Smoking Immediately Harms Lungs and DNA, Report Finds
Smoking Causes Immediate Lung and DNA Damage
JB Reed/Bloomberg
A woman smoking a cigarette in New York.
A woman smoking a cigarette in New York. Photographer: JB Reed/Bloomberg
Smoking causes immediate lung, cardiovascular and DNA damage that may lead to illness or sudden death, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin said.
New research shows that a toxic mix of more than 7,000 chemicals in cigarettes can harm the body “from the moment they enter your mouth” by attacking tissues as smoke travels to the lungs, Benjamin said in a report issued today. Smoking also weakens the immune system’s ability to prevent damaged DNA from causing cancer, she said.
Benjamin’s findings are the first Surgeon General’s report issued under the Obama administration. The findings strengthen the scientific reasoning for a plan by the Health and Human Services Department to reduce the U.S. smoking rate to 12 percent in a decade from the current 20 percent, Howard Koh, the agency’s assistant secretary for health, said today at a news conference.
“By learning how tobacco smoke causes disease, we learn more about how chemicals harm cells, how genes may make us susceptible, and how tobacco users become addicted to nicotine,” Benjamin said in the report. “The answers to these questions will help us to more effectively prevent tobacco addiction and treat tobacco-caused disease.”
More than 46 million adults in the U.S. smoke cigarettes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Smoking is the biggest cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing about 443,000 people a year. Tobacco-related illness costs the U.S. economy about $200 billion a year, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at the briefing.
Decades of Research
A Surgeon General’s report issued in 1964, when two-fifths of U.S. adults smoked, was the nation’s first official recognition that cigarettes cause serious illnesses including cancer. While the U.S. smoking rate dropped by half in the next 40 years, it has remained at 20 percent since 2004.
Benjamin, whose mother died of lung cancer caused by cigarettes, said her report is the 30th smoking-related study issued by the office.
“This report focuses on how tobacco smoke causes damage to almost every organ in your body,” Benjamin said at the briefing. “One cigarette or exposure to second-hand smoke may cause a heart attack. We didn’t know that before.”
An estimated 70 percent of U.S. smokers want to quit, Benjamin said. While President Barack Obama is among them, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today that he hasn’t seen Obama smoking “in probably nine months.”
Obama’s Struggle
“The president would be the first to tell you that it’s a struggle,” Gibbs told reporters today at the White House. Smoking “is not something he’s proud of; he knows that it’s not good for him” and “doesn’t like children to know about it, obviously, including his.”
The U.S. must aggressively implement the HHS smoking- reduction strategy in light of the new report, Matthew Myers, president of the nonprofit Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, said today in an e-mail. The Food and Drug Administration must “vigorously exercise” new authority to regulate the tobacco industry, he said.
A law signed by Obama last year gave the FDA unprecedented power to restrict the marketing of tobacco products and banned companies from adding flavors such as clove or strawberry to cigarettes. The law required that the FDA create the Center for Tobacco Products and the 12-member Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee.
Advisory Panel
The advisory committee’s duties include helping the agency decide whether to ban menthol cigarettes, assessing the health effects of dissolvable tobacco products and evaluating companies’ applications to offer new “modified-risk” tobacco products.
Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA, the biggest U.S. cigarette maker, broke with rivals Reynolds American Inc. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. to back the law as a way to standardize manufacturing requirements and spur development of less-harmful tobacco products.
“Philip Morris USA supports a variety of efforts to communicate the health risks of tobacco use, prevent underage use and connect smokers who wish to quit with effective cessation information,” Steve Callahan, a company spokesman, said today in an e-mail. “The company supported legislation to give the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco products, including authority to address many of the issues discussed in today’s press conference.”
Reynolds’s Response
Reynolds is reviewing the Surgeon General’s report and isn’t in a position to comment on the specifics, David Howard, a spokesman for the Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based company, said in an e-mail.
“What I can tell you is we believe individuals should consider the conclusions of the U.S. Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and other public health and medical officials when making decisions regarding smoking, and the best course of action for tobacco users concerned about their health is to quit,” Howard said.
Robert Bannon, a Lorillard spokesman, declined to comment on today’s findings.
Reynolds and Greensboro, North Carolina-based Lorillard are among tobacco companies seeking to overturn the parts of the 2009 law in court, such as a requirement that cigarette packages start carrying graphic warning labels in 2012. Altria, of Richmond, Virginia, isn’t part of the effort.
Nicotine Replacement
Obama has used nicotine replacement therapy in his battle with cigarettes, Navy Captain Jeff Kuhlman, head of the White House medical unit, said in March after conducting the president’s annual physical.
Asked whether she had any suggestions to help Obama remain smoke-free, Benjamin said she’d give him the same advice she’d offer to any other patient.
“Don’t give up, don’t be discouraged, because it may take a number of times to try to quit and a number of efforts,” she said. “And we now have medications that have been approved by FDA to be able to use to treat it, which we didn’t have in the past.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Molly Peterson in Washington at mpeterson9@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adriel Bettelheim at abettelheim@bloomberg.net
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