Happy Hearts Smokeless

Our hearts are happier without smoke, and it shows. In fact, according to a 2009 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, states with smoke-free laws had declines in their emergency room visits for heart attacks of smokers and non-smokers, sometimes 25% below the pre-law rate.

After seeing a statistic like this, quitting smoking looks a lot more attractive, and smokers aren’t the only people whose hearts are being helped by smoke-free laws. By avoiding secondhand smoke, which can increase the risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) up to 25% to 31%, nonsmokers breathe easier, too (Cardiovascular Effect of Bans on Smoking in Public Places). In fact, those states who implemented a smoking ban from January 2004 to April 2009 saw an overall average AMI decrease by 17% overall.

What could or would you do with a healthier heart, a healthier life? Play soccer with your daughter or catch with your grandson? Go for long walks with your partner? Shovel snow without running out of breath?

These seem like small things in the long run, but it’s the little things that count.

If you’re happier that your heart is healthier, here are some things you can do:

1) Write a letter to your local newspaper about how great smoke-free policy has been for your enjoyment of visiting public places and allowing you to live life with less illness.

2) Write or call your legislators and tell them how much the last year-plus of smoke-free air has meant to you in terms of your health and the health of your community.

3) Patronize restaurants and other public smoke-free places and tell them how much you love going out now that you can breathe clean air.

Enjoy your smoke-free air and breathe easy, Wisconsin.

State Stands by Our Kids, Makes RYO Shops Follow the Law

Do you pay taxes? Roll-Your Own (RYO) tobacco companies don’t.

RYO businesses sell cigarettes that are manufactured at their shops (by actual customers). These businesses are creating generic cigarettes that look the same as name-brand cigarettes, have the same substances as in name-brand cigarettes, but cost about half the price of name brands, which is illegal because they are not paying the same taxes on their products as everyone else. This is a major health problem for our state because cheap cigarettes encourage youth to pick up the habit and discourage adults from quitting. Fortunately, Friday, Governor Walker and the Department of Revenue did something about it.

By allowing RYO shops to not pay taxes, we give children the idea that sometimes smoking can be okay. When we allow the promotion of unhealthy habits we, in turn, get an unhealthy generation that we have to foot the bill for. In fact, we already pay the price—each year Wisconsin pays $2.8 billion dollars on tobacco health care costs. Half a billion dollars from that cost comes directly from the pockets of Wisconsin taxpayers in the form of Medicaid. Personally, I would rather spend that money on my family, my rent check, or a down payment on a hot tub. By preventing this cost of tobacco in Wisconsin in the first place, we all save money.

Unfortunately, our state keeps cutting funding to the Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, hurting our potential progress in lowering the burden of tobacco on our state.. And to add insult to injury, RYO shops aren’t paying taxes on the products producing these high-cost chronic diseases..

That is why we are happy that the governor’s administration and the Department of Revenue are requiring RYO shops to follow the law and pay taxes on the cigarettes they manufacture and sell. The law states “if a retailer or retailer’s customer operates a RYO machine on the retailer’s premises to make cigarettes with loose tobacco, the retailer is both a cigarette manufacturer and distributor. This will make RYO shops, more accountable for their products. It will decrease accessibility to tobacco products for kids. It will lessen the burden of tobacco costs on Wisconsin’s taxpayers. It will promote a healthier Wisconsin.

Appeals Court Upholds Award For Punitive Damages against Philip Morris

Woman who died at age 65 awarded $13.8 million in punitive damages in case against Philip Morris. The decision was upheld in appeals court on Wednesday. Here's an excerpt on the case from The San Francisco Chronicle:

"The court described Philip Morris' extensive efforts from the 1950s onward to deny the dangers of smoking to its customers and the government - contradicting the company's own research - and to make cigarettes more addictive and advertise them aggressively to youths as well as adults.
"The damage award is justified by 'the extreme reprehensibility of Philip Morris' misconduct, including the vast scale and profitability of its course of misconduct,' Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the majority opinion."

To read the full article, click here. 

Clean Up Day at HFW

It's never too late to do a little spring cleaning! Yesterday was clean-up day at Health First Wisconsin. We deleted thousands of emails, filled up multiple recycling bins and emptied out plenty of file folders! It sure was nice to walk into a cleaner, more organized office this morning. Hidden inside some of the drawers and file cabinets we found some real gems!

In going through fliers created by other organizations we found an old picture of a new friend that we can't wait to share with her...

...We found a fun mixed CD from a colleague (thanks, Kyle)...

...And a neat reminder that some of our champions have been at this for a long time, too - these ads below ran in 2001!

Not all of us quiiiite finished cleaning out our inboxes though... not to mention any names. You know who you are. ;)

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?