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For the Perrys and other smokers, the incentive to kick the habit has perhaps never been stronger. The economic downturn continues to wear on, and this spring smokers were hit with the largest federal tax increase ever on cigarettes.
But reason doesn't always rule out, says Dr. David Abrams, a clinical psychologist and executive director of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy, which is part of the anti-smoking nonprofit American Legacy Foundation. "If anybody looked at the pros and cons and weighed the evidence, frankly, we shouldn’t have a single smoker in the country. But the brain's reward centers are very powerful, and they avoid logical reasoning. Seeking immediate pleasure is sometimes something you can’t stop yourself from doing."
But while experts do say they're seeing more interest in quitting, the support system is collapsing, as some states have exhausted funds for smoking-cessation programs that many smokers, especially lower-income folks, depend on when they decide to quit.
An estimated 45 million Americans smoke, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found last year that the U.S. smoking rate had dipped below 20 percent for the first time on record.
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Male gender and current smoking are significant risk factors for advanced colorectal neoplasia and colorectal cancer, according to two studies published in the June issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
In one study, Kelvin K.F. Tsoi, M.D., of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 28 cohort studies which included 1,463,796 subjects in America, Europe, and Asia who were followed for a median of 13 years. Compared to never smokers, they found that current smokers had an increased risk of colorectal cancer and rectal cancer (relative risks, 1.20 and 1.36, respectively). They also found that male smokers had a higher risk of colorectal cancer than female smokers (relative risks, 1.38 and 1.06, respectively).
Antony Worrall Thompson, the celebrity chef, is spearheading a campaign to overturn the ban on smoking in British pubs.
The Ready-Steady-Cook star and restaurateur is leading the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign calling for changes to the blanket ban which came into force in 2007.
Campaigners say the ban is "ripping the heart out" of British pubs, which are now closing at a rate of 40 a month, and want publicans to be allowed to tempt customers back by permitting smoking in some areas.
He said: "The smoking ban has had an extraordinarily detrimental effect on pubs and clubs and you can understand why. They used to be bastions of adult entertainment where young and old could meet and chat over a pint without the health police looking over their shoulders... The legislation as it stands is excessive and I would like to see it amended."
Hong Kong smokers will be squeezed out of the city’s bars and clubs when a tobacco ban takes effect at midnight after the government rejected pleas for further reprieve, saying owners have had enough time to prepare.
“It’s time for the smokers to think about quitting,” said Ronald Lam, head of the Department of Health’s Tobacco Control Office. “The key message is that the government is working with the community to push for a smoke-free society.”
The ban aligns Hong Kong with much of the European Union, the U.S. and Australia, which have all acted to protect workers from tobacco smoke. While the city banned smoking in offices and at beaches, parks and shopping malls in 2007, more than 1,000 pubs, nightclubs and mahjong halls were granted temporary exemptions, which expire tomorrow.
“It’s 2 1/2 years overdue,” said James Middleton, chairman of Hong Kong anti-tobacco pressure group Clear the Air. “Health of the workers must always come before business profits.”
As more and more teenagers of India's IT hub Bangalore are falling prey to smoking, the Karnataka High Court order barring tobacco products' sale near schools and colleges has been welcomed by the youngsters themselves. This should help them stay away from the harmful addiction, they say.
The Karnataka High Court on Monday directed the government to effectively implement the Cigarette and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003 (COTPA), to prevent the sale of tobacco products near educational institutions.
The high court has asked the Bangalore Municipal Corporation and the pre-university board to file an action-taken report in six weeks time on the implementation of the COTPA.
According to the COTPA, cigarettes and other tobacco products are banned to be sold to those below 18 years and such sales are prohibited within 100 yards from institutes of learning.
Smokers in Hong Kong will have to stub out their cigarettes before entering recreational venues to avoid hefty fines as an extended smoking ban comes into effect July 1.
A spokesperson of the HKSAR Health Department said late Monday that smoking will not be allowed in bars, night clubs, bathhouses, massage and mahjong premises and violators of the rule could have to pay 5,000 HK dollars in financial punishment at the most.
The spokesperson called for cooperation from the management of these venues in providing a smoke-free environment for their staff and customers, noting "they are authorized to require anyone to stop smoking in no-smoking areas and can request those refusing to produce their identity and address for follow-up action, or ask them to leave."
A proposal by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to levy a fee on cigarettes to help pay for the city's cleanup of discarded butts received backing from a Board of Supervisors committee Monday.
The mayor's office, however, Monday lowered the originally proposed 33-cent-per-pack fee to 20 cents.
Newsom praised the decision by the Budget and Finance Committee, which is expected to forward the item to the full board next week.
"All litter creates unnecessary costs for the city and its taxpayers," he said in a prepared statement, adding, "Cigarette butts are a big part of the problem."
The cleanup also removes toxins that can leach from the cigarette butts into groundwater or the bay and ocean, he said.
