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The Guardia Civil in Tenerife have arrested 12 men who formed an organized gang who smuggled fake cigarettes into the Canary Islands. The cigarettes, made in China, were found to contain a high proportion of rabbit excrement which padded out the tobacco. The cigarettes were sold in bars and shops mainly in the south of the island.
Operaci�n Chester is the largest counterfeit tobacco operation this year in Spain. One and a half million packets of false cigarettes with a street value of almost five million euros were seized. It is not known how many false packets have been sold but the value is expected to be millions of euros.
The operation started after the Guardia Civil started to receive a series of complaints from smokers about "terrible" cigarettes. . . .
The false cigarettes were made in China before being shipped to Spain via the UAE. Apart from the rabbit excrement, they also contained dangerously high levels of nicotine, CO2 and heavy metals.
Amongst the arrested was a corrupt customs officer who allowed the shipments into the Canary Islands.
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Exposure to cigarette smoke might weaken immune cells' ability to remove bacterial infections from the lungs, specifically nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHI), a pathogen often associated with respiratory infections and the progression of respiratory disease, says a new study.
NTHI has been found to cause invasive diseases such as meningitis, sinusitis, pneumonia, and bronchitis.
It is also the pathogen most frequently isolated in the respiratory tract of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic bronchitis.
Alveolar macrophages are part of the lungs'' innate defense system and they play an essential role in the clearance of bacterial infections.
The research team has found that cigarette smoke may disrupt the capability of alveolar macrophages to clear NTHI from the lungs. . . .
The study appears in journal Infection and Immunity.
Researchers from the Catalan Institute of Oncology have studied the impact of the law banning smoking in public places such as bars and restaurants on those working in these places. The results are positive - 5% of waiters have stopped smoking, and the number of cigarettes smoked by those who still smoke has fallen by almost 9%.
On 1 January 2006, a smoking ban came into force in public places in Spain. More than three years later, these health measures against tobacco smoking have borne fruit. A new study led by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) has shown that the proportion of smokers strongly addicted to nicotine has halved as a result of the law.
All the effects observed during this research study, which is published this month in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, have been "significantly reduced" among waiters in bars where smoking has been completely banned than among those who work in places with smoking areas, or where there are no restrictions in place. "Changing the partial ban on tobacco consumption in bars and restaurants for a total ban would have beneficial effects on the health of all the workers in this sector", Esteve Fernández, one of the authors of the study and a researcher at the ICO, tells SINC.
When Spain toughened anti-smoking legislation in 2006, the measure was hailed as an important step forward in the battle against addiction in the country formerly known as a "smokers' paradise."Three and half years later, however, smoke is again floating in bars, restaurants, and even some places of work, prompting the government to consider stricter legislation.
The current law bans smoking at work and in public places such as hospitals, schools or shopping centres.
Owners of bars or restaurants measuring less than 100 square metres, however, may allow smoking. . . .
The anti-smoking law is not applied fully in some regions. Those do not carry out inspections, do not apply sanctions, or have watered the law down with their own decrees, according to press reports.
The 2006 law has been "beneficial," but it has "gaps" and is not clear enough, Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez said.
The positive effects of the law could be observed in 2006, when the number of heart attacks went down by about 10 per cent.
One million Spaniards are estimated to have stopped smoking since the law entered into force.
Spain is ready for total smoking ban in public places, Spain's health minister Trinidad Jimenez said in an interview Monday with radio station Cadena Ser.
"Right now, with the information we have and the study we are doing of the current [smoking] law, I think the society is mature enough... and we want to prohibit smoking in all public places," Jimenez said.
In 2006, Spain introduced a smoking ban in workplaces and public places larger than 100 square meters. However, a smoke-free bar or restaurant, for example, in Spain is rare. Many of the country's bars and restaurants are smaller than 100 square meters and in larger establishments, few owners enforce the law or have installed nonsmoking sections.
The move is likely to be a blow to tobacco companies, that have traditionally found Spain, along with other Southern European nations, to be key markets.
Tobacco acts as a precipitating factor for headaches, specifically migraines, new research suggests. This is indicated in a study which shows that smokers have more migraine attacks and that smoking more than five cigarettes a day triggers this headache. The work has appeared in the Journal of Headache and Pain.
The influence of tobacco as a precipitating, non-causal factor of migraine attacks has produced contradictory data in scientific literature. The limited research prior to the work published in The Journal of Headache and Pain indicated that smoking could improve migraines by reducing anxiety, one of the factors that triggers an attack.
"This study is groundbreaking in Spain as there are few studies on this topic, and all are very biased. This is due to the complexity and need for prior training of the participants", Julio Pascual, one of the authors of this research and doctor at the Neurology Unit of Marqués de Valdecilla, University Hospital (Santander), explains to SINC.
Analysis of the Public Health Agency of Barcelona says that from 1136 catering establishments in the city it was revealed that 90.9% of fast foods and franchises are smoke-free environments.
At the other extreme, there only appears to be about 8% of the bars and cafes of the smallest areas who have banned smoking on their premises.
The Department of Health carried out several inspections on properties that were less than 100 square meters in footage (as is stated in the law) and that sold food and this is where the figures have caused criticism.
Among the restaurants, 40% of those over 100 m2y nearly one third have opted to be smoke-free premises in Barcelona (it is the local groups that has constructed separate spaces for smokers and non-smokers).
