Gore Announces $38 Million for New Tobacco Research
Copyright 1998 U.S. Newswire
July 27, 1998
Vice President Gore announced today that the National
Cancer Institute plans to allocate $38 million for additional
research into
prevention and cessation programs to reduce tobacco use, and he
posed five
questions for researchers to help Americans better understand
tobacco addiction
and how to prevent it.
"These
investments in more research can help turn the tide on the tobacco
epidemic," the Vice President said in a speech to 600
researchers and public heath
advocates at the first conference on nicotine addiction sponsored
by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation.
"President Clinton and I see tobacco research not just as a
policy priority, but
as a moral obligation," he added.
"By funding groundbreaking new tobacco research, we will
harness the full power
of science and
technology to protect our children."
This $38 million is part of the president's 1999
budget, which includes an
unprecedented increase in funding for research at NIH. The National
Cancer
Institute, which is part of NIH, plans to spend this money over the
next two
years:
-- to determine if adult cessation programs, including
the nicotine patch, and
nicotine gum work for children; to find other successful cessation
programs for
children; and to enable university researchers to learn why some
children can
resist tobacco advertising and marketing that is targeted at them;
-- to work with the National Institute of Drug Abuse
in genetics research to
discover genetic
factors that contribute to tobacco addiction;
-- to provide epidemiological research to track
patterns in children's smoking
over a longer period than ever before;
-- to find new, better treatments for adults addicted
to nicotine; and
-- to extend the National Cancer Institute's American
Stop Smoking
Intervention Study (ASSIST)
program, a joint effort with the American Cancer Society and 17
state health
departments, to focus the newest tobacco control research on
populations that
are still smoking and those that disproportionally use tobacco
products,
including minorities.
The vice president posed five questions for
researchers to help promote
more understanding of tobacco addiction: (1) what makes nicotine so
addictive?
(2) what makes someone move from experimenting with a tobacco
product to
addiction? (3) how can we help children resist the temptation to
try tobacco
products? (4) what treatments work best for nicotine addiction? (5)
what treatments work best for teenage smokers?
The vice president also renewed his call for Congress
to pass comprehensive
tobacco legislation to reduce youth smoking. Each day, he said,
3,000 young
people start smoking, 1,000 of whom will die prematurely from a
tobacco-related
disease. In addition, over three million teenagers -- over 22
percent of high
school students -- smoke cigarettes on a daily basis.
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