Top FDA Official Says Regulators Should Consider Potential Benefits Of E-Cigarettes

The Congressional Quarterly (10/22, Siddons, Subscription Publication) reports that Mitch Zeller, head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products, said Wednesday that regulators have to consider the possible health benefits for smokers who transition to e-cigarettes. “If there is an opportunity to shift those unable or unwilling to quit from the most harmful form of nicotine delivery, to the least harmful form,” Zeller said, “then I think that we as regulators have an opportunity to explore what those options are. “

Still Smoking?? These Facts Will Definitely Blow You Off

How Is Smoking Related to Cancer?

Smoking can cause cancer and then block your body from fighting it:

·         Poisons in cigarette smoke can weaken the body’s immune system, making it harder to kill cancer cells. When this happens, cancer cells keep growing without being stopped.

·         Poisons in tobacco smoke can damage or change a cell's DNA. DNA is the cell's "instruction manual" that controls a cell's normal growth and function. When DNA is damaged, a cell can begin growing out of control and create a cancer tumor.

Doctors have known for years that smoking causes most lung cancer. It's still true today, when nearly 9 out of 10 lung cancers are caused by smoking cigarettes. In fact, smokers have a greater risk for lung cancer today than they did in 1964, even though they smoke fewer cigarettes. One reason may be changes in how cigarettes are made and what they contain.⁵

Treatments are getting better for lung cancer, but it still kills more men and women than any other type of cancer. More than 7,300 nonsmokers die each year from lung cancer caused by secondhand smoke.

Smoking can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body, including the.

·         Blood (acute myeloid leukemia)

·         Bladder

·         Cervix

·         Colon and rectum

·         Esophagus

·         Kidneys and ureters

·         Larynx

·         Liver

·         Lungs

·         Mouth, nose, and throat

·         Pancreas

·         Stomach

·         Trachea

Men with prostate cancer who smoke may be more likely to die from these diseases than nonsmokers.

Smokeless tobacco also causes cancer, including cancers of the:

·         Esophagus

·         Mouth and throat

·         Pancreas

How Can Smoking-Related Cancers Be Prevented?

Quitting smoking lowers the risks for cancers of the lung, mouth, throat, esophagus, and larynx.

·         Within 5 years of quitting, your chance of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and bladder is cut in half.

·         Ten years after you quit smoking, your risk of dying from lung cancer drops by half.

If nobody smoked, one of every three cancer deaths in the United States would not happen.

SMOKING AND COPD. WHAT LINK THEY SHARE??

Studies suggest that about 50 percent of people who smoke will develop lung disease.  This might explain why so many smokers develop COPD, and why COPD is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S. So what is it that so closely links COPD with smoking?

Chemicals.  There are over 5,000 chemicals in a cigarette, and these are inhaled with both first and second hand smoke.  They sit on the moist lining of the respiratory tract.  While the exact mechanism is yet unknown, long term (chronic), or repeated, exposure to these chemicals has an influence on a person's genetics. 

Genetics.  Genes cause the production of proteins, and each protein carries out some bodily function. So some genes and the proteins they make are responsible for the normal development and maintenance of lung tissue. Long-term exposure to chemicals in cigarette smoke may cause genetic mutations that result in proteins that destroy instead of build lung tissue.   Since each person has a unique genetic makeup, the impact of genetics on COPD may vary from person to person.

Tissues.  The proteins from gene mutations cause changes within the lungs.  Some prevent the normal development and maintenance of lung tissue, resulting in emphysema.  Others cause changes to the tissues lining airway walls, causing airways to be chronically thick and narrowed.  Others cause an increase in goblet cells that cause an abnormal amount of mucus. Others cause the destruction of cilia (hairlike structures) lining the airways, making it so this excess mucus is difficult to cough up.

Disease.  These changes are permanent, meaning they are chronic (always there). While lung disease will naturally occur in most adults, cigarette smoking speeds up this process by as much as 50 percent, resulting in a diagnosis of lung disease by the ages of 45 or 55.  Loss of lung tissue is called emphysema, making it so your lungs have less capacity to move air. Excessive secretions and chronically narrowed air passages is chronic bronchitis.  Together these make up a disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. 

Living Well.   Smoking is proven to both cause COPD, and speed up the natural progression of the disease.  While there is no way to reverse the disease process, quitting smoking is proven to slow its progression.  This is why it is of utmost importance that you quit inhaling cigarette smoke, whether its from your own or someone else's cigarette called second hand smoke or passive smoking.