Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Do School Programs Keep Kids From Smoking?

May 7, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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After examining over a hundred "gold standard" studies, researchers found that school-based programs that teach children life skills and self esteem were linked to a significant reduction in the number who started using tobacco down the road. "There was a significant effect for more than one year," said Julie McLellan, one of the study's authors from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. McLellan and her colleagues published their findings in The Cochrane Library, which is a publication of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical ... Read More

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All the Cigarettes in the World

August 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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H.L. Mencken's American Mercury once called cigarettes "the most democratic commodity in common use." While big tobacco may be positioning itself for a smoke-less, e-cigarette future, a billion smokers across the globe still celebrate their egalitarianism with 15 billion cigarettes every single day, according to the World Health Organization. In order to visualize the staggering physical amount that represents, Healthline, a website devoted to health education, developed this handy infographic. Who knew that all it took to get to the moon was a half a day of smoking? ... Read More

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Secondhand Smoke Linked to Dementia

May 28, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

With frustrating vagueness reflecting the limitations of our knowledge, the Mayo Clinic website reports Alzheimer’s disease is caused by “a combination of genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors.” Newly published research provides evidence that one of those environmental factors may be secondhand cigarette smoke. Researchers in Hong Kong report chronic exposure to smoky air apparently affected the brains of rats. “These changes might serve as evidence of early phases of neurodegeneration,” they write in the online journal PLoS ONE, “and may explain why smoking can ... Read More

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Cigarettes Do Have Free Speech Rights

November 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

In August, our Emily Badger asked if cigarettes have a right to free speech. This week, a federal judge answered yes. Not that cigarettes, perhaps outside Doonesbury’s Mr. Butts, actually talk. Instead, a U.S. court in the District of Columbia determined that über-graphic depictions of diseased lungs and rotting teeth that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required be put on cigarette packages exceeded the informational and entered the emotional. The distinction mattered to U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who argued that the disturbing images and giant warning text were not the ... Read More

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Assessing Cigarettes’ Right to Free Speech

August 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Warning Messages on Cigarette Packs

Four major tobacco companies filed a lawsuit in federal court earlier this month to fight the Food and Drug Administration's infamous new cigarette warning labels — those half-pack, graphic images of rotting lungs and teeth, dead bodies and presumed smokers on respiratory machines. Anyone who's looked at the images — due to appear on packs in September 2012 — couldn't be surprised that Big Tobacco balked. The companies are arguing that the new warnings violate their First Amendment rights to, in essence, not be forced to carry gross pictures designed to discourage sales on their ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, The Idea Lobby
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Can Cigarette Butts Be Recycled?

June 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Nearly 2 billion pounds of trash is thrown on the ground every year in the form of cigarette butts — 4.5 trillion cigarette butts, composed largely of filters made from cellulose acetate, a non-biodegradable plastic. But what if all these cigarette butts had a value? What if you could trade them in for cash? Would they then disappear from streets, beaches and parks? Curtis Baffico, a San Diego stock trader who moonlights as an environmentalist, asked himself these questions and decided to create a recycling system to try to answer them. Baffico raises money on his website, Ripplelife.org, ... Read More

More like this: Environment, July-August 2011, News and Options
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Warnings on Cigarette Packs May Be Counterproductive

June 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Federal officials today unveiled new warning labels that will soon adorn cigarette packs and advertisements. The warnings feature larger and more graphic images, which are intended to scare people away from smoking. But one study suggests such tactics may be counterproductive. Below is our original story from Sept. 23, 2009, stating that death-related warnings actually increase cigarettes' appeal. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • In June 2009, President Obama ... Read More

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Sticking to Your Resolutions, With Uncle Sam

December 28, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Government has been getting a bum rap this year for trying to help us be our better selves. Eat less salt. Drink less soda. Turn off the lights. Exercise more. Be better parents. Don't text while driving. The goals are admirable, although, to some, the government nudging is not. "Instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician's wife's priorities, just leave us alone," Sarah Palin recently snapped, "get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own ... Read More

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How Not to Stop Smoking

July 28, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Over the past 25 years, a series of studies have found suppressing unwanted thoughts is not only ineffective, but counterproductive. Try to not think of a white bear, and chances are the creature will come roaring into your mind. In 2007, British psychologist James Erskine applied this dynamic to diet. He reported women instructed not to think about chocolate consumed more of the high-calorie treat when offered it, and suggested this rebound effect may explain the failure of so many dieters to lose weight over the long term. Now, in a paper just published in the journal Psychological ... Read More

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Why It’s ‘OK’ to Leave the Party for a Quick Smoke

January 4, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

The journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence reported in September on a survey of the smoking habits among college freshman at a large Midwestern university. Smoking was "stigmatized" on an everyday level, the researchers found. But things were quite different indeed at parties, where, it seems, smoking was considered "socially acceptable" and "served multiple utility functions for this population," including: • Facilitating social interaction across gender • Allowing one to structure time and space at a party • Enabling "party" smokers to smoke with fewer negative side effects, ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, January-February 2010, The Cocktail Napkin
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