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New Smokefree Generation want parents to quit  

A new ‘Smokefree Generation’ of children say that they will never try a cigarette, think that smoking is really uncool and are increasingly worried about the health of smoking parents according to new research conducted on behalf of NHS Stop Smoking Services.

The research, which polled 1,000 children in England aged 8-13, coincides with the launch of a powerful new Department of Health advertising campaign aimed at getting loved ones to stop smoking. It features real children, not actors, talking about how concerned they are about their parents’ smoking.

Gillian Merron, Public Health Minister said:

'We understand how difficult it is to stop smoking. I hope this new campaign will give mums and dads the encouragement they need to realise they can do it with help from the NHS, and support from their children.

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• Secondhand smoke risks underestimated, survey finds 

About 360,000 Kentucky children are exposed to secondhand smoke every day in their homes, putting them at risk for everything from asthma to ear infections to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

That's the word from researchers at the University of Kentucky, who found that many parents are unaware of such dangers when they light up.

A UK HealthCare survey highlighted Thursday found that nearly 1.6 million Kentuckians underestimate the dangers of secondhand smoke, and 45 percent of homes with children had at least one adult who didn't believe it was a serious health hazard. To change such perceptions, UK HealthCare helped launch a state-wide, five-year campaign Thursday featuring educational materials, a school-based program, an interactive Web site, and radio and television public service announcements with John Calipari, UK's head basketball coach.

"We know secondhand smoke is a silent killer, and a lot of people, based on our data, still don't believe it," said Ellen Hahn, director of UK's Tobacco Policy Research Program and Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy. "The whole purpose of this campaign is to ratchet up awareness."

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ATS: Childhood Secondhand Smoke Effects Persist 

The effects of exposure to secondhand smoke in childhood may persist for decades, a researcher said here.

In a large cohort of nonsmokers, early signs of emphysema were noticeable on CT scans among those who had lived with one or more smokers in childhood, according to Gina Lovasi, Ph.D., of Columbia University.

Those signs -- a significant increase in the number of "air-like spaces" -- were not accompanied by any clinical symptoms, Dr. Lovasi said at the annual meeting of the American Thoracic Society.

"We do see a difference" in the structure of the lung, Dr. Lovasi told reporters, "but it's important to note that we didn't see a difference in lung function."

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UK Electronic Cigarette Company push for parents to quit smoking 

Every parent knows that smoking is not only bad for them but the passive smoking is dangerous to their children. From today UK based Electronic Cigarette giant cheapelectroniccigarettes.co.uk will be campaigning for parents to quit smoking once and for all.

Looking for a gift for a smoker? An electronic cigarette is a unique opportunity to also potentially save their life.

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• Multiple factors impact adolescent smoking risk  

There is no one-size-fits-all explanation for why teenagers take up smoking, hint findings of a Canadian study.

Therefore, focusing on one single risk factor is not likely to help adolescents resist peer pressure to smoke, or help advance the understanding of why young people smoke, Dr. Jennifer O'Loughlin and colleagues report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

O'Loughlin, at the University of Montreal in Quebec, therefore suggests that efforts to prevent smoking should take into account "individual-level factors such as age, self-esteem, alcohol use, and academic success." Those involved should also bear in mind "contextual factors such as smoking in parents and friends, and school smoking policies," she told Reuters Health in email correspondence.

Her group investigated how numerous factors altered smoking initiation among 877 students (half male), who were pushing 13 years of age at the start of the study and had never smoked.

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• Parents Play Key Role In Whether Teen Tobacco Use Becomes A Daily Habit 

Researchers have found new evidence showing that parents play a key role in whether or not their adolescent children who experiment with tobacco progress to become daily smokers before they graduate from high school.

A study published on-line and in the September issue of journal Pediatrics shows that parents can be a positive or negative influence on their children's future smoking habit.

"If parents really don't want their children to smoke they need to communicate that by establishing clear guidelines in their families about not smoking and discuss them with their school-age children." said Min Jung Kim, a research scientist with the University of Washington's Social Development Research Group and lead author of the study.

At the same time, parents can increase their children's chances of smoking by their own use of tobacco.

"If parents smoke, teens have more access to cigarettes than teens who have non-smoking parents. A second preventive measure for smoking parents is to quit smoking themselves," said Kim. . . .

She recommends that parents "should not ignore children's experimental smoking at any age because it put them at great risk of progressing to daily smoking." To do that, parents should:

* Set and enforce clear guideline about tobacco.

* Monitor to ensure that your children are following your guidelines.

* Know and monitor your children's friends.

* Provide clear, consistent and positive consequences for following those guidelines and appropriate, consistent negative consequences for violating them.

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Cruel mum used baby as ashtray  

A TEENAGE mother from Worcester has been found guilty of deliberately stubbing out a cigarette on her toddler daughter.

Charlotte Sutton had denied causing unnecessary suffering to her young daughter, insisting that the tip of the lit cigarette had accidentally fallen on to the child.

But yesterday a jury at Worcester Crown Court found Sutton guilty.

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Individual and Social Influences on Progression to Daily Smoking During Adolescence  

Conclusions This study supports preventing escalation in adolescent smoking by targeting parents' and peers' smoking and involvement in other forms of antisocial behavior and working with parents to improve their use of positive family management practices.

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• Parents important in teens' smoking risk: study  

Friends and parents have a strong influence over whether teenagers move from experimenting with cigarettes to becoming full-fledged smokers -- but so do parents, a new study finds.

The study, which followed 270 teenagers who had become occasional smokers before high school, found that 58 percent made it a daily habit by 12th grade.

But the likelihood of that happening depended partly on friends and parents, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics.

