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  USA Today's Smoking and Health Page has lots of Links to latest info. Also try, Health News Links from Oncolink. A search on smoking at Your Health Daily will turn up a host of NY Times articles.

  • 2/26/99 New Tobacco Citations CDC
    
    The Office on Smoking and Health, part of CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, is pleased to make available citations of recently published, tobacco-related articles from behavioral, scientific, and technical literature. Please consult a technical, medical, or public library to obtain articles of interest.
  • Men's Health: Smoking compilation of NY Times articles
  • 00/03/15 Pharmacotherapy of Smoking Cessation
    
      Tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable diseases in the United States. Smoking accounts for more than 400,000 deaths yearly and 30% of all cancer deaths. Primary care physicians have access to 70% of smokers, approximately 60% of whom are perceived to be in excellent health. Recent advances in the pharmacotherapy of nicotine addiction, including nicotine nasal spray, nicotine inhaler, bupropion hydrochloride, and over-the-counter transdermal nicotine patches, have increased the treatment options physicians can offer to smokers. Physicians, especially those in primary care specialties, should familiarize themselves with these products to improve efforts to help their patients stop smoking. This article reviews scientific data on the efficacy of approved medications, benefits, adverse effects, and appropriate use of these products. We also discuss nicotine addiction and treatment for special populations, including women, ethnic minorities, light smokers, and patients with cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases.
    
    
  • 01/28/99 Combination Nicotine Replacement Therapies Are the Most Effective Means to Quit Smoking EurekAlert
    
    Combined methods of nicotine replacement therapy are more effective than using just one, says a study in this week's BMJ. Dr Thorsteinn Blondal and colleagues from National University Hospital in Iceland, along with researchers from Pharmacia and Upjohn in Sweden, found that patients combining the use of nicotine patches with nicotine nasal sprays were twice as likely to still be abstaining from smoking after five years than those who had only used patches.
    
    
  • 01/28/99 Study Backs Nicotine Therapy AP
    
    Smokers who used a combination of a nicotine patch and nasal spray doubled their chances of staying smoke-free for six years, compared to those who used a patch alone, a new study says. The research by scientists in Iceland -- which involved the longest follow-up of any such study to date -- showed that 16 percent of those who used the combination did not smoke for six years, compared to 8.5 percent of those who relied only on a patch. . . . In the study, published in this week's British Medical Journal, scientists at the National University Hospital in Rekyjavik enrolled 237 smokers in a program to help them quit.
    
    
  • 01/28/99 Massage May Help Smokers Resist Cravings Reuters
    
    Individuals who are trying to give up smoking may find relief in massage, which has been shown to improve mood and reduce levels of anxiety and stress hormones. . . While Gallup polls have found that about 75% of smokers would like to quit, smoking cessation programs and medical interventions have had little effect. One reason, say researchers, is the symptoms that accompany withdrawal from nicotine, including anxiety. "Research suggests that massage therapy reduces anxiety," explain Dr. Maria Hernandez-Reif and colleagues with the Touch Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. . . SOURCE: Preventive Medicine 1999;28;28-32.
    
    
  • 01/27/99 If They Think Stopping Smoking Is Hard, There's One Man They Should Meet The Scotsman
    
    "I'm going to cure the world of smoking," shouted ALLEN CARR. She didn't know what to think. She'd been on at him about how he'd have to do something about his bronchitis, but it must have seemed a bit extreme. Fifteen and a half years later, he hasn't saved the world, but he hasn't done bad. The first clinic he opened within six months of that flash of comprehension has led to 40 others worldwide, from Joppa to Jerusalem, Quito to Kent. His first book, Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking, has been a best-seller in 20 languages (last year alone, it topped the German non-fiction list and was second in the Dutch: he stopped counting its British sales once it went past a million). He wrote another, more detailed book about nicotine addiction, and has just published a third, on how to stop children smoking. Between the books, the videos and the clinics (he has personally treated 25,000 clients), no man in the world has or is doing more to stub out our cigarette habit. . . From a smoker's point of view, the psychology of Carr's method is spot-on. The drug's to blame, not the smoker. Again, it's basic stuff, but if you realise how you are being manipulated by a chemical and how you then rationalise that feeling (got to smoke: it's a post-meal/post-coital/pre-deadline/coffee/social/firing squad/whatever kind of thing), it's quite easy to change that habitual behaviour. As Derek McGuff, whose Edinburgh clinic is Carr's only one in Scotland, points out: "Giving up smoking is no big deal. The idea that it is is part of the brainwashing." . . . HOW TO STOP YOUR CHILD SMOKING by Allen Carr is published by Penguin
    
    
  • 01/27/99 Retinoid Signaling and Activator Protein-1 Expression in Ferrets Given -Carotene Supplements and Exposed to Tobacco Smoke Journal of the National Cancer Institute
    
    Conclusions: Diminished retinoid signaling, resulting from the suppression of RAR gene expression and overexpression of activator protein-1, could be a mechanism to enhance lung tumorigenesis after high-dose -carotene supplementation and exposure to tobacco smoke. [J Natl Cancer Inst 1999;91:60-6]
    
    
  • 01/27/99 Plasma Levels of Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I and Lung Cancer Risk: a Case-Control Analysis Journal of the National Cancer Institute
    
    Conclusions: Plasma levels of IGF-I are higher and plasma levels of IGFBP-3 are lower in patients with lung cancer than in control subjects. If these findings can be confirmed in prospective studies, measuring levels of IGF-I and IGFBP-3 in blood may prove useful in assessing lung cancer risk. [J Natl Cancer Inst 1999;91:151-6]
    
    
  • 01/27/99 New Era In Butting Out Canadian Medical Association Journal
    
    anada's first nicotine-free stop-smoking drug is "changing the whole nature of smoking cessation," an expert says. Dr. Frederic Bass, head of the BC Doctors' Stop-Smoking Program, says bupropion (Zyban) "reflects our progress in understanding tobacco addiction" and has entered wide use since coming on the market last August. . . . . But Bass cautions physicians against relying solely on the new drug. He advocates a multipronged strategy for the "chronic condition," including counselling lasting more than 10 minutes, long-term follow-up and a team approach. "These are as effective as pharmacology," he says.
    
    
  • 01/26/99 Tobacco Compound Found In Fetal Fluids Reuters
    
    British researchers have found that a nicotine metabolite, cotinine, accumulates in the fluid surrounding a fetus as early as 7 weeks' gestation, both in women who smoke and women exposed to smoke at home or in the workplace. . . "Our results further support anti-smoking advice, suggesting that women should not only stop cigarette consumption before conception, but also avoid environmental tobacco smoke exposure during pregnancy," the researchers write this month in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
    
    
  • 01/26/99 Parkinson's Disease Research Findings Point to Environmental Causes Business Wire
    
    An interesting future direction will be to investigate the role that cigarette smoking may play in protecting against Parkinson's disease. While smoking is traditionally viewed as an activity harmful to the body, Dr. Tanner's group found that twins who smoked were less likely to develop Parkinson's disease than their nonsmoking twin brothers. The reasons are not clear for this association, so the Institute is already actively pursuing research in this area.
  • 01/27/99 Parkinson Disease in Twins / An Etiologic Study [Abstract] JAMA
    
    Conclusions  The similarity in concordance overall indicates that genetic factors do not play a major role in causing typical PD. No genetic component is evident when the disease begins after age 50 years. However, genetic factors appear to be important when disease begins at or before age 50 years.
  • 01/26/99 Study: Parkinson's Not Inherited AP
    
    "For the first time, today we can say that for people with Parkinson's disease diagnosed after age 50, it's most commonly caused by environmental factors," said Dr. Caroline M. Tanner of the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale, Calif., who led the study. It is published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. . . Tanner said environmental factors most likely to play a role in typical Parkinson's include exposure to chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides, diet and tobacco smoking. The apparent protective effect of smoking was found in the twins and in previous research, Tanner said. She and Dr. J. William Langston, president of the Parkinson's Institute and senior author, said the protection is probably real, perhaps caused by smoking's stimulation of the liver to produce enzymes that neutralize some toxin that would otherwise provoke Parkinson's. "But there are about 2,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, so we still have a big job ahead of us in finding what chemicals might actually be protective," Langston said. "And we don't recommend smoking to prevent Parkinson's disease."
  • 01/25/99 Parkinson's Risk Lower In Smokers Reuters
    
    A new study supports previous research that found that smokers may be at lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease. Dr. Jay M. Gorell, of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and colleagues compared the smoking and alcohol drinking habits of 144 Parkinson's disease patients with 464 people the same age that did not have the disease. They found that the more years a person smoked, the less likely they were to develop Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurological disorder characterized by tremors, muscle rigidity, and difficulty walking. . . . . Even past smokers appeared to be protected against Parkinson's disease, according to a report in the January issue of Neurology.
    
