The Responsible Use of Nicotine

What was learned at the, 13 February, Resident Council meeting has been summarized in the chart in operational terms: Condition of Employment, Training, and Uniform. The chart was distributed at a, 14 February, meeting at Provision Living with the Central Missouri Area Agency on Aging (CMAAA), Donna Wobbe, Director, 573-443-5823.

A few edits have been made to keep the chart on one page. It will be used in a working paper presentation to the staff at Provision Living, Thursday, 22 February 2018. Other comments:

Conditions of Employment

Employers who hire people with addictions that have a harmful effect on others at the site have a responsibility to minimize or eliminate the effect on smokers and non-smokers. This is the flip side of providing special arrangements for the physically and mentally “challenged”. A well established practice.

There is a counter culture that promotes tobacco smoking. Many states have laws prohibiting “life style” city ordinances. This made some sense at the time we knew little about the immediate effects of tobacco smoke.

Columbia, MO, promotes tobacco smoking by outdoor “smoker stations” in the downtown “The District” area to “protect the wild life” at the other end of the sewer system. This promotion also comforts nicotine addicted and non-addicted persons with the reassuring words, “If you smoke cigarettes, you have every right to do so.”

This is one of the main tobacco company lies. There is no such right (except where smoking has no effect on other people). It is important to the people taking in the money, to say this, so everyone is happy with their operation. The specter of “excess” deaths hanging over the area must be kept out of mind.

[Columbia, MO, City Code 16-231 Littering, states it is a Class A misdemeanor with up to one year in jail and up to $1,000 fine if (cigarette butt) litter escapes from property that permits littering.

This is a perfect example of how laws, that look good to the public, are passed with little if any attempt at enforcement. Owners are not interested in paying $1,000 fine for each night that butts stray into the street.]

Training

Our understanding of when tobacco smoke injures is changing as we learn more about how it injures. Blood platelets become sticky in about 30 minutes; promoting heart attacks and strokes (both tobacco and e-cigarettes). Vascular endothelial function is reduced in seconds; arteries then fail to enlarge when added oxygen is needed.

I measured indoor and outdoor air quality in northwest Missouri for several years. It came as a surprise to find an article, in March, 2017, that compared the fine particulate concentration from tobacco, marihuana, and “vaping”. They have the same concentration of toxic fine particles! It never occurred to me that burning and heating (charring?) would generate the same toxic particles.

It is the fine particulates that contribute to illness and “excess” deaths in smog. Burning tobacco with or without nicotine made no difference in their results. It is the smoke; not the nicotine, that is toxic.

“Vaping” seems to be a truth and another big lie. It can get a person, addicted to nicotine, to switch from tobacco to vaping (for about $60, at one store I visited). It can also get a non-addicted person addicted.

The CDC and FDA have yet to sort this out. Until they do, avoid vaping. Vaping generates a colorful third hand “smoke” with its own drug rituals.

Uniform

Several people have mentioned the smell of tobacco smoke. That used to be the end of the matter. Now it is a warning, of the presence of third hand tobacco smoke and the immediate results on health; that an addicted person is sharing for lack of knowing how to use, non-smoke containing, nicotine sources.