduce smoking rates amongst disadvantaged Australians?

Smoking rates in Victoria are at an historic low, according to research released last week by Cancer Council Victoria, which found that 14.4 per cent of Victorians were regular smokers in 2011 compared with 21.2 per cent in 1998. But in the article below, University of Newcastle researchers Associate Professor Billie Bonevski and Professor Amanda Baker argue that smoking rates are still too high among many disadvantaged groups, and that social change and public health measures are needed. For those with an interest in equity and tobacco control, they recommend a special issue of the international addictions journal Drug and Alcohol Review.

  Smoking is a social justice issue

 Billie Bonevski and Amanda Baker write:
 In 1998 the public obtained the right to access internal tobacco industry documents, which blew the lid on the industry’s secrets. We learnt that the industry had evidence that cigarettes caused cancer and other negative health outcomes. Another involuntary disclosure was that the marketing and promotion strategies used by big tobacco targeted vulnerable groups like young people and the poor. They used various techniques. In the US, for example, tobacco companies financially sponsored events hosted by African American community groups and supported civil rights causes. It was not unusual for them to provide free cigarettes to mental health facilities and homeless shelters or to distribute cigarette branded blankets to people living rough on the streets. Similar grants and aid were given to Australian community social services.

“Value” pricing and promoting images and flavours (menthol) that appealed to people living in deprived urban areas were also used. Marketing cigarettes as a way to help you “cope with stress” was common. The entire strategy was labelled “downscaling” and today we are witnessing a globalisation of “downscaling” strategies where low and middle income countries have become the targets for the tobacco industry. Unfortunately even in developed countries like Australia we continue to experience the effects of these strategies. A social gradient in smoking exists whereby smoking prevalence rates rise as one moves down the socioeconomic scale.

 While the latest research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that the adult smoking prevalence rate in the general community is about 15-18%, other data show that it is much higher in groups that may be labelled as socioeconomically disadvantaged and often not captured in health census surveys. Population health surveys such as the recent Victorian Smoking Prevalence survey, using the Australian Bureau of Statistics indexes for socioeconomic status (the SEIFA index), indicate that rates of smoking are declining across socioeconomic groups, but these surveys do not capture people who are homeless, institutionalised, without phone access, or mentally or physically unable to respond to surveys.

 Nonetheless, even in population surveys, like the Victorian survey, the socioeconomic gradient in smoking rates persist – the report shows that those who are in higher socioeconomic status postcodes have smoking rates of 11%, compared to 16% and 18% in those who live in middle and low socioeconomic postcodes. Instead, reports focussing on including highly disadvantaged social groups show much larger differences in smoking rates – up to 50% of Aboriginal Australians smoke, 37% of single parents, 73% of homeless people and people with other drug disorders, 66% of people with a mental illness smoke and 60% of people accessing welfare aid from non-government agencies such as Anglicare and the Salvation Army.

Smoking linked to ectopic pregnancy

Cigarette smoke reduces the production of a Fallopian tube gene, which helps explain the link between smoking and ectopic pregnancy, Scottish researchers say. Drs. Andrew Horne and Colin Duncan of the Medical Research Council Centre for Reproductive Health in Edinburgh, Scotland, said ectopic pregnancy -- when the embryo implants in the Fallopian tube -- is the most common cause of maternal death in early pregnancy.

Ectopic pregnancy occurs in up to 2 percent of all pregnancies.There is no way to prevent the condition, which must be treated by abdominal surgery or, if the ectopic is small and stable, by injection of a drug called methotrexate. Horne and colleagues exposed cells from the Fallopian tube to a breakdown product of nicotine -- cotinine. They then showed that cotinine had a negative effect on genes known to be associated with cell death, or apoptosis, and in particular with a particular gene.

In a further study the researchers showed that the gene's reduced production in the Fallopian tube of women who were smokers. "The research is exciting because it provides new scientific evidence to help understand why women who smoke are more likely to have ectopic pregnancies," Horne said. "It appears that smoking reduces the production of genes, which are involved in the control of cell death and promote an environment in the Fallopian tube which is attractive to the developing embryo." The findings were presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Istanbul, Turkey.

Limbe Leaf Tobacco trophy sponsorship increased to K5m

Most sponsors have a tendency of putting sports administrators and their athletes in suspense after conclusion of tournaments but tobacco leaf buyer and processor Limbe Leaf Malawi have chosen to be different by announcing straight away that the stakes for the country’s oldest sports competition - Limbe Leaf Trophies – have been raised from K3 million to K5 million beginning next season. Limbe Leaf’s Corporate Services Manager Willie Zingani made the announcement Sunday, July 8, 2012 at Nankhaka ground in Area 30, where the tobacco firm splashed out cash prizes to winners of this year’s competition after the final games.