All litter creates unnecessary costs for the city and its taxpayers. Cigarette butts are a big part of the problem.San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose plan to levy a unique fee on cigarettes to help pay for the city's cleanup of discarded butts received backing from a Board of Supervisors committee Monday.
On first approach, Yunxiao seems like any other Chinese backwater caught in an uneasy industrial transition. . . .
Ringed by thickly forested mountains, illicit cigarette factories dot the countryside, carved deeply into caves, high into the hills, and even buried beneath the earth. By one tally, some 200 operations are hidden in Yunxiao, a southwestern Fujian county about twice the area of New York City. Over the last 10 years, production of counterfeit cigarettes has soared in China, jumping eightfold since 1997 to an unprecedented 400 billion cigarettes a year—enough to supply every U.S. smoker with 460 packs a year. Once famed for its bright yellow loquat fruit, Yunxiao is the trade's heartland, the source of half of China's counterfeit production. . . .
But for U.S. consumers, inhaling the knockoff cigarettes may do even more damage than their genuine counterparts. Lab tests show that Chinese counterfeits emit higher levels of dangerous chemicals than brand-name cigarettes: 80 percent more nicotine and 130 percent more carbon monoxide, and they contain impurities that include insect eggs and human feces.
Slate V: Hunting Chinese cigarette pirates
Today, China's fake cigarettes—knockoff Marlboros, Newports, and Benson & Hedges—are flooding markets around the globe. They fuel a violent, multibillion-dollar black market and are even more hazardous to smokers than the real thing, yet the industry is little-known.
We locals would like to see Yunxiao start its own legal cigarette factory someday.Unidentified cigarette broker, in an unprecedented look into the multi-billion $ counterfeit trade in China's Yunxiao county.
The European Union's health chief proposed on Tuesday that uniform laws be drafted for all 27 countries in the bloc to regulate smoking more strictly in public areas and workplaces.
Many EU countries have laws limiting exposure to second-hand, or passive, smoking. The rules are strictest in Britain and Ireland, where smoking is banned in enclosed public places, public transport and workplaces, including restaurants and bars.
"Each and every European should be entitled to full protection from tobacco smoke," EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou told a news conference.
The recommendation calls on all member states to implement laws that will limit exposure to tobacco smoke in public places, workplaces and public transport, and aims to protect children.
The City of Eagle was well on it's way to becoming the first smoke-free city in Idaho, until last week, at least. Councilman Michael Huffaker put a stop to the city's Clean Indoor Air Ordinance when he changed his vote on June 23.
The ordinance would have prohibited smoking at all businesses with more than five employees, including standalone bars, and would limit where smokers could light up outside, within city limits. . . .
Huffaker joined the skeptics last week when he changed his vote in opposition to the ordinance saying that possible detriments to the City of Eagle outweighed the benefits to the city. Huffaker cited a study that claims that if bar rats can't smoke in their favorite bar in Eagle they will drive to neighboring cities to get their fix and then drive home drunk.
For everyone involved here -- from the staff ferrying free drinks and cigarettes to the players themselves -- the marriage between the Chinese gambling game and smoking is one that shouldn't be broken.
Nevertheless, it is about to be.
Hong Kong?s government is set to enforce a blanket smoking ban in public places from July 1, aimed at protecting workers in the city?s bars, nightclubs, bathhouses, massage establishments and mahjong parlours from second-hand smoke.
Yet many workers regard the legislation as a death-knell amid a recession that has pushed the city's unemployment rate up to 5.3 percent. Bars have reported a drop in business as the slowdown bites.
"With the financial crisis, swine flu and now the smoking ban, it?s a perfect storm of trouble for the entertainment sector in Hong Kong," said Lawrence Ho, who has run a bar here for 18 years.
For most of the past 25 years, Hong Kong-based, British-born doctor Judith Mackay has been the tobacco control movement in Asia. . . .
Her success is based on her ability to convince the right person with the right power to make changes that will save lives. And she is happy to take advantage of non-democratic regimes.
"That is one of the reasons I was so active in the 1980s. Once you had democracies, you have white papers and green papers, you had public debates and forums and it went on forever," the 65-year-old said from her Hong Kong home.
"I found I could jump over quite a few fences in one go," added Mackay, who has been a senior policy adviser to the World Health Organization for more than 10 years.
Her vigour has inevitably drawn the attention of the tobacco industry -- she was once described by a trade organisation as one of the three most dangerous people in the world. . . .
wing professionalism of the Asia's anti-tobacco movement, boosted by a grant from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's foundation.
It funds her position at the World Lung Foundation working on cutting tobacco use in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on Asia.
"Bloomberg has brought business management into tobacco control. It is not an option to run over deadlines, like some academics and governments," she said.
"You are now offered a career path in tobacco control. Before, there was nobody to employ you."