Dr. Ben Shukron of Eisenhower Medical Center explains how graphic cigarette pack warnings, tested in Canada and Australia, work especially well for low-literacy smokers. Addressing both nicotine addiction and habit is key to quitting. He endorses e-cigarettes as a cessation tool, citing Lancet data showing doubled quit rates.
Chapters
The biggest changes we've seen in decades of cigarette packs took effect last week, and joining us now to discuss is Dr. Ben Shukron from Eisenhower Medical Center. Good morning to you.
Good morning.
Thank you for being here. Now, there— these are big changes we're talking about, and there's some evidence behind graphics used in other countries like Canada and Australia, and even though teens aren't affected, some socioeconomic groups are?
It's mostly the low-literacy groups that are affected by that. Teens are mostly affected by the price of cigarettes, obviously, but they have shown a lot of effects in having quit smoking rates going up because of those pictures, only because they're much more efficacious in quitting smoking than texts only or just leaving it to pamphlets or something like that.
Right, and the location of the graphics. Countries like— or places like Australia, they're attempting to change the label so there's not even a brand there. It's just like a huge, big, disgusting picture. Some of these like what people are seeing right now, just a big gross picture of a mouth or something like that. But Philip Morris says they'll sue if that happens.
I think that they have a lot invested in this, so that's why they're trying to keep the brand on this, the packaging. But unfortunately, as you can see, though, some of these pictures are very grim and they send a clear message. And so some governments are taking a lot more lead than ours, but I think that we are already at a very nice place where we can put some of those pictures and hopefully we can get people to quit smoking.
Absolutely. I'm honestly dumbfounded almost that something that's so toxic for health is able to persist and that we provide teens and people with this.
There are two things with cigarette smoking. It's not just the nicotine addiction. There's a habit that forms with that, and so a lot of people would say, I need to have my cigarette after dinner, I need to have my cigarette, you know, at the red light, and so when I'm upset. So —when we tackle smoking cessation, we have to tackle these two things. First is the nicotine addiction, and second, the habit of purchasing those packages. So I'm hoping that those pictures will show some of the effects that have already been shown in Canada, Australia, and other places in the world, as you mentioned.
And every time I see— even though we're seeing some of the same pictures over and over again— every time I see it, I'm like, oh God, how could you want to smoke after seeing that? And specific to the Valley, people who smoke who smoke are more likely to have less common infections. Let's talk about some of those.
You know, in the Valley, there are a lot of pulmonary infections that are specific to sensitive lungs. For example, there's mold everywhere, and while we do not see it all the time, when you have some of the earthquakes that we see, spores from the earth are actually aerosolized, so people can inhal them in, when you have lungs that are of smokers, they're not as good as preventing those infections as, say, healthy lungs. So that's specific to the valley and other heated areas. We just had 2 days ago the warning about the quality of the air, and it was a lot more dangerous to people whose sensitive lungs are not— it causes a lot of deleterious consequences. So when you are a smoker, you definitely put yourself at a lot more danger to get either atypical infections or more sensitive to the polluted air.
Absolutely, and I can't believe we're already out of time, but just really quickly, do electronic cigarettes work to help people quit smoking?
They do. I promote them in a lot of my patients. It transitioned them to quit smoking. Today, The Lancet, there was Text to Quit today where they showed double the quit rates. We have a Freedom from Smoking at Eisenhower So I believe that those are excellent tools for people that are— Do you have a website people can go to? On Facebook, facebook.com/DrB.California. Great. I put there a lot of information, especially for smokers.
And we'll put that information on our website as well so people can check it out. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. KMYR Today will be right back.
