Handsel
Art
Date:
For Immediate Release
Contact: J.R. Few at
(870) 427-1365 or
email
Who Profits from Nicotine Addiction?
Advocates around the globe are questioning the legitimacy of
funding from the pharmaceutical companies most likely to profit from
nicotine
addiction for the World Conference on Tobacco or Health. Sometimes controversial advocate Michael
Siegal calls the conference “prostitution”. “You can't objectively
discuss the appropriate role, if any, of nicotine replacement products in a
global smoking cessation strategy when the very conference you are attending is
being sponsored by perhaps the two leading companies that have a great
financial interest in the results of that discussion,” he says. Makers of nicotine replacement and tobacco cessation drugs
Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline are funding the conference.
Public health advocates are concerned that the tobacco industry’s history
of manipulating data and public opinion has spread into the pharmacological
companies. Siegal credits John Polito of Whyquit.com
of calling attention to this anomaly.
Polito questions the validity of so called blind studies and sites a
2004 GlaxoSmithKline study showing 37% of nicotine gum users were addicted to
the nicotine in the gum. WhyQuit.com
is the internet’s leading free resource for cold turkey tobacco cessation.
“Has the pharmaceutical industry invented a
new definition of quitting, one that only refers to quitting one form of
nicotine delivery, smoke? Why in nearly all clinical trials did it fail to
examine nicotine levels in blood, urine or saliva of those declared to have
successfully quit? Is the industry's lack of regard for whether a smoker
arrests their chemical dependency closer to public health interests or those of
the tobacco industry?” asks Polito.
Concerns about tobacco industry manipulation
came close to home last fall when the International Society for the Prevention
of Tobacco Induced Diseases held its annual conference at the Peabody Hotel in
“Discovering that Filigent
made cigarette butts cast umbrage over the whole conference,” says local
activist J.R. Few. “Following the money
is essential to challenging tobacco. In
a capitalist climate antithetical to science and research it makes good sense
to question profit motives for funding sources.”
The 14th World
Conference on Tobacco or Health is scheduled for
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