Smoking

Fire-safe cigarettes

The parents of three children who died in a cigarette related fire hoped to force tobacco manufacturers to start making fire-safe cigarettes. In January, they launched a class-action suite alleging that cigarettes sold in Canada by Imperial Tobacco Ltd., Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc. and JTI-MacDonald Inc. are defective because they fail to provide reasonable protection against house fires. Fire-safe cigarettes were invented more than a century ago, but 100 Canadians still die every year in cigarette-related fires. CMAJ 2000;163(1):73.

Within three years, New York will be the first US state to sell only fire-safe, self-extinguishing cigarettes. The move is designed to cut down on fires caused by careless smokers, which account for at least one-third of US fire deaths. About 1,000 Americans die in such fires each year. CMAJ 2000;163(5):588.

Litigation used to combat smoking

US lawsuits that pried loose some 39 million pages of internal tobacco company documents are a huge boon to a Canadian class-action suit and suits brought individually. Andreas Seibert, a lawyer with Sommers & Roth of Toronto, devotes all his time to a smoking-related class-action suit and 2 private lawsuits that dovetail with the class action. A number of pre-trial hearings have already taken place, and a judge is expected to decide within a year whether to certify the lawsuit as a class action. CMAJ 2000;162(11):1608-9.

Senator seeks smoking levy

Liberal Senator Colin Kenny returned with his plan to charge a levy on every carton of cigarettes sold in Canada last year. He said he was counting on support from physicians to ensure his new private member's bill will not be tossed out on a technicality as it was before. The CMA Board of Directors voted to support the bill in principle at its March meeting and about 200 members filled out a petition to support the Senator.

The bill proposed a levy of $1.50 on every carton of cigarettes produced. The estimated $360 million raised by the charge would go to educational campaigns aimed at reducing tobacco use among youth. CMA News 2000;10(5):3.

Two doctors took a Senate committee on a figurative tour in June to show how the ravages of tobacco produce patients for almost every department in their hospitals.

"I can walk you through every department in my local hospital and show you patients that are there because of tobacco," said Dr. Peter Kuling, a family physician in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans, Ont., and chair of the CMA Tobacco Steering Committee. "There's the man in the ER fighting his third myocardial infarction, the woman in the ICU with end-stage lung cancer and the tiny infant in the neonatal ICU born too small because mom smoked."

"These are just a few of the cases I see every day," he added. "I can show you how tobacco is involved in everything I do." The presentation was made in support of Senator Colin Kenny's Bill S-20, which would impose a levy on tobacco products to fund tobacco-control programs aimed at youth. That idea is not new — it has been a tremendous success in California, where youth-smoking rates have plummeted to around 11%, compared with Canada's rate of about 29%. CMA News 2000;10(7):1.

Smoking and pregnancy

Researchers analysed data from routinely collected perinatal records of 8,528 women in Nova Scotia whose smoking status before pregnancy was known. Overall, 33.1% smoked before their pregnancy; of these, 69.9% smoked throughout the pregnancy, 13% quit by their first prenatal visit and maintained their nonsmoking status, and eight% were smoking at the time of their first prenatal visit but quit by the time of delivery. CMAJ 2000;163(3):281-2.

An accompanying commentary reviews the steps physicians can take to increase the rate of smoking cessation among pregnant women. CMAJ 2000;163(3):288-9.

Copyright 2000 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors