 President's Corner
In June, the public health community recognized the first anniversary of the landmark legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama, granting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over one of the deadliest products legally available to American consumers: tobacco. While this law represents a remarkable shift in social norms surrounding the issue of tobacco use in the United States, tobacco will never be safe for consumers.
In my latest blog, I discuss a new study finding that U.S.-made cigarettes, compared with those made in other countries, contain high levels of nitrosamines. Other toxins found in all cigarettes include arsenic, cadmium and ammonia.While one of the most well-known fast food giants around the world recently recalled a toy for containing cadmium, a recall might never happen with tobacco:
"Last month, McDonald's was forced to issue a recall throughout the United States and Canada for over 13 million drinking glasses promoting the new Shrek Forever After film. Why? The designs painted on the glasses contain higher than acceptable levels of cadmium, a heavy metal found in batteries and a well known carcinogen.
I always find these recalls interesting. Since January 2010, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled over a million cribs because of the risk of strangulation or suffocation to the young children who sleep in them.
It is critical that these cribs and glasses be recalled because they pose such a deadly public health threat to the nation's youth. And yet the deadliest product of all - tobacco - remains on the market while simultaneously causing the death of over 400,000 Americans every year."
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| Summer Recreation Draws Public Attention to Outdoor Smoking Policies
As America heads outside this summer, new research indicates adult support for smoke-free outdoor public places. Results from the annual Social Climate Survey of Tobacco Control show more than two-thirds (67.3 percent) of Americans feel that smoking should not be allowed within 20 feet of a doorway--a finding that is increasingly relevant as more indoor spaces have gone smoke-free. According to the Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation, there are currently 100 municipalities, and the state of Maine, that prohibit smoking on public beaches and 464 with smoking bans in city parks. The survey findings reveal that 43 percent of Americans feel that beaches should be smoke-free, and 36.5 percent are in favor of smoking bans in parks. Partly funded by Legacy, the Social Climate Survey of Tobacco Control is conducted annually by the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University and by the AAP Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence to measure Americans' attitudes and behaviors as they relate to tobacco and secondhand smoke, and to policies to protect people from smoke exposure.
Public Support for Smoke-Free Outdoor Public Places |
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Movie Ratings Downplay Smoking Risk
A new report shows that more than half of widely released  films showing tobacco were youth-rated (carrying a rating of G, PG or PG-13), and only 15 percent of those films actually contained a "smoking" descriptor in its rating. This comes three years after the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) announced that they would take smoking into account when assigning ratings to films.
For many years, public health advocates and researchers have been asking the film industry to eliminate smoking in movies that are accessible to young people. On-screen exposure to tobacco imagery accounts for an estimated 180,000 new youth smokers annually. The new report shows that the film industry's trade associations consistently understated the amount of smoking in wide-release films marketed to children and adolescents:
- Half of the descriptors minimized the amount of smoking in films, describing it as "brief," "incidental" or "momentary," regardless of the actual amount of smoking in the film;
- Descriptors were not applied to films with relatively low tobacco incidence, but these films delivered the majority of tobacco impressions to theater audiences.
- No film was awarded an R-rating for tobacco use as recommended by a broad coalition of health authorities, including Legacy, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Los Angeles and New York Departments of Health, and the World Health Organization.
- In the three-year period surveyed, popular U.S. films of all ratings delivered 44 billion tobacco impressions to theater audiences. Half were delivered by youth-rated films.
The study was conducted by the University of California, San Francisco and Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails and was partly funded by Legacy. To view the study, click here.
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Legacy Teams Up with Digital Artists to Spread  About Youth Smoking Prevention
The truth youth smoking prevention campaign is partnering  with Digital Artists (DA), an independent talent-powered studio, to further propel its life-saving messages against teen tobacco use through high-quality digital content produced by today's leading creative artists. After 10 years of developing powerful anti-tobacco campaigns, including the iconic television ad "Singing Cowboy" featuring a man with a hole in his throat, Legacy aims to leverage its relationship with DA to pair its educational images and messages with top filmmakers, musicians, athletes and artists. Personalities actively working with DA include international soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), the Farrelly Brothers (There's Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber), and others. Beyond the 30- and 60-second spots and robust online and content integration efforts thus far that have been critical to the campaign's success, new digital content will include short- and long-form video, documentary-style features, content integrations, mobile applications, games and new forms of experimental media.
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| Students and Families Get a Head Start on Tobacco Cessation
In 2003, 5.6 million children lived in a household with at least one parent who smoked, and the home continues to be the place where children are most exposed to toxic tobacco smoke. In an effort to create a safer, smoke-free environment for youth and to improve the quality of life for families, Legacy and the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health engaged one of the nation's most well-known and successful federal early childhood education programs - Head Start. Founded in 1964, the federal program "provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families." Tobacco use is strongly associated with low socio-economic status making the opportunity for outreach that much more fitting.
In 2004, pilot interventions took place in four states. Six years later, the initiative has expanded to ten states and continues to grow. Through staff training, systems change, and partnership development, Head Start staff can identify tobacco users in the home and refer them to state and local cessation services, including quitlines. Together, Head Start, Early Head Start and public health practitioners have the opportunity to dramatically improve the health of the families they serve and to protect children from the long-term, harmful effects of secondhand smoke. Legacy's partners in this important effort include Louisiana State University School of Public Health and state steering teams. For more information, please email hs@legacyforhealth.org.
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| U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Tobacco Case: District Court's Findings of Racketeering and Fraud by Tobacco Industry Stand
On June 28, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will not review the May 2009 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld a lower court's finding that tobacco companies deceived the American public and in doing so, engaged in racketeering and fraud. The court's decision leaves in place an August 2006 opinion by U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler's concluding that:
"[O]ver the course of more than 50 years, Defendants lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as 'replacement smokers,' about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke, they suppressed research, they destroyed documents, they manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction, they distorted the truth about low tar and light cigarettes, so as to discourage smokers from quitting, and they abused the legal system in order to achieve their goal - to make money with little, if any, regard for individual illness and suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system."
The Supreme Court's decision not to review the case means that the tobacco industry will not be forced to pay billions of dollars in monetary penalties, despite its decades-long action perpetrating deadly fraud on the American people.
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It's Time to Give!
Voting is taking place right now for an initiative that could see the truth campaign receiving tens of thousands of dollars for its life-saving activities. As part of a partnership Best Buy, one of the nation's largest electronics retailers, Best Buy selected the campaign as one of the select charities to be part of the @15 Exchange. @15 drives teens to become active leaders in social change. As part of the program, Best Buy donates $250,000 each qua rter to charities selected by teens. Using online activities and voting applications, teens collect points and then donate them among four nonprofit organizations. Voting ends July 31 so register now.
The percentage of the available points each organization earns through the teen voting, then determines the organization's percentage of the $250,000 awarded each quarter.
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