    
  • 01/26/99 Researchers Find Genetic Connection To Cigarette Smoking ScienceDaily Magazine
    
    In two studies featured in this month's American Psychological Association's journal of Health Psychology, researchers discovered that people carrying a particular version of the dopamine transporter gene (SLC6A3-9) are less likely to start smoking before the age of 16 and are more likely to be able to quit smoking if they start.
  • 01/24/99 Gene May Aid in Anti-Smoking Plan AP
    
    "This is just one small piece of the puzzle" of what influences smoking behavior, said psychologist Caryn Lerman, an author of one of the studies. . . It's at least the third gene to show evidence of an effect on smoking. . . But Ken Kidd, a Yale University geneticist who has studied the genetic marker used by the researchers, criticized the design of the studies and analysis of the results. "I do not accept their conclusions," he said. . . Hamer's group found no sign that the gene affects whether a person gets hooked, but results suggested it can help smokers quit
  • 01/24/99 Researchers Find Genetic Connection to Cigarette Smoking American Psychological Association
    
    In two studies featured in this month's American Psychological Association's journal of Health Psychology, researchers discovered that people carrying a particular version of the dopamine transporter gene (SLC6A3-9) are less likely to start smoking before the age of 16 and are more likely to be able to quit smoking if they start.
  • 01/24/99 Introduction to the Featured Section: GeneticResearch on Smoking Health Psychology
    
    Dopaminergic genes are likely candidates for heritable influences on cigarette smoking. In an accompanying article, Lerman et al. (1999) report associations between allele 9 of a dopamine transporter gene polymorphism (SLC6A3-9) and lack of smoking, late initiation of smoking, and length of quitting attempts. The present investigation extended their study by examining both smoking behavior and personality traits in a diverse population of nonsmokers, current smokers, and former smokers (N = 1,107).
  • 01/24/99 A Genetic Association for Cigarette Smoking Behavior Health Psychology
    
    Dopaminergic genes are likely candidates for heritable influences on cigarette smoking. In an accompanying article, Lerman et al. (1999) report associations between allele 9 of a dopamine transporter gene polymorphism (SLC6A3-9) and lack of smoking, late initiation of smoking, and length of quitting attempts. The present investigation extended their study by examining both smoking behavior and personality traits in a diverse population of nonsmokers, current smokers, and former smokers ( N = 1,107). A significant association between SLC6A3-9 and smoking status was confirmed and was due to an effect on cessation rather than initiation
    
    
  • 01/24/99 Waiting To Exhale Without Smoke--And Extra Pounds Chicago Tribune
    
    "When you're a smoker, you're talking about an average of between 300 and 600 trips to the mouth in a day," he says. "That's the traffic pattern. If you stop smoking, what is one of the earliest tips you hear? Put something in your mouth. It started with candy and gum, then for a few years we got healthy with carrots. Now it's non-consumables--straws, toothpicks." But he says those substitutes keep cravings alive. . . "A lot of people make radical change," he says. "That seems to be a prime contributor to difficulties. If you're quitting, it should be a very quiet ceremony, like putting a baby to sleep. You tiptoe away, you don't poke it and prod it."
    
    
  • 01/23/99 Scientist finds plant SOS messages Augusta Chronicle
    
    During three years of research at the University of Georgia's Coastal Plain Experiment Station in Tifton, entomologist Consuelo De Moraes showed that cotton, corn and tobacco plants send out one signal when they're being attacked by corn ear worms and another when they're being attacked by tobacco bud worms. . . The plants summon a black, half-inch parasitic wasp, known as cardiochiles nigriceps, that is a natural enemy of the caterpillars.
    
    
  • 01/22/99 Ex-smokers Gain, Then Lose Weight Reuters
    
    Smokers who wish to quit but worry about gaining weight may find encouragement in a Japanese study that shows weight gain is usually temporary -- after a few years, most ex-smokers drop to weight levels consistent with those of people who have never smoked. But the number of cigarettes previously smoked per day plays a role in this weight gain, with those who smoked 25 or more cigarettes per day gaining more than those who smoked less, according to a recent report in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
    
    
  • 01/22/99 Male Sexual Problems British Medical Journal
    
    Tobacco consumption also produces immediate and long term effects on erections that are sometimes dramatic.1 Giving up smoking often leads to improvement. It is surprising that impotence is not cited more often as a persuasive reason for giving up smoking.
    
    
  • 01/20/99 SMITHKLINE BEECHAM Offers New Option for Smokers - New MINT-FLAVORED NICORETTE(R) Nicotine Gum Hits Stores Today PR Newswire
    
    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Nicorette(R) Mint nicotine gum for over-the-counter sale. The seven month approval time-frame demonstrates the FDA's continued commitment to reduce the number of smokers by increasing the availability of treatment options.
    
    
  • 01/20/99 Tobacco Plant-Produced Vaccine Helps Mice Survive Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, Stanford Researchers Find Business Wire
    
    Eighty percent of the mice that received the plant-derived vaccine survived the lymphoma, while untreated mice died within three weeks after contracting the disease, the researchers reported in the January 19 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
    
    
  • 01/19/99 Cold/Flu Season Takes Its Toll on Busy Women Business Wire
    
    American Lung Association Offers Health Tips for Women with its New "Ther-MOM-eter" Campaign . . . Smoking puts you at increased risk for cold and flu and also increases the risk for your children. Inhaled smoke further irritates the air passages, worsening a cough and prolonging other symptoms. [This graph only]
    
    
  • 01/19/99 How To Avoid Withdrawal Symptoms Electronic Telegraph
    
    MANY people who want to give up say that they fail because of stress. But the "stress" is more likely to be withdrawal tension from the last cigarette, says Gay Sutherland, of the Maudsley Smoking Cessation Clinic. "You must persist for a month to show you can manage your usual stress level." Long-term studies show that ex-smokers have lower stress levels than smokers. Exercise, particularly swimming, can be helpful.
    
    
  • 01/19/99 The Best Ways To Stub It Out Electronic Telegraph
    
    THE message seems to be: the more the advice, counselling and nicotine replacement (NR), the greater the likelihood of success. (Information based on estimates of those who have stopped smoking for 12 months, except where indicated.) Willpower: one to two per cent success rate: This is the toughest; it is easy to fall by the wayside.
    
    
  • 01/18/99 Q&A: CFS sufferer has youth in favor Biloxi Sun Herald
    
    Q:I know smoking is bad for my health, but at least it won't mess up my sperm like hard drugs can. Right? A:Wrong, tobacco breath.
    
    
  • 01/18/99 Lung Disorders Tied To Cancer Risk In Nonsmokers Reuters
    
    The investigators found that the lung cancer risk increased 94% in those people with a history of emphysema, 73% for chronic bronchitis, and 82% for those with a combination of emphysema, chronic bronchitis and asthma. And the associations remained even after the researchers factored in a past history of smoking or of exposure to secondhand smoke. They speculate that chronic lung diseases may increase the risk of lung cancer through genetic factors, or through causing chronic inflammation and tissue damage.
    
    
  • 01/18/99 Smokers Prone To The Blues The Australian
    
    In a study of just over 2700 Canberra residents, researchers from the Australian National University's psychiatric epidemiology research centre have found smoking is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, alcohol misuse, extraversion and psychoticism. . . The centre's deputy director Anthony Jorm said the research . . . is important in helping to understand what motivates people to take up such a harmful habit. "For many, smoking must give short-term rewards that outweigh the long-term risks," he writes in a report of the research, published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
    
    
  • 01/17/99 Nobody Gets A Quick Divorce From Nicotine Twin Falls Times-News
    
    "Some people do manage to say `OK, that's it - I'm quitting,' and then do it, and that works for them," she said. "Others need to go through a class, and some quit over the years in these classes." There's also the option of using a stop-smoking product that contains nicotine to help break the habit, such as Nicoderm or Nicorette gum. For anyone interested in trying this, $5-off coupons are available at the health department until March 31.
    
    
  • 01/16/99 In The News: Smoking And Women's Fertility Minneapolis Star Tribune
    
    Women who smoke may risk having irregular periods, according to a study published in this month's Obstetrics and Gynecology. California Department of Health researchers say this would explain why women smokers are more likely to be infertile and enter menopause at an earlier age than women who don't smoke.
    
    
  • 01/16/99Tools to Improve Documentation of Smoking Status Journal of the American Medical Association
    
    Conclusions: A continuous quality improvement group process aided by an electronic medical record is useful to develop a self-sustaining office system to screen, document, and periodically update smoking status in a consistent place in the medical record. Although screening for and documenting smoking status are only the first step toward helping patients stop smoking, it is an important one.
    
    
  • 01/15/99 Panel Urges Research on Health Care For Lesbians The Washington Post
    
    The committee's report found that a lesbian's sexual orientation does not necessarily put her at any higher risk for a specific disease. Instead, certain risk factors, such as smoking, drinking and higher body fat, may be more prevalent among lesbians than among other women.
    
    
  • 01/14/99 ATP Announces Nicotine Inhaler Achieves 15% Market Share in United Kingdom & Excellent Physician Response in U.S. Canada Newswire
    
    According to Ron Schmid, VP of Communications for McNeil, "the physician's response to the U.S. launch of the Nicotrol(R) Inhaler has been excellent." The Inhaler is the first-ever FDA approved stop-smoking product that provides smokers with the comfort of the hand-to-mouth smoking ritual. The Inhaler delivers small doses of nicotine to satisfy the physical cravings as the smoker tries to quit, but without the harmful tars and toxins of a cigarette.
    
    
  • 01/15/99 Dementia? No, It's Just Snoring The Independent
    
    A 65-year-old man narrowly escaped a diagnosis of dementia which would have left him dependent for the rest of his life on his long-suffering wife, when the real cause of his problems was discovered - he snored. The man, who was a life-long smoker and had chronic bronchitis, was admitted to King's Mill Hospital in Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, because he was having hallucinations during the night and was confused during the day. . . In the man's case, the SLEEP APNOEA combined with his BRONCHITIS caused the oxygen level in his blood to fall very low during the night.
    
    
  • 01/15/99 Pulmonary medicine British Medical Journal
    
    Only two interventions have been shown to increase survival of smokers who develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The first is stopping smoking, which is beneficial at all stages of the disease. . . The second is long term oxygen therapy, which increases life expectancy of patients with chronic respiratory failure. The main goal of other interventions is to relieve symptoms.
    
    
  • 01/14/99 Long-term Smoking Tied To Pancreatic Cancer Reuters
    
    Long-term, heavy smoking -- two packs of cigarettes per day for over 20 years -- appears to be linked to an increased risk of genetic changes that may lead to pancreatic cancer, researchers report. Mutations of K-ras -- a gene found in pancreas cells -- linked to the development of cancer are often found at autopsy in heavy smokers, even smokers who did not die of pancreatic cancer, according to a report in the January 15th issue of the journal Cancer. The new findings provide further evidence that heavy smoking is a risk factor for pancreatic cancer, according to Dr. Bruce A. Ruggeri, of Cephalon, Inc., West Chester, Pennsylvania, and associates.
    
    
  • 01/12/99 Smoking Found to Disrupt Menstrual Cycle Your Health Daily (NYT Syndicate)
    
    Women who smoke may be putting themselves at risk for irregular menstrual cycles, according to a new report. . . The study also suggested that women who smoked heavily were more likely than nonsmokers to have a menstrual cycle in which no egg was released from the ovaries. This may help explain why women smokers are more likely to be infertile and may undergo earlier menopause, researchers reported in the January issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
    
    
  • 01/13/99 Smoking Closes 'Mortality Gap' Times Of London
    
    MEN are beginning to close the mortality gap with women, largely because they are more successful at giving up smoking. The latest set of statistics were collected by the Faculty and Institute of Actuaries, which monitors death rates to help to determine life insurance premiums. Its figures, based on the numbers of policyholders who died between 1991 and 1994, show that the average life expectancy for men since 1978 has increased by 14 per cent, while women's has increased only 12 per cent.
    
    
  • 01/12/99 Doctor's Diary Electronic Telegraph
    
    Dr David Jones, writing in the journal Nature, suggests it might be possible to combine the brain-stimulant properties of alcohol and tobacco while reducing the anti-social and health risks of smoking - by developing a tobacco wine. "With a bottle of tobacco wine at their side, smokers will find it easy to give up their cigarettes," he writes. "They will be able to enjoy their addiction without the tars and combustion products (the smoke) which makes smoking hazardous and unpopular." This would certainly be welcomed by our very own Lord Deedes. In his foreword to Murder a Cigarette (by Ralph Harris and Judith Hatton) - a cheerful, but emphatic rebuff to the SS (Stop Smoking) brigade - he observes:
    
    
  • 01/12/99 OH: Researchers to examine oral cancer Columbus Dispatch
    
    Armed with a $4.2 million grant from the government, researchers at the ARTHUR G. JAMES CANCER HOSPITAL will spend the next five years studying what causes oral cancers and how to prevent them. "We want to expand our research into oral cancers,'' said GARY STONER, a James researcher who specializes in chemoprevention, or the creation of drugs to prevent cancer. "This area hasn't been explored heavily and demands attention.'' The grant comes from the NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DENTAL RESEARCH, an arm of the government's NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH. . . The goal, Stoner said, is to find agents to inhibit genetic damage caused by tobacco-related products, thereby preventing oral cancers.
    
    
  • 01/12/99 Cancer's 1999 toll is put at 1.2 million The Boston Globe
    
    Lung cancer remained the leading US cancer killer, with more than 150,000 deaths this year, the [American Cancer Society] said in its annual report. Cases were declining among white men, the society said. They were on the increase among women, probably because fewer men, but more women, were smoking. Cancer was the second-leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease, the organization said.
    
    
  • 01/11/99 IRELAND: Are you going toquit smoking? Irish Times
    
    Did you make a New Year's resolution to give up smoking? Are you among the 70 per cent of Irish smokers who would like to quit? Are you among the 50 per cent of smokers who have tried but failed to give up cigarettes over the past two years? If so, drop in to the free Stop Smoking session held every Tuesday
    
    
  • 01/09/99 US Heart Disease Rate Prompts Calls For Lifestyle Change The Boston Globe
    
    Heart disease, the biggest killer in most of the industrialized world, is largely preventable by healthier habits . . . While scientists have known for some time that the risk of developing coronary heart disease over a lifetime must be high, the study published in this week's edition of the British medical journal The Lancet was the first to quantify it. Smoking, being overweight, not exercising enough, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure are all known to contribute to the risk. . . If those factors are controlled, a huge proportion of heart disease cases could be eradicated, Levy said.
    
    
  • 01/06/99 Munchies can beat bad habits San Antonio Express-News
    
    You've given up smoking for many good reasons. But now you really need something to keep your hands and mouth busy. Some people reach for snack food. . . But it doesn't have to be that way, said MARGIE CHAPMAN, extension agent with the Family and Consumer Section of the Bexar County Agricultural Extension Service. "Some snack foods are low in fat and good for you," she said.
    