However, after three years of the regulation being in force, it has not increased the percentage of bars and cafes that comply with the smoking ban. Among the cafe and bars, only one in four prohíbit smoking.
Spain said Tuesday it plans to force tobacco companies to put gruesome images on cigarette packets to warn smokers of the health risks, a measure already introduced in some European countries.
The images will have "strong visual impact," but it isn't known what they exactly they will be or when the measure will come into force, Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez said on Spanish National Radio.
Tobacco companies are already obliged to put the message "Smoking Kills" in black and white on cigarette packets sold in Spain
THE Regional Health Ministry carried out inspections of more than 1,600 establishments in the province of Almeria in 2008. The inspections, the numbers of which have been boosted by the need to meet the provisions of the anti-tobacco laws, are far in excess of the 64 establishments inspected in 2007. Nearly 90 per cent of all the establishments visited since January 2006 were found to have complied with the anti-tobacco law, in relation to which a total of 198 formal complaints have been submitted in the province since it came into effect, resulting in 32 penalties being issued. Before the anti-tobacco law came into effect, the Regional Health Ministry organized the ‘Integral Plan to Prevent Nicotine Poisoning’ (PITA), which includes 85 measures aimed at discouraging the smoking habit among teenagers and helping those who want to give up smoking. One of the measures included in the plan is the increase in health resources available in Andalucia to help those citizens who want to quit smoking.
The end of E.U. subsidies mean an end to the cultivation of the crop on the Granada vega.
More than 1,000 families on the Granada Vega will now have to look for a new source of income with the closure of the tobacco plantation in the area. It comes following the cutback of E.U. subsidies for the crop in the area.
It ends generations of ‘tabacoleras’ who had worked out an income on the plains of the province for more than a century.
Sports and tobacco consumption are directly related, according to a new study by researchers in Spain.
The work was carried out by researchers of the University of Granada, the Spanish National Research Council- CSIC, the Universities of Murcia, Zaragoza and Cantabria, and the Nuestra Señora de la Consolación School of Granada. Results of the study show that those Spanish adolescents who play a sport do not smoke usually (8 of every 10), and more than 40% of the adolescents aged between 13 and 18 do not practice any physical activity.
In the article "Increase of tobacco consumption and reduction of the physical activity practice level in Spanish adolescents: AVENA Study", published in the journal Nutrición Hospitalaria, the researchers analysed the relationship between tobacco and sports in a sample of about 3,000 students
A research team from the University of Granada has carried out a study on the psychological process that triggers the "craving" or intense desire for tobacco, a study that could establish the bases to determine the brain mechanisms that activate this state and how to control them.
Miguel Ángel Muñoz García, from the Department of Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment of the University of Granada has carried out this study, under the direction of the Professors Jaime Vila Castelar and Mª Carmen Fernández Santaella.
"Craving" is an expression used to define an uncontrollable desire for the administration or consumption of an addictive substance. . . .
These results have been the basis of a series of studies with smokers, in withdrawal for 8 hours, to measure the physiological and emotional variables present in withdrawal symptoms using a machine (a polygraph) to estimate the emotional mechanisms responsible for the addiction to that substance. The smokers were shown several images (48) connected with situations that produce desire (related with leisure, free time, coffee…), analysing the heart´s defensive cardiac response produced as well as the startle response. . . .
Miguel Ángel Muñoz García states that this research has studied for the first time behavioural mechanisms involved in the tobacco craving process determining the brain areas and body responses connected with the compulsive behaviour provoked by tobacco.
The risk of suffering depression increases 41% in smokers, in comparison with non-smokers. This was the conclusion of a study undertaken with 8,556 participants by scientists of the University of Navarra, in collaboration with the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the Harvard School of Public Health (USA), and which demonstrates in a pioneering way the direct relationship between tobacco use and this disease.
The article, whose first author is Prof. Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, is based on research undertaken over the course of 6 years on university graduates with an average age of 42.
The work - exhaustive it is a report on the present situation of the tobacco consumption from a sort perspective. And it adds, that is perhaps but the important thing, a series of future recommendations. It takes the seal of the National Committee for the Prevention of Tabaquismo (CNPT) that publishes with the collaboration of the Observatory of the Woman of the Ministry of Health and Consumption. In him the most qualified specialists in the study take part of which it is possible to be called with all property, tabáquica epidemic in our country.
Doctor Mª Planchuelo Angels, besides to dedicate all her medical life to this problem of public health, is today the president of the CNPT. Perhaps the first question that can arise before this publication is porqué is necessary to approach the tabaquismo from this perspective; in other words, if the circumstance of being man or woman alters the problem.
One first question that is analyzed in this report is the analysis of the social and biological conditioners that in this subject affect of form different from women and men.
The State collected 5,006 million euros through special taxes and IVA of the tobacco in the seven first months of the year, which supposes an increase of 13% with respect to the entered thing in he himself period of the previous year, according to data presented/displayed today by of the Club of Smokers by the Tolerance. . . .
“All it makes think that 2007 will be a new year record for the coffers of the State as far as tax collection of the pocket of the smoker”, it maintains the association, after standing out that it is the second year in which the Law Antitabaco is vigor.
The Club of Smokers by the Tolerance denounces “the condition of citizen of second of the smokers, every day more undressed of rights”, while they support a tax burden over 75% of the sale price to the public of cigarettes.