Public health wins a big one; how to go paperless

How to be 21^st century

This past weekend, I spent four hours in my office sorting through the papers that had accumulated over the last two months. I whittled it down a lot but kept thinking, “I shouldn’t  accumulate this much paper.”

I’d like to hear from people who’ve made the transition successfully in spite of getting 100+ email messages each day, many of them with attachments. Oh yeah, and how to do it in organizations with incredibly small storage limits.

Send me your thoughts!

A landmark week for public health

The ground shifted last week. Congress voted to grant the FDA authority to regulate tobacco (HR 1256). And we have a new Commissioner of the FDA, Margaret Hamburg, who wrote in last week’s New England Journal of Medicine about the FDA as a public health agency!

Tobacco products are comprised of many toxic additives (599) which the FDA now will regulate. So, who cares whether the FDA regulates tobacco? We all should. In the future, there won’t be candy-flavored cigarettes and there’ll be fewer ads featuring sexy young smokers (Durham Herald-Sun, 6/13). Cigarette packages will have larger warning labels. All these changes will help to reduce teenage smoking. “Each day in the United States, approximately 3,600 young people between the ages of 12 and 17 years initiate cigarette smoking, and an estimated 1,100 young people become daily cigarette smokers” – CDC Fact Sheet Youth and Tobacco Use: Current Estimates. Many of them will seal their fates as they start smoking.

In this country alone, about 400,000 people still die of smoking-related illnesses every year. Over $100 billion is attributed to the health care costs associated with smoking—every year. We simply cannot afford this product. Tobacco has played an important role in North Carolina history, and I empathize with the plight of tobacco farmers. Today, with the health consequences of tobacco use known for more than 40 years, we should regard the profits associated with use of tobacco toxic assets.

For another point of view, see “Washington’s Marlboro Men” in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The editorial argues that by not regulating menthol, an additive favored by Black smokers, Congress could. The result, they say is “largely an exercise in political and financial self-interest masquerading as public virtue.” I don’t agree, but the WSJ has a good point about menthol.

Happy Monday!