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 andrevention the cdc also reports that nearly 13% of the adult population in california a 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 sming 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 arceologist, 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 hunter gatherers probably figured out the special properties of the plant quite eay. >> 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. th 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 cpound 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 phaps cultivated it for centies, far earlier than first imagined. although it'sikely they consumed it much less frequently

and for a differt purpose from smoking as we know it today. it was more of a ceremonial and ritual, and itoccurred 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 future studies 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. talked about that number of 13% of californians smoking, but it used to be a lot higher. it usedo be 22%, 33% of californians smoked. >> so something is working? >>absolutely.

when the first tobac 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 ws. >> 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 secondnd smoke is. >> that's how manynon-smoking ericans die prematurely from secondhand smoke and that's about losing 13 to 14 years of their life. >> and what does it do to somebody? >> well, most of us know what it 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 t

congestion in your chest tightness and then have an attack later on where you are really having it d then you have to take medication. more long-term effects could be, you know, have en shown to be lung cancer and tn 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 rase which is new, irdhand smoke. >> thirdhand smoke is something we all knew about and someone ga it a catchy rm. 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 smoked-in room, and y leave it and don't smoke in the room and you come back and test the afr d some of the research has shown th the air is more toxic 21 days after the smoking happened >> -- wow! >> -- in the room. who is most at ri? 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 the hands in their mouth a lot doctors are deeply concerned about the ki 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 youcan't smoke where you're outdoor dining, bus stops and t 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 ahort break. when we come back we'll learn

about the dangerous cnection about the dangerous cnection between smoking and lung mmmm. ring ring! ring ring! progresso. i forgive you. you do? it's ok that your soup tastes like my homemade. it's our slow simmer vegetables and tender white meat chicken. apology accepted. i'm watching you, soup people. this week at safeway, buy four progresso traditional soups for five dollars with your club card.

> welcome back to eyond 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 smokerershan for women who have never smoked. dr. david jennings is the program director of the forensic oncology lab at the university of california san francisco. it's grea 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 body. >> right. cheryl, it's great to be here and thank you so mucfor 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 absorbe very quickly and they travel througut the body and they wreak havoc throughout the lungs regarding ncer and also the poorly combusted smoke and the copd and the emphezema is a dominant problem and it causes peipheral 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 dmages 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 l along and finally, the truth is being aired and people are realizing that people are trying hard to quit. it's hard to quit,ust 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 ose 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 nicote satisfaction so then you don't light up tobacco which carries the carcinogens. so the idea is you would at lea be spared much of the carcinogen load which would reduce significantlyhe rick of emfa zeema and lung cancer. >> you see people who come to you who have aariety 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 mesotheoma 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 andit 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 alsodo awareness and we have made progress. we ve 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 patits and smokers have the ct scan and show that t ct scan is a 25% more preventable death over justuitting 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 r. >> 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 oology program and she realized she could do more on herown 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 awarene and build novel clinical trials and novel approaches because, you know, it's never a good time, obviously, to have cancer but it's alst a good time because we're on the cusp of what i think areramatic changes. >> in just a moment, we do is to take a break in just a

>> 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 we as other diseases and emphysema and we cannterrogate 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 it didn't have 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 rds, 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 prett tantalizing. >> and they are still accepting families who ha lung cancer. >> correct. >> i have ten seconds left, dr. joplin. for people concerned about

having lung cancer, what suld they do, real willy quick? >> they should talk to their doctor. if they're over 50, and sked previously, they should think about ct screening. if theymoked they should have stopped smoking and then they can go to ourwebsite 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 for over0,000 california foster children,

extra curricular activities help provide a sense of identity and a path to success. joining the soccer team. getting help with math. going to prom. i want to learn to swim. it's hard to feel normal, when you can't do the normal things. to help, sleep train is collecting donations for the extra activities that, for most kids, are a normal part of growing up. not everyone can be a foster parent... but anyone can help a foster child.

>> 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 battery-powered devices up from 1%. many say they never smoked a real cigarette. >> it's very concerning because

nicotine is incredibly addictive and onc you get someone hooked on an e cigarette. will they switch over it it a regular cigarette? we don't know the answer ad 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 li other tobacco products. joining us in the studio on suggestions for ways to kick the habit is rosalynn moya and tobacco coordinator at an dolescent treatment center in alameda count pep thank you for being here today. >> thank y. i'm also co-chair for the tobacco-free coalition and the other drug network. >>ou busy lady. >> tell us about the work you do for the tobacco-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 wantme to come there and do quick groups. it's a contact with the department of education and the unified school strict. 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 w tried to quit, half can andthe other can't. it's tough. >>hat's why when they come to the group iry to make it a very welcoming environment, and have pizza. we recognize their desire to want to quit becauset'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 wat other challenges that's keeping them from smoking and also what are the things in tir life that we can use to levere that would help them to quit. >> what would be an example wil? >> some of them would talk about when they smoke a cigarte, they may smoke, so instead of letti letting, like my passe. can you describe those? >> for people who want to quit and they're getting withdrawals from nicotine, there are great fda-approved out there and nicotinepatches, gum and lozenges and there are also some

that are not nicotine replacemen 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 n. 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 d 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 toll 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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