Another story on the 50-year anniversary of the Surgeon General’s, this one from Think Progress.
The RawStory article touched on this, but this article deals with it more directly: Since the 1964 landmark Surgeon General’s report, more than 20 million people in the U.S. have died as a result of smoking — 2.5 million of those deaths are blamed on secondhand smoke (boy that’ll drive the Smokers’ “secondhand smoke is harmless” Club crazy.).
Think about that — what a holocaust, and that’s just in the U.S. That’s more than twice the number of people killed in Hitler’s Holocaust — only it happens in slow motion, a person there, a person here. I know I watched my mom’s entire circle of friends wiped out by smoking — almost all of her friends smoked and most of them died of cigarette-caused diseases relatively young. She smoked for 60 years and managed to outlive almost all of them.
Lots of news outlets are doing 50-year anniversary stories on the Surgeon General’s landmark report. I’m posting links to a couple of them.
This one is from RawStory (Reprinted from a French news service — thanks to Haruko for the link and there she is posting away and a bunch of people shilling ecigs– starting to see these folks all over the Internet, and am starting to wonder how many of them are paid to promote ecigs), about a 50-year anniversary report put out. Two conclusions from this report stood out for me:
1) Cigarettes are more potent than they’ve ever been.
2) And this is a big one, there’s a LOT more health risk involved in smoking than just lung cancer. The updated report specifically mentions:
…. active smoking can cause a common form of blindness called age-related macular degeneration, as well as diabetes, colorectal cancer and liver cancer.
Smoking can also cause tuberculosis, erectile dysfunction, facial clefts in infants, ectopic pregnancy, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammation, impaired immune function, and worsens the outlook for cancer patients and survivors.
Those who do not smoke but are exposed to second-hand smoke face an increased risk of stroke, said the report.
So, it’s right there in an official Surgeon General’s report: Smoking increases the risk for macular degeneration, diabetes, erectile dysfunction and arthritis (in particular, I’ve been looking into the ties between arthritis and smoking. Want to do a major post about that soon). This is important to me, because people tend to get hung up on idea that smoking causes lung cancer and that’s it. A lot of information has been coming out in the past 5 years about the connection between smoking and diabetes and arthritis.
No more smoking at work or three-martini lunches, 1960s Don Draper
Next week is the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking U.S. Surgeon General’s report on cigarettes. This report was the result of more than a decade of studies and research into the growing suspicion of a connection between smoking and lung cancer.
A lot of this is documented pretty well in an excellent book called “The Cigarette Century.” The report was fought big time through political channels by the tobacco industry, trying to get it suppressed.
The report issued by Surgeon General Luther Terry came out on Jan. 11, 1964, and along with the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry, was a major turning point in the fight against smoking. Now, there was a highly official report, signed off by the U.S. Surgeon General, unequivocally with no subtleties — smoking causes lung cancer. And that cigarette filters did nothing to lower the risk.
Remember these? These used to be EVERYWHERE!
Think about that for a moment. No if, ands or butts. There is no doubt. For years, the cigarette industry had been working feverishly to create “doubt” about the science (the same techniques are used by global warming and evolution denialists today — feed the “doubt.”).
It was such a momentous report that it was actually released on a Saturday for fear that it would devastate the stock market.
Think about 1964 … smoking ubiquitous on TV, in movies, in almost every workplace. Ashtrays jammed with cigarettes in hotel lobbies, restaurants, work desks, cars, everywhere. There were no smokefree areas, not in restaurants, not in airplanes, not even in hospitals. The smell was everywhere. Cigarettes sold in vending machines.
My how times have changed since 1964. But, it changed slowly.
A few years after the report, the warnings arrived on packs of cigarettes.
You would have thought this would have been the end of the tobacco industry with two or three years, but no, incredibly, smoking continued to thrive and smoking rates didn’t really start to drop until the 70s, and then didn’t really drop all that dramatically until the 80s, nearly 20 years later.
Why? The industry fought back. Afterward, the tobacco industry poured more money than ever into its PR machine and its advertising, trying to counteract the influence of the report. Advertising was aimed at women with a series of new cigarettes marketed specifically for women. Then, came Joe Camel, enticing what the industry called “new smokers” (The industry’s euphemism for teen smokers) by making smoking look more cool than ever. And for a time, they were successful.
Luther Terry and his groundbreaking report
The smoking rate was about 43 percent in 1964 (and more than 50 percent for men). After the Surgeon General’s report came out, the smoking rate for women and teenagers actually went up for several years, but finally started to drop in the 70s. Around this time, cigarette ads were banned from TV and vending machines disappeared (They were finally banned by the FDA in 2010.). The dramatic drop-off was between 1970 and 1980, with a second, less dramatic drop-off after 2000. From 1990 to 2000, the smoking rate remained stubbornly persistent, dropping only from 25.5 percent to 23.3 percent (the result of a higher teen smoking rate than the 60s and 70s … thanks Joe Camel). Today, the smoking rate is about 19 percent.
What’s more. The attitudes toward smoking changed — dramatically. Smoking is no longer seen by society as “cool” or “hip.” Now, it’s seen as a dirty habit, something to be embarrassed about. Smokes are assigned to the alleys outside bars, in all kinds of weather. It’s no longer “fun” to smoke.
It took about 40 years to cut the smoking rate in half, in other words. Today, it is roughly about 44 percent of what it was in 1964. Just as importantly, but not talked about enough, is the amount of smoking has gone down because very few workplaces allow smoking any longer. There are very few 2- and 3-pack-a-day smokers today, compared to 50 years ago.
Jan. 11, 1964. The date the tide began to turn against the tobacco industry. It was the first major victory against the industry.
File this one under, “you have to be absolutely shitting me.”
Five Big Tobacco companies, led by (cue shock) R.J. Reynolds, the sleaziest of the sleaze Big Tobacco companies, filed suit against the Food and Drug Administration over graphic warning labels being required by the agency.
Get this, the complaint claims the labels would make their customers, i.e., smokers, “depressed, discouraged and afraid” to buy their products.
Oy.
That’s the FUCKING point! To DISCOURAGE and make people AFRAID to use the product.
Arrrrrggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!! Must …. avoid … kicking …. cat…..
These warning labels are all part of legislation signed into law in 2009 that gave the FDA regulatory authority over Big Tobacco. These same kinds of graphic warnings have been implemented in Great Britain, Canada and Australia (and they’ve been controversial in those places, as well.)
Altria, i.e. Philip Morris, as usual likes to play nice and has not joined this litigation. With 60 percent of the cigarette market cornered, Philip Morris doesn’t need to jump into these frivolous suits (and Philip Morris actually helped write that 2009 law to begin with, which is weird, because if their competitors can no longer advertise, they can cling on to that 60 percent market share much more easily.).
These images, which will be unveiled a year from now, include sickly children, people dying of cancer and diseased gums and lungs. These kinds of images have been on cigarette packs in Commonwealth countries for a few months now.
OK, what has gotten a lot of press from a truly extensive Surgeon General’s report on cigarettes released yesterday is a conclusion that “there is no safe level of cigarette smoke.”
The media has turned this into “just one cigarette can kill you.” Unfortunately, the report does contain a passage that just a few minutes of cigarette smoke can give a person with heart disease a heart attack. Well, having someone sneak up on you from behind and say, “Boo!” can give you a heart attack if you have serious heart disease. It’s a really stupid point.
The real crux of the report, which the media has missed somewhat, is that it examines how cigarettes cause various forms of cancer and lung disease.
In summary:
• The chemicals and toxicants in tobacco smoke damage DNA, which can lead to cancer. Nearly one-third of all cancer deaths every year are directly linked to smoking. Smoking causes about 85% of lung cancers in the U.S.
•Exposure to tobacco smoke quickly damages blood vessels throughout the body and makes blood more likely to clot. This damage can cause heart attacks, strokes, and even sudden death.
• The chemicals in tobacco smoke inflame the delicate lining of the lungs and can cause permanent damage that reduces the ability of the lungs to exchange air efficiently and leads to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
I found the lung cancer chapter the most interesting. Sure enough, here is the conclusion I was looking for:
“There is consistent evidence that a combination of polymorphisms in the CYP1A1 and GSTM1 genes leads to higher DNA adduct levels in smokers and higher relative risks for lung cancer than in those smokers without this genetic profile.
“Exposure to cigarette smoke carcinogens leads to DNA damage and subsequent mutations in TP53 and KRAS in lung cancer.”
So, here’s the thing to wrap your heads around. Smoking fucks with your DNA. It isn’t just irritating the cells of your lungs, it’s actually changing the DNA of those cells.
The various cancers mentioned by the report were lung, mouth, throat, stomach, pancreas, bladder, kidney and leukemia. Surprisingly, lymphoma was not mentioned. I had always thought there was an increased risk of lymphoma if you smoked, but this report doesn’t mention that, so I suppose not.
One of the things that has long baffled scientists is why most smokers don’t get lung cancer. Somewhere between 10 to 20 percent do, depending on what study you read. Why don’t the 80 or other 90 percent get lung cancer is smoking is carcinogenic?
The answer apparently is in genetics, which the report refers to above, and I was hoping it would talk about that. People with a certain gene are more prone to lung cancer. If they smoke and have this gene, they are at extreme risk of lung cancer. If they don’t smoke, they are still at elevated risk of lung cancer. That’s why 10 percent of men who get lung cancer aren’t smokers, and 20 percent of women. Perhaps there are other environmental factors, such as radon or air pollution. But, the fact remains, that roughly 85 percent of the people who get lung cancer are smokers.
So, if you don’t have this gene and smoke, you will probably never get lung cancer. You may die in your 50s of heart disease or die from COPD or some other form of cancer, but you probably won’t get lung cancer. So, you’re not somehow magically out of the woods if you don’t have this gene. It isn’t that simple.
Anyway, here is the press release on this report. You can download the whole 700-page document if you wish. Or you can just download the executive summary.
