Articles Tagged with ''smoking and health''

In a closely watched election contest, San Francisco voters have upheld a first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products, overwhelmingly rejecting an $11.6 million campaign by R.J. Reynolds to scuttle the law. San Francisco officials last June approved the ban but a petition drive funded by Reynolds, the maker of the top-selling menthol brand, Newport, forced the issue onto yesterday’s ballot.

Tobacco companies were ordered last week to place warning statements about their products’ health effects on their websites and cigarette packages – the latest step in a court order they’ve been fighting for 17 years. Altria, its Philip Morris USA subsidiary and R.J. Reynolds have until Nov. 21, 2018 to publish “corrective statements” on five topics about which they had been found to deliberately deceive the public:

Men under 50 who smoked were more likely to have a stroke, and their risk increased with the number of cigarettes they smoked, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke. An increasing number of young adults are suffering ischemic stroke, which is the most common stroke type.

Seven public health and medical groups, and several individual pediatricians, filed suit today in federal court in Maryland challenging a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decision that allows electronic cigarettes and cigars – including candy-flavored products that appeal to kids – to stay on the market for years without being reviewed by the agency.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking steps that may exempt premium cigars from tobacco regulation – a move that is angering the American Heart Association. By asking for more information about the high end cigars, the AHA’s CEO Nancy Brown said the FDA is “sending mixed messages on tobacco regulation.”

Workers who smoke can cost their employers thousands of dollars per year more than their non-­‐ smoking counterparts, new research has found. The study found smoking to pose a substantial burden on employers through increased costs from lost productivity. The US researches say it would be in an employer’s best interest to support smoking cessation programs that facilitate quitting among employees.

Although tobacco control measures have reduced overall smoking rates in the United States (from 42% in 1965 to 15% in 2015), a new report says several vulnerable subpopulations continue to smoke at high rates. The report by American Cancer Society (ACS) investigators calls high rates of smoking among specific subpopulations one of the most pressing challenges facing the tobacco control community.