Fists fly in Ukraine parliament punch up

(News Terupdate) - Lawmakers in Ukraine scuffled with each other, throwing punches and eggs, as parliament met Tuesday to ratify a treaty with Russia that extends the latter's navy presence in the Ukraine's Crimean peninsula until 2042.

The ruling Regions party eventually ratified the treaty but not before howls of protest from the opposition.

Someone set off a smoke bomb inside the building, while Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn sought refuge behind an umbrella as he was pelted with eggs.

During a rally attended by thousands on Saturday, opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko -- the former prime minister who lost to Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential election run-off in February -- said the ratification must be prevented at all costs.

She claimed that Yanukovych is "selling out" Ukraine, has "openly embarked on the path of destruction of (Ukraine's) national interests, and has actually begun the process of eliminating the state's sovereignty."

The deal was signed last week by Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Tymoshenko said it violated part of the Ukrainian Constitution, which forbids the country from hosting foreign military bases after 2017.

The deal extends Russia's lease of a major naval base in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol for an additional 25 years, in exchange for a 30 percent cut in the price of natural gas that Russia sells to Ukraine.

The agreement may bring an end to years of disputes over natural gas prices, which culminated in Russia turning off the pipeline to Ukraine.

The dispute affected not only Ukrainians, but many Europeans who depend on Russian gas pumped through Ukraine.

The two countries had been at odds ever since the "Orange Revolution" swept Yanukovych's fiercely anti-Russian predecessor Viktor Yushchenko to power in 2005.

Throughout his time in office, Yushchenko repeatedly threatened to expel Russia's Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol. The Russian military lease there was scheduled to expire in 2017.

Yanukovych said the new deal added a "concrete and pragmatic dimension" to centuries of relations between Ukrainians and Russians.

Opposition groups in Ukraine, however, were quick to denounce the agreement. Yuschenko's "Our Ukraine" party said the treaty would lead to the "Russification" of Ukraine.

Source : CNN

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CDC urges 50-state anti-smoking effort

(News Terupdate) - A coordinated national anti-smoking effort could reduce the more than 400,000 annual tobacco-related deaths in the United States, federal health officials said Thursday.

A new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a snapshot of each state's tobacco control progress, including wider adoption of measures to control, prevent and stop smoking. The key, the report says, is having all the states adopt uniform tobacco control plans.

"From the numbers it's the leading preventable cause of death," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC. "As a doctor I have cared for people with cancer, with chronic lung disease, people who have to gasp for every breath, and I know that behind those numbers are people and lives. ...

"If states make the right decisions, if policymakers and families make the right decisions, we can save lives."

The CDC estimates that 46 million American adults smoke cigarettes, and smoking causes approximately 443,000 deaths each year. The CDC estimates that in 2004 smoking cost more than $96 billion in direct medical costs, $193 billion in annual health-related economic losses and more than $97 billion in annual lost productivity.

Overall, the report finds that smoking rates for American adults vary. States with the highest smoking rates include West Virginia with 26.5 percent, Indiana with 26 percent, Kentucky with 25.2 percent, Missouri with 25 percent and Oklahoma with 24.7 percent.

The lowest smoking states include Utah with 9.3 percent, California with 14 percent, New Jersey with 14.8 percent and Maryland with 14.9 percent.

In previous reports issued in 1999 and 2007, the CDC outlined strategies that are known to stop and prevent smoking, including raising the price of tobacco products, enacting smoke-free laws, cutting tobacco advertising and promotion while enacting anti-smoking media campaigns, limiting access to tobacco products and encouraging and offering assistance to smokers to quit.

In 2007, the Institute of Medicine, the medical branch of the National Academy of Sciences, released "Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation," stating a goal of eliminating smoking as a public health problem in the United States. The strategies included strengthening and fully activating tobacco control methods similar to the CDC's plans, as well as tobacco regulation.

In 2008, the World Health Organization's MPOWER program outlined additional steps that complemented and reinforced the other agencies' recommendations.

As an example of the success of these strategies, the CDC cites the state of California, which has one of the oldest comprehensive tobacco control programs. California cut adult smoking rates from 22.7 percent in 1988 to 13.3 percent in 2006. That reduction in smoking accelerated the decline of heart disease deaths and lung cancer incidence in California, compared with the rest of the country.

In 2009, 14 states and the District of Columbia implemented an excise tax on cigarettes. Those state tax hikes followed a 62-cent federal cigarette tax hike instituted by Congress in April 2009.

