Digest #22: This Month in Smoke-free News

How can people enjoy smoking in the middle of the summer? I was out with some friends last night on the infamous Mill Avenue in Tempe, AZ, and everywhere we went, people were lighting up. Wouldn't sucking on a flaming stick to inhale hot smoke be about the last thing you'd want to do on a warm mid-summer night? I'd rather suck on a nice, cold milkshake...Anyway, here are the past month's developments:

Macy's, Humana, hospitals take action
On July 1, two large companies started a new era in their employment practices. Macy's, the department store chain, began charging employees who admit to using tobacco an extra $35 per month for health coverage. Meanwhile, Humana, a health insurance company, completely stopped hiring smokers in Arizona, where state law allows employers to require smoking cessation programs, and the adult smoking rate is at a very low 13%. Much of this trend can be attributed to the new taxes on businesses that spend an inordinate amount on health care. However, Humana, as a health insurance company, insists that it cares about its employees' well-being, which happens to be why I think Humana's new policy is appropriate. If Macy's--a company with no ties to public health--were to stop hiring smokers, I'd have to object. My stance is simple: Where smoking and tobacco use is counterproductive and hypocritical to company culture is where I draw the line.

July 1 also marked the beginning of the tobacco ban at Sunrise Children's Hospital in Las Vegas. Here's the best part, which I suppose I'll make my 'quote of the month':

"...if you merely smell like cigarette smoke, forget about getting inside the hospital." --Las Vegas Review Journal

Another bit of hospital news that caught my eye: The Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital is going 100% tobacco-free. Incidentally, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is well-known for its support of various tobacco control initiatives. As if allowing smoking in any other hospital wasn't ironic enough...

Smoking on Film
To revisit a topic I introduced in March, when I actually downplayed the role of smoking in Rango, I have some good news to share: The tobacco industry is losing its fight on the film frontier. From 2005 to 2010, the number of times that smoking appeared in movies rated G, PG and PG-13 decreased from 2,093 to 595, or 71.6%. Furthermore, 75 of the 137 highest-grossing films in 2010 did not include scenes with smoking, compared to one-third of the total in 2005. Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney all have policies that were adopted between 2004 and 2007, but the real change came between 2005 and 2010, when tobacco use in films targeted to children sharply declined by 96%. It will be interesting to see if these changes correlate with a decline in adolescent smoking over the next decade, as research has shown that adolescents with the highest exposure to on-screen smoking are twice as likely to begin smoking as those with the least exposure.

Hooked on Hookah
Speaking of impressionable teenagers, The New York Times had a great article in May about the hit that hookahs have become over the past several years. The article explains why the health advantages of smoking tobacco through a water filter is marginal, at best. Contrary to popular belief, a hookah filters out less than 5% of the nicotine in tobacco, it doesn't prevent tar, heavy metals and other cancer-causing chemicals from entering the smoker's system, and it introduces a high level of CO exposure due to the heated charcoal used by the communal apparatus, which also promotes the spread of infection. Here's the most striking statistic:

"Many young adults are misled by the sweet, aromatic and fruity quality of hookah smoke, which causes them to believe it is less harmful than hot, acrid cigarette smoke. In fact, because a typical hookah session can last up to an hour, with smokers typically taking long, deep breaths, the smoke inhaled can equal 100 cigarettes or more, according to a 2005 study by the World Health Organization." --The New York Times

If we thought that cigarettes are alluring to teens, hookah is in a whole 'nother league of temptation. I, the one who is blogging about the idiocy of smoking, have even been misled into enjoying a hookah. Now that is saying something.

Other News (in brief):
- Update (May): California landlords can now lawfully prohibit smoking on their properties.
- Update (June): In response to questions about the smoking ban enforcement in New York City, parks commissioner Adrian Benepe said, "We’re going to rely on peer pressure. The other dog owners, when they see someone who doesn’t pick up after his or her dog, they say ‘pick up after your dog, don’t be a slob.'" Another great analogy.
- Update (June): On the Tuesday that the new cigarette warnings were unveiled, phones calls to 1-800-QUIT-NOW phone calls more than doubled the number from the previous Tuesday. The graphic images and warnings, which won't appear on cigarette packs until next year, are already working...or it was just a huge coincidence.
- British researchers have shown that smokers who receive encouraging text messages are twice as likely to quit as those who don't. What a great way of using one addiction to combat another!
- NYU has published its results for a study of 1,533 non-smoking adolescents that showed how teenagers who are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke are almost twice as likely to exhibit hearing loss as teenagers who live in smoke-free environments. The causal factors are still hazy, but the general idea is that SHS causes ear infections, which can potentially lead to hearing loss.
- After refusing to pay over $55,000 in smoking ban-related fines, a bar in Ohio has lost its liquor license. Well, that problem could have been easily avoided. Good luck profiting from root beer sales! ...Lame joke? Okay.
- Here's an interesting solution: The Chicago Tobacco Prevention Project has started to award grants to apartment and multi-unit housing complexes that go smoke-free. It's nice to know that owners of these developments can be bought out with grants or by government subsidy. Perhaps we can further increase cigarette taxes to fund these grants...there certainly is a demand for smoke-free housing.
- I've saved the best news for last: For the first time ever, most Americans want smoking banned in public places, according to a recent Gallup poll. In 2001, 39% shared this opinion, but this group has since increased by 20%. It feels good to be in the majority!