    
  • 01/08/99 Smoking Mums Recipe For Tantrums The Courier-Mail
    
    CHILDREN whose mothers smoked during early pregnancy are more likely to be aggressive and display delinquent behaviour when they grow up. Mothers who smoke early in pregnancy are twice as likely to have children with behavioural problems than those who do not smoke -- and the more the mother smokes, the higher the risk. A longitudinal study, of 4879 five-year-old children whose mothers were patients at Brisbane Mater Hospital, looked at women who quit smoking before pregnancy; who continued smoking at the same level during pregnancy; and those who cut back during pregnancy.
    
    
  • 01/07/99 Educational Push Works: SIDS Deaths Decline Chicago Tribune
    
    Deaths from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) have declined dramatically, thanks to parents who heed medical advice to have their infants sleep on their backs and to decrease the babies' exposure to cigarette smoke. A study of SIDS deaths in California found that from 1990 through 1995, the death rate declined 20 percent among black infants and 41 percent among all others, according to Elizabeth J. Adams of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta . . . in PEDIATRICS, a publication of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
    
    
  • 01/06/99 High-dose Beta-carotene May Up Cancer Risk Reuters
    
    A study in ferrets suggests an association between high-dose beta-carotene supplementation and precancerous changes in lung tissue. The researchers also note that these lung changes were even more pronounced when the animals were exposed to tobacco smoke. Their report is published in the January 6th issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "Our findings shed light on the potential harmful effects of high-dose beta-carotene supplementation, particularly as it relates to cigarette smoke," Dr. Xiang-Dong Wang and colleagues at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, report.
  • 01/07/99 Animal study sheds light on link between cancer and high doses of beta carotene supplements NewsEdge
    
    Researchers explain in tomorrow's Journal of the National Cancer Institute how high-dose beta carotene supplements may have increased lung cancer rates among smokers in two large intervention trials reported in 1994 and 1996. . . A study of ferrets -- which metabolize beta carotene very much like humans -- shows that excess beta carotene stored in the lungs becomes oxidized into products that turn the normal control of cell division upside down.
    
    
  • 01/07/99 PATENTS: Method of treating nicotine dependence ($$) NewsEdge
    
    Abstract: A method of treating a subject afflicted with nicotine dependence with the opiate antagonist, nalmefene is described. The subjects will not gain significant amounts of weight as a result of smoking reduction or cessation.
    
    
  • 01/06/99 Advances in the Pharmacotherapy of Smoking...[Abstract] Journal of the American Medical Association
    
    Since the 1996 publication of guidelines on smoking cessation from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and the American Psychiatric Association, several new treatments have become available, including nicotine nasal spray, nicotine inhaler, and bupropion hydrochloride. In addition, nicotine gum and patch have become available over-the-counter. This article reviews the published literature and US Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical company reports on these therapies. Based on this review, clinical logic, and experience, we conclude that pharmacotherapy should be made available to all smokers. All currently available therapies appear to be equally efficacious, approximately doubling the quit rate compared with placebo.
    
    
  • 01/06/99 SMOKING Kick the habit Philadelphia Daily News
    
    If you are still smoking, despite a New Year's resolution to quit, you may have succumbed to a "common misconception about quitting," says Dr. Frank Leone, director of the Tobacco Intervention Program at Thomas Jefferson University. Like: I'll gain weight. . . .Withdrawal symptoms will be unbearable. . .The program I want is too expensive.
    
    
  • 01/05/99 Exterminator charged over using bomb of pesticide Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
    
    Fredrickson said the pesticide, a nicotine alkaloid, was clearly labeled with a white and red label featuring the universal symbol for poison -- a skull and crossbones. . . The amount of nicotine residue found inside the apartment equaled the content of 37,000 cigarettes, Fredrickson estimated. Authorities don't believe the family will suffer any long-term effects.
    
    
  • 01/05/99 Watching for the Warning Signs of an Invisible Killer New York Times
    
    Most people normally have at most only a few percent of their hemoglobin as carboxyhemoglobin. Smokers have much more than nonsmokers, and those who live or work in environments polluted by tobacco smoke are likely to have even higher levels of carboxyhemoglobin than smokers themselves. [This graph only]
    
    
  • 01/05/99 Overcoming Resolution 'Failure': A Solid Mental Preparation Is the Best Guarantee of Success The Washington Post
    
    Moreover, people who take action and fail within a month are twice as likely to succeed over the next six months as people who don't take any action at all; failure, in fact, is usually part of the equation for success. . . These are the findings of JAMES PROCHASKA, a University of Rhode Island psychologist who has specialized in studying how people alter their behavior. His approach has been used successfully by such organizations as the National Cancer Institute to help people stop smoking
    
    
  • 01/04/99 ELAN Receives FDA Approval for Nicotine OTC Patch; Perrigo to Market the Product PR Newswire
    
    Elan Corporation, plc (NYSE: ELN) ("Elan") and Perrigo Company (Nasdaq: PRGO) ("Perrigo") today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") has issued a letter approving Elan's supplemental New Drug Application ("NDA") to change from prescription to over-the-counter ("OTC") status its Nicotine Transdermal System patch for adult use as an aid to smoking cessation. In its prescription format, the product was formerly marketed as ProStep(R) by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories.
    
    
  • 01/02/99Migraine and stroke in young women: case-control study British Medical Journal
    
    Coexistence of risk factorsuse of oral contraceptives, high blood pressure, or smoking had more than multiplicative effects on odds ratios for ischaemic stroke associated with migraine alone
    
    
  • 01/04/99 Stopping Smoking Tops Resolution List MSNBC
    
    Kicking the cigarette habit, losing weight and exercising more top the list of New Year's resolutions cited in a new telephone poll of 922 Americans conducted by Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. And these goals are right in line with what the American Council on Science and Health, a nonprofit group based in New York, cites as important priorities. . .Focus your efforts on things that matter. . . And yet, while people are fretting about the possible carcinogens in their foods and pondering the potential benefits of the latest supplements, more than 1,300 Americans are dying prematurely each day from cigarette smoking
    
    
  • 01/02/99 Smoking Offsets One Illness Denver Post
    
    Conrad, a 41-year-old schizophrenic, knows from experience that smoking allows him to focus his thoughts and combat one specific aspect of his illness: the inability to filter out background noise in his environment. And so he struggles with a 1 1/2-pack-a-day habit that plays havoc with his health and drains his poverty-level income - but gives him indispensable, though short-lived, relief from his illness. After years of trying to quit, he has resigned himself to a lifetime of tobacco self-medication.
    
    
  • 01/01/99 Counseling can be key to quitting smoking CNN
    
    It is estimated that only 5 percent of smokers who quit cold turkey are able to refrain from smoking for more than a year. The pleasurable effects that many derive from nicotine makes smoking a tough habit to break, said Dr. Steve Adelman of the Harvard Vanguard Medical Association. "Nicotine is one of the most tenaciously addictive substances known to mankind. It's as addictive -- and for some people, even more addictive -- than heroin," Adelman said. . .Following are some common aids to breaking the smoking habit and their estimated costs.
    
    
  • 01/02/99 Blowing Away a Bad Habit in 1999 Los Angeles Times
    
    Several area smokers spoke with RACHEL FISCHER about how they plan to beat the odds. . . It was the whole thing of, "Smoke a cigarette; you'll be cool if you do." I wish I'd never done it. . . Recently, though, I got sick. It was only for two days, but then I could not get rid of the congestion in my chest. I coughed like an old woman. It scared me. . . Every day there's a new study about smoking's effects and I don't want to take the risk anymore. . . The smell is also an issue: The smoke is always on your clothes, and when I'm around kids, they pick it up.
    
    
  • 01/01/99 Americans Resolve To Keep On Trying Chicago Tribune
    
    While the total number of smokers who annually attempt to quit has remained steady for the last several years, the survey revealed, the number of smokers who eschew cigarettes multiple times is on the rise--proof again that for Americans, failing once does not mean failing forever.
    
