American journal of preventive medicine
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Menthol cigarettes account for 25% of the market in the U.S. The Food and Drug Administration currently is considering regulatory action on tobacco products, including a ban on menthol cigarettes. With 39% of menthol smokers reporting that they would quit smoking if menthol cigarettes were banned, there is a need to better understand whether existing cessation programs, such as quitlines, are serving menthol smokers. ⋯ Quitlines appear to be adequately serving menthol smokers who call for help. Cessation outcomes for menthol smokers are comparable to nonmenthol smokers. However, if a menthol ban motivates many menthol smokers to quit, quitlines may have to increase their capacity to meet the increase in demand.
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Recent attempts to improve the healthfulness of away-from-home eating include regulations requiring restaurants to post nutrition information. The impact of such regulations on restaurant environments is unknown. ⋯ A restaurant nutrition-labeling regulation was accompanied by some, but not uniform, improvements in other aspects of restaurant environments in the regulated compared to the nonregulated county. Additional opportunities exist for improving the healthfulness of away-from-home eating beyond menu labeling.
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Downtown Wilkes-Barre, a town of 40,000 residents in Northeast Pennsylvania, and the hub of a planned urban, suburban, and rural trail network, was the site of a number of changes to improve walkability during the Active Living by Design (ALbD) grant period. ⋯ The Bike-Ped Count illustrates patterns of bicycling and walking downtown and allows comparisons of bicycling and walking among locations, including different cities. In the future, counts will help show how ongoing changes to the downtown environment affect walking and bicycling.
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Smokefree workplace policies have successfully limited indoor exposure to secondhand smoke. However, exposure still exists in other indoor locations, most notably in the home. ⋯ Over 10 years, Minnesotans reported a significant decline in exposure to secondhand smoke and a significant increase in voluntary smokefree home rules. Such a trend is notable as virtually all public tobacco control efforts were aimed at raising awareness and support for smokefree policies within workplaces. These findings demonstrate positive changes in social norms and suggest that behavior change in public settings might also be translated into practice in private settings.
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Under a grant funded by ClearWay Minnesota(SM) and in partnership with nationally recognized experts in tobacco product regulation, the Public Health Law Center investigated how laws at every level apply, or fail to apply, to noncigarette tobacco products--also called "other tobacco products." ⋯ The article highlights several federal policy interventions that would address gaps in the regulation of other tobacco products. The FDA must determine whether these interventions will benefit public health and, if so, to what extent--the legal criteria for intervention under the federal Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.