Carrie M. Carpenter

Developing smokeless tobacco products for smokers: an examination of tobacco industry documents

Objective: To investigate whether development of smokeless tobacco products (SLT) is intended to target current smokers. Methods: This study analysed internal tobacco industry documents to describe research related to the smokeless tobacco market. Relevant documents included those detailing the development and targeting of SLT products with a particular emphasis on moist snuff. Results: Cigarette and SLT manufacturers recognised that shifting demographics of SLT users, as well as indoor smoking restrictions, health concerns and reduced social acceptability of smoking could impact the growth of the SLT market. Manufacturers developed new SLT products to target cigarette smokers promoting dual cigarette and SLT use. Conclusions: Heavy marketing of new SLT products may encourage dual use and result in unknown public health effects. SLT products have been designed to augment cigarette use and offset regulatory strategies such as clean indoor air laws. In the United States, the SLT strategy may provide cigarette companies with a diversified range of products under the prospect of federal regulation. These products may pose significant challenges to efforts by federal agencies to reduce harm caused by tobacco use.

How smoke-free laws improve air quality: A global study of Irish pubs

INTRODUCTION The present study examined indoor air quality in a global sample of smoke-free and smoking-permitted Irish pubs. We hypothesized that levels of respirable suspended particles, an important marker of secondhand smoke, would be significantly lower in smoke-free Irish pubs than in pubs that allowed smoking. METHODS Indoor air quality was assessed in 128 Irish pubs in 15 countries between 21 January 2004 and 10 March 2006. Air quality was evaluated using an aerosol monitor, which measures the level of fine particle (PM(2.5)) pollution in the air. A standard measurement protocol was used by data collectors across study sites. RESULTS Overall, the level of air pollution inside smoke-free Irish pubs was 93% lower than the level found in pubs where smoking was permitted. DISCUSSION Levels of indoor air pollution can be massively reduced by enacting and enforcing smoke-free policies.

Tobacco Industry Manipulation of Nicotine Dosing

For more than a half century, tobacco manufacturers have conducted sophisticated internal research to evaluate nicotine delivery, and modified their products to ensure availability of nicotine to smokers and to optimize its effects. Tobacco has proven to be a particularly effective vehicle for nicotine, enabling manipulation of smoke chemistry and of mechanisms of delivery, and providing sensory cues that critically inform patterns of smoking behavior as well as reinforce the impact of nicotine. A range of physical and chemical product design changes provide precise control over the quantity, form, and perception of nicotine dose, and support compensatory behavior, which is driven by the smokers addiction to nicotine. Cigarette manufacturers also enhance the physiological effects of nicotine through the introduction and use of compounds that interact with nicotine but do not directly alter its form or delivery. A review of internal documents indicates important historical differences, as well as significant differences between commercial brands, underscoring the effectiveness of methods adopted by manufacturers to control nicotine dosing and target the needs of specific populations of smokers through commercial product development. Although the focus of the current review is on the manipulation of nicotine dosing characteristics, the evidence indicates that product design facilitates tobacco addiction through diverse addiction-potentiating mechanisms.

Health meetings do not belong in smoky cities

Each year thousands of tobacco control workers meet at the US National Conference on Tobacco or Health. Eleven years ago, in Boston, the opening plenary of the first meeting was held in the Roxy Hotel. Participants at the session complained of the stench of stale tobacco smoke which lingered in the air from an event on the previous evening. The most recent meeting, held in May 2005, took place in Chicago, where smoking is still allowed in the lobbies of convention hotels and adjacent bars and clubs. The same complaints heard years ago about Boston were expressed by this year’s attendees. A group of delegates conducted research on the air quality of Chicago bars and restaurants in an effort to urge conference organisers and city leaders to adopt a smoke-free policy. Fifty people were trained in …