    
  • 12/31/98 CA: Toll-Free Helpline Available for Smokers San Francisco Chronicle
    
    Martinez -- Smokers who quit after cigarette prices jump tomorrow can get help from a toll-free counseling service. Funds from a 1988 tobacco tax measure, Proposition 99, allowed the state to set up the California Smokers Helpline, where coaches guide smokers through withdrawal. . . The helpline, at (800) 7-NO-BUTTS, sends smokers information and steers them to community resources.
    
    
  • 01/01/99 Site Sends Resolution Makers E-Mail Reminders New York Times
    
    Called the Resolution Reminder, Surratt's site aims to keep you focused on your resolution throughout the year by sending friendly e-mail reminders encouraging you to stick with it (whatever 'it' may be). Now in its second year, the site provides a form with a list of 15 of the most common resolutions, including: Lose Weight, Exercise More, Save Money, Quit Smoking, Advance Career, Follow My Dreams and the all-inclusive -- and arguably most difficult to achieve -- Be a Better Person in General.
    
    
  • 01/02/99ANN LANDERS: Here's how to quit smoking Minneapolis Star Tribune
    
    I recently came across these tips written by Linda Greenhow, coordinator of the nicotine addiction program at the St. Helena Health Center in Deer Park, Calif. They may be helpful if you want to quit smoking. The information sounded good to me, and I would like to share it with you.
    
    
  • 01/01/99 FINDINGS: Migraine Sufferers and Strokes The Washington Post
    
    Women who get migraines are at greater risk of having a stroke than those who do not, according to research published in the British Medical Journal. . . After studying 291 women ages 20 to 44 who had had strokes, scientists said the risk is even higher if the woman smokes, has high blood pressure or uses oral contraceptives.
    
    
  • 12/31/98 Smokers Count Down To Butting Out Kamloops Daily News
    
    The B.C. LUNG ASSOCIATION wants to help those who are trying to get off tobacco by offering quitting tips in a free booklet and on its Internet site. . . The QUIT TIPS booklet is available from the B.C. Lung Association at 2675 Oak St., Vancouver, B.C., V6H 2K2, or by calling toll-free, 1-800-665-5864, or at the Web site at www.bc.lung.ca/quittips.html .
    
    
  • 12/29/98 AMA Offers New Year's Resolutions for a Healthy 1999 PR Newswire
    
    1. Give up smoking or help someone else stop. If you smoke, you should be aware that cigarettes are the only product that when used as directed by the manufacturers, causes serious illness and even death. More than 400,000 Americans die each year as the result of a smoking-related disease.
    
    
  • 12/29/98 One-Third of Americans Keep Their New Year's Resolutions, AT&T WorldNet Service Survey Reveals PR Newswire
    
    With the survey results, AT&T WorldNet Service has created a "New Year's 1999 Resolution" Website (http://www.att.net/resolutions.html) listing America's top 10 resolutions for 1999 and providing direct links to Web sites and services that can help people stick to their resolutions throughout the new year. . . 2. Kick That Smoking Habit -- American Cancer Society(TM)
    
    
  • 12/28/98Nicotine Anonymous Offers Help to All Nicotine Addicts; Support Available to Those Who Wish to Stop Smoking 365 Days a Year PR Newswire
    
    Nicotine Anonymous is a non-profit, 12-step fellowship of men and women helping each other to live nicotine-free lives.
    
    
  • 12/28/98 Smoking, Maternal History Predict Hot Flashes Reuters
    
    Cigarette smoking and a maternal history of menopausal hot flashes may predispose a woman to hot flashes during her own menopause, findings from a recent study suggest. According to researchers writing in the Journal of Women's Health, ``women who reported having mothers with hot flashes were about four times more likely to have hot flashes than those women whose mothers did not have hot flashes.''
    
    
  • 12/28/98 The Prospective Relationships Between Smoking and Weight in a Young, Biracial Cohort: The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
    
    Over the 7-year follow-up, all smoking status groups gained weight, including continuous smokers and initiators. Weight gain was greatest among those who quit smoking. Weight gain attributable to smoking cessation was 4.2 kg for Whites and 6.6 kg for Blacks. Smoking had a small weight-attenuating effect on Blacks. No such effects, however, were observed among Whites. These results suggest, at least in younger smokers, that smoking has minimal impact on body weight.
    
    
  • 12/28/98 Research burns light cigarettes Toronto Globe and Mail
    
    Low-tar cigarettes have been exposed as a potential hoax with new research that shows these so-called "light" cigarettes may actually cause more heart and lung damage than regular cigarettes because smokers inhale more and smoke more after they switch. The revelation was made before Christmas by the British Columbia governmen . . . But it was a group of researchers at HEALTH CANADA that spurred the development of a new test to measure what smokers draw into their lungs when they light up. B.C. is the first province in Canada to use the new methodology, which was developed at a lab in Kitchener, Ont.
    
    
  • 12/26/98 Human Aging Process Is A Medical Mystery San Diego Union-Tribune
    
    "If people are looking for magic bullets, they're not there," says Sprott. "The best advice we can give to maximize your life span is to give up smoking, fasten your seat belt, and engage in regular daily exercise, some of it load-bearing, to strengthen the bones. Those are the biggies."
    
    
  • 12/24/98 PATENTS: Method for treating substance abuse withdrawal (Assignee -- Eli Lilly and Company) ($$) NewsEdge
    
    This invention provides a method for treating a condition resulting from the cessation or withdrawal of tobacco or nicotine, opioids, ethanol or combinations thereof comprising administering an effective amount of 4-chloro-5-(imidazoline-2-y(amino)-6-methoxy-2-methylpyrimid ine.
    
    
  • 12/23/98 PATENTS: Colonic delivery of nicotine to treat inflammatory bowel disease (Assignee -- Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) NewsEdge
    
    Abstract: A method is provided to treat inflammatory bowel disease by locally administering to the colon an effective amount of nicotine or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof, preferably via formulations adapted for delayed oral release or rectal administration. Further provided is a novel formulation for the oral administration of nicotine comprising a polyacrylic polymer complexed with nicotine.
    
    
  • 12/22/98 Smoking Linked To Earlier Menopause Reuters
    
    A woman's smoking habits, her weight, the number of children she bears, and even her religion may affect the age at which she reaches menopause, according to a study by researchers at New York University School of Medicine. The investigators found that women who smoked more than 10 cigarettes per day were 40% more likely to enter menopause earlier than nonsmokers. . . SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 1998;51:1271-1276.
    
    
  • 12/22/98 PERSONAL HEALTH / Where There's Smoke, There Are Respiratory Symptoms Newsday
    
    Despite initial worry from bar owners about losing business, revenues from bars and taverns have stayed about the same since the ban went into effect, according to Ken August, spokesman for the California Department of Health Services. Go into any California restaurant and bar "and you won't find anyone smoking - not because there are uniformed guards but because people have come to understand the dangers of secondhand smoke," August said.
    
    
  • 12/22/98 Anti-smoking Device Uses Hand-to-mouth Approach -- The Business Journal Of Phoenix The Business Journal
    
    The typical pack-a-day cigarette smoker repeats the same hand-to-mouth motion up to 200 times each day. . . With those rituals and cravings in mind, McNeil Consumer Products Co. has started marketing a new weapon -- the NICOTROL INHALER -- for smokers who have, so far, lost the battle to quit. The Philadelphia health care company, a business unit of Princeton-based Johnson & Johnson, started marketing the smoking cessation device through an agreement with Pharmacia & Upjohn Co.
    
    
  • 12/21/98 Educated Heart Attack Survivors Quit Smoking Reuters
    
    Patients who have a high school or higher level of education are more likely to quit smoking after a heart attack than smokers with lower levels of education, report US researchers. ``The dramatic influence of higher levels of education following the experience of a heart attack suggests that more highly educated older smokers 'learn' from their heart attacks and quit smoking,'' according to a report . . . SOURCE: The Journal of Health and Social Behavior 1998 (December):271-294.
    
