Tobacco.org

• An informal school-based peer-led intervention for smoking prevention in adolescence (ASSIST): a cluster randomised trial. (PDF) 

The absence of any effect on young people who were already smoking every week, as well as their sense of addiction, calls for greater attention to programmes for smoking cessation. The processes that affect initiation are probably different from those that affect progression and maintenance of regular smoking,6 and youth-specific cessation programmes need to become more available to adolescents. There is growing evidence for the promise of interventions for tobacco cessation for young people,8 but more high quality, rigorous controlled trials—like ASSIST—are needed to move this area forward.

We also need to consider other social influence factors that could have an equal, if not greater, effect on youth smoking than could peers. Adolescents are more likely to smoke if a parent smokes, and sibling smoking might have an even stronger effect on an adolescent’s smoking.9,10 Some family interventions might prevent adolescent smoking,11 but rarely do these programmes include a sibling component. Yet siblings, even those who smoke, could be able to provide powerful antismoking messages, given that anecdotally these young people often state that they hope their younger siblings never smoke or become addicted like they are. Siblings remain an untapped resource for the extension of prevention programmes. Social influence processes also come into effect with marketing and advertising by tobacco companies, and some researchers have noted that teenagers are more likely to be influenced to smoke by cigarette advertising than they are by peer pressure.12

Both bold policy solutions and effective interventions are needed to reduce smoking in adolescents. As encouraging as ASSIST’s findings are, an important message is the need to go beyond the classroom setting and into the many domains of social influence that adolescents encounter.

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What's in Your Genes? You Don't Want to Know -- Yet.  

The company 23andMe promises to "unlock the secrets of your own DNA." Navigenics wants you to be tested to "do everything you can to stay healthy." And deCODEme hopes that genetic testing will "prompt people to do the right thing."

It all sounds so good. If you have a couple of thousand dollars to part with (along with some saliva), why not have one of these companies scan your genome?

The primary caution about genetic testing has usually been that you will learn that you are destined to develop some dreadful disease (such as Huntington's disease, a degenerative neurological disorder) for which there is no known therapy. A positive test only allows you to start worrying about your demise earlier. Do you really want to know? . . .

(These uncertainties, combined with the absence of increased lung-cancer risk, may tempt you to keep smoking.)

What's the right thing to do? With the exception of quitting smoking, the truth is: No one knows.

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Training influential school students in anti-smoking messages lowers smoking rates among peers 

Smoking rates among teenagers can be reduced by training influential students within secondary schools to promote anti-smoking messages in their everyday conversations with their friends and peer group. This is the conclusion of authors of an Article in this week's edition of The Lancet.

Whether or not a young person smokes is strongly associated with their friends' smoking behaviour. Peer pressure is often used to explain this finding, although evidence suggests that peer selection, whereby young people choose to associate with like-minded people engaging in similar behaviours, is also a cause, However, peer influence can be protective, leading to attempts to harness it to positive effect through peer education.

Professor Rona Campbell, University of Bristol, UK, and Professor Laurence Moore, Cardiff University, UK, and colleagues did the ASSIST* study in 59 schools across western England and Wales.

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UT researchers find link between advertising and increased tobacco use among India's youth 

As the westernization of India accelerates, tobacco advertising and marketing have been linked to increased tobacco use by urban Indian children as young as 11, according to a study by researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health.

The study, "Associations Between Tobacco Marketing and Use Among Urban Youth In India," is published in the May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior.

Findings from an earlier published study by the researchers revealed that in 2004, Indian sixth graders were using three times the amount of tobacco as eighth graders, which the authors found might indicate a new wave of increased tobacco use. The second study sought to discover the reason for the jump.

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Teen Marijuana Use Linked to Later Illness 

Teenagers who smoke marijuana put themselves at risk for future mental illness and higher rates of depression, according to a report to be released today by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Although fewer teens overall are smoking marijuana, the report said, there is growing concern that those who do, particularly those who view the drug as a way to cope with depression, do not understand its consequences. It also is not clear whether their parents, who might have indulged when they were younger, understand the risks, experts say.

