KJC Korea
Journal Central

The smoking prevalence among Korean adult men has reached to 38.1% in 2017, which was the lowest in Korea’s history. JUUL will be sold in Korea. This study has discussed: what JUUL was; how people use JUUL; what knowledge we have had about JUUL so far; what kind of marketing tactics has been employed; and how we prepare the introduction of JUUL in Korea. JUUL is a new electronic-cigarettes (e-cigs) shaped like a USB flash drive and is divided into two parts, device and pod. A pod contains nicotine liquid and flavors, such as Mango and Mint. JUUL contains more nicotine than many other e-cigs. JUUL uses nicotine salt which can increase the rate and amount of nicotine delivered into the blood. Since its introduction in 2015, JUUL has been the top-selling e-cig brand in the US. Due to JUUL, e-cig use among the US high school students rose by 78%, and more than 3.6 million middle and high school students used e-cigs. The recent evidence showed that nicotine in JUUL pod was much higher than other e-cigs. US FDA has taken some actions to address this crisis. JUUL will be treated as same as other tobacco products in Korea. The government must closely monitor JUUL’s marketing activities, particularly, its flavor marketing. Parents and teachers should be educated about JUUL and can recognize that it is a tobacco product. This study calls the government, experts and civil societies to take urgent actions to protect our youth from JUUL.

This paper is an anthropological approach to the scientific debate on the harmful effects of the heated tobacco products after the launch of them in Korea in July 2017. I discussed where and how the ‘boundary of pollution’ works in the debate over electronic cigarettes (so-called ‘liquid/cigarette type’) and smoking cessation. First, I discussed which of the cigarettes and smokers is the real target of the tobacco denormalization policy. The recent smoking cessation campaign (ex, ‘Smokers’ Gab-Jil (=power-trip)‘) seems to emphasize smokers more harmful than ’harmful cigarettes‘. The campaign can be attributed to the fear that the spread of new electronic cigarettes could lead to renormalization of smoking. However, it is contradictory that the cause of pollution is concentrated in smokers rather than tobacco companies and tobacco products. Next, I dealt with whether nicotine or tar is the substance that smokers should escape. I think the following precautions are needed when nicotine is used as a ’harm reduction‘ policy; both the government's fundamental policy attempts and the motivation for smokers to completely quit can be weakened. Third, I dealt with the boundary of pollution that smokers want to overcome through the ’cigarette-type‘ electronic cigarettes. I discussed that the fact that the new electronic cigarette has a low odor could help smokers to recover the disconnected human relationship due to tobacco denormalization. Finally, I also introduced two major boundaries of pollution (smoking as a working drug and as a means of national revenues), which have been discussed in anthropology.

Smoking is a preventable risk factor of many disease such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and premature death. Many smokers want to quit smoking but nicotine dependence makes it hard. There are many smoking cessation interventions including pharmacotherapy and counselling, however, the success rate is low. There is possibility that mindfulness meditation play a role as smoking cessation therapy. Actually, the mindfulness meditation has good evidence on reducing emotional problem such as depression, anxiety, and stress. The meditation could have effect on smoking cessation because it reduce negative emotion, withdrawal symptom and increase coping skills and self efficacy. There are several types of mindfulness meditation such as Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, and Compassion Focused Therapy. This article showed 7 randomized controlled trials (RCT), 3 cross-sectional studies, and 2 meta-analysis by narrative review. Recently some RCT have shown positive relationship between mindfulness meditation and smoking cessation. However the meditation’s effect did not last in 6month follow up studies. Even though a small number of subjects and low quality in these studies may be a limitation, the mindfulness meditation showed effects reducing craving of smokers during study period. In addition, mindful attention awareness status could be a good predictor of successful smoking cessation. Further good quality studies are necessary to gather evidence clarifying the association between mindfulness mediation and smoking cessation.

Background: Cancer survivors have high risk of secondary cancer and diseases other than cancer. However, there are persistent smokers among them. This study aims to explore the tobacco use patterns and associated factors with current smoking among cancer survivors. Methods: The results of surveys and blood tests collected from the Korea Medical Institute (KMI) from 2007 through 2011 were used as data. The subjects of this study were 91,040 adults (59,132 men) aged 20-64, and they were divided into cancer survivor group (1,375 men, 671 women) and non-cancer counterparts according to their past history of cancer. Results: The current smoking rate of cancer survivors was lower than that of non-cancer survivors, but 33.53% of men and 2.53% of women among cancer survivors were still current smokers. In the cancer survivors, in men, the younger they were, the higher the risk of current smoking became (The odds ratio of smoking in those aged 20-39 to 51-64 was 2.47 while that of smoking in 40-50, 1.43); and that the odds ratio of smoking in persons in drinkers to non-drinkers, 2.80 (95% CI: 2.02-3.88). In women cancer survivors, the odds ratio of current smoking was 21.15 (95% CI: 2.72-164.35) in alcohol drinkers to non-drinkers. Conclusion: Young age in men and alcohol use in both men and women were important factors correlated with tobacco smoking among cancer survivors. Further research and policy is needed to support cancer survivors’ smoking cessation and health promotion.