    
  • 12/21/98 Smoking Puts Home Oxygen Patients At Risk Reuters
    
    In the December issue of the journal Burns, physicians at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, describe 21 patients on domiciliary oxygen who suffered severe burns when their oxygen delivery system ignited while they smoked. According to the report, recent surveys reveal that up to half of patients on home oxygen admit to smoking. . . SOURCE: Burns 1998;24:658-660.
    
    
  • 12/17/98 Just Say 'Wait a Minute' New York Review of Books
    
    Earlier this year, for example, a group of researchers at the University of Michigan led by the psychiatrist Ovide Pomerleau published a short report in the journal Addiction. Pomerleau and his colleagues polled four separate groups of people about how they felt when they first experimented with cigarettes: heavy smokers, light smokers, ex-smokers, and never-smokers. What they found is that there are huge differences in how much pleasure people derived from their first few cigarettes. In fact, the amount of pleasure neophyte smokers experienced correlates closely with how heavily they ended up smoking later in life.
    
    
  • 12/20/98 Quitter's Lament   Minneapolis Star Tribune
    
    I have been reading all the quitting-smoking Web sites for support, but they go on and on about how much damage I have done to my body. According to the American Lung Association, I have taken years off my life, inflicted upon myself a long, slow, painful death and have gravely endangered society and my loved ones. I went looking for encouragement and maybe a promise that it gets easier (oh, please, let it get easier!) but now I am morbidly depressed. What's the difference if I destroy my body for six years or for 20? Is there any offering of hope you can give me? Help! Thank you!
    
    
  • 12/17/98 Break From Smoking Helps Lungs Reuters
    
    ``Not only quitting smoking but attempts to quit smoking can prevent some loss of lung function,'' conclude a team of researchers led by Dr. Robert Murray of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Their findings are published in the December issue of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.
    
    
  • 12/16/98 Hopkin's Q & A: U.S. vital signs The Baltimore Sun
    
    Smoking while pregnant can cause low birth weight, can't it? Dr. GUYER: Yes, smoking during pregnancy is one of the most important preventable causes of low birth weight, and women were slightly less likely to report smoking during pregnancy in 1996 (13.6 percent) compared with 1995 (13.9 percent). Since 1989, tobacco use during pregnancy has fallen 30 percent; however, maternal smoking among teens rose from 1995 to 1996, with an increase of five percent reported for younger teens ages 15 to 17 years (to 15.4 percent in 1996) and one percent for teens ages 18 to 19 years (to 18.3 percent in 1996).
    
    
  • 12/15/98International Conference on Prevention and Early Diagnosis of Lung Cancer; Varese, Italy BW HealthWire
    
    On a worldwide basis, lung cancer is the most deadly malignancy; it will cause more than one million deaths this year. Because cigarette smoking is the vastly predominant cause, lung cancer is almost entirely preventable. . . An important aspect of the Conference was a review of new technology that holds the promise of substantial mortality reduction from lung cancer. These new technologies include low dose spiral CT scan, autofluorescent bronchoscopy and molecular markers in sputum cytology. . . The Conference encourages national governments and public health organizations involved in cancer prevention and control to more aggressively address tobacco control and to urgently consider the issues surrounding the early detection of lung cancer.
    
    
  • 12/15/98 CA: When Bars Say 'No' to Smoking New York Times
    
    In their report, the scientists noted that a majority of the bartenders (64 percent) said they "strongly" or "somewhat" disagreed with the smoking ban, making it unlikely that reports of reduced symptoms were inspired by anti-smoking fervor. But 80 percent also said they believed that second-hand smoke had a "slight" or "moderate-to-severe" effect on their health.
    
    
  • 12/11/98 OK, take a deep breath Edmonton (Alberta) Journal
    
    But triggers that could be avoided such as tobacco smoke or exposure to pets, also play a major role in bringing on asthma attacks, the survey found. Despite the fact that 55 per cent of children with asthma reported tobacco smoke brought on or worsened their asthma, 48 per cent of them reported being regularly exposed to second-hand smoke, mostly at home. And nearly a quarter of surveyed teenagers with asthma smoked.
    
    
  • 12/15/98 NY: ROCHESTER: Women's deaths by lung cancer rising here Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
    
    Women in Monroe County have a lung cancer death rate that is higher than the state average and climbing. . . In Monroe County, the lung cancer death rate for women jumped from 39.1 per 100,000 women in 1992 to 50.4 in 1996. The rate for males dropped during the same period, from 67.1 to 63.2 per 100,000 men. Similar patterns are seen in Ontario and Wayne counties.
  • 12/14/98 NY: Lung Cancer Jumps Among N.Y. Women AP
    
    Lung cancer among New York state women has jumped 40 percent in the last 20 years, an increase some health department officials are attributing to the legions of women who took up smoking during World War II.
  • 12/13/98 NY: Lung cancer takes increasing toll on women Albany Times-Union
    
    Between 1976 and 1995, the number of women in New York who died from lung cancer jumped from 19.8 per 100,000 to 32.4, while the disease's rate of death among men, though still roughly twice that for women, dropped slightly. "This is probably the biggest and most meaningful cancer trend that there is over the past 20 years,'' said Mark S. Baptiste, the Health Department's leading epidemiologist, in an interview Friday. And the causes behind it are clear: the decades-old boom in the ranks of women smokers.
    
    
  • 12/11/98 Smoking Cigarettes Is Associated with Increased Sperm Disomy in Teenage Men ($4.00) NewsEdge
    
    CONCLUSION(S): Cigarette smoking among teenagers was associated with increases in disomic sperm and a diminution in specific aspects of semen quality. Such defects may affect male fertility and may increase future chances of fathering offspring with aneuploidy syndromes." [PAY PER VIEW: $4.00]
    
    
  • 12/11/98 Patches And Gum Can Curb Craving Times Of London
    
    There is well-substantiated evidence that the likelihood of hardened smokers giving up is doubled if they supplement willpower with patches that deliver a regular dose of nicotine through the skin. These are of variable strength and can be selected to match the person's usual daily intake. The mistake is to choose too weak a patch.
    
    
  • 12/9/98 WWW.NICONEWS.COM; The New Online Destination for Smokers Who Want to Quit PR Newswire
    
    Internet-savvy consumers who want to learn more about how to stop smoking can now visit WWW.NICONEWS.COM, a new Web site created by SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare. Unlike its "stop smoking" Web predecessors, niconews.com will serve as the definitive source for how to kick the habit, providing everything from interactive tools to help you quit, to the latest news about quitting smoking.
    
    
  • 12/10/98 Study Revises Treatment Options For Brain Aneurysms Minneapolis Star Tribune
    
    A Mayo Clinic study published in today's New England Journal of Medicine may hold the answer for some of the estimated 10 million to 15 million Americans who have or will develop a brain aneurysm, a ballooning in a weak spot of a blood vessel wall. . . Wiebers said he recommends that smokers with the condition quit, because smoking appears to increase aneurysm risk.
    