Twenty-four states and D.C. have comprehensive smoke-free laws. Seven states do not have statewide smoke-free laws of any type: Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.

While some progress has been made in getting more states to implement tobacco control measures, the report stresses that much more is still needed.

The CDC's Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs 2007 noted that states could plan and enact tobacco control programs with a small percentage of tobacco excise tax revenues and funds from a 1998 agreement between states' attorneys general and the four largest tobacco companies.

The report concludes that putting uniform tobacco control policies in place would dramatically reduce the health and economic burden on states.

"The first step is knowledge, knowing what the issues are," Frieden said. "We need to act."

Source : CNN

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Nicotine vaccine effective in early tests

(News Terupdate) - A vaccine that could help people stop smoking is showing promise in early clinical trials, researchers announced this week at a national meeting of addiction specialists.

The vaccine is designed to stimulate the immune system to generate antibodies that would latch on to nicotine in a smoker's body and prevent it from ever entering the brain.

The vaccine maker, Nabi Biopharmaceuticals, reported that among those who responded best to NicVAX in earlier testing, 16 percent were able to stop smoking and not start again, compared with 6 percent in the placebo group.

These are considered statistically significant results and superior or comparable to the testing results of Zyban and Chantix, prescription medications already approved to help smokers over the age of 18 quit, Nabi officials told the National Institute on Drug Abuse conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In addition, those whose bodies responded most effectively to NicVAX cut the number of cigarettes smoked, from a baseline of 20 cigarettes per day to 10 cigarettes per day.

Those who took the vaccine experienced few side effects, said Dr. Raafat Fahim, president and CEO of Nabi Biopharmaceuticals.

In 2009, Zyban and Chantix were ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to carry "black box" warnings of the risk of depression and suicidal thoughts.

Nabi began the first phase III trials for NicVAX last November, enrolling 1,000 people. In March, a second phase III trial began with another 1,000 participants. Phase III trials are intended to prove a drug's effectiveness.

The effects of nicotine addiction cause nearly a half-million deaths annually in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.

"Finding effective treatments that can help people stay off cigarettes has been a real challenge," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. "This phase III trial of a nicotine vaccine offers tremendous hope towards solving this immense public health problem."

One of the primary goals of the NicVAX phase III studies is to determine what the smoking abstinence rate is at 12 months, meaning how many people are actually quitting for good.

Study results are anticipated by the third quarter of 2011. Then, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the NIDA, "we can get the vaccine in front of the Food and Drug Administration for approval."

Volkow, citing the positive reports, said she is excited about the idea of vaccinating to fight addiction overall. Noting that a vaccine for cocaine addiction is also in testing, she said, "We could apply it for heroin, for marijuana, other drugs, and that could make a huge impact."

When a smoker inhales cigarette smoke, nicotine is absorbed through the lung tissue, into the blood stream and carried through the body. Because nicotine is a small molecule, it easily crosses the blood-brain barrier into the brain. The nicotine then binds to receptors in the brain, which release dopamine, a stimulant that gives the smoker a pleasurable sensation, known as a "smoker's high."

This process occurs very rapidly in the body -- less than one minute after tobacco smoke is inhaled -- so the nicotine fix is quick. That's what causes the addiction.

The NicVAX vaccine creates antibodies that bind to nicotine in the bloodstream, blocking it from crossing into the brain, through the blood-brain barrier. That's because these nicotine-specific antibodies are molecules that are too big to cross into the brain.

So the bound nicotine is trapped in the blood and can't reach the receptors that trigger the release of dopamine, which is what causes the pleasure response. It's believed that the addiction of the smoker to nicotine will gradually diminish because as the antibodies created by NicVAX continue to bind to the nicotine, the amount of nicotine reaching the brain will gradually decrease.

"We hope the phase III trials will get stronger results, so that a large percentage of our population can benefit from it" Volkow said. "Ideally, we'd like to see 100 percent of those taking the vaccine stop smoking for good."

Relapse is a significant challenge facing smokers, Volkow said. With currently available therapies, relapse rates can be as high as 90 percent in the first year after a smoker quits. Of the 44 million people in the U.S. who smoke, the American Cancer Society says, 70 percent say they want to quit, and about 40 percent do quit each year. Yet only 4 percent to 7 percent actually give up smoking, without help, permanently.

