↓ Skip to main content

Obsolete tobacco control themes can be hazardous to public health: the need for updating views on absolute product risks and harm reduction

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Public Health, May 2016
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (97th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (96th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
6 news outlets
blogs
1 blog
twitter
87 X users
facebook
2 Facebook pages
googleplus
1 Google+ user
reddit
1 Redditor
f1000
1 research highlight platform

Citations

dimensions_citation
55 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
112 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Obsolete tobacco control themes can be hazardous to public health: the need for updating views on absolute product risks and harm reduction
Published in
BMC Public Health, May 2016
DOI 10.1186/s12889-016-3079-9
Pubmed ID
Authors

Lynn T. Kozlowski, David B. Abrams

Abstract

Leading themes have guided tobacco control efforts, and these themes have changed over the decades. When questions arose about health risks of tobacco, they focused on two key themes: 1) how bad is the problem (i.e., absolute risk) and 2) what can be done to reduce the risk without cessation (i.e., prospects for harm reduction). Using the United States since 1964 as an example, we outline the leading themes that have arisen in response to these two questions. Initially, there was the recognition that "cigarettes are hazardous to health" and an acceptance of safer alternative tobacco products (cigars, pipes, light/lower-tar cigarettes). In the 1980s there was the creation of the seminal theme that "Cigarettes are lethal when used as intended and kill more people than heroin, cocaine, alcohol, AIDS, fires, homicide, suicide, and automobile crashes combined." By around 2000, support for a less-dangerous light/lower tar cigarette was gone, and harm reduction claims were avoided for products like cigars and even for smokeless tobacco which were summarized as "unsafe" or "not a safe alternative to cigarettes." The Surgeon General in 2014 concluded that by far the greatest danger to public health was from cigarettes and other combusted products. At the same time the evidence base for smokeless tobacco and alternative nicotine delivery systems (ANDS) had grown. Product innovation and tobacco/nicotine bio-behavioral, epidemiological and public health sciences demonstrate that low nitrosamine smokeless tobacco (e.g., Swedish snus), and ANDS have substantially lower harms than cigarettes. Going forward, it is important to sharpen themes and key messages of tobacco control, while continuing to emphasize the extreme lethality of the inhaled smoke from cigarettes or from use of any combusting tobacco product. Implications of updating the leading themes for regulation, policymaking and advocacy in tobacco control are proposed as an important next step. A new reframing can align action plans to more powerfully and rapidly achieve population-level benefit and minimize harm to eliminate in our lifetime the use of the most deadly combustible tobacco products and thus prevent the premature deaths of 1 billion people projected to occur worldwide by 2100.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 87 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 112 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 112 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 17 15%
Researcher 13 12%
Other 12 11%
Student > Bachelor 9 8%
Student > Ph. D. Student 7 6%
Other 19 17%
Unknown 35 31%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 16 14%
Medicine and Dentistry 12 11%
Nursing and Health Professions 8 7%
Social Sciences 6 5%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 5 4%
Other 25 22%
Unknown 40 36%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 112. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 January 2024.
All research outputs
#375,713
of 25,446,666 outputs
Outputs from BMC Public Health
#336
of 17,594 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#7,323
of 348,890 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Public Health
#8
of 190 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,446,666 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 17,594 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 348,890 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 190 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.