The report, whose release coincides with the start of Mental Health Awareness Month, said studies show links between marijuana use and risk of mental illness later in life, and that use could increase the risk by as much as 40 percent.

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Training Student Leaders Cuts Peers' Smoking Rates 

Training influential students to spread anti-smoking messages in their everyday conversations with peers helps reduce smoking rates, according to a U.K. study.

The study included almost 11,000 students, ages 12 to 13, at 59 schools in western England and Wales. At 30 of the schools, certain students were selected to receive training about the risks of smoking, the economic benefits of not smoking, communication skills, group work, negotiation, conflict resolution, sensitivity to others, personal values, and building confidence and self-esteem. The students at the other 29 schools acted as a control group.

For 10 weeks after their ASSIST (A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial) training, the peer support students talked with other students in their age groups about the benefits of not smoking.

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Study suggests cool kids can help others avoid smoking  

Getting the cool kids to talk to their peers about the dangers of smoking cut the number of young people who started using cigarettes in one study by nearly 25 percent, British researchers said on Friday.

The study published in the journal Lancet took a different approach than most tobacco cessation programmes aimed at youths by asking students to nominate others they viewed as influential or leaders to spread the anti-smoking message.

This peer selection proved more effective than conventional programmes and greatly reduced the number of students likely to start smoking, the researchers said.

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Doctors: Chantix Benefits Outweigh Risks  

The drug Chantix may be linked to suicidal thoughts and depression in some people, but the risk of smoking is far worse, according to some physicians.

The health risks of smoking, including lung cancer, emphysema, stroke and heart attack, outweigh the known side effects of Chantix, said Dr. Marc Siegal, a FOX News Channel contributor.

"I still think it's a first-line agent," Siegal, a board certified internist and clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, told FOXNews.com. "It's absolutely the best thing we have out there to help people stop smoking."

The U.S. Public Health Service released its quit-smoking guidelines this week.

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Influential School Students Can Help Lower Peers' Smoking Rates 

Reduction of smoking rates among teenagers can be achieved by training more influential students in secondary schools to promote anti-smoking messages in everyday conversations with their friends and peers, according to an article released on May 9, 2008 in The Lancet.

A young person's smoking habits are strongly associated with the behaviors their friends perform and usually, this is attributed to peer pressure. However, evidence suggests that peer selection, in which young people tend to choose to associate with like-minded people who engage in similar behaviors to themselves, is also a cause. Peer influence itself is not solely destructive, and can be protective, leading to efforts to harness its positive effects through peer education.

To this end, Professor Rona Campbell, University of Bristol, UK, and Professor Laurence Moore, Cardiff University, UK, and colleagues performed A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial (ASSIST).

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Children's peers are best people to warn of smoking dangers 

The most important health warning that parents can give their children - don't smoke - is best delivered by their friends, researchers have found.

Training children who are popular at school to educate their peers about the dangers of smoking could cut the number who take up the habit by more than a fifth, a study showed. If the same technique were used nationwide, the number of children aged 14 and 15 who take up smoking could be cut by 43,000 a year, researchers estimate.

It is unclear whether young people smoke because their friends do or whether those who choose to smoke associate with others who are similarly inclined. What is clear, according to the researchers from the universities of Bristol and Cardiff, is that peer influence can be protective, if it can be effectively harnessed.

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Cool kids lead smoking fight  

POPULAR school students are spreading the message that smoking isn't cool as part of a unique Cardiff scheme.

Research has found that the A Stop Smoking In Schools Trial programme or "Assist", developed by Cardiff University, could prevent more than 40,000 children from smoking every year.

The programme works by using peer pressure to persuade young teenagers not to become smokers.

Pupils aged 12 and 13 are asked to nominate the people in their year group who they respect and look up to, who are then trained as peer supporters.

They in turn talk to other children their age about the benefits of not smoking.

