Regulating America's smoking scourge

摘要

The USA has made impressive gains in reducing tobacco use during the past 50 years, including halving of the adult smoking rate from 42.4% in 1965 to 18.1% in 2012. However, the war on smoking is far from won. Tobacco use is still the biggest cause of preventable death and disease in the USA, where 42 million American adults and around 3 million children smoke. Although industry marketing techniques designed to hide the damaging effects of smoking and encourage uptake have long been exposed, product alterations have received less scrutiny. A new report by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids describes how the tobacco industry has made cigarettes more addictive (eg, increasing nicotine levels), more attractive to children (eg, by adding flavourings such as chocolate), and even more deadly (eg, increased levels of carcinogenic nitrosamines).