 Stakes high 


 “This year we have sponsored the competition to the tune of K3 million but from next year, we are raising the stakes to K5 million. Our aim, as Limbe Leaf Tobacco Company is to assist the government in its youth development programmes,” said Zingani. Zingani said Limbe Leaf was proud to be associated with the success achieved by the country’s national football and netball teams and would continue providing a nursery for the national teams. He said it is now over 32 years since they started sponsoring the tournament. Zingani said in that period, the competition has produced such great stars as Young Chimodzi, Gilbert Chirwa, John Maduka and Joseph Kamwendo. 


Government thankful 


 Guest of honour at the finals Principal Secretary for Youth Development and Sports Alex Mseka thanked Limbe Leaf for remaining government’s strategic partner in the development of sports from grassroots for close to four decades. “I have been reliably informed that Limbe Leaf has been sponsoring these competitions for over 35 years now and that the competition has produced some reputable sportsmen, some of whom have ventured into coaching and administration,” said Mseka. He said sports plays an important role is the social and economic development of the country beside promoting good health. The PS said the country needs serious sponsors like Limbe Leaf to sustain the development of football and netball.

Atlanta weighs smoking ban for parks, public areas

Workers on lunch break, parents of Little Leaguers and other visitors to Atlanta parks, be warned: You might have to leave the cigarettes at home. Atlanta officials are moving forward with a plan to ban smoking in city parks, wading into an issue that has grabbed attention from the southside to the northern rim of the metro region. Across the country, smoking has gradually ceded ground and disappeared from movie theaters, public buildings, office complexes and many restaurants.

 The proposed ban in Atlanta would follow similar moves by Alpharetta, Roswell, Duluth and Clayton County, among other local jurisdictions. The rules would affect hundreds of thousands of people who come to Atlanta's parks from intown or the suburbs for concerts and shows during the city's packed festival season. Piedmont Park alone attracts 3 million visits per year, according to a March 2007 study. City Councilwoman Joyce Sheperd, who is co-sponsoring the legislation, said it took a while for the Parks Department to convince her that a ban is a good idea.

But a couple of incidents — adults lighting up near children at a splash pad in her district, and widespread smoking during the Jazz Festival in Piedmont Park over Memorial Day — changed her mind. "I'm a park person, and I've seen incident after incident where people were smoking all over the place and not being very respectful," she said. "I'm amazed that people will smoke around children and not think twice about it." "Over the last year, I said, 'You know what? This is getting ridiculous,'" she said. But smoking bans, or the threat of them, can create controversy.

In DeKalb County, a proposed ban on smoking in public places — including parks, bars and strip clubs — was stubbed out last year after owners of nightclubs said the measure would hurt business. And the Gwinnett County city of Norcross just repealed a ban on use of tobacco products in public places after residents and business owners pushed back. The ban had been on the books only a month. "The issue changed completely from tobacco use to one of too much government involvement," said Councilman Ross Kaul, who sponsored the law in May but then pushed to repeal it. In Roswell, City Councilwoman Betty Price said the city's ban is unfair to smokers and unnecessary in the city's wide-open park land. She said city staffers had no record of smoking-related complaints before the ban was enacted.

 "I don't smoke or encourage anyone to," she said. "But 20 percent of the populace does smoke, and 20 percent also pays taxes and in public parks. They have as much right to be there as anyone else." In Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed supports the proposed ban. But city officials acknowledge there could be vigorous debate. "I think, generally, there will be support" from the community, said George Dusenbury, commissioner of the city's Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs. "People see parks as places where kids should run free." Atlanta's proposed ban would apply to parks, athletic fields, aquatic areas, golf courses, tennis courses, hiking and walking trails, playgrounds, off-leash areas, and spectator and concession areas.

It would prohibit anyone from burning or carrying cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco. Alex Wan, whose City Council district includes Morningside and Virginia-Highland, said the goal is to increase green space and encourage active lifestyles. Smoking runs counter to that, especially in kid-centric areas like the skate park in the Historic Fourth Ward Park, he said. Wan predicted that residents and park visitors would help enforce the measure with peer pressure.

SMOKING IS HEALTHIER THAN FASCISM

Barry Obama played an if-you-got-the weed-I-got-the-papers teenager in Hawaii’s real-life Dazed and Confused Choom Gang. Now that the high-school stoner has graduated to the White House, he rolls his eyes at those who roll their own—at least when it comes to cigarettes. The president signed a bill on Friday that redefined stores that offer roll-your-own tobacco devices as tobacco manufacturers. The legislation effectively raises taxes on small-business owners from about $1 per pound of tobacco to $25 per pound.

