Health News
- Athletes Drive A Rise In High Schoolers' Use Of Smokeless Tobacco
High-school athletes are using more smokeless tobacco, even though overall tobacco use among high-school students has declined, according to a study published by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ?We can do more to protect America?s...
- Cdc Says State Spends Less Than 8% Of What It Should On Preventing Use Of Tobacco; Companies Spend 13 Times As Much
Kentucky spends only 7.6 percent of what it should spend on preventing the use of tobacco, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in its latest annual report on the subject. The state spent $4.33 million on tobacco-control programs...
- Cdc: Kentucky Grossly Underuses Tobacco Settlement Money When It Comes To Tobacco Prevention And Cessation Programs
Kentucky is not even remotely up to snuff on state tobacco-prevention programming. According to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control, the state spends only $2.2 million on such programs. That amount...
- Non-profit Encourages Districts To Go Tobacco Free Inside And Outside Of Schools
In an op-ed piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Susan Zepeda, president and CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, encourages school districts to adopt comprehensive tobacco-free policies. "Many believe that schools are already tobacco-free,...
- World No Tobacco Day To Be Observed Tuesday
World No Tobacco Day 2011 will be observed Tuesday, with goals of encouraging tobacco abstinence for a 24-hour period, as well as drawing attention to the dangers of tobacco use. The observance, created by the World Health Organization in 1987, occurs...
Health News
Study outlines historical barriers to tobacco prevention in Kentucky and other tobacco-growing states
A University of Kentucky College of Nursing study published in The Milbank Quarterly has shown that five major tobacco-growing states?Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee?fall behind the rest of the states in enacting laws to reduce tobacco use.
Tobacco and the diseases it causes affect those five states more than others across the nation, and tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Those states also have fewer smoke-free laws and lower tobacco taxes, which are two evidence-based policies that help reduce tobacco use, write the authors, Amanda Fallin and Stanton A. Glantz.
The researchers used five case studies chronicling the history of tobacco-control policy "based on public records, key informant interviews, media articles and previously secret internal tobacco industry documents available in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library," they write.
They found that beginning in the late 1960s, tobacco companies focused on creating a pro-tobacco culture to block tobacco-control policies. However, since 2003, tobacco-growing states have seen passage of more state ad local smoking bans, partly because the alliance between tobacco companies and the tobacco farmers dissolved and hospitality organizations stopped objecting to such bans. National Cancer Institute research projects also built infrastructure that led to tobacco-control coalitions. "Although tobacco production has dramatically fallen in these states, pro-tobacco sentiment still hinders tobacco-control policies in the major tobacco-growing states," the researchers write.
To continue the progress, health advocates need to teach the public as well as policymakers about "the changing reality in the tobacco-growing states, notably the great reduction in the number of tobacco farmers as well as in the volume of tobacco produced," Fallin and Glantz write. Kentucky once had about 50,000 tobacco farmers; today it has about 5,000, and production is dominated by large farmers. The study is behind a paywall; to read its abstract, click here.
Tobacco and the diseases it causes affect those five states more than others across the nation, and tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Those states also have fewer smoke-free laws and lower tobacco taxes, which are two evidence-based policies that help reduce tobacco use, write the authors, Amanda Fallin and Stanton A. Glantz.
The researchers used five case studies chronicling the history of tobacco-control policy "based on public records, key informant interviews, media articles and previously secret internal tobacco industry documents available in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library," they write.
They found that beginning in the late 1960s, tobacco companies focused on creating a pro-tobacco culture to block tobacco-control policies. However, since 2003, tobacco-growing states have seen passage of more state ad local smoking bans, partly because the alliance between tobacco companies and the tobacco farmers dissolved and hospitality organizations stopped objecting to such bans. National Cancer Institute research projects also built infrastructure that led to tobacco-control coalitions. "Although tobacco production has dramatically fallen in these states, pro-tobacco sentiment still hinders tobacco-control policies in the major tobacco-growing states," the researchers write.
To continue the progress, health advocates need to teach the public as well as policymakers about "the changing reality in the tobacco-growing states, notably the great reduction in the number of tobacco farmers as well as in the volume of tobacco produced," Fallin and Glantz write. Kentucky once had about 50,000 tobacco farmers; today it has about 5,000, and production is dominated by large farmers. The study is behind a paywall; to read its abstract, click here.
- Athletes Drive A Rise In High Schoolers' Use Of Smokeless Tobacco
High-school athletes are using more smokeless tobacco, even though overall tobacco use among high-school students has declined, according to a study published by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ?We can do more to protect America?s...
- Cdc Says State Spends Less Than 8% Of What It Should On Preventing Use Of Tobacco; Companies Spend 13 Times As Much
Kentucky spends only 7.6 percent of what it should spend on preventing the use of tobacco, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in its latest annual report on the subject. The state spent $4.33 million on tobacco-control programs...
- Cdc: Kentucky Grossly Underuses Tobacco Settlement Money When It Comes To Tobacco Prevention And Cessation Programs
Kentucky is not even remotely up to snuff on state tobacco-prevention programming. According to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control, the state spends only $2.2 million on such programs. That amount...
- Non-profit Encourages Districts To Go Tobacco Free Inside And Outside Of Schools
In an op-ed piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Susan Zepeda, president and CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, encourages school districts to adopt comprehensive tobacco-free policies. "Many believe that schools are already tobacco-free,...
- World No Tobacco Day To Be Observed Tuesday
World No Tobacco Day 2011 will be observed Tuesday, with goals of encouraging tobacco abstinence for a 24-hour period, as well as drawing attention to the dangers of tobacco use. The observance, created by the World Health Organization in 1987, occurs...