A very interesting and interactive website about nicotine addiction is available at this link:

NOVA “The Dope on Nicotine”

Save the Date! We will be hosting a local community event in Greeley about Tobacco on the Great American Smoke Out. Topics will include youth prevention, threats to the tobacco control movement and a historical perspective that will lead us into the future. Registration will be on this site! Check back for more details!

There are a lot of similarities between tobacco and candy advertisements. Still, the tobacco industry denies that they are marketing to youth. See for yourself. What do you think?

David Kessler’s new book, “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite” offers an interesting premise: the food industry has purposely manipulated our food to make us eat more than we need and stimulate our brains in a way that creates an addictive behavior. The most blatant ingredients for manipulating? Salt, Sugar and Fat in varying arrangements. David Kessler was the long-time FDA director who highlighted the cigarette manipulation by the tobacco industry and specifically that they manipulated the nicotine yields through various techniques. One such technique involves adding ammonia to the products to make the nicotine absorb into the blood and brain more quickly -basically nicotine free-basing. What he found was that he was being triggered by certain foods (for him, usually sweet and fattening) much in the same way that it seemed tobacco users were triggered to use tobacco. So he set out to find out why.

The results of his studies are stunning. The more highly processed (palatable) a food item becomes, the closer it resembles a drug delivery device rather than a meal. He found that at Chili’s Restaurant, for example, that some appetizers contained more calories than most meals, but that the customers upon eating them were not only not filling up, but were more likely to eat more food (and calories) throughout the rest of the meal. This was due to the stimulation that the combination of fats, salts and sugars (and temperature) had on the brain. In laymen’s terms: it just felt too good to stop.  

He also goes into other food industry dirty secrets such as their ingredient list (how many different ways can you list sugar?) and how they use certain bright colors (especially red) that stimulate hunger in the body. But overall, his book is a wake up call to be aware of what is going on and to take back the control of your own body and mind once the truth is known. He suggests we can use similar tactics as has been used in tobacco control to help change the norms of these tactics and perceptions of so-called “foods” that are little more than stimulants with little to sometimes no nutritional value to the body.

For a longer discussion with David Kessler, see below.
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=287080-1&showVid=true

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco has had an immense and strong presence at the Greeley Independence Stampede for many years, but it is no longer that way. In December 2007, the Greeley City Council voted 4-3 in favor of passing an ordinance that prohibited the giving away of free tobacco in city limits. This included the Greeley Stampede. However that next summer at the Stampede, US Smokeless still had a booth and were giving away free items like bandanas. This year, there is no trace of them there at all. The reason is unknown, but the outcome is good all the same: children and adults alike will not associate the cancer-causing products with the fun events of the Stampede. Congratulations to the Stampede and Greeley!

BEFORE

AFTER

The Same Location as the First Picture a year later

A recent study conducted by the University of California San Francisco has found that young adults (aged 18-25) with an unfavorable view of the tobacco industry were statistically much less likely to smoke or use tobacco or were much more likely to want to quit and make more quit attempts if they were current users. 

This information is valuable for health educators and social marketers alike whose goal is to educate about the risks of tobacco and encourage avoiding tobacco. Often times health education campaigns focus on the health risks to the user rather than on the deceitful tactics of the tobacco industry or what the study calls “tobacco indsutry denormalization”.

“Running anti-tobacco ads to expose the fact that the tobacco industry kills five million people worldwide annually turns out to be hugely successful in preventing (tobacco use) and promoting cessation,” said Stanton Glantz, PhD, a study co-author and professor of medicine and director of UCSF’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

A social marketing campaign against tobacco and the industry that has been shown to be effective in both the young adult (18-25) and youth (12-18) demographics has been the Truth Campaign that is sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation.

“The results show a huge effect of attitudes linked to advertising campaigns that focus on portraying the tobacco industry in a negative light. The tobacco industry cares a lot about public opinion and hates those ads, because the ads make the industry look bad,” said Pamela Ling, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and assistant professor of general internal medicine at UCSF.

To determine attitudes, the researchers asked respondents how strongly they agreed or disagreed with three statements: Taking a stand against smoking is important to me; I want to be involved with efforts to get rid of cigarette smoking; and I would like to see cigarette companies go out of business. They found that these views could be influenced with the anti-industry ads.

The researchers found that those who agreed with those statements and supported action against the tobacco industry were one-third as likely to be smokers as those who did not support action against the tobacco industry. Among current smokers, those who had a negative attitude towards the tobacco industry were over four times more likely to plan to quit smoking than smokers who did not support action against the tobacco industry.

Here is a recent ad from the Truth campaign:

For more information on the study and on tobacco industry denormalization, visit:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/149242.php

The Tobacco Free Coalition of Weld County celebrated another year of hard work on making our community a healthier place. On Tuesday, June 9th, approximately 40 coalition members came together at Coyotes Southwestern Grill in Greeley for an appreciation luncheon.

Handing out Awards and Silly Gifts

Enjoying the meal and socializing

I work in a dental office.  Today I had a patient (41 year old male) come into the office.  One of the first things he told me is that he quit chewing tobacco,  a habit that he has had for at least 25 years.  The main reason he quit is because of the price.  He stopped cold turkey in April of this year, and although he has gained some weight-he feels great!  He did mention that he wished he didn’t put on the extra pounds, but that has been the only drawback to quitting.  We also talked about how the  Stampede can no longer  give out free samples, and he was very supportive of that.  Even though he has been a tobacco user for many years and always enjoys the Stampede, he was concerned that the free samples were landing in the hands of kids.  He has three boys, and he would never want them to start using tobacco.  This story made my day!!!!

If you are a member of the Tobacco Free Coalition of Weld County (or want to be), please fill out this survey.  Current members with a valid email address should have already received a link.

Click Here to take survey

This helps in our ongoing efforts at strategic planning and assessment.
Thanks in advance.

While nicotine is what gets people addicted and gives them the buzz to keep using, it is not easily extracted from the plant form of tobacco. In order for it to release chemically, ammonia and other freebasing items are added to the products. American Spirit has often claimed to have no additives or preservatives, but recent research has shown it to have the highest level of free basing ability which indicates higher levels of ammonia. Maybe it’s just made from natural sources…like urine. 

Adding ammonia to cigarettes increases the amount of easily absorbed “freebase” nicotine released by smoking, which may make some cigarettes more addictive than others depending on their formulas, the Independent reported July 28.

Researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University looked at 11 U.S. cigarette brands and found that some had up to 20 times more freebase nicotine — a form of the drug that is quickly absorbed and transmitted to the brain and central nervous system. Cigarettes with high levels of freebase nicotine probably are more addictive, researchers said.

American Spirit cigarettes, for example, had 36 percent freebase nicotine, compared to 1 percent in a benchmark cigarette, 2.7 percent in Camel, 5-6.2 percent in Winston, and 9.6 percent in Marlboro.

“During smoking, only the freebase form can [evaporate] from a particle into the air in the respiratory tract,” said study leader James Pankow. “Gaseous nicotine is known to deposit super-quickly in the lungs. From there, it’s transported rapidly to the brain. Since scientists have shown that a drug becomes more addictive when it is delivered to the brain more rapidly, freebase nicotine levels in cigarette smoke are thus at the heart of the controversy regarding the tobacco industry’s use of additives such as ammonia and urea.”

The study was published in the January 2003 issue of the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

Pankow, J., Barsanti, K., & Peyton, D. (2003) Fraction of Free-Base Nicotine in Fresh Smoke Particulate Matter from the Eclipse “Cigarette” by 1H NMR Spectroscopy. Chemical Research in Toxicology, 16(1): 23-27.