The Publican Party in Scotland which hopes to attract the votes of angry smokers, launched its election campaign, claiming it could win up to four seats in the Scottish Parliament in May.

The Publican Party, which will contest the election on the simple premise of a partial lifting of the smoking ban, announced it would be standing candidates in four of Scotland's eight regions. Kit Fraser, the chairman of the party and a publican from Inverness, said smokers were being treated like cattle and made to stand outside to smoke.

Mr Fraser said: We all want clean air, but we believe there should be a separate ventilated room for smokers in pubs.

He added: There is an unholy alliance between the media and government in Scotland, they are both run by the middle classes. There are a lot of working people out there who, when they finish their working day, want to relax with a pint and a cigarette, and they don't want to be treated like second-class citizens.

Source: The Scotsman 23 February 2007
Link to article: http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=288622007

In Kentucky Debbie Coulter, 52, shudders when she recalls a recent incident in which she fell asleep smoking and her bathrobe caught fire. It scares me to death, said Coulter, whose husband helped extinguish the fire. I could have lost everything - my husband would have had to bury me.

Ten people died at a recent house fire in the town after, investigators believe, a lit cigarette set a chair aflame. That fire has sparked calls from fire prevention advocates to require all cigarettes sold in Kentucky to be fire safe, or made to extinguish when dropped or not inhaled for a period.

We should act quickly to make sure we don't have those kinds of tragedies in the future, said Lorraine Carli from the National Fire Protection Association.

Carli says the push to switch to fire-safe cigarettes is not anti-smoking, it is to improve public safety. It has little to do with smoking and has everything to do with saving lives, she said.

The Kentucky Senate passed a measure that would require the conversion to fire-safe cigarettes during the week.

In 2004, New York became the first state to require fire-safe cigarettes to be sold, and fire officials there have noticed a difference. We are comfortable that the `fire-safe' cigarettes have reduced the number of fires and fatalities, said Eamon Moynihan, from the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control.

Norman Shipp, 70 wants to quit smoking, but if he can't, he would buy fire-safe cigarettes. He said he had burned holes in two pairs of jeans by falling asleep with lit cigarettes. Those cigarettes would be a good deal, he said.

Source: The Guardian 22 February 2007
Link to article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6432200,00.html

Genetic factors play an important role in addiction to cigarettes, suggest scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The smoking-related genes identified normally facilitate communication between nerve cells in the brain. One gene in particular, the alpha-5 nicotinic cholinergic receptor (CHRNA5) gene, was a very strong indicator of risk for nicotine dependence.

"An imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory activity in the brain may predispose people to addiction, such as alcoholism, drug dependence or nicotine dependence," says Laura Jean Bierut, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and principal investigator of both studies. "The Neurexin gene we've identified is really a key factor in the balance between inhibition and excitatory activity in neurons."

More than half of the people who smoke at least five packs in their lives - 100 cigarettes - go on to become nicotine dependent. But about 15 percent of people who smoke that amount won't develop any symptoms of nicotine dependence. "These people can give up smoking at any time," Bierut says. "They have no cravings. They smoke socially."

Earlier research suggested that smoking behaviours tend to cluster in families, and large studies of twins previously concluded that the clustering is partly related to genetic factors. An important aspect of these latest studies is that rather than comparing smokers to non-smokers, the researchers compared addicted smokers to non-addicted smokers.

"You're not at risk for nicotine dependence unless you've smoked," Bierut says. "You have to study smokers to identify the people who are at risk of becoming nicotine dependent versus those who smoke but can give it up at any time."

Bierut says it's important to find genetic factors related to nicotine dependence because so much of the population continues to smoke, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that it's harmful. And she believes some of the genes her research team has identified will help scientists to develop therapies for smokers who just can't seem to quit with existing treatments.

Source: Medical News Today, 21 February 2007
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/2q98z9

From the people who brought you cigarettes, here is another addictive and unhealthy product. Stick a pouch of tobacco in your mouth and get a nicotine kick that way.

It does not sound that great an idea, does it? As smoking slowly declines in the developed world, cigarette companies are seizing on snuff tobacco as an alternative. British American Tobacco, Reynolds American and Philip Morris are all diversifying into smokeless products, an area cornered in the US by the US Smokeless Tobacco Company, which makes Skoal Bandits.

Europe has been here before and unhappily so. When UST introduced Skoal Bandits to the UK in the 1980s, it faced an outcry over its apparent attempt to hook youngsters on sweet tobacco. Tobacco pouches were banned in the UK in 1990 - although chewing tobacco remains legal - and the ban was extended across the European Union two years later.

Groups such as the World Health Organisation and the American Cancer Society think it is wise to remain suspicious of so-called oral snuff. A pouch tucked between the upper lip and gum delivers a bigger dose of nicotine than a cigarette, while chewing tobacco, still widely used in south Asia, causes cancer of the mouth and lips.

It is, however, time to rethink. Tobacco regulation in Europe is bizarrely inverted: there are strict controls on smoking cessation aids such as nicotine patches; there is an outright ban on snuff; chewing tobacco is legal, if hard to find; but cigarettes, undoubtedly the most hazardous way to consume nicotine, are sold at every corner shop.

As it happens, Europe has already experimented with the legalisation of oral snuff. Sweden is the only EU country where snus (pronounced "snooze") - the local name for oral stuff - has been legal since the 1992 ban. It was given an opt-out from the ban when it joined the EU in 1995, because oral snuff is widely consumed both there and in Finland.

Sweden has also been the most successful of all industrialised nations in reducing smoking and deaths from lung cancer among men in the past two decades. Only 16 per cent of Swedish men now smoke, compared with 27 per cent in the UK and 47 per cent in Japan, and the rate has fallen steadily as Swedes have taken to snus as an alternative to smoking.

True, Sweden is often an outlier in matters of health and environment. It sometimes seems as if the world would be a better place if we were all Swedish or we all lived there (even if it would be a bit of a squeeze). Only the other day, Sweden came second to the Netherlands in a Unicef study on which industrialised country was the best place to be a child.

But the Swedish experiment should be taken seriously. One reason for the comparative benefits of snus is that Swedish Match, the biggest maker of the stuff, has worked hard to reduce its carcinogens. It does not lead to smoking-related conditions such as bronchitis and has largely been cleared of causing cancer (with the exception of pancreatic cancer).

What, after all, is the purpose here? After two decades of concerted efforts to reduce smoking through health warnings, bans in public places and hefty taxation, governments have little to show. Smoking has edged downwards in industrialised countries but is rising rapidly enough in developing nations for tobacco to remain a growth business.

There have been few better places to invest your money over the past few years: BAT's shares have more than tripled in value in five years. Tobacco companies have deflected legal liability in the US by reaching settlements with states and are gaining millions of new customers in countries where their brands connote wealth and sophistication.

In short, telling people not to smoke on the grounds that it is extremely dangerous has mostly failed. Under these circumstances, luring them towards a safer form of consumption of nicotine is worth a try. "Nobody can put his hand on his heart and claim that snus is harmless but it is a lot less harmful than cigarettes," says Adrian Payne, head of corporate social responsibility at BAT.

We should no doubt be wary of anything that tobacco companies push. Much of the research in the US in support of oral snuff is financed by, you've guessed it, UST. But it also has some impartial and even some surprising backers. The Royal College of Physicians has supported snus as an alternative to cigarette smoking and so does ASH, the British anti-smoking organization.

Deborah Arnott, director of ASH, says it wants snus to be made legal only if it matches the safety standard established by Swedish Match and is marketed to adult smokers as a way of kicking cigarettes. Given the murky history of Skoal Bandits, safeguards are needed but it is absurd to stick with a blanket ban in Europe.

The EU will soon have a chance to act. A committee of experts is examining the record of snus and will report to the European Commission this year. Any effort to alter the directive would face difficulty because it would need to be approved by the European parliament, which is likely to be suspicious of anything that smacks of endorsing tobacco.

Well, tough. Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils, no matter how compromised it makes you feel. Smoking tobacco is a deadly pastime that no government has yet found an acceptable way to eradicate. If the Swedes have come up with a safer alternative, it behoves other countries to give it a chance.

Financial Times, 5 March 2007
http://tinyurl.com/2eyso3

We need your help for a survey on whether it is better to quit smoking gradually or abruptly. Please take 5 minutes to answer on:
http://www.stop-tabac.ch/en/Abrupt/

German scientists are proposing to temporarily introduce genes into tobacco plants and hijack the machinery of the plant cells to produce medicines, vaccines and even antibodies. The hope is that tobacco can turn over a new leaf' and start curing diseases such as cancer rather than causing them.

Medicines from genetically engineered sources are not new - insulin produced by modified bacteria has been used to treat diabetes since 1982. However, the size and complexity of protein-based pharmaceuticals that bacteria can produce is limited.

Existing manufacturing technologies rely on permanently introducing a foreign gene into yeast or animal cells, then persuading the cell to translate that gene into the protein product. The MagnIcon process, developed by Icon Genetics, can be completed in two weeks in standard laboratories and greenhouses, yielding up to 500 times the amount of drug in a fraction of the time.

The choice of host plant is a key consideration - unlike many plants, tobacco tolerates foreign proteins well and has sizeable leaves, making it ideal for large-scale production.

However, it will still be a few years before we see plant-made drugs in the pharmacy.

Sources: ASH Daily News (www.ash.org.uk) + The Telegraph 6 March 2007
Link to article: http://tinyurl.com/ypcrpe

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that heavy smokers who reduce their number of daily cigarettes still take in two to three times more total toxins per cigarette than light smokers.

The study, published in the December issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, cites compensatory smoking as the chief reason for the increased exposure despite decreased cigarette use.

We found that the more that heavy smokers reduced their smoking, the more likely they were to increase their intake of toxicants per cigarette, presumably because they took more frequent puffs or inhaled deeper or longer on each cigarette to compensate for fewer cigarettes smoked, said Dorothy Hatsukami, Ph.D., lead researcher on the study. This indicates that they are trying to maintain a specific level of nicotine in their bodies.

Our results are consistent with other studies that show that people who decrease their smoking by 50% or more do not experience a comparable reduction in risk for lung cancer because they tend to smoke their fewer cigarettes more intensely, Hatsukami said. The best way to lower the risk for tobacco-caused premature death is to stop smoking altogether.

Source: Medical News Today 18 December 2006
Link to article: http://tinyurl.com/u9j73

[ash.org.uk] New research from Sweden shows that smokers take almost 8 days more sick leave every year than non-smokers. [1] This large, nationally representative study provides the best evidence to date that smoking affects productivity. Across the whole sample, the average number of days taken as sick leave was 25. Smokers took almost 11 extra days off sick compared to non-smoking colleagues. Adjusting for other factors such as socioeconomic status and the type of job undertaken, brought the figure down to just under 8 on average.

Commenting on the study, Deborah Arnott, Director of the health campaigning charity ASH, said:

This research shows clearly that smokers take significantly more time off sick smoking but what is particularly interesting is that once people stop smoking, their productivity immediately improves.
The smokefree legislation will bring enormous health and economic benefits for employers and employees alike. In the run-up to the workplace smoking ban employers should provide as much support as possible for their staff who need help in quitting smoking.

The benefits of quitting smoking cannot be over-stressed and the positive effects can be felt quickly. [2] A non-smoking workforce is therefore more likely to be a productive, healthy workforce.

Notes and links:
[1] Lundborg P. Does smoking increase sick leave? Evidence using a register data on Swedish workers. Tobacco Control 2007; 16: 114-118 [2] See ASH Factsheet no 11 Stopping smoking: The benefits and aids to quitting.
http://www.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets/html/fact11.html

About 18 percent of pregnant Indiana women smoked in 2004, significantly higher than the 10.8 percent national average, state health officials reported Monday.

"We have pregnancy smoking rates in some counties in Indiana as high as 33 percent," State Health Commissioner Judy Monroe said in a news release. "More troubling is that in 72 of Indiana's 92 counties, the rate is higher than the state average.

Up to 14 percent of preterm and low-birth-weight births can be attributed to maternal smoking, according to Jan Arnold, state director of program services for March of Dimes, Indiana Chapter. . . .

In light of the newly released information, Karla Sneegas, executive director of Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation, urged passage of legislation to raise the cigarette tax by 25 cents per pack. It is now 55.5 cents per pack.

Jump to full article:
http://www.tobacco.org/news/244643.html
Indianapolis (IN) Star, 2007-04-03

We need your help for a study of whether it is better to quit smoking abruptly or gradually.
This survey will help us to devise better smoking cessation interventions. Only daily cigarette smokers can take part.
Please take 5 minutes to answer on:
http://www.stop-tabac.ch/en/Abrupt/

Despite the horror of Chernobyl, the health risk from radiation in such accidents is not much greater than everyday hazards such as gaining weight and passive smoking, a new report claims.

The report, from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in London, appears in the online peer-review journal, Biomed Central.

Its author is a respected scientist and mathematical modeller, Jim Smith.

"The mortality risk to populations exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident may be no higher than that for other more common risk factors such as air pollution or passive smoking," says his report.

"Radiation exposures experienced by the most exposed group of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to an average loss of life expectancy significantly lower than that caused by severe obesity or active smoking."

Mr Smith has visited the area around Chernobyl frequently, and studied the fates of thousands of people who lived nearby.

The nuclear plant, in the Ukraine, exploded in April 1985.

The World Health Organisation has estimated that the direct death toll from Chernobyl will be 9,000. Fewer than fifty people have died, but several thousand contracted thyroid cancer as a result of the accident.

http://www.irishhealth.com/?level=4&id=11274

More and more Asians are becoming smokers, but very few are making an effort to quit, an international team of researchers reports.

Public health efforts, the researchers say, must focus on getting the word out about the health dangers of smoking and helping people to kick the habit, noting that if efforts only target preventing people from starting smoking in the first place, "160 million current smokers will die before 2050, with the vast majority of deaths occurring in China."

To analyze patterns of smoking in Asia, where the habit has only relatively recently become established, as well as in Australia and New Zealand, Dr. Rachel Huxley of The George Institute for International Health in Sydney, Australia and colleagues reviewed 31 studies on smoking, quitting and lung cancer. The studies included a total of 480,125 people.

Awareness of the health risks of smoking is low in China, the researchers say, noting that in one study they reviewed, 70 percent of Chinese smokers called the health dangers of smoking "negligible" and just 4 percent thought the habit was related to heart disease.

One study found that two-thirds of UK smokers expressed a desire to quit, they note, while nearly three-quarters of China's 320 million smokers said they had no intention of doing so.

Jump to full article: Reuters, 2007-04-02
http://www.tobacco.org/news/244653.html
Author: SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, online March 16, 2007.