Source : CNN

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Tobacco in candy-like form can poison kids

(News Terupdate) - A new generation of smokeless, flavored tobacco products that look like breath mints or breath-freshening strips may be life-threatening for children who mistake them for candy, according to researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"Nicotine is a poison, and now we're seeing smokeless tobacco products that look like Tic Tacs or M&M's, which parents can leave on the counter and children can be attracted to," says Greg N. Connolly, D.M.D., the director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Connolly led a research team that found that smokeless tobacco products are the second most common cause of nicotine poisoning in children, after cigarettes. The researchers reviewed data from 61 poison control centers and identified 13,705 cases of tobacco ingestion between 2006 and 2008, the vast majority of which were in infants. Smokeless tobacco was involved in 1,768 of the cases.

The new products -- currently being test-marketed in three cities -- include Camel Orbs, which resemble breath mints; Camel Sticks, which are about the size of a toothpick and dissolve in the mouth; and Camel Strips, which are similar to breath-freshening strips. Small, teabag-like "snus" -- pouches filled with tobacco that are placed between the upper lip and gum -- are also a potential hazard, according to the study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics.

These products are not smoking cessation aids; rather, they are marketed as a nicotine alternative in places where smoking isn't allowed.

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Although children in the study were most often poisoned from eating cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products in general, the researchers single out the new, dissolvable products -- especially Camel Orbs -- as a "major concern." Orbs are available in cinnamon and mint flavors and could easily be mistaken for candy, the researchers say.

"The candy form can only mean trouble, particularly for children and infants," says Connolly. "And snus are attractive, flavorful, and easily ingested by an infant or child."

R.J. Reynolds spokesman David Howard says that the packaging of Camel Orbs and the other dissolvable products is "100 percent child-resistant in accordance with Consumer Product Safety Commission standards" and bears a label that says "Keep Out of Reach of Children." Adults, he adds, should ensure that "children do not have access to any tobacco products -- including dissolvable tobacco products."

Still, the researchers say, the pellets could find their way into children's mouths. Nicotine poisoning can cause nausea or vomiting, and severe cases can result in convulsions, respiratory failure, and even death. Just under 0.5 milligrams of nicotine per pound of body weight is the minimum lethal dose for children, according to Connolly.

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A chemical analysis conducted by Connolly and his colleagues found that Camel Orbs contain an average of 0.83 milligrams of nicotine in each pellet. Some of the nicotine is "un-ionized," which allows for more rapid absorption and may be more toxic than other forms of the drug, they write.

"A small pellet with a rapid release of nicotine and a young child with a low body weight can be a very serious problem," Connolly says. "We have to look at high-risk groups who may ingest these thinking that they are candy, and be very cautious about dispensing them and not leaving them around."

Regulators, he adds, "must ask tough questions about who is at risk from these products, and who we are trying to help with them."

To focus on the poison risk of Camel Orbs and dissolvable nicotine products is "remarkably selective," Howard says. He points out that Connolly and his colleagues make no mention of nicotine gums and lozenges used in smoking cessation, which are also available in a range of flavors and resemble candy and gum.

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In a commentary accompanying the study, officials from the Center for Tobacco Products at the Food and Drug Administration write that dissolvable tobacco products "pose unique concerns for public health authorities." Dr. Marisa Cruz, M.D., and Dr. Lawrence Deyton, M.D., write that the FDA has requested research on the products from tobacco companies and will hold a series of public meetings to help develop a regulatory policy.

The FDA has broad authority to regulate tobacco products under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which was signed into law last June. Later that fall, the agency banned the sale of candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes.

"I would feel safer if the FDA...looked at the packaging [of these products] as well as their safety," says Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

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While accidental infant poisonings are certainly cause for concern, purposeful ingestion of smokeless tobacco products by kids and teens may be a larger problem, Winickoff points out. As the study notes, the use of smokeless tobacco products among adolescents increased 6 percent per year from 2002 to 2006.

"An adolescent thinks this is harmless because it looks harmless, but they're exposing their brain to nicotine, and there's a chance that they would be primed to develop a nicotine addiction," says Winickoff, who was not involved in the study. "If teens ended up using smokeless product because they are attracted to candy flavors and they end up getting addicted to nicotine, the public health benefit of smokeless tobacco is neutralized."

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One of the study authors, Terry F. Pechacek, Ph.D., the associate director for science at the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, in Atlanta, says that more than half of people who use smokeless tobacco are underage.

Products such as Camel Orbs, he says, "look like candy, are more easily concealed, and can be used at school or in front of parents. That raises even greater concerns."

Source : CNN

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