Latest news with #SmokingandHealth
Gulf Insider
7 days ago
- Business
- Gulf Insider
Global Tobacco Use Is Steadily Declining
More than 60 years ago, on January 11, 1964, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, Luther L. Terry, M.D., published the first comprehensive report on the effects of smoking on health. A committee was appointed to review and evaluate existing research on the topic in order to 'reach some definitive conclusions on the relationship between smoking and health in general.' And, as Statista's Felix Richter reports, while it may seem absurd from today's point of view that the adverse effects of smoking were ever in doubt, 60 years ago the 'tobacco-health controversy' was exactly that: a controversy. After consulting more than 7,000 articles about the relationship between smoking and disease, the committee did come to a definite conclusion, however, making its report 'Smoking and Health' a landmark study in the fight against smoking. ' On the basis of prolonged study and evaluation of many lines of converging evidence, the Committee makes the following judgement: Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action. ' (Smoking and Health, 1964) The report found that smoking is a cause of lung cancer and laryngeal cancer in men, a probable cause of lung cancer in women, the most important cause of chronic bronchitis and a contributing factor to cardiovascular diseases, resulting in a higher death rate from coronary artery disease among male cigarette smokers. After its release, it dominated newspaper headlines for days and was later ranked among the top news stories of 1964. And while some tobacco control measures, such as warning labels on cigarette packs, were implemented promptly, cigarette sales in the U.S. continued to rise until the early 1980s, which is when they peaked at more than 630 billion cigarettes per year. Over the past four decades, measures to discourage smoking and protect the public from second-hand smoke have become more and more strict and wide-ranging, resulting in falling tobacco use prevalence in the United States and large parts of the world. Looking at the U.S., the CDC considers the antismoking campaign a 'public health success with few parallels in history', as it achieved its goal despite 'the addictive nature of tobacco and the powerful economic forces promoting its use.' According to WHO estimates, 21.7 percent of all people aged 15 and older used tobacco in 2020, down from 32.7 percent at the turn of the millennium. As the cvhart above nicely illustrates, the tobacco use rate is highest among 45- to 54-year-olds at 27.5 percent, while it's just 13.8 percent among 15- to 24-year-olds and 13.5 percent among those aged 85 and older.
Medscape
15-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Six Patterns Define Young Adult Substance Use in the US
Among six distinct patterns of substance use identified in young adults in the United States in 2019, nicotine vaping and cannabis smoking were the most common, new research showed. Additionally, stress, boredom, and loneliness were linked to specific substance use patterns. METHODOLOGY: To identify patterns of substance use at the day level and potential associations with mood, researchers analyzed data of nearly 600 young adults (mean age, 19.3 years; 66% women; 70% White) who reported alcohol use in the previous 30 days as 12th grade participants in the Monitoring the Future study (2018) and completed daily surveys for 14 days in a 2019 follow-up study. Individuals reported alcohol, cannabis, and/or nicotine/tobacco use across 3086 days (mean, 4 substance use days contributed). Stress, boredom, loneliness, and type of day (special occasion or difficult day) were included as covariates. TAKEAWAY: Six distinct patterns were identified: Nicotine vaping (34% of substance use days), cannabis smoking (24%), alcohol only (17%), cannabis vaping (12%), multiple tobacco combustibles (7%), and multimodal cannabis use (cannabis smoking plus cannabis vaping, 7%). In all, 52% of participants experienced more than one type of substance use day. Mean stress, boredom, and loneliness levels were higher on days of multimodal cannabis use than on most other days of substance use. Days of alcohol use showed lower levels of stress, boredom, and loneliness, with these days more likely than other substance use days to be a special occasion or weekend. Days characterized by multimodal cannabis use had higher probabilities of nicotine vaping and alcohol use, suggesting an increased risk for acute harms and increased risk for cannabis use disorder, the researchers noted. IN PRACTICE: 'Understanding these patterns is important for developing intervention strategies that are responsive to specific substance use on a given day,' the investigators wrote. 'Just-in-time or adaptive interventions that aim to be delivered during moments of stress, boredom, or loneliness, and help individuals to identify and develop alternative coping strategies in that moment may be particularly salient for reducing high-risk patterns of cannabis use,' they added. SOURCE: This study was led by Rebecca J. Evans-Polce, PhD, Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health, School of Nursing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was published online on April 29 in Addictive Behaviors . LIMITATIONS: This study relied on self-reported substance use data, which may be affected by social desirability bias or memory recall issues. Additionally, it focused on individuals with a mean age of 19 years and was conducted in 2019, potentially limiting the generalizability of the study to young adults of other ages or to different time periods. Low prevalence hindered the inclusion of substance use beyond alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine/tobacco. DISCLOSURES: This study was funded by research grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Cancer Institute. The investigators reported having no relevant conflicts of interest.
