HWN Suggests

Will we ever… make a safe cigarette?

There’s an old saying among people who work in public health: Tobacco is the only legal product that, when used as intended, will kill you. Decades of research have thoroughly documented the health problems that result from inhaling tobacco smoke – more than a dozen different types of cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema and other respiratory diseases, among others. Are these risks an inevitable part of smoking? Or is there a way of creating safe cigarettes without any of these hazards? “I think it’s very unlikely,” says Stephen Hecht from the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, who studies tobacco carcinogens – substances that cause cancer. Tobacco smoke is a complex cocktail of at…

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Featured

 Smoking Just One Cigarette Could Take 20 Minutes Off Your Life

“People generally know that smoking is harmful but tend to underestimate just how much,” said Dr Sarah Jackson, a principal research fellow at UCL’s alcohol and tobacco research group, per the Guardian. “On average, smokers who don’t quit lose around a decade of life. That’s 10 years of precious time, life moments, and milestones with loved ones.”

Articles of Interest

100 Years Of Smoking Studies In Popular Science

Popular Science has reported on tobacco smoking throughout its history. There are some fun anachronisms, like a 1910 declaration that “there is no scientific evidence that the moderate use of tobacco by healthy mature men produces any beneficial or injurious physical effects that can be measured.” Health organizations now say there is no healthy level of smoking, nor of exposure to secondhand smoke.

A New Smoking Warning for Women, and It's a BIG Deal

Sometimes I dread to report on the health risks of smoking, because obviously you know the risks by now. But, just in case you (or a girlfriend you love) is still, occasionally smoking socially (even a cigarette here and there), this news is for you (and her). According to a new study published in Circulation: Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology, an American Heart Association Journal that looked at results of more than 100,000 women as far back as 1976, those who were light to moderate smokers had a significantly increased risk of dying from sudden cardiac arrest than those who didn't smoke.

Breaking Nicotine’s Powerful Draw

At some point in the next few years, the 30 million smokers in the United States could wake up one day to find that cigarettes sold at gas stations, convenience stores and smoke shops contain such minuscule amounts of nicotine that they cannot get their usual fix when lighting up. Would the smokers be plunged into the agonizing throes of nicotine withdrawal and seek out their favorite, full-nicotine brand on illicit markets, or would they turn to vaping, nicotine gum and other less harmful ways to get that angst-soothing rush?

People Have Tried to Make U.S. Cigarette Warning Labels More Graphic for Decades

Today, health advocates are fighting to have tobacco packaging be even less attractive using measures like requiring tobacco products to be sold in plain packaging and using the world’s ugliest color to turn people off.

Single cigarette takes 20 minutes off life expectancy, study finds

Figure is nearly double an estimate from 2000 and means a pack of 20 cigarettes costs a person seven hours on average.

Smoking Fewer Than 5 Cigarettes a Day Damages Your Lungs Almost as Much as Smoking a Whole Pack, Study Says

Health officials have long argued there’s no safe amount of smoking—but, even still, many people assume a cigarette here and there doesn’t hurt. A new study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine puts that notion to rest: It found smoking just a handful of cigarettes per day causes lung damage similar to smoking more than a pack per day.

Smoking harms not just your physical health, but your mental health too

Although some studies have shown that the nicotine in cigarettes can improve concentration and attention (making smokers feel more alert), there’s more to cigarettes than just nicotine. They contain over 4,000 chemicals – over 50 of which are known to be toxic in nature: the carbon monoxide also found in car exhaust fumes, butane found in lighter fluid, and arsenic, ammonia, and methanol found in rocket fuel, for example.

Smoking’s Toll on Health Is Even Worse Than Previously Thought, a Study Finds

Even though people are already barraged with messages about the dangers of smoking, researchers say it is important to let the public know that there is yet more bad news. “The smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy making in public health,” said Brian D. Carter, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society and the first author of an article about the study, which appears in The New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s not a done story.”

Surgeon General Adds New Risks To Long List Of Smoking's Harms

"Smoking really is even worse than we knew," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tells Shots. Half of all long-term smokers will die from a smoking-related disease, with the annual toll now about 480,000 people. Frieden says smoking is more lethal than it used to be. "Even though the Americans who smoke are smoking fewer cigarettes, the risk of dying among smokers is increasing," he notes, quoting the new report.

Switch from smoking to vaping cuts health risks substantially, report finds

Review of 400 published studies stresses vaping is not risk-free and urges action to reduce teenage use

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Undo

As a program of the California Department of Public Health, UNDO is one of the nation’s leading public health programs – fighting to end Big Tobacco’s deadly epidemic in California. We work every day to undo the tobacco industry’s damage and restore health and wellness to every Californian. Because we all deserve to live in healthy communities with clean air and water, and free from the tobacco industry’s death, disease, and toxic waste. And kids should be able to grow up without Big Tobacco poisoning their future.