 The amendment appropriately found its way into a bill concerning transportation, which is precisely what smokers will now need to find the best deal. Like fuel-efficiency standards on auto manufacturers, the tobacco taxes reveal the government unmaking an industry that made America. Friday’s anemic jobs numbers—adding just 80,000 new jobs in a nation of 311 million people for June—are the result of such mush-heading thinking in Washington. We lose our jobs when politicians lose their minds. Obama began his presidency with a massive tax hike. The feds’ take from a carton of cigarettes jumped from $3.90 to $10.07.

But the smoking snobs exempted pipe tobacco. They sought to punish The X Files’ Smoking Man but not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Cultural tics often masquerade as public health crusades. Wine is good; Four Loko, bad. Football causes brain injuries. Bicycling saves the environment. Marijuana is medicinal; cigarettes, carcinogens. Government favoritism toward cultured pipe puffers over redneck cigarette smokers resulted in cigarette smokers rolling their own with cheaper (read: more lightly taxed) pipe tobacco.

Thousands of merchants invested tens-of-thousands in roll-your-own machines that enabled smokers to put cheaper pipe tobacco into their cigarette papers. Consumers avoided paying both Phillip Morris and Uncle Sam. So Big Business and Big Government ganged up on the little guy—smokers, store owners, and small companies that manufacture the roll-your-own machines. Taxes are bad for business. They are worse for freedom. The animating force behind modern liberalism is the desire to micromanage the lives of others. The state decides where you go to school, what doctor you visit, and the pension fund you will contribute to.

Liberal is another name for control freak. Drinking Big Gulps, eating Happy Meals, and smoking Marlboro Reds isn’t good for you. But neither is fascism. The greatest threat to an individual’s health is an overbearing government. The antidote to this public health crisis is choice. Freedom presumes the right to be “wrong,” to make choices another wouldn’t, to decide. Life is so much more interesting with millions of people making billions of choices rather than a few people making all of the choices. Diversity is poison to conformist control freaks. A government prevented from directing the affairs of its citizens by remote isn’t likely to be emboldened to direct malefactors to the gas chamber or the gulag. Smoking is healthier than fascism.

 The smoker-in-chief who crusades against the evils of tobacco is a symbol of the times. Governments forbid fireworks but this week past staged enormous explosive displays in the skies. They ban bookies but run lotteries. They inveigh against the evils of cigarettes while reaping billions in profits from them. Do as they say not as they do. The Puritans outlawed smoking in public two years after establishing the Massachusetts Bay colony. Two years later, they banned smoking in private homes. Then, amidst bans on garish clothing, toasting healths, and working for outside the legally-controlled wage, they prohibited the sale and purchase of tobacco.

 Barack Obama, Michael Bloomberg, and Max Baucus, who slipped the tobacco tax into this week’s transportation bill, don’t think of themselves as Puritans. They call themselves progressives. But there is a startling overlap between theocrats establishing government by god and secular politicians who play god by imagining an omniscient state. They know best. The control freaks think we must be saved from ourselves. Who will save us from the people who would save us?

Smoke lounge opening in Discontent location

The former location of Discontent will soon be home to a  sampling lounge, Discontent owner Tom Tepley said Friday. Pyromaniacs could possibly be open in the new location at 815 Main Avenue later this week, Tepley said. Pyromaniacs was originally located at 23 4th St. S. before it and Discontent closed indefinitely in January after a new city ordinance banned the sale of items deemed to be drug paraphernalia. Tepley said his brother, who owns the property, rented out a portion of the building to Pyromaniacs for a tobacco and shisha – or hookah – sampling lounge.

Trepley said he had built the portion of that building specifically for a sampling lounge for Discontent, but he didn’t want to open it himself for fear of prompting another lawsuit. “I told them, you know, you’re probably going to get harassed (by the city),” Tepley said. “So I wish those guys a lot of luck.” Discontent still won’t be operating out of the location yet, as Tepley said he is awaiting the outcome of his lawsuit with the city before deciding his next step.

 Tepley filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Moorhead earlier this year after the new ban on pipes and bongs was enacted. The lawsuit argues that the items sold by Discontent actually do not constitute drug paraphernalia under the city’s ordinance. It further argues that under threat of criminal prosecution from the city, the employees were forced to close the store, which it claims caused irreparable injury and economic damages.

 The lawsuit asks that the city ordinance be declared unconstitutional under federal law and requests a court order to bar the city from enforcing it. After the suit, Tepley said he has considered moving Discontent to another location or just retiring. “Maybe I’ll look at a different market, a more business friendly market,” he said.