Professor Laurence Moore, director of the Cardiff Institute of Society, Health & Ethics, which developed the Assist programme, said: "A lot of time and effort goes into encouraging children not to take up regular smoking in schools but that generally hasn't been found to be particularly effective as often kids will do the opposite of what their teachers tell them.

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South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan 

As if a crippling medical manpower crunch - with just one doctor currently available for every 10,000 Indians - wasn't bad enough, India is also poised to hold a whopping 60% of the world's heart disease patients by 2010, according to a recent study by the British journal The Lancet.

The groundbreaking study, conducted by a team of researchers led by Dr Denis Xavier of St John's National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore, studied 21,000 heart attack patients admitted to 89 hospitals in 50 cities across the country. It found that while the cardiac risk factors in India - excessive tobacco consumption, high lipid levels in the blood due to fat-rich diets and hypertension - weren't dissimilar to those in other nations, what disadvantaged Indians further was the time it took for them to access medical help. . . .

India is also home to 12% of the world's smokers and will witness 930,000 deaths in 2010, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study estimates that India has about 120 million smokers who will contribute to deaths mainly from tuberculosis, heart disease and cancer.

Oncologist Dr Swati Chopra stresses that smoking exacerbates the risk of heart attack as elevated nicotine levels spike the body's bad cholesterol or LDL making the blood stickier and the arteries harder. "This enhances the blood's chances to clot more readily. Sticky blood flowing through hardened arteries can lead to the formation of a clot and block an artery. A blocked artery in the brain," informs the expert, "can trigger a brain stroke which may lead to paralysis or even death."

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Stopping smoking in schools 

Smoking rates among teenagers can be reduced by training influential students within secondary schools to promote anti-smoking messages in their everyday conversations with their friends and peer group. This is the conclusion of authors of an article in this week's edition of The Lancet.

Whether or not a young person smokes is strongly associated with their friends' smoking behaviour. Peer pressure is often used to explain this finding, although evidence suggests that peer selection, whereby young people choose to associate with like-minded people engaging in similar behaviours, is also a cause. However, peer influence can be protective, leading to attempts to harness it to positive effect through peer education.

Professor Rona Campbell of the University of Bristol and Professor Laurence Moore of Cardiff University, and colleagues did the ASSIST (A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial) study in 59 schools across western England and Wales.

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Tobacco Quit Line Expands Services for Pregnant Women Who Smoke 

Quitting smoking is one of the best things a woman can do to protect her own health and the health of her baby. In time for Mother's Day on May 11, the state Department of Health has added new services to its free Tobacco Quit Line to provide pregnant women with more help when they're ready to quit using tobacco.

The new tools include quit materials and extra follow-up calls specifically to help pregnant women increase their chances of quitting and remaining tobacco-free after the baby is born. Quit coaches have received additional training to better understand the challenges pregnant women face when trying to quit smoking. In Washington, more than 8,700 babies are born each year to women who smoke during their pregnancy.

"Quitting smoking is a Mother's Day gift that a pregnant woman can give to herself and her baby," said Secretary of Health Mary Selecky. "Babies with moms who smoke are more likely to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and have health problems like ear infections and pneumonia. These new resources will make a real difference in the health of pregnant women and their babies."

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'Tobacco use kills 42 000 a year' 

More than 42 000 deaths in South Africa annually are attributed to tobacco use, the Cancer Association of SA (Cansa) has said at the Health Portfolio Committee's public hearing in Cape Town.

On Tuesday Cansa, which based its figures on studies by the Medical Research Council, submitted that all forms of advertising and promotion of tobacco products must be banned in order to help prevent young people from starting to smoke.

In a statement on Tuesday, the health department said it welcomed submissions on tighter tobacco control from various organisations including Cansa, the SA Medical Association and the University of Cape Town Health Economics Unit.

The hearings are aimed at amending Section 76 of the Tobacco Control Amendment Bill 2008 to bring it in line with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

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