Bottomline: Cold crisis

Puff, puff, pass

With all of the nicotine and none of the smoke, e-cigarettes have become a booming, $1.5 billion industry in the U.S. While Oklahoma’s smoking rate among adults has dropped steadily over the past decade, lighting up remains at the root of some of our state’s leading preventable causes of death. Smoking and the resulting illnesses kill more Oklahomans than alcohol, auto accidents, AIDS, suicides, murders, and illegal drugs combined.

The e-cigarette has become so popular and useful for quitting tobacco because it offers something no other smoking cessation tool does: the soothing ritual of the puff. Patches and gum offer a nicotine quench without the satisfaction of physically smoking a cigarette.

Local vapor shops have proliferated across Tulsa as smokers dump their packs, and the purchase of cigarettes in Oklahoma continues to decline. The ratio of smokers to nonsmokers in the state dropped to 23.3 percent in 2012, a new historic low. Oklahoma ranked 39th among all states for its adult-smoking rate in 2013, an eight-point rise from our ranking in 2012, at 47th.

We’re out of the bottom 10, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

Enter a seemingly e-asy solution: the e-cigarette. In the past year, Oklahomans have expressed growing concern about the regulation of the burgeoning e-cig industry. Enter next the Oklahoma Vapor Action League (OVAL), an organization of consumers, small retailers, and residents concerned about the new e-cig craze. 

The FDA and other agencies are investigating whether these slick new contraptions have become a gateway product for youngsters. The use of the devices among teenagers is on the rise, according to a September 2013 Centers for Disease Control report. E-cigarettes produce none of the smoke of cigarettes, and new users don’t have to practice – and cough and gag – to get the hang of how to take a drag. The yield is a discreet, and addictive, nicotine buzz.

Republican legislators have introduced three bills in the Oklahoma House to provide precautions designed to keep e-cigs away from kids. Two of the bills would put e-cigs in league with tobacco products, though it contains no tobacco; the bills would also create regulatory limits and protections for the fake smokes. House Bill 2904 would expand the definition of “tobacco products” to explicitly include “electronic smoking devices.”

House Bill 3104, the companion legislation to Senate Bill 1602, would ban sales of vapor products, with or without nicotine, to youth. While Gov. Mary Fallin won’t yet comment on specific legislation, she agrees that e-cigarettes should not be sold to minors and should be regulated responsibly. Though e-cigs create no secondhand smoke, Fallin banned the devices on state property via executive order in December.

Bottomline: When it comes to stemming the tide of new young smokers, e-cigs might be more of a problem than a solution. These tobacco-free facsimiles have become an important step out of a tar-lunged existence for many smokers, but in exchange for what? Those sweet, easy e-cigs, complete with myriad flavors and customizations that would daunt any marketer to this demographic, lure in youngsters and could set them up for a lifetime of nicotine addiction. But we must be cautious not to snuff out a cessation tool that is poised to blow away Americans’ love affair with tobacco once and for all. 

Editing error?

When the reboot of Carl Sagan’s celebrated series “Cosmos” aired March 9, most felt “billions and billions” of warm-fuzzies remembering America’s late, lovable astrophysicist. In 1980, Sagan took viewers on a memorable journey through the known universe with his characteristic passion, curiosity, and brilliance.

This time, Neil deGrasse Tyson helms an updated “Cosmos,” highlighting all the wondrous things we’ve discovered about the universe since disco died. For mere seconds of the March 9 episode, Tyson mentioned the rapid evolution of plants, animals, and humans on our pale blue dot.

To many Oklahomans – specifically, those who refuse to trust any text but the Bible – Tyson’s open mention of evolution on Fox-affiliate stations during Sunday primetime was controversial. So when Oklahoma Fox affiliate KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City inserted a 15-second promo for their local news at the precise moment Tyson began to mention evolution, it raised eyebrows.

The statistical probability of such a specific mistake or coincidence or whatever-it-was is almost as mind-boggling as the cosmos itself. “In what appeared to be an editing error, a Fox affiliate in Oklahoma managed to remove the only mention of evolution from Sunday night’s ‘Cosmos’ science documentary,” reported The Raw Story on March 12.

 Bottomline: “We are newcomers to the cosmos,” Tyson explained as KOKH cut to a promo for its story about a 12-year-old bow hunter. “Three and a half million years ago, our ancestors – yours and mine left these traces,” Tyson said. “We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder.” We are just as free to wonder whether or not this 15-second edit was a flub or purposeful dub. Like the Big Bang, we don’t have exact proof. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. No matter what local station managers think,
the infinite universe cannot be censored.

Cold crisis

Crimea, a small Ukranian peninsula floating between Russia and its parent country, has become a flashpoint for global tensions. In late February, Russian troops began to move into Crimea, setting Russia and the West at a standoff not seen since the Cold War.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is trying to protect ethnic Russians on the peninsula and eastern Ukraine. On March 16, the pro-Russian Crimean government held a vote, which showed Crimeans would prefer to join up with Russia than to strike out on their own as an independent nation.

On Friday, March 7, Sen. Jim Inhofe talked to Tulsa World about his plan for dealing with this new predicament. In addition to sanctions suggested by experts and most lawmakers, Inhofe suggested we should “put some F-22s in Poland” and deploy Aegis-equipped ships to the region.

Only a small minority of lawmakers agree with Inhofe’s military-muscle plan, that flashing America’s lethal weapons would cause Russia to cool its jets. Most experts and lawmakers support sanctions against Russia, though similar efforts during the 2008 Georgian conflict ultimately failed.

Bottomline: In his March 7 interview, Inhofe created a bottom line of his own with this gem: “Putin is still KGB. He’s just a mean guy.”