"We found that parents play an important role in preventing teens' smoking escalation from experimental to daily smoking," Dr. Min Jung Kim, of the University of Washington in Seattle, said.

When friends or parents smoked, teens were more likely to become daily smokers.

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The Women’s Crusade  

In Ivory Coast, one research project examined the different crops that men and women grow for their private kitties: men grow coffee, cocoa and pineapple, and women grow plantains, bananas, coconuts and vegetables. Some years the “men’s crops” have good harvests and the men are flush with cash, and other years it is the women who prosper. Money is to some extent shared. But even so, the economist Esther Duflo of M.I.T. found that when the men’s crops flourish, the household spends more money on alcohol and tobacco. When the women have a good crop, the households spend more money on food. “When women command greater power, child health and nutrition improves,” Duflo says.

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Can parents of children with cancer accurately report their child's passive smoking exposure?  

Introduction: This study examined whether children with cancer are exposed to measurable levels of passive smoke as assessed by parent report and laboratory measures of urine cotinine, an established biomarker of passive smoke exposure (PSE). It also determined whether parents/caretakers of young cancer patients can provide valid reports of their child’s PSE during the child’s treatment, by examining their association with urine cotinine measures. . . .

Results: Findings showed that parents provided valid short-term accounts of their child’s PSE in the context of their child’s cancer treatment. Parent reports of PSE showed moderately strong positive relationships with urine cotinine levels which were stronger for reports provided by parents who smoked compared with nonsmoking parents.

Discussion: Parent reports of PSE were validated by positive and significant associations with urine cotinine. Reports provided in the context of possible verification by biomarker assays can provide sufficiently accurate estimates of PSE to serve as outcome measures for clinical research and clinical care in a pediatric cancer setting.

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• Smoking May Worsen Malnutrition In Developing Nations 

A new study finds that smokers in rural Indonesia finance their habit by dipping into the family food budget--which ultimately results in poorer nutrition for their children. The findings suggest that the costs of smoking in the developing world go well beyond the immediate health risks, according to authors Steven Block and Patrick Webb of Tufts University.

The study is published in the October issue of Economic Development and Cultural Change.

Using surveys of 33,000 mostly poor households in Java, Indonesia, the researchers found that the average family with at least one smoker spends 10 percent of its already tight budget on tobacco. Sixty-eight percent of a smoking family's budget goes to food, and 22 percent for non-food, non-tobacco purchases. The average non-smoking family, on the other hand, spends 75 percent of its income on food and 25 percent for non-food items.

"This suggests that 70 percent of the expenditures on tobacco products are financed by a reduction in food expenditures," the researchers write. . . .

The decrease in child nutrition associated with a parent who smokes is "an intuitive but rarely documented empirical finding," the researchers write.

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The combination of direct health threats from smoking coupled with the potential loss of [food] consumption among children linked to tobacco expenditure presents a development challenge of the highest order.
Steven A. Block and Patrick Webb. Up in Smoke: Tobacco Use, Expenditure on Food, and Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 58:1. (October 2009)

Electronic Cigarette Company Urges Parents To Stop Smoking 

Most parents know that smoking is bad for their children, some just don't know how bad it really is. Second-hand smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including cyanide, carbon monoxide and benzene. Second hand smoke makes children more susceptible to pneumonia and ear infections and contributes to lifelong health conditions, such as asthma. Babies of smokers are more likely to experience sudden infant death syndrome and suffer from respiratory diseases.

Second-hand smoke is a mixture of smoke from the burning end of a tobacco cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled by the smoker. It is estimated that 1/3 of households are smoking households. The Surgeon General warns that persons who already have heart disease or asthma are at an especially high risk of suffering adverse affects from breathing secondhand smoke, and should take special precautions to avoid even brief exposure.

"Quitting smoking is the best thing any parent can do for their family's health and well being, but most smokers are not able or willing to quit. In this instance, it is recommended that the parent smoker only smoke outside of the home and car. If you are a committed smoker, the e-cigarette may also be the solution for you and your family"

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Smokers Barred From Adopting or Fostering Children / / Ban Reportedly First to Apply to Children Regardless of Age 

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), America's first antismoking organization, has helped convince more than a dozen states to prohibit smoking in homes where foster children live, and also helped to persuade judges in the great majority of states to issue orders prohibiting smoking in the homes of children involved in custody disputes. ASH Wales was a major factor in persuading the Merthyr Tydfil Council to take this latest step, which involves both adoption and foster care.

However, this move is not unprecedented. Several years ago a couple has been told they cannot adopt a child because the husband smokes, even though he claims he never smokes indoors. Indeed, the prohibition stands until he quits smoking for six months and provides medical documentation that he is no longer a smoker.

"This is just the latest step in a growing movement to protect the most vulnerable and most defenseless victims of tobacco smoke pollution," public interest lawyer John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), commented at the time.

As a matter of fact, says Banzhaf, even years ago, when the dangers of smoking around children were far less well appreciated, ten percent of social workers specializing in adoption turned down potential parents because one or both smoked.

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• Mother's smoking increases daughter's pancreatic cancer risk 

A woman who smokes during pregnancy and motherhood appears to boost her daughter's odds of developing pancreatic cancer, the deadly disease that will strike an estimated 21,420 women (and 21,050 men) this year.

Researchers from Harvard University and Imperial College London looked at pancreatic cancer rates in the Nurse's Health Study, one of the nation's oldest and largest studies of women and influences on their health. Although it's long been known that tobacco use is associated with higher rates of pancreatic cancer, researchers wanted to explore the effects of secondhand smoke on a person's risk of developing the disease. In the 24 years over which the women were followed, 384 of 86,673 women were diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas.

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