welcome to "beyond the headlines." i'm carheryl jennings. from cancer to heart disease and of course, the dangers of secondhand smoke and every

single day nearly 4,000 young people under the age of 18 smoke a cigarette for the first time. according to the centers for disease control and prevention the cdc also reports that nearly 13% of the adult population in california are currently smokers, and that is more than 3 million people. 69% of smokers in the united states do want to quit completely. the impact of smoking tobacco is clearly dangerous, but a fascinating recent study suggests tobacco's historic use in california may actually stretch back far longer than researchers believe. it's abc 7's carolyn johnson. >> this is the type that got us all started. >> if archaeologist, she's certainly fascinating by it. she spent tracing the earliest use of the people of california and the pacific coast. >> tobacco in the united states was present 8,000 or 10,000 years ago and hunterrers

gatherers probably figured out the special properties of the plant quite early. >> she says the clues were burned into ancient pipes and some found in nearly pristine conditions during digs at the swiss river basin near the oregon border and another undisclosed site here in the bay area. first to document what was being smoked and when. her colleagues at uc davis used test pipes to plant different species. they were able to compare it to the residue still in stone pipes. >> the residue inside the spaces will preserve over thousands of years, relatively unchanged. >> so when we started obtaining positive results, it was a very exciting thing. >> still, for more accuracy, the microscopic samples were analyzed using advanced technology including glass tomography and glass spectrometers. allen runs the lab at the eugene resource center. >> you have to look at the

different fragments of it it so that you can really identify which compound it was. the verdict? tobacco and they say the evidence suggests that native americans in northern california, smoked it more than a thousand years ago and perhaps cultivated it for centuries, fat earlier than first imagined. although it's likely they consumed it much less frequently and for a different purpose from smoking as we know it today. it was more of a ceremonial and ritual, and it occurred in a ceremonial and ritual context that has roots deep, deep in time. >> carolyn johnson, abc 7 news. those researchers say that early tobacco had much less nicotine content than today's cigarettes and researchers hope that data can be used in future studies to learn whether the early ritual smoking could have produced health effects. joining me in the studio to shed light on the current realis of smoking risk for the entire bay area. there's serena chin and she's the regional director for the

american lung association. >> thanks for being here. it's great to be here. >> this is your passion. we talked about that number of 13% of californians smoking, but it used to be a lot higher. it used to be 22%, 33% of californians smoked. >> so something is working? >> absolutely. when the first tobacco tax passed it funded a huge health education program that has spread throughout the state and cities and countieses have jumped on the bandwagon because everyone wanted to be part of getting rid of the tobacco epidemic. so cities and counties started passing smoke-free laws. >> i want to get back to that in a moment, but you're talking about education and i don't think a lot of people realize how dangerous it is the secondhand smoke is. >> that's how many non-smoking americans die prematurely from secondhand smoke and that's about losing 13 to 14 years of

their life. >> and what does it do to us> well, mbody? us know what t feels like to be suddenly exposed to secondhand smoke. you start sneezing and eyeses water. for people who are sensitive leak people with asthma might trigger the asthma attack and you would start feeling the congestion in your chest tightness and then have an attack later on where you are really having it and then you have to take medication. more long-term effects could be, you know, have been shown to be lung cancer and then the other amazing piece of data that has come out is as little as 30 minutes of being exposed in a smoky room can cause a fatal heart attack in a non-smoker. so the heart impact is more immediate and, of course, devastating. >> we also hear about this phrase which is new, thirdhand

smoke. >> thirdhand smoke is something we all knew about and someone gave it a catchy term. it's when you don't see the smoking, but you know the smoking has happened and it's more like secondhand smoke. researchers discovered what happens when you have a smoked-in room, and you leave it and don't smoke in the room and you come back and test the afr and some of the research has shown that the air is more toxic 21 days after the smoking happened. >> -- wow! >> -- in the room. who is most at risk? i would imagine children and people with compromised immune system? >> of course, children with the residual secondhand smoke or thirdhand smoke it can turn into a dust a carcinogenic dust and kids crawl on floors and stick their hands in their mouth a lot

doctors are deeply concerned about the kind of nicotine and carcinogen that young children are picking up and putting in their mouth. the other people are people with chronic disease. cancer survivors and heart patients, people with asthma, copd and some folks don't realize that secondhand smoke can't make it worse for people with diabetes. >> oh, my goodness. we talked about education and the laws that are making people move to other -- so what are the smoking laws and where do people smoke if they do want to smoke? we're not in the business of offering up places and we're basically looking at unwanted secondhand smoke. >> okay. >> basically, in a lot of our cities especially here in the bay area we've gone beyond inside the workplace. we have doorway buffer zone laws anywhere from 15 to 25 feet away from doorways. we have outdoor dining laws where in some cities you can't smoke where you're outdoor dining, bus stops and the most

controversial one might be banning smoking inside multi-unit housing. >> all right. serena, we are out of time and i appreciate all of the insight and information. thank you very much for what you're doing. >> thank you for having me. >> all right. we do have to take a short break. when we come back we'll learn about the dangerous connection between smoking and lung cancer. stay

