You Can Help Transform Wisconsin

Earlier this week, we launched Transform Wisconsin – an exciting effort to help Wisconsin communities become healthier.

Every person in Wisconsin has the right to breathe smoke-free air and have a healthy and safe place to live, work and play. The bottom line is that living in healthy communities makes it is easier for everyone to make healthier choices, like eating more fruits and vegetables and being more physically active.

To move us toward healthier communities, Transform Wisconsin is offering competitive grants to non-profit and local government groups seeking to promote active communities, smoke-free living and access to fresh, local foods.

Transform Wisconsin will bring together parents, farmers, landlords, schools – and people like you – to find innovative solutions to improve the health and quality of life in communities across the state.

From May 1-June 15, local governments and non-profit organizations can apply to receive Transform Wisconsin grants. Potential applicants can also sign up and participate in a webinar on Tuesday, May 8th at 10am to learn more about the grant application process.

Transform Wisconsin is built on the idea that when we invest in communities, we invest in health and make lives better. We have a tremendous opportunity to make the kinds of changes now that will benefit our health for generations to come.

Want to join the movement? Follow TransformWI on Facebook and Twitter and be sure to visit the website for updates and the opportunity to vote for your favorite project proposals in the coming weeks.

Together, we can Transform Wisconsin into a place where everyone can access fresh fruits and vegetables, breathe smoke free air, and have safe places to play.

That will be a beautiful thing.

Graphic Cigarette Warning Labels and Big Tobacco's Stall Tactics

Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled the FDA’s new graphic warning labels on cigarette packages violate Big Tobacco’s freedom of speech.

The decision is only one step in the legal process – the case will go on to appeal. But it is a small victory for Big Tobacco, awarding the industry’s continued aggressive and deceitful efforts to conceal the fatal health effects of smoking.

It's clear that Big Tobacco is using the courts as a stall tactic to keep effective new cigarette warning labels off their products as long as possible.

Starting this September, the FDA will require graphic warning labels to cover 50% of the front and 50% of the back of cigarette packages. The truthful, appalling labels will also be prominently featured in tobacco ads. The warnings will replace the small text-only cigarette warning labels that have not been updated since 1984.

This idea is not new. Many other countries, from Brazil to Russia, require similar graphic warnings on their cigarettes. Research from these countries shows these labels are an effective way to educate about the risks of smoking and discourage smoking. 

We need all the tools possible to further educate people about this deadly addiction and counteract the hundreds of millions of dollars the tobacco industry spends peddling their products to new and existing customers.

In Wisconsin alone, tobacco companies spend $233 million a year to market their lethal products to kids and adults – more than 40 times what the state spends on the Tobacco Prevention and Control Program ($5.3 million/year).

In case you forgot, smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in Wisconsin and nearly 8,000 residents die each year from tobacco-related causes. Tobacco costs us over $4.5 billion a year in health care costs and lost productivity. That’s almost $2,000 per Wisconsin household!

The new cigarette warning labels will help relieve this tremendous burden on our kids, families, businesses and communities.

Let’s get these warning labels on our cigarette packages. In doing so, we’ll help the 70 percent of adult smokers who want to quit and we’ll prevent our kids from picking up this lifetime addiction. 

Smoking and Tobacco Use in Top Ranking Movies Significantly Reduced

Between 2005 and 2010 the total number of onscreen tobacco incidents decreased 71.6 percent! In 2010 the average number of incidents of tobacco use per youth-rated movie was 6.8, compared to 20.1 in 2005. This  drop is especially exciting because, according to a 2010 meta-analysis of four studies, 44 percent of youth smoking initiation is attributed to viewing tobacco incidents in movies. By exposing our youth to fewer tobacco incidents in movies, we can reduce the number of kids who become lifetime customers of Big Tobacco - currently 4,000 kids in US try smoking for the first time every single day!

So making sure that tobacco use doesn't look cool in kids' favorite movies is important. Between 2004 and 2007, three of the six major motion picture companies adopted policies which provide review of scripts, story boards, daily footage, rough cuts and the final edited film by a manager to monitor tobacco incidents. While tobacco imagery is not banned completely within these policies, these three companies have eliminated tobacco depictions almost entirely in their G, PG and PG-13 rated movies.

Despite this great news, there's still work to be done to get tobacco out of movies our kids see. The World Health Organization and many other public health groups and health professionals recommend that tobacco use in movies automatically set the rating to R unless the movie portrays a historical character who smoked or shows the real, negative effects of tobacco use. Other recommendations include showing ads that warn viewers of the dangers of tobacco use before movies that depict smoking or use of other tobacco products, and "certifying no payments for depicting tobacco use and ending depiction of tobacco brands," according to MMWR report.

But the reduction we're seeing now is certainly a great step and certainly worth celebrating... perhaps with a trip to the theater?

Stomach and Throat Cancers Linked to Smoking

A recent Italian study has found that smokers have an increased risk of certain throat and stomach cancers, even after quitting.  Current smokers’ risk of developing esophageal or gastric cardia (located in the stomach) cancers is two times higher than nonsmokers, and even people who had quit smoking for over three decades still had a heightened risk of esophagus cancer.

What’s more, smoking tied with obesity has led to skyrocketing numbers of esophageal and gastric cardia cancer rates in the U.S. and Europe.

And the risks don’t decrease to nonsmokers’ rates after quitting.  They remain higher, even decades later.  The sooner a person quits smoking, the faster they will receive health benefits, but cancer risks are still decrease slowly, being on average 62% higher in former smokers than lifelong nonsmokers. 

Some people may wonder why they should quit smoking if their risk of cancer is still higher after quitting, but when one compares the cancer rates of former smokers to the rate of current smokers, quitting does have its benefits - especially beyond cancer risk.  Why wait another day to both increase your chance at disease and decrease your overall health?

To read more click here.

Smoking in Movies

Perhaps over the holiday break you, like millions of other people, went to see a movie. If you went to see Avatar, you undoubtedly noted that despite being a futuristic movie with the latest in technology-Sigourney Weaver is smoking in the movie!
It seems that the filmmakers don't see a tobacco-free future...

In California there has been significant progressive towards de-normalizing smoking by not showing famous actors in movies lighting up. Perhaps you are like me, who at first wasn't entirely convinced about this whole smoking in movies leading to increased smoking n young people. Once I began getting friendly with the research and data, it became clear. Big Tobacco is a smart one and they know the research and facts too. They know product placements and smoking in movies sells move of their product. 

Most of the advocacy work in this area has been through a group called Smoke-Free Movies. If you hop over to Smoke-Free Movies you will see industry documents and the impact of smoking in movies. Quite simply smoking in movies is a highly effective method which promotes the initiation of smoking amongst young people:

Exposure to depictions of smoking in movies is associated with more favorable attitudes toward smoking and characters who smoke, and these positive views are particularly prevalent among youth who themselves smoke.

Exposure to smoking in movies increases the risk for smoking initiation. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies provide clear support that youth report greater susceptibility and intentions to smoke and are more likely to actually try smoking following exposure to smoking in the movies and on television. Furthermore, even after controlling for other factors known to be associated with adolescent smoking intention and tobacco use, studies show a clear dose effect, whereby greater exposure to smoking in the movies is associated with a greater chance of smoking.

The increased risk for smoking initiation as a result of exposure to smoking in the movies can be reduced by antismoking advertisements and parental restriction of which movies their children watch. (Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences conclusions)

Before you go out for your next movie, decide what type of influence you would want that movie to have on your kids. If you don't want your kids lighting up, head over to Smoke-Free Movies and see which films are completely smoke-free!