Reports

Cigarette bill treats menthol with leniency
As part of the move toward FDA regulation of tobacco, Congress is working to ban candy and fruit-flavored cigarettes. However, this effort to make cigarettes less attractive to youths does not ban menthol cigarettes, which are especially popular among African Americans. Banning menthol cigarettes could have a significant impact on African Americans’ health, but insiders acknowledge that such a ban is not currently politically feasible for several reasons. If given regulatory power of tobacco products, the FDA could ban menthol if it was proven a harmful ingredient; yet, scientific evidence is inconclusive on whether smoking menthol cigarettes actually raises one’s cancer risk. Click here for the full article.

Sharing Our Lessons – Colorado Statewide LGBT Network Case Study (CO)
The National LGBT Tobacco Control Network has released its first issue of Sharing Our Lessons, a newsletter that reports tobacco control efforts and strategies from around the country that have worked to reduce the LGBT community’s high rates of tobacco use. The first edition of the newsletter is a summary of a case study on Colorado’s statewide initiative, which highlights the history, activities, lessons learned, and future goals of the project. Click here to download the first Sharing Our Lessons newsletter.

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International

Exploration of in-patient attitudes towards smoking within a large mental health trust
A survey of inpatients at a British psychiatric facility on the effects of smoking on health and well-being revealed that nearly half of the patients are against a total smoking ban. Although 89.6% of the public believe that smoking should be banned from public places, only 54.1% of the inpatients who were interviewed agreed. While 84.4% of the inpatients were aware that secondhand smoke poses a health hazard, just over half felt that smoking should be completely banned from their facility. The hospital’s current rule, which bans smoking except in designated areas, was the most popular smoking arrangement among the survey respondents, with 71.1% favoring this policy. The researchers suggest that a compromise on smoking in psychiatric facilities may be favorable to patients as these facilities’ exemption from England’s workplace smoking ban expires on July 1. Click here for a summary of the research. The findings are published in the May 2008 issue of Psychiatric Bulletin. Click here for the abstract.

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