welcome back to "beyond the headlines." we are talking about the risks of smoking tobacco. american women have caught up to men in terms of risk of death from smoking. women are starting to smoke earlier and they're lighting up more often than they did decades ago. it hit a plateau in the 1980s, but for women it's still rising. researchers say the risk of dying of lung cancer 25 times higher for smokerers than for women who have never smoked. dr. david jennings is the

program director of the forensic oncology labthe universi at the of california san francisco. it's great to see you because we've been working it together for several years. i appreciate your expertise. >> for those folks that don't understand the risk of smoking, it doesn't just affect the lungs. it's the whole body. >> right. cheryl, it's great to be here and thank you so much for your help and advocacy to get the word out. smoking is a total body phenomenon and you inhale it through the best drug delivery organ we have which is the multiple football field size airway space of the lung and the carcinogens are absorbed very quickly and they travel throughout the body and they wreak havoc throughout the lungs regarding cancer and also the poorly combusted smoke and the copd and the emphezema is a dominant problem and it causes peripheral vascular disease. if it weren't for the nicotine buzz, nobody would do it. >> i watched this in my own

family because my parents both smoked and like a lot of people i grew up in a smoking household. i can only imagine. i'm wondering if that affects people's intellectual development when you are a kid and exposed to that. >> you see the damages and the side e tekts and not to mention in the first few cigarette puffs you ever take you start gagging and coughing. nobody puts their mouth on the exhaust pipe to get the carbon monoxide. it's all about the drug delivery and big tobacco has known that all along and finally, the truth is being aired and people are realizing that people are trying hard to quit. it's hard to quit, just hard to stay off cigarettes for good. >> i saw that in my own family. some did and some didn't. a new trend are e-cigarettes and what are those and how does that

affect them? >> we don't know what the impacts will be regarding all of these other total body effects. it's a way to give you the nicotine satisfaction so then you don't light up tobacco which carries the carcinogens. so the idea is you would at least be spared much of the carcinogen load which would reduce significantly the rick of emfa zeema and lung cancer. >> you see people who come to you who have a variety of diseases, mostly lung cancer? >> thoracic maling nancy and is in this country and worldwide is lung cancer. 90% of the time it's lung cancer and we specialize in the bleak and challenging tumors like mesothelioma and lung cancer. >> i think that people might be surprised that the survival rates of people being diagnosed with with lung cancer is just 15%. >> right. it's horrible and it hasn't changed in 40 years and that's why you and we and bonnie and everyone else gets up and goes out to change the dog, and break

the stigma and also do awareness and we have made progress. we have ct screening. it took us a decade to get that approved and it's finally approved through cms. it took a $200 million study and 50,000 patients and smokers have the ct scan and show that the ct scan is a 25% more preventable death over just quitting a lobe and that proved 50,000 patients in nine months. >> you mentioned bonnie now, for folks that don't know bonnie, she's from the cancer foundation. you walked into my clinic and you fixed her. >> stage three lung cancer. >> she had 3b in a trekkie spot. she's a fighter and we're a can-do team and we built a program and she was in the thoracic oncology program and she realized she could do more on her own and started

foundation that i helped her start and the rest has been history and she's been trying to change the perpective on lung cancer and drive awareness and build novel clinical trials and novel approaches because, you know, it's never a good time, obviously, to have cancer but it's almost a good time because we're on the cusp of what i think are dramatic changes. >> in just a moment, we do is to take a break in just a moment. take a break in just a moment. we'll have more[ male announcer] pillsbury grands biscuits. delicious, but say i press a few out flat, add some beef, sloppy joe sauce and cheese, fold it all up and boom! delicious unsloppy joes perfect for a school night. pillsbury grands biscuits. make dinner pop. so i should probably get the last roll... yeah but i practiced my bassoon. [ mom ] and i listened. [ brother ] i can do this. [ imitates robot ] everyone deserves ooey, gooey, pillsbury cinnamon rolls. make the weekend pop.

>> welcome back to "beyond the

headlines." california has the second lowest population of smokers in the united states, but the dangers of smoking remain a huge concern. we are joined by dr. david joplin. he's the program director of the thoracic oncology lab at the university of california san francisco. and you started to talk about a lot of changes, improvements and ways of treating lung disease. >> well, it's happening for lung disease, for biology in general, we are with precision medicine which is a buzz word. it hasn't quite lived up to the excitement yet, but it it will. it's just a matter of time and technology and that is the idea of understanding whether it's a cancer of the lung or the colon or the breast and not of the organ and the pathways and the signaling and the stem cell it came from and the carcinogens and other exposures as well as other diseases and emphysema and we can interrogate these issue

fishes and if you, god forbid, are diagnosed with a cancer and it is so important because we can learn so much about the tumor and direct and then guide the therapy based on that. >> you can design a therapy just for that particular tumor? >> right. exactly, so the excitement around these designer therapies or personalized medicine, because clearly that's where it needs to be. no two tumors are the same and a familial history and no two tumors are the same even though they're lumped together and whether they're breast, colon or lung and that these abnormalities and am preification can be targeted and in the research laperrieres, people are going at full throttle tol find novel targets or antibodies that can be very selective to the cancer of that organ?