    
  • 12/09/98 CA: Study calls smoke-free bars a plus for bartenders' health Sacramento Bee
    
    Anti-smoking activists are hailing a new study that says California's year-old law that bans smoking in bars has improved bartenders' health -- even those who already smoke. But based on their own observations, local bar owners question the findings. . . "I've heard people say, 'My business is down because of the law and because there's always smokers standing in front of the bar smoking, so some people don't come in,'" Mahan added. "But no one has said they feel better."
  • 12/09/98 CA/ME: Study Airs Benefits Of Bar Smoking Ban Maine Sunday Telegram
    
    The study comes just four days after a smoking ban went into effect in Portland restaurants . . . studies like this one could help lay the groundwork for future action. . . "It's a very exciting article and gives a lot of fuel to the fire in terms of saying 'Look, secondhand smoke is a major public health issue and we need to clear out our public airways,'" said Dr. DORA ANNE MILLS, director of the Maine Bureau of Health.
  • 12/09/98 CA: Smoking Ban Boosted Health of Bartenders, Study Reports Los Angeles Times
    
     "We've never had a study like this that tracked health changes following the creation of a smoke-free workplace," said UC San Francisco epidemiologist Stanton A. Glantz, an anti-smoking activist who did not participate in the study.  "The results show that this law is really achieving its stated aim of protecting people who go into bars and who work in bars," he said. "This will make it much more difficult for the tobacco industry to get the law repealed." . . Surprisingly, even among bartenders who smoked cigarettes, the reduced exposure to secondhand smoke led to improved respiratory symptoms and function, the researchers said.  "Even smokers are being made ill in a smoke-filled room," Eisner said.
  • 12/09/98 CA: Smoking Ban Good for Bartenders' Health, Study Says San Francisco Chronicle
    
    Tom Humber of the Alexandria, Va., National Smokers Alliance, said research on secondhand smoke has produced decidedly mixed results. ``Of all the serious, large-scale consequential work, almost none come up with statistically significant results.'' . . He said promoters of the smoke-free bar law are facing a dilemma: ``If they move to enforce this, the rebellion is going to rise; if they don't move to enforce it, noncompliance will rise.''
  • 12/09/98 CA: After Calif. smoking ban, barkeeps breathed easier The Boston Globe
    
    Researchers say the findings are among the first to show that secondhand smoke can cause short-term respiratory problems as well as raise the risk of long-term diseases like cancer and heart disease. The new report from San Francisco, said Siegel in an interview, ''documents that not only is this secondhand smoke dangerous for long-term health, it is causing suffering every day'' that the bar workers go to work. Those breathing-related problems, moreover, improved quickly after the smoke was eliminated, said the scientists.
  • 12/08/98 Smoking ban helps bartenders' health Reuters
    
  • 12/09/98 Study Says Smoking Ban Working AP
    
    ``Medically, sure, I think we're healthier,'' she said. ``Personally, no, because I have to sneak out into the cold to have a cigarette.''
  • 12/08/98 Smoking Ban In Bars Improves Health Of Bartenders St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    
    California bartenders saw their respiratory health improve in as little as a month after state law banned smoking in their workplace in January, even if they still smoked themselves, researchers found.
  • 12/09/98 Bartenders' Respiratory Health and Smoke-Free Bars Journal of the American Medical Association
    
    Results.--Fifty-three of 67 eligible bartenders were interviewed. At baseline, all 53 bartenders reported workplace ETS exposure. After the smoking ban, self-reported ETS exposure at work declined from a median of 28 to 2 hours per week (P<.001). . . Conclusion.--Establishment of smoke-free bars and taverns was associated with a rapid improvement of respiratory health.
  • 12/09/98 Respiratory Health Of Bartenders Improves Rapidly When Bars Become Smoke-free Journal of the American Medical Association
    
    Mark D. Eisner, M.D., of the University of California at San Francisco, and colleagues report on the observable health benefits to bartenders from a new California law that prohibits smoking in bars. . . The authors note: "In addition to potentially reducing the long-term risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, workplace smoking prohibition appears to have immediate beneficial effects on adult respiratory health." The authors continue: "Our study ... helps confirm the adverse impact of ETS exposure on immediate respiratory health." (JAMA. 1998;280:1909-1914)
    
    
  • 12/09/98 JAMA Patient Page - SECONDHAND SMOKE Journal of the American Medical Association
    
    When You Smoke, Everyone Near You Smokes
    
    
  • 12/08/98 AZ: Volunteer smokers Arizona Daily Star
    
    Volunteer smokers are needed for two University of Arizona studies of medications that help adult chronic smokers quit. Both studies are run by the Arizona Program for Nicotine and Tobacco Research.
    
    
  • 12/08/98 Drug Therapies; Nicotine-Like Drugs Enhanced Learning, Memory in Rat Model ($4.00) NewsEdge
    
    [CW Henderson, 607 words, PAY PER VIEW $4.00] Duke University, North Carolina, behavioral pharmacologist Edward Levin said in a report prepared for presentation at the Society of Neuroscience's annual meeting held in early November in Los Angeles, California, that nicotine-like compounds can actually help restore the ability to learn and remember in rats that have brain lesions similar to those found in Alzheimer's disease patients. The research showed that rats given a drug called AR-R 17779, a proprietary compound, performed significantly better than untreated rats on standard radial arm maze learning and memory tests.
    
    
  • 12/08/98 Esophagus Cancer; Obesity, Smoking May Be Responsible for Rise in Cancer ($4.00) NewsEdge
    
    [CW Henderson, PAY PER VIEW $4.00] One type of cancer of the esophagus has increased more than 350 percent among white men in the past 20 years, and researchers say the reasons may include smoking and an increase in obesity. The study, published in the November 12, 1998, issue of Cancer, reported that annual cases of adenocarcinoma rose from 0.7 cases per 100,000 in 1974- 76 to 3.2 cases per 100,000 in 1992-94.
    
    
  • 12/07/98 Sometimes Pollution Can Be Its Worst Inside Your Home The Wall Street Journal
    
    Secondhand cigarette smoke "puts you in a league of your own" for high levels of nitrogen oxides, particulates and volatile organic compounds such as benzene and toluene, says Tim Buckley, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. [This graph only]
    
    
  • 12/07/98 Packing Smokes With a Wallop Los Angeles Times
    
    A New Mexico woman who invented a talking cigarette pack 15 years ago as a novelty gag now thinks the devices should be used to discourage smoking. Mae Stangle says money from the recent tobacco settlement could finance mandatory talking cigarette packs that spout such warnings as "Spare your lungs" and "Smoking is stupid." A computer chip in the packs would be activated every time a cancer stick is removed.
    
    
  • 12/03/98 Scientists Pursue The Prospect Of A Pill For Quitting Smoking San Diego Union-Tribune
    
    It's called gamma vinyl-GABA, or GVG, and marketed as Vigabatrin. It's been used in Europe to treat epileptic children for more than a decade, but recent reports of it causing vision problems appear to have stalled FDA approval here.
    
    
  • 12/04/98 Advice for the Under-30 Crowd The Washington Post
    
    Dear Carolyn: Hi! I am in the throes of nicotine withdrawal . . . If death, desiccation and destitution aren't enough to scare off the beast, try a damaged ego: Unless they hang with Gwynnie and Winona, smokers dwell (and, don't forget! die) disproportionately at the lower socioeconomic ranks. Indulge your inner social-climber, and make your quitting stick.
    
    
  • 12/03/98 Ex-Smoker Gives Tips On Staying Smoke-Free During Holidays PR Newswire
    
    "Holidays can be the hardest times to stay smoke-free," says ex-smoker Carla Hess. "Parties and drinking often go hand in hand, and so do drinking and smoking." Millions of Americans choose to quit smoking on the American Cancer Society's annual Great American Smokeout day in November, right before the season of overindulgence.
    
    Here are US lung cancer/consumption rates by state from CDC/ACS
    
  • 12/03/98 Women At Greater Risk From Killer Lung Cancer New York Post
    
    [Note: It's nothing short of astounding that the NY Post should run this story. Has the Murdoch-owned paper finally decided to start informing its readers on the health risks of smoking?]
  • 12/02/98 Women, Lung Cancer Risk Identified AP
    
    Experts say the British study of 1,601 lung cancer patients marks the first time scientists have discovered a significant difference between the sexes in the risk of small-cell lung cancer. Virtually always caused by smoking, it is the hardest form of lung cancer to treat successfully. The study, presented Wednesday at a conference of the British Thoracic Society in London, showed that women under 65 were 1.7 times more vulnerable than men to small-cell lung cancer, which spreads so rapidly that by the time it is diagnosed, it is usually too late to operate.
  • 12/03/98 Women Risk Most Deadly Lung Cancer The Independent
    
    The findings reinforced calls by the BTS, the UK's official body of respiratory specialists, for the Government to target teenage girls in its imminent White Paper on tobacco.
  • 12/02/98 New cancer threat for women smokers This is London (Associated Newspapers)
    
    They say the 'killing difference' between the sexes could be the way women inhale cigarette smoke. However, it might also be that they are more vulnerable to damage by tobacco or that they choose brands which cause more harm.
  • 12/02/98 Women More At Risk From Deadliest Lung Cancer Type Reuters
    
    ``This may be due to changing patterns of smoking behaviour -- many women took up the habit a decade after men smoked heavily during World War Two. ``Women may also smoke in a different way to men, for example taking shorter, sharper inhalations which could have an effect on the kind and severity of cancer that they develop,'' he added. Another possible explanation is that women may have some hormonal or genetic predisposition to the most deadly form of lung cancer.
  • 12/02/98 Lung Cancer Risk Twice As High For Women Times Of London
    
    The study found that the small-cell lung cancer was usually so advanced in women before its diagnosis that in 70 per cent of cases it was impossible to operate - the most effective form of treatment. In contrast, nearly half of male patients could be considered for an operation. The study, co-ordinated by the ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS' research unit, used data from 46 hospitals and will enable specialists to check lung cancer survival rates across the country. The results, to be presented to the winter meeting of the BRITISH THORACIC SOCIETY today, will be used to urge the Government to introduce measures in its White Paper on tobacco to cut the number of teenage girls who take up smoking.
    
    
  • 12/04/98 A PHARMACOLOGIC STRATEGY FOR THE TREATMENT OF NICOTINE ADDICTION Synapse
    
    Abstract. Like many psychostimulant drugs, nicotine elevates extracellular and synaptic dopamine (DA) concentrations in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). This elevation has been linked to its reinforcing properties.
  • 12/03/98 Anti-epilepsy Pill Shows Promise In Addictions The Boston Globe
    
    A small white pill, available as antiepilepsy medicine in 60 countries but banned in the United States, might help control cravings for cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, and even cigarettes, according to several scientists.
  • 12/02/98 HOECHST Epilepsy Drug May Fight Nicotine Addiction, Study Says Bloomberg News
    
    Hoechst, the world's ninth biggest drugmaker by sales, is seeking U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of SABRIL for epilepsy and is focusing on that effort, said Hoechst spokeswoman Lori Kraut. While the company considers addiction an important area, it has no plans to pursue further studies on it, Kraut said. In the new study, researchers led by STEPHEN DEWEY of the BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY found that addicted rats given the drug no longer pushed a lever to get access to nicotine. And rats who had never been addicted, when given higher doses of the drug, didn't become addicted when offered nicotine, they said. . . The study, published in the journal SYNAPSE, was announced by the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY.
  • 12/02/98 Epilepsy Drug May Help Smokers Quit AP
    
    Animal studies suggest a European epilepsy drug might one day help people quit smoking by blocking nicotine's effect in the brain, the Energy Department said Wednesday. The department's scientists said last summer that similar animal studies suggested the same drug, known as GVG, might also help cocaine addicts kick their drug habit. ``Nicotine is the most frequently abused drug in the world, and every smoker who's tried knows how hard it is to quit,'' said lead scientist Stephen Dewey of Brookhaven National Laboratory. ``We've shown in animals that the proper dose of GVG can stop nicotine's addictive effects entirely.''
    
    
  • 12/02/98 Cooking A Source Of Indoor Air Pollution Reuters
    
    Even restaurants that restrict smoking can contain potentially harmful levels of airborne particulate matter, according to a report in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health . . . Researchers in Canada and the Netherlands believe cooking fumes are the source of much of this pollution. While cigarette smoke is often the major source of indoor pollution, particulate concentrations are ``influenced by other factors, especially differences in ventilation and cooking emissions."
    
    
  • 11/30/98 SMITHKLINE BEECHAM/ SmithKline Consumer HealthCare launches NiqQitin CQ in Europe ($) NewsEdge
    
    SmithKline Beecham Consumer HealthCare announced the latest step to globalize its smoking cessation business by launching the NiQuitin CQ range of nicotine replacement therapy patches in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Sweden.
    
    
  • 11/24/98 Smoke Exposure Affects Fertility Reuters
    
    Women who smoke may have more trouble conceiving a child than nonsmoking women, Danish researchers report. Their study also suggests that exposure to tobacco smoke before birth impairs fertility in both sexes. Current smoking in males was not found to correlate with reduced fertility, however. ``Data from the present study provide evidence that cigarette smoking is a reproductive hazard even prior to pregnancy,'' conclude Dr. Tina Kold Jensen of Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, and colleagues. . . SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology 1998;148:992-997.
    
    
  • 11/24/98 Smoking Ups Lung Risk in HIV-positive Reuters
    
    Among people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), smoking further suppresses immune function in the lung, increasing risk of bacterial pneumonia, acute bronchitis and other respiratory infections, US researchers report. These findings, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, suggest that quitting smoking may reduce the number of respiratory infections among those who are HIV-positive.
    
    
  • 11/26/98 Smoking Linked With Very Premature Birth Reuters
    
    Pregnant women who smoke have an increased risk of having a very premature infant, according to a Swedish study of more than 300,000 births. Dr. Nina B. Kyrklund-Blomberg, of the Karolinska Institute, Danderyd, and Dr. Sven Cnattingius, of Uppsala University Hospital, examined all live births in Sweden between 1991 and 1993. They found that smoking increased the risk of very preterm birth, and the more the women smoked the greater the risk. . . SOURCE: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 1998;179:1051-1055.
    
    
  • 11/27/98 HPV, smoking tied to cervical cell changes Reuters
    
    Cigarette smoking may be an important factor in the development of virus-related abnormalities in cervical cells, according to researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Their study, published in the International Journal of Cancer, included 258 women infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV) -- a virus associated with genital warts -- who also had cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) I-III, cell changes considered to be precancerous.
    
    
  • 11/27/98 MN: BLUE CROSS Plans Line For Smokers Pioneer Press
    
    The company is working on a program, the first of its kind in the state, to allow members to talk by telephone to a trained counselor about quitting. ``We're pretty excited about it,'' says Michael Moen, director of the center for tobacco reduction and health improvement at the Blues. ``It's something we're looking at as another type of intervention that we can offer.''
    
    
  • 11/25/98 IL: Program To Help Smokers Quit Habit Chicago Tribune
    
    Centegra Health System is offering "Fresh Start," a program designed to help those wishing to kick the tobacco habit.
    
    
  • 11/25/98 Variety Of Aids Help Snuff Smoking Habit Arizona Daily Star
    
    If the increase is making you think seriously about quitting, you might consider the market options. But even then, they may not be enough. ``It's misleading to use a patch or a pill or a spray or a gum and think that will do the trick,'' said Dr. Ken Adler, who practices family medicine in Tucson. ``A very small percentage of cases will do that, but most also need a behavioral change option.'' In other words, counseling - often in peer groups. Some, but not all, sessions are free.
    
    
  • 11/25/98 Smoking Does Not Lower Blood Pressure, Study Finds Reuters
    
    Dr. Gunilla Bolinder of Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm and colleagues studied 135 healthy Stockholm firefighters, fitted with wearable blood pressure monitors. None had been diagnosed with high blood pressure. ``During the 24-hour monitoring, smokeless tobacco users and smokers exhibited systolic blood pressures (in smokers also diastolic blood pressures) significantly higher compared with non-users,'' they wrote in their report, published in the American Journal of Hypertension.
    
    
  • 11/24/98 Scientists Finger A Molecular Kingpin In Body's Response To Cigarettes ScienceDaily Magazine
    
    The finding comes thanks to a batch of genetically engineered mice normal in every way except for the deletion of the gene for the aromatic hydrocarbon, or AH, receptor; these mice had no damage from the same levels of cigarette smoke that caused significant gene damage in their normal brethren. The work, reported in the November issue of Carcinogenesis, clarifies how cigarette smