Tobacco.org

Agung Laksono kicks smoking habit 

Anyone who has smoked cigarettes for a long period of time may find it difficult to kick the unhealthy habit -- but Agung Laksono says he is finally free of his nicotine addiction.

The House of Representatives spokesman says he forced himself to stop smoking, a bad habit he picked up when he was 13.

"I had been smoking since I was in high school and smoked heavier when started working. I could smoke up to five packs a day," Agung was quoted as saying by Antara on Tuesday.

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Efforts to curb tobacco use in effect at prison  

IONIA - In an effort to improve the health and welfare of those in Ionia County, some local workplaces are making efforts to curb the use of tobacco products.

At Thursday's community liaison meeting, Dave Johnson, Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility Assistant Deputy Warden of Custody and Programs, said efforts are underway to eliminate tobacco use in the state's prisons.

Some of the methods being employed by prisons include the use of special programs, utilizing guest speakers, offering quitting aids such as lozenges and offering other items and support for inmates and corrections workers.

"We've reduced the amount of tobacco prisoners can order every couple of months," he said. . . .

Hospitals, including Ionia County Memorial Hospital, are also making efforts to curb smoking.

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Health Blog : For Chantix and Ambien, Ads That Dare Not Speak the Drugs' Names 

And Pfizer, whose smoking-cessation drug Chantix has come under scrutiny for psychiatric side effects, has recently revived ads that send people to mytimetoquit.com.

The site gives readers lots of options to "learn about a prescription treatment option" -- which turns out to mean clicking through to the Chantix Web site.

The campaign isn't designed to circumvent FDA rules, Pfizer spokeswoman Sally Beatty tells the WSJ. "My Time to Quit is designed to encourage people who are thinking about quitting to speak to their health-care provider about the benefits of quitting smoking and available treatment options," she said.

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• Making a Name for Drugs Without Using Their Names ($$) 

Pfizer Inc. has found a way to encourage the use of its antismoking drug Chantix without detailing serious potential side effects through a commercial that doesn't mention Chantix at all.

During NBC's coverage of the Beijing Olympics this month, Pfizer aired a commercial in which a middle-age woman tells the camera, "At 6:30 in the morning, I have a cigarette. And then another on my way to work." During the 60-second commercial, a voice discusses ways to break the habit and directs viewers to Mytimetoquit.com. Visitors to the site find a link to a Chantix site that contains information on the antismoking drug, including the negative side effects.

Such "unbranded product advertising" like the mytimetoquit.com spot is gaining popularity among drugmakers, which in recent months have come under renewed fire from lawmakers for the ways in which they promote drugs directly to consumers.

Under Food and Drug Administration rules, if an ad doesn't directly name the drug, it doesn't have to include the reading of possible side effects

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Quitting real solution to contraband cigarette problem, Schabas says  

Ottawa has committed $20 million to help stamp out the contraband cigarette trade, but that would be unnecessary if smokers did the smart thing — quit.

Local medical officer of health Dr. Richard Schabas applauded the Ottawa initiative, but he stressed quitting is the real solution.

But, Schabas conceded, it is tough to do.

“The problem with smoking is it’s an addiction ... and addictions are very hard to break,” he said. “Almost all smokers become addicted (when) they are teenagers.”

Help is on the way for those who wish to quit — the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health will be in Belleville and Trenton, Sept. 15, to begin a study into stopping smoking.

Smoking Treatment for Ontario Patients — the STOP study — provides nicotine replacement therapies and counselling support to eligible participants who want to quit.

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Young smokers stubbing it out doubles 

The number of children trying to quit smoking in Reading has more than doubled in the last year.

Figures released exclusively to the Evening Post by the Berkshire West Primary Care Trust (PCT) reveal that 53 children aged under 16 used NHS Stop Smoking services in 2007/8, compared with 22 the year before, and 18 the year before that.

Although the sum is still low in comparison to the population of Berkshire West, the figures show a positive step towards tackling ill-health among children in the area, according to health experts.

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Man who gave up smoking gets chance to attend Games 

A Beijing man who has vowed to give up smoking was given a free ticket to watch the men's volleyball tonight at the Capital Stadium, a reporter with the Beijing News told China Daily Friday.

The reward came courtesy of anti-smoking campaigner Xiong Wei who on Sunday placed an advertisement in the Beijing News offering free Olympic tickets to 10 smokers who promised to quit.

The identity of "volleyball man" is known only to Xiong, who told China Daily on Thursday that he received 132 applications within 40 hours of his ad being placed.

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Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Awards Grant to Clarian Tobacco Control Center 

Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation (ITPC) recently awarded Clarian Tobacco Control Center (CTCC), a part of the Clarian Health network, a grant to implement new tobacco cessation guidelines, set by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), throughout its statewide network.

The grant follows the release of the PHS 2008 Clinical Practice Guideline Update: Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence. The Guideline aims to provide clinicians and health care systems a more consistent and effective approach when treating patients who smoke. According to PHS, "many clinicians lack knowledge about how to identify smokers quickly and easily, which treatments are effective, how such treatments can be delivered, and the relative effectiveness of different treatments."

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EDITORIAL: Make smoking more expensive, make quitting free 

Our reputation as a have-not province usually puts us in the bottom three or four of whatever issue is being measured.

In this case, however, we are No. 1, but for the unenviable distinction of having the greatest proportion of hard-core smokers.

Last year, New Brunswickers smoked more cigarettes per day - 17.3 - than people in every other province, and that number has risen by two a day since 2006. . . .

So if a smoker wants to be free of cigarette enslavement, let's offer the help that will increase the odds of success.

And if a smoker wants to continue the habit, let's make it more difficult financially.

These changes have the potential to put New Brunswick in top spot for a much better reason - the biggest drop in cigarette consumption.

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John Robson: The futile war on smoking 

Tuesday's Citizen reported a StatsCan's finding that smoking has not declined in the past three years and a Canadian Cancer Society spokesman's irritated response, "The reason the smoking rate stopped going down is because of the serious contraband situation. . . .

Apparently one cannot say often enough, in public policy, that individuals insist upon weighing alternatives and making decisions for themselves. . . .

Whether they enjoy smoking more than I do or like other aspects of being alive less, they haven't decided to quit. Like myself, they weigh the costs including monetary, but the math comes out differently. . . .

At some point we need to weigh the gains from further discouraging smoking against the costs of spreading illegality and corruption. . . .

Smoking may be dumb. But a policy that corrupts citizens and police, and that menaces public safety, needs very strong positive effects to pass the test of common sense. Does further discouragement of smoking, at this point, seem to you to qualify?

The rush of bossing people about, the tingly puritanical pleasure of snatching peoples' glowing cigarettes from their very lips and stamping them out in front of their faces is a short-term pleasure that comes at too high a long-term cost. Time to give it up.

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Graphic anti-smoking ads hit target 

A national anti-smoking campaign has prompted nearly 200,000 people to kick the habit and should prevent about 55,000 deaths, new research has shown.

The hard-hitting 'Every cigarette is doing you damage' campaign, which started 11 years ago and cost around $9 million, is expected to save more than $740 million in health care costs.

Professor Susan Hurley, the author of the new report published online in the international journal Tobacco Control, said the first six months of the National Tobacco Campaign (NTC) in 1997 was the most intensive, and costly.

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Newly-defined factors may prevent postpartum smoking relapse 

By shedding light on the factors that enable the other half to put down that cigarette for good, a study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill could lead to programs designed to help women quit and stay quit.

According to the study, women with a live-in partner who shared some of the burden of child-rearing were more likely to remain smoke free, while women who were single mothers or who lacked the social and financial resources to deal with being a new parent were more likely to relapse.

"In the future we can look at these and other factors in women who quit smoking during pregnancy to assess who is at low or high risk of relapse," said Carol E. Ripley-Moffitt, MDiv, research associate in UNC's department of family medicine and the study's lead author. "We can then offer more intensive interventions for those at higher risk to address the physical, behavioral and social issues related to relapse."

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• Nicotine Replacement Drug's Bad Trip 

Abbott Laboratories, Targacept and AstraZeneca have nicotinic receptor drugs in clinical trials for memory impairment, adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and pain. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is testing varenicline itself as a treatment for cocaine and alcohol dependence. Preclinical studies are looking at other new nicotinic receptor compounds for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, ulcerative colitis and inflammation as well, attesting to the broad influence of this receptor family.

The effects of nicotinic receptors are so pervasive, in fact, that some of the mechanisms involved are not completely understood. “It’s a story that’s still evolving, and it’s very complicated, so going in with a drug like varenicline, I’m not surprised that there are side effects,” says Lorna Role, who studies the receptors’ biology at Columbia University and Stony Brook University. This type of acetylcholine receptor, which also responds to nicotine, acts as “a volume control” for other neurotransmitters, according to Role. “A little nicotine turns up transmitter release,” she explains. “It’s been shown to increase the release of dopa­mine, glutamate, GABA—every major neurotransmitter.” . . .

“It’s just like the SSRIs,” Role agrees. “I think refining the compounds in terms of the balance of their activities is really key, but that’s not to say that’s trivial. It’ll take time.” Targeting nicotinic receptors “has enormous therapeutic potential,” she says, adding that the biggest joke on the tobacco industry may be that they missed seeing it.

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Cornwall | Warning over bogus smoking calls 

People in Cornwall are being warned about bogus callers asking for money to help them give up smoking, when the service is available free on the NHS.

Callers, posing as official NHS advisors, have been knocking on doors and asking for money for treatments.

On one occasion a bogus agent called at the house of an official advisor and fled when challenged.

The Stop Smoking Service said its advisors never arrived without an appointment and carried identification.

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Sail crew stub out cigarette habit 

Service users at Norcare's Sail project, run in the North East of England, are taking advantage of a health improvement programme to tackle the addictive problem.

Norcare runs the project for people with mental health issues, based at the Eco Centre in Jarrow, to provide a range of support to people in the locality.

These services include helping them cope with everyday tasks such as paying bills and eating healthily, encouraging them to socialise and to become more active in the local community.

Vicky Richardson, Norcare health improvement officer, is running the 12-week Stop Smoking course to help them kick their nicotine habit.

She said: "A lot of people within the group use cigarettes as a psychological support. It helps them to cope with the stressful situations they deal with on a daily basis.

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