November 19 is the date when American smokers are supposed to experience GAS, which is the American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) has been producing GAS for 34 years, during which time it has refused to acknowledge that tobacco harm reduction is a legitimate public health option. That’s the main reason GAS is just a lot of hot air.
ACS has even criticized other medical organizations that want to tell smokers the truth. In 2007, the Royal College of Physicians, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical societies, issued a comprehensive report reviewing and corroborating the impressive scientific foundation for tobacco harm reduction. The report concluded “…that smokers smoke predominantly for nicotine, that nicotine itself is not especially hazardous, and that if nicotine could be provided in a form that is acceptable and effective as a cigarette substitute, millions of lives could be saved.”
The response from the ACS and its vice president for epidemiology Michael Thun to this thoughtful treatise was a disservice to the millions of inveterate smokers in the U.S. who can not achieve complete abstinence from nicotine and tobacco.
Dr. Thun dismissed the existence of inveterate smokers as a “false assumption,” even though over 13 million Americans have died from smoking-attributable illnesses in the 34-year history of GAS. His solution is to provide all smokers with “sufficient counseling and treatment.”
“Counseling” consists of giving smokers behavioral coping skills. ACS instructs smokers who are in desperate need of nicotine to “Take a walk, go get a drink of water.” In 1991, the National Cancer Institute told physicians to help their patients quit smoking by advising them to: 1) ”Keep your hands busy- doodle, knit, type a letter,” 2) ”Cut a drinking straw into cigarette-sized pieces and inhale air,” and 3) ”Keep a daydream ready to go.” I’ve never met a smoker who could daydream himself out of craving for a cigarette, and I’ve never met a physician who passes along these ridiculous tips.
“Treatment” refers to pharmaceutical nicotine. In a prior post I discussed why these products fail to help smokers. They’re expensive, unsatisfying and most smokers have no interest in using them. If any other medication had the dismal 7% success rate of pharmaceutical nicotine products, the FDA would remove it from the market.
The grim reality is that Dr. Thun’s approach is grossly inadequate. According to the 2006 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Conference on Tobacco Use, “…fewer than 5 percent [of smokers] succeed [in quitting] in any given year. Effective tobacco cessation interventions are available and could DOUBLE OR TRIPLE SUCCESS RATES…” (emphasis added). This means that providing Dr. Thun’s “conventional treatments” to all 45 million American smokers would help fewer than 15% – no more than 7 million – to quit. Dr. Thun has no plan for the other 38 million adult smokers, except denying them life-saving information about safer smokeless tobacco products.
Dr. Thun understands the difference in risk between cigarettes and smokeless use; he served on a review panel for a National Cancer Institute-sponsored study which concluded that the health risks from the latter are at least 90% lower than those from smoking. However, he withholds this information from smokers because it might “postpone quitting.” He fears that smokeless will repeat the “fiasco of ‘Light’ and ‘Mild’ cigarettes,” which he characterizes as an industry-driven conspiracy. But that is only part of the story.
ACS played a prominent role in the fiasco, publishing research in 1976 showing that light cigarettes were indeed safer. ACS investigators wrote that “total death rates, death rates from coronary heart disease, and death rates from lung cancer were somewhat lower for those who smoked ‘low’ tar-nicotine cigarettes than for those who smoked ‘high’ tar-nicotine cigarettes.” The ACS made a mistake with light cigarettes, but the scientific evidence for smokeless tobacco is unequivocal.
Prohibitionists routinely stifle discussion by transforming every tobacco topic into a children's issue. Dr. Thun’s claim that “apple, peach, and mint” flavored smokeless tobaccos target children sets a new standard of insincerity. If he really believes that these are children’s flavors, Dr. Thun should campaign to eliminate them from alcoholic beverages, another cancer-causing adult-only consumer product. As with alcohol, tobacco manufacturers ought to be free to make their ST products appealing to adult tastes. Carping about flavored tobacco products is not responsible tobacco control; it is unwarranted harassment of adult consumers and the manufacturers who serve them.
Tobacco initiation by young people should be stopped in its tracks, but the relative safety and palatability of ST isn’t a children’s issue. The 8 million Americans who will die from smoking-related illnesses in the next 20 years are not children today; they are adults, 35 years and older. Preventing youth access to tobacco is vitally important, but the Thun/ACS position on tobacco harm reduction effectively condemns millions of smoking parents and grandparents to premature death. If any other consumer product was as dangerous as cigarettes, society would demand safer alternatives. It is scandalous that the Cancer Society is not telling smokers the truth.
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