>> one of the things woe just roll out, something called t-790 m. and the gdfr gene and in particular, women who have nevered, not necessarily the 270 mu advertising is what trips that cancer. a jeff ox for in boston is ready to do a study looking to see if we can measure in your blood in the germ line dna, in other words, all of the cells in your body and not just a lung biopsy and whether you harbor this mute asian and mu advertising, and preliminary data looks pretty tantalizing. >> and they are still accepting families who have lung cancer.

>> correct. >> i have ten seconds left, dr. joplin. for people concerned about having lung cancer, what should they do, real willy quick? >> they should talk to their doctor. if they're over 50, and smoked previously, they should think about ct screening. if they smoked they should have stopped smoking and then they can go to our website and see what kind of exciting research weir doing at the. >> that is it for this segment, but city wuz, please and we'll talk about strategie

♪ turn around ♪ every now and then i get a little bit hungry ♪ ♪ and there's nothing good for me around ♪ ♪ turn around ♪ every now and then i get a little bit tired ♪ ♪ of craving something that i can't have ♪ ♪ turn around, barbara ♪ forever i've been praying for a snack in my life ♪ ♪ and now i have a brownie ending all of my strife ♪ ♪ i finally found the right snack ♪

♪ one of the best things about is that millions of people will qualify for financial assistance. for example, if you're a single person making less than $46,000 a year, or a family of four, earning up to $94,200, you may be eligible for premium assistance. the lower your annual income, the greater financial assistance you will receive. get answers, and get covered. find out if you're eligible and enroll now. at coveredca.com. >> welcome back to "beyond headlines" i'm cheryl jennings. they druggel with ways to do it. a recent survey warns that children and teens are increasingly trying electronic cigarettes. the devices turn liquid nicotine into a vapor that smokers inhale. the centers for disease control found that in 201210% of high school students admitted they

have tried e cigarette, up from 4% the year before. 2% of middle school students also experimented with these p from devices up from 1%. many say they never smoked a real cigarette. >> it's very concerning because nicotine is incredibly addictive and once you get someone hooked on an e cigarette. will they switch over it it a regular cigarette? we don't know the answer and until you answer that you don't want to get these products into the hands of children. >> the the food and drug administration is expected to announce a plan to start reg r lating e-cigarettes just like other tobacco products. joining us in the studio on suggestions for ways to kick the habit is rosalynn moya and tobacco coordinator at an adolescent treatment center in alameda count pep thank you for being here today. >> thank you. i'm also co-chair for the tobacco-free coalition and the

other drug network. >> you busy lady. >> tell us about the work you do fotobacco-free coalition. >> well, i work also with teens and i do a lot of group in high school to help high school students who want to quit. some of them may come -- they may come in for information or they just might want to reduce their cigarettes and if they want, i can help them to quit. >> you go out into the community, right some. >> i go to all of the high schools that want me to come there and do quick groups. it's a contact with the department of education and the unified school district. they want to have us come out there. >> and you mentioned that you work with young people who are trying to quit. it must be so hard because everyone i've ever known who tried to quit, half can and the other can't. it's tough. >> that's why when they come to

the group i try to make it a very welcoming environment, and have pizza. we recognize their desire to want to quit because it's a great thing to want to do that and to care about their health. >> what's the first step. basically, i want to what they get out of it, their goals and i pretend to be the big coach. recognize what other challenges that's keeping them from smoking and also what are the things in their life that we can use to leverage that would help them to quit. >> what would be an example will? smokeen they smoke a cigarette they may smoke, so instead

letti letting, like my passers. can you describe those? >> for people who want to quit and they're get withdrawals from nicotine, there are great fda-approved out there and nicotine patches, gum and lozenges and there are also some that are not nicotine replacement, but but from a gologiical, and all of that's available to help people quit. >> can you use that with students, too? >> those are over the counter. if they want to get it they can go to the store and get it. it's more. what i tell them is all they're doing is introducing anything new. tell us about the e cigarettes and what does the public know

about those? >> they're very easy to get and i see them on the counters and registers and gas stations andes of just talking to my 14-year-old niece who is in ninth grade now and she was telling me how they can get them at school very easily. they like to do these smoke. before we wrap up. we have 30 seconds. what do you want people to know about the health benefits of quitting smoking? >> within 20 minutes of quitting people will feel their heart rate go back to normal and their blood pressure go back to normal and after 10 years the person who has been smoke will have the same cancer, almost when wants to get smoking, thai can quit it any time. and feel the effects very quickly. >> we appreciate it.

thank you for the work you're doing. that is all of the time we have for today and my thanks to all of the wonderful guests. for more information on the program go to our website, abc7.com. we are also on facebook at abc 7 community affairs and follow me on twitter @cherylabcjennings. we'll see you next time. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

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