The HealthCentral Network, Inc. (http://www.HealthCentral.com) today announced the launch of StopSmokingConnection.com, a website dedicated to helping smokers successfully quit. The site provides expert advice, reliable medical information and a community support network that will aid smokers in their quest to overcome addiction.

Former smoker and award-winning author Anne Mitchell will write a weekly blog for the site. Mitchell's book, Give It Up! Stop smoking for life, was published in 2003. Mitchell is also trained as a facilitator for the American Cancer Society's FreshStart stop-smoking program and will use her training and her struggle with smoking cessation to offer advice and support for the site's community members. Source: www.tobacco.or and PR Newswire Date: 2007-12-04 Author: SOURCE The HealthCentral Network URL: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-03-2007/0004715685&EDATE=

Smoking is having a considerable impact on developing nations with the top ten countries with the highest smoking rates amongst its population losing more than 6.5 per cent of their gross national income (GNI).

The top ten countries with the highest smoking rates which were identified by Forbes magazine include Kenya, Turkey, Namibia, Yemen, Guinea, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Mongolia, Nauru and Sao Tome and Principe.

While the smoking population is half what it was a generation ago in the US and other industrialised nations, with only one in five using tobacco, it is very different in Africa and East Asia.

Smoking rates of 40 per cent or more of the population are common in these regions and medical services are limited.

In Turkey, for example, 44 per cent of its 71.5 million population smokes, draining USD 22.4 billion annually which accounts for 5.8 per cent of its GNI of 384.3 billion dollars.

Around 45 per cent of Yemen's population smokes which accounts for 6.2 per cent of its GNI.
Tom Glynn, Director of International Care Control for the American Cancer Society has been quoted as saying. "In Africa, health care systems that we have in industrialised countries don't exist, at least not in the form that we are used to."
Most studies conclude a cigarette costs 10 minutes of life and a pack-a-day smoker (20 cigarettes a day) loses 13.9 per cent of a year because of smoking which has a considerable impact upon medical services which are limited.

Source: http://www.ash.org.uk and The Economic Times, 06 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2h7qq7

The team of Stop-tabac.ch wishes you a smoke free and Happy New Year !

Conclusion:
Active smoking is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Future research should attempt to establish whether this association is causal and to clarify its mechanisms.

Source: Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
Vol. 298 No. 22, December 12, 2007 JAMA. 2007;298(22):2654-2664.
Date: 2007-12-12
Author: Carole Willi, MD; Patrick Bodenmann, MD, MScPH; William A. Ghali, MD, MPH; Peter D. Faris, PhD; Jacques Cornuz, MD, MPH, 992-2000
URL: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/298/22/2654

Anti smoking campaigners have criticised a new product Less Smoke Smell (LSS), a new technology launched by Japan Tobacco International, the world's third largest tobacco company.

The Mirage cigarettes, a new product exclusive to Canada, is promising to have "less lingering tobacco smoke smell in an enclosed area when compared to a typical Canadian cigarette."

Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada said, "The smell of cigarette smoke is what lets people know to get out of the way."

Callard has sent a letter to Health Canada's Tobacco Control Program. She argues that the Mirage adverts contravene section 20 of the Tobacco Act, which states that no person can promote tobacco products by means "that are likely to create an erroneous impression about the characteristics, health effects or health hazards of the tobacco product or its emissions."

Andre Benoit, JTI-Macdonald's vice-president of corporate affairs and communication, says the cigarette paper for the new product has a vanilla aroma used to improve the smell of the smoke.

He says neither the adverts or packaging indicate Mirage cigarettes are less hazardous to health than other varieties.
Japan Tobacco has applied for a Canadian patent for its smell masking technique. The patent's title is "Method of fixing flavourant which improves sidestream smoke smell of tobacco and cigarette." It states that a smell improving agent comprising an ethanol or propylene glycol solution is applied to the cigarette paper.

Rob Cunningham, a lawyer with the Canadian Cancer Society, says the Mirage cigarettes undermine efforts made to ensure people smoke outside their homes and vehicles so others are not exposed to secondhand smoke.

"This is an example of the bottomless creativity of tobacco companies to market their products," said Cunningham. "Give them an inch, and they take 10 miles."

Sources: http://www.ash.org.uk and Canada.com, 10 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3y5sy7

Prosecutors in nine states from the United States, said that Camel adverts using illustrations promoting rock music in the Rolling Stone magazine, violate the tobacco industry's nine-year-old promise not to use cartoons to sell cigarettes.
Attorneys general in at least nine states planned to file lawsuits against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co about advertising for Camel cigarettes in the November edition of Rolling Stone, officials said.
The section combines pages of Camel cigarette adverts with pages of magazine produced illustrations on the theme of independent rock music.
'Their latest nine page advertising spread in Rolling Stone, filled with cartoons, flies in the face of their pledge to halt all tobacco marketing to children,' Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett said in a news release.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown called the publication a 'rather clever piece of advertising.'
Brown said, "We have to call them to task, they agreed not to do these kinds of things ever since Joe Camel."

The landmark 1998 settlement between 46 states and the tobacco industry reimburses states for smoking related health care costs.

In an effort to prevent the industry from pitching to minors, the agreement includes a provision against using cartoons in advertisements.
The cigarette adverts in Rolling Stone tout its 'The Farm: Free Range Music' campaign and support for independent record labels while using photographic images of people in 1950s dress, farm animals, an old-fashioned tractor and furnishings like a phonograph against a farm backdrop. Those pages fold out to reveal a four-page illustrated spread of an 'Indie Rock Universe' with animals, imaginary figures and other drawings.
The lawsuits also seek removal of the advert campaign images from all Web sites and promotions, including the packaging of a related music CD that was mailed out in some states, and money from R.J. Reynolds for anti-smoking adverts.

Source: www.ash.org.uk and Yahoo Financial News, 05 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2q463c

Over the last few months the troubles for Pfizer's smoking cessation drug, Chantix, have been growing by leaps and bounds. The shooting death of Dallas musician Carter Albrecht sparked public interest here in the U.S. and in the UK and Europe their version of the same drug, marketed as Champix, was thrown into the public eye after the highly publicized suicide of well known television editor Omer Jama shortly after starting the drug. This week a new report shows that claims of suicidal thoughts associated with Champix doubled in just a 60 days period in Europe.

According to that same report, in a clinical trial with Champix, the drug had six times the number of serious adverse reactions as a similar drug, Zyban. Pfizer used Zyban as a comparison in clinical trials to show the success rate of its drug.

The FDA is currently in the process of investigating adverse events reported in the U.S. and just last week the Australian equivalent to the FDA announced that when the drug hits the Australian market in January of 2008 it will contain a warning that some patients have experienced depression, agitation, and suicidal thoughts.

Source: www.tobacco.org and InjuryBoard.com
Date: 2007-12-14
Author: Scott Kappes
URL: http://galvestonbay.injuryboard.com/defective-drugs/chantix-suicidal-ideation-reports-doubled-in-two-months.php?googleid=13837

Researchers say that people who quit smoking, drink moderately, exercise and eat five servings of fruit and vegetables each day live on average 14 years longer than people who adopt none of these behaviours.

Overwhelming evidence has shown that these contribute to healthier and longer lives, but the new study actually quantified their combined impact, the British team said.

The researchers wrote in the journal PLoS Medicine that, "These results may provide further support for the idea that even small differences in lifestyle may make a big difference to health in the population and encourage behaviour change."

Between 1993 and 1997 the researchers questioned 20,000 healthy British men and women about their lifestyles. They also tested every participant's blood to measure vitamin C intake, an indicator of how much fruit and vegetables people ate.

The participants, aged 45-79, were then assigned a score of between 0 and 4, giving one point for each of the healthy behaviours.

After allowing for age and other factors that could affect the likelihood of dying, the researchers determined that people with a score of 0 were four times as likely to have died, particularly from cardiovascular disease.

The researchers, who tracked deaths among the participants until 2006, also said a person with a health score of 0 had the same risk of dying as someone with a health score of 4 who was 14 years older.

The lifestyle change with the biggest benefit was giving up smoking, which led to an 80 percent improvement in health, the study found.

Moderate drinking and keeping active brought the same benefits, Kay-Tee Khaw and colleagues at the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council said.

The researchers wrote,"Armed with this information, public health officials should now be in a better position to encourage behaviour changes likely to improve the health of middle-aged and older people."

Sources: ASH daily nws (www.ash.org.uk) and Reuters Health, 08 January 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/25zl6f

A LEADING health campaigner is urging people not to shun an anti-smoking "wonder drug" at the centre of a health probe.

When Champix was launched last year it was hailed as the most effective weapon in the fight to give up smoking, with 22.5 per cent of its users having stayed off the dreaded weed 12 months later, compared to 16pc who used nicotine-replacement therapy.

It has now emerged the drug is being monitored by the Government's watchdog Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) after users documented a number of possible side-effects, while there were fears it was linked to the deaths of seven people.

Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh -- the campaign for a Smoke Free North East -- said: "We are talking about a fairly unhealthy section of the population anyway . . . one in two will die because of smoking.

Source: www.tobacco.org and Newcastle Chronicle & Journal (uk)
Date: 2008-01-06
Author: Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun
URL: http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/sundaysun/news/tm_headline=smokers-urged-to-keep-taking-pills%26method=full%26objectid=20316976%26siteid=50081-name_page.html

A group of researchers have found that smokers have about double the risk of tuberculosis, when compared to non-smokers.

Though the evidence was more limited due to a substantially smaller number of studies, they also found evidence of an association between smoking, passive smoking and indoor air pollution and TB infection, disease and mortality.

They advocate larger rigorously designed studies in the future to substantiate that association.

"Since tobacco smoking has increased in developing countries where TB is prevalent, a considerable portion of the global burden of TB may be attributed to tobacco. Importantly, this also implies that smoking cessation might provide benefits for global TB control in addition to those for chronic diseases," said Majid Ezzati, an associate professor of international health at Harvard School of Public Health .

Sources: www.tobacco.org and Hindustan Times
Date: 2008-01-06, 556-6129
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=68cdcb0b-b35b-4c3a-81ae-f2f6652f68e5&ParentID=9ea5e79a-2a14-48a3-a0fa-4872b243e873&MatchID1=4617&TeamID1=3&TeamID2=4&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1163&PrimaryID=4617&Headline=Smokers%20at%20double%20risk%20of%20TB

After an in-depth study among young people in Bavaria, German researchers found a clear and alarming link between smoking and the desire to kill oneself.

The investigation, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, is based on data from a detailed psychology study launched in 1995 among 3,021 people aged 14-24 who lived in Munich.

They were interviewed again four years later, when 2,548 of the volunteers responded.
A quarter of these individuals never smoked, 40 per cent were defined as occasional smokers, 17 per cent as "non-dependent" regular smokers and 19 per cent as addicted smokers.
Among non smokers, nearly 15 per cent reported having had suicidal thoughts, defined as making plans to kill himself or herself or spending two weeks or longer with the wish to die.
The rate was around 20 per cent among occasional and non-dependent smokers, but among dependent smokers, suicidal ideation was 30 per cent.
An even more pronounced pattern was found among the 69 individuals who had actually tried to commit suicide.
Only 0.6 percent of the non-smokers said they had sought to end their life; among non-dependent smokers, the rate was 1.6 percent; but among addicted smokers, it was 6.4 per cent.
To ensure that the results were not being skewed by other factors, the researchers stripped out alcohol use, illicit drug use and a history of depression among the volunteers.
They found the result was the same: the more a person smoked, the likelier he or she would have suicidal ideation.
The authors, led by Thomas Bronisch of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich said, "Campaigns for reducing smoking should also point to the elevated risk of suicidality for occasional and regular smokers."
They acknowledge that there were limitations to their study.
One was that in the four-year follow-up, no suicides actually occurred, so that the conclusions of the study are based on suicidal ideas and attempts rather than the completion of the act.
Previous investigations have likewise seen an association between suicide and smoking but also left unsettled the big question as to whether smoking causes the malaise or is just a symptom of it.
Some research suggests that nicotine depletes a vital pleasure giving brain chemical called serotonin, and the risk could be higher among individuals with a genetic susceptibility to this effect.
Meanwhile, other research has suggested that tobacco smoke may contain antidepressant compounds that may encourage depressed individuals to smoke.
Sources: ASH: www.ash.org.uk and AFP, 09 January 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/33rnte

An anti-smoking law which entered into force two years ago has helped 1.6 million Spaniards to stop smoking, media reported Wednesday. The law, which prohibits smoking at work and in public buildings and limits it in bars and restaurants, is not always respected, but has nevertheless cut cigarette sales, according to the daily El Pais.

The law has proved most effective in places of work. Several hundred commercial establishments, university faculties, hospitals and other places are under investigation over allegedly breaking the law.

Meanwhile in Portugal, bar and restaurant owners began adjusting to a similar law that entered into force from January 1.

Source: www.tobacco.org and Earth Times
Date: 2008-01-02
URL: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/167704.html

The dramatic decrease in high school smoking reported today by New York City sets an example for the nation and shows what can be achieved when committed leaders aggressively implement proven tobacco prevention measures. We applaud Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden for their leadership in implementing a comprehensive, aggressive and sustained tobacco prevention program. These smoking declines will benefit all New Yorkers by saving lives, improving health and reducing health care costs for generations to come. According to the data released today, New York City has reduced high school smoking by more than half over the past six years, from 17.6 percent in 2001 to 8.5 percent in 2007. While a comparable national rate has yet to be released for 2007, New York City's high school smoking rate is nearly two-thirds lower than the most recent national rate of 23 percent in 2005, and it is lower than any reported state high school smoking rate except for Utah, which had a high school smoking rate of 7.4 percent in 2005. New York City's adult smoking rate of 17.5 percent in 2006 is also significantly lower than the national rate of 20.8 percent.

Most notably, New York City has continued to significantly reduce high school smoking rates in recent years while such declines have stalled nationally since about 2003. New York City has succeeded because it is one of the few places in the country that have implemented all three of the most effective policies to reduce tobacco use recommended by public health experts: a high tobacco tax, a comprehensive smoke-free workplace law and well-funded tobacco prevention and cessation programs. New York City has also recognized the need to sustain these programs over time so every generation is protected.

Sources: www.tobacco.org and PR Newswire
Date: 2008-01-02
Author: SOURCE Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids
URL: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-02-2008/0004729560&EDATE=

Research in Bulgaria has found that more than half of pregnant women in Bulgaria continue to smoke.
Although the pregnant women were aware of the harm inflicted on their child, 64 per cent failed to give up, with many claiming to cut down the number of cigarettes they smoke instead of completely stopping.
The research was carried out among female smokers between 22 and 53 years of age.
Lack of will was the main factor that prevented pregnant women from giving up.
Despite not having been able to stop smoking during their pregnancy, 90 per cent of the women interviewed thought that Bulgaria should reduce smoking in public places.

Sources: ASH news (www.ash.org.uk) and Sofia Echo, 09 January 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2n8kyd

The anti-smoking drug Chantix (champix in the UK) will in future carry a warning about the possibility of suicidal thoughts for those who take it
Drug company Pfizer updated the drug's labelling after receiving hundreds of complaints about the drug's side effects.
The updated Chantix label will include a warning that patients taking the drug should be observed for serious neuropsychiatric symptoms.
These symptoms include changes in behaviour, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviour.
Although the warning is similar to the one issued in November last year, it is more prominently displayed in order get the attention of doctors.
Pfizer says there is no scientific evidence linking Chantix to depression and a causal relationship between Chantix and the reported symptoms has not been established.
The drug company said that in some cases an association could not be excluded but the scenario has been complicated by the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal in patients who stopped smoking and also that not all patients with these symptoms had quit smoking.
Pfizer says in controlled clinical trials with more than 5,000 patients treated with Chantix, such changes in behaviour occurred at a rate comparable to placebo treated patients and there were no suicides attributed to the drug.

Source: ASH daily news (www.ash.org.uk) and News-Medical, 21 January 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/yoxyz7