A carcinogen is any agent that promotes the development of cancer. Carcinogens can include synthetic chemicals, naturally occurring substances, physical agents such as ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, and biologic agents such as viruses and bacteria. Most carcinogens act by creating mutations in DNA that disrupt a cell's normal processes for regulating growth, leading to uncontrolled cellular proliferation. This occurs when the cell's DNA repair processes fail to identify DNA damage allowing the defect to be passed down to daughter cells. The damage accumulates over time. This is typically a multi-step process during which the regulatory mechanisms within the cell are gradually dismantled allowing for unchecked cellular division.
A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing a combustible material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opposite end. Cigarette smoking is the most common method of tobacco consumption. The term cigarette, as commonly used, refers to a tobacco cigarette, but the word is sometimes used to refer to other substances, such as a cannabis cigarette or a herbal cigarette. A cigarette is distinguished from a cigar by its usually smaller size, use of processed leaf, different smoking method, and paper wrapping, which is typically white.
The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any warm, moist environment, which means it can be farmed on all continents except Antarctica.
Tobacco smoke is a sooty aerosol produced by the incomplete combustion of tobacco during the smoking of cigarettes and other tobacco products. Temperatures in burning cigarettes range from about 400 °C between puffs to about 900 °C during a puff. During the burning of the cigarette tobacco, thousands of chemical substances are generated by combustion, distillation, pyrolysis and pyrosynthesis. Tobacco smoke is used as a fumigant and inhalant.
Tobacco smoking is the practice of burning tobacco and ingesting the resulting smoke. The smoke may be inhaled, as is done with cigarettes, or simply released from the mouth, as is generally done with pipes and cigars. The practice is believed to have begun as early as 5000–3000 BC in Mesoamerica and South America. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 17th century by European colonists, where it followed common trade routes. The practice encountered criticism from its first import into the Western world onwards but embedded itself in certain strata of a number of societies before becoming widespread upon the introduction of automated cigarette-rolling apparatus.
Smoking bans, or smoke-free laws, are public policies, including criminal laws and occupational safety and health regulations, that prohibit tobacco smoking in certain spaces. The spaces most commonly affected by smoking bans are indoor workplaces and buildings open to the public such as restaurants, bars, office buildings, schools, retail stores, hospitals, libraries, transport facilities, and government buildings, in addition to public transport vehicles such as aircraft, buses, watercraft, and trains. However, laws may also prohibit smoking in outdoor areas such as parks, beaches, pedestrian plazas, college and hospital campuses, and within a certain distance from the entrance to a building, and in some cases, private vehicles and multi-unit residences.
Passive smoking is the inhalation of tobacco smoke, called passive smoke, secondhand smoke (SHS) or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), by individuals other than the active smoker. It occurs when tobacco smoke diffuses into the surrounding atmosphere as an aerosol pollutant, which leads to its inhalation by nearby bystanders within the same environment. Exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke causes many of the same health effects caused by active smoking, although at a lower prevalence due to the reduced concentration of smoke that enters the airway.
Steven J. Milloy is a lawyer, lobbyist, author and former Fox News commentator. Milloy is the founder and editor of the blog junkscience.com.
Tobacco products, especially when smoked or used orally, have serious negative effects on human health. Smoking and smokeless tobacco use are the single greatest causes of preventable death globally. Half of tobacco users die from complications related to such use. Current smokers are estimated to die an average of 10 years earlier than non-smokers. The World Health Organization estimates that, in total, about 8 million people die from tobacco-related causes, including 1.3 million non-smokers due to secondhand smoke. It is further estimated to have caused 100 million deaths in the 20th century.
Stanton Arnold Glantz is an American professor, author, and tobacco control activist. Glantz is a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, where he is a Professor of Medicine (retired) in the Division of Cardiology, the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control, and former director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Glantz's research focused on the health effects of tobacco smoking.
The Weinberg Group is a Washington, DC–based food and drug regulatory consulting group. Founded in 1983, the firm assists pharmaceutical and biotech companies with the "development and implementation of successful and innovative regulatory strategies" and also helps these companies to "remediate, maintain and improve their regulatory compliance." The Weinberg Group sent a memo to DuPont in 2003 recommending that the company “reshape the debate by identifying the likely known health benefits of PFOA exposure.”
Ventilated cigarettes are considered to have a milder flavor than regular cigarettes. These cigarette brands may be listed as having lower levels of tar ("low-tar"), nicotine, or other chemicals as "inhaled" by a "smoking machine". However, the scientific evidence is that switching from regular to light or low-tar cigarettes does not reduce the health risks of smoking or lower the smoker's exposure to the nicotine, tar, and carcinogens present in cigarette smoke.
In the early 20th century, German researchers found additional evidence linking smoking to health harms, which strengthened the anti-tobacco movement in the Weimar Republic and led to a state-supported anti-smoking campaign. Early anti-tobacco movements grew in many nations from the middle of the 19th century. The 1933–1945 anti-tobacco campaigns in Nazi Germany have been widely publicized, although stronger laws than those passed in Germany were passed in some American states, the UK, and elsewhere between 1890 and 1930. After 1941, anti-tobacco campaigns were restricted by the Nazi government.
The Tobacco Institute, Inc. was a United States tobacco industry trade group, founded in 1958 by the American tobacco industry. It was dissolved in 1998 as part of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
John C. Luik was a senior fellow of the Democracy Institute. A Rhodes Scholar attached to Hertford College at the University of Oxford, he was a Senior Associate of the Niagara Institute with responsibility for its work in public policy and its Values and Organizational Development programmes." From 1977 to 1990 he taught philosophy and ethics at two Canadian universities, but was dismissed from each for misrepresenting his academic credentials. He acted on behalf of the tobacco industry amongst others and was prominent in criticising the evidence related to the claimed links between passive smoking and cancer.
Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal which covers legal aspects of toxicological and pharmacological regulations. It is published by Elsevier on behalf of the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology. The current co-editors-in-chief are Lesa L. Aylward and Martin van den Berg.
Jeffrey E. Harris, is an economist and physician who has been on the faculty of the Economics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1977. He received an AB from Harvard University, as well as an MD (1974) and a PhD in Economics (1975) from the University of Pennsylvania. Having trained in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital (1974-1977), he maintained a medical practice at that institution until 2006. Since then, he has continued to practice as an internist at federally sponsored community health centers in Rhode Island, where the majority of his patients have poverty-level incomes and are not fluent in English.
Tobacco-free college campuses are institutions that have implemented policies banning the use of tobacco products in all indoor and outdoor areas. These policies aim to reduce the well-documented health risks of tobacco, such as harm to users, exposure to secondhand smoke, and the environmental damage caused by tobacco waste. Many colleges and universities have adopted these tobacco-free policies to promote public health, create a cleaner campus environment, and minimize the ecological impact of tobacco use.
Good Epidemiological Practices or Good Epidemiology Practices (GEP) was a set of guidelines produced by the U.S. Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) in 1991 to improve epidemiologic research practices. It was then adopted by the tobacco industry around 1993 as part of its "sound science" program to counter criticisms of the industry on health and environmental issues such as secondhand smoke. It failed to make much impact on the US and European regulators, but may have had more influence in its later manifestations in Asia and particularly China.
The history of nicotine marketing stretches back centuries. Nicotine marketing has continually developed new techniques in response to historical circumstances, societal and technological change, and regulation. Counter marketing has also changed, in both message and commonness, over the decades, often in response to pro-nicotine marketing.
