President Mack Beers called our meeting to order and Sharron Zimmerman gave us the day’s Thoughts for Reflection.
President Mack announced a zoom wine tasting in tandem with The Blue Goat coming up on February 18th. There is still room if you would like to join in. please contact Kathy if you are interested.
Ramona Pleva reminded everyone of Friday’s (2/12) Blood Drive.
Adam Beers from the Sunrise Club gave a follow-up to the SuperBowl raffle. Both Kat Paye and Mark Newhouse were winners from the Noon Club.
Alexis Juett announced the Kick-off of the new IM Rotary year, which starts with a high-level overview of all the Club does. This session will follow next Tuesday’s regular meeting. She also acknowledged new graduate of the program: Bernie Rubin.
Who’s Smoking Now and Why It Matters….
Jayne Mohr introduced Ken Warner who is deeply involved in health care and tobacco control policy. Warner points out that smoking is still an important issue throughout the nation despite restrictions in the culture.
Success in smoking reduction has been clear over the last decades. Nonetheless, the number of smoking-related deaths remains relatively constant. And lung cancer is still one of the leading causes of death nationally. Even ahead of breast cancer in women. Today smoking is responsible for a sixth of all deaths of Americans.
A pack a day smoker, who continues over a lifetime, will take in the various toxic chemical found in cigarettes some 4 million times and risks death from smoking-related factors at a 50% rate, and many more will be ill as a result.
Since the 60s there has been a radical decrease in smoking. However the rate is higher among the less educated within the population. The percentage drop is the same when looking at income. Smoking prevalence is even more sharply defined in recent years, with the better educated quitting at more substantial rate. Warner also spoke to the prevalence of smoking within those afflicted with mental health issues and concerns that have risen as a result within the mental healthcare community.
Men continue to smoke at a higher rate than women. Although demographics alter this picture somewhat, it is clear that smoking is largely a function of those in marginalized groups and they are dying at much higher rates than people in the mainstream.
Possible solutions? Warner named two. Increasing the excise tax, which is a known deterrent particularly with youth who are more price-conscious. And prohibiting smoking in public and workspaces. While we have already done that in Michigan, 50% of the States have not yet done so.
More explicit warnings will appear on cigarette packages beginning in January of 2022. He noted that the USA is many years behind most of the world in this regard. There is a consideration of a ban on menthol used in cigarettes which can be highly addictive, making it far more difficult to quit.
There is also research that suggests there are ways to make tobacco less addictive by reducing the nicotine to levels that won't sustain addiction. It’s considered to be as easy to de-nicotinize cigarettes as it is to decaffeinate coffee. The FDA continues to look at many ways that the dangers of smoking can be mitigated and we see many of them instituted.
There were questions about vaping and Warner posited that vaping is not necessarily a stepping stone to cigarettes. Warner mentioned that vaping is substantially less dangerous than cigarettes, despite information to the contrary.
