New Measures Needed to Stamp Out U.S. Smoking Rates, IoM Report Says
Posted on: Friday, 10 August 2007, 09:04 CDT
By Arias, Donya C
Health news at the national and federal levels HIGHER taxes, federal regulatory control and marketing restrictions are needed to reduce smoking in the United States, according to a new Institute of Medicine report, which came out amid several recent actions related to the fight against one of the world's leading killers.
The report, released in late May, said a combination of increased excise taxes, nationwide indoor smoking bans and other measures would greatly lower the U.S. smoking rate, which is about 21 percent. Even though smoking has decreased nationwide by more than 50 percent since 1964, tobacco use still kills about 440,000 people each year, and secondhand smoke is linked to another 50,000 annual deaths. Globally, tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death and kills about 5 million people yearly, according to the World Health Organization.
"Smoking is a habit with particularly deadly consequences that is often taken up by adolescents before they can truly appreciate the risk of addiction," said Richard J. Bonnie, LLB, chair of the committee that authored the IoM report and director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Bonnie said at a May 24 news conference that tobacco use has been "one of the nation's major public health problems for most of the 20th century and continues at an unacceptable level in the 21st century. Indeed, it has become one of the world's major public health challenges."
The blueprint for tobacco control outlined in the IoM report supports measures such as strengthening state tobacco control programs, including raising tobacco taxes and enacting more stringent smoking restrictions and limiting youth access to tobacco products. The report calls for all states to ban the sale of tobacco products directly to consumers through mail orders or the Internet, among many recommendations designed to "reduce smoking so substantially that it is no longer a significant public health problem for our nation." The report takes a two-part approach to tobacco control, first outlining ways to strengthen and implement effective tobacco control measures, and second describing how to change regulations to allow for the types of "aggressive policy initiatives" that could help end the tobacco problem.
When it comes to reducing the glamorization of smoking in popular culture, the IoM report also called for the Motion Picture Association of America to "consider the use of tobacco in the movies as a factor in assigning mature film ratings." Yet many health advocates pushed for a stronger stance. The American Academy of Pediatrics said any movie with less than an R rating should not feature cigarettes in any circumstance and theaters should "convey an effective anti-smoking message before all films portraying smoking." The group also called for certifying that no payments were made for tobacco product placement in films and eliminating brand identification. In early May, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that all smoking depictions will be considered when assigning a movie rating.
At the international level, WHO officials unveiled a new policy just days before World No Tobacco Day on May 31 that calls for all indoor public places and workplaces to be smokefree, noting there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.
Also in May, a new study showed tobacco marketing practices increase teen smoking rates. The study, published May 7 in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, found that the more cigarette marketing teens were exposed to in retail stores, the more likely they were to smoke. The study also concluded that restricting such in-store marketing would decrease teen smoking. Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said the findings underscore the need for Congress to enact pending legislation that would grant the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products. The IoM report said such federal regulation would be a key step toward reducing smoking rates.
At the federal level in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that class action suits on "light" cigarette marketing could be heard in state courts. Al issue are marketing practices that tout "light" cigarettes as less harmful then regular cigarettes. Research has shown such "light" cigarettes carry the same health risks as other cigarettes.
The IoM report, "Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation," is online at www.nas.edu.
- Donya C. Arias
During World No Tobacco Day in May, WHO released a new policy calling for smoking bans in public places and workplaces.
Copyright American Public Health Association Aug 2007
(c) 2007 Nation's Health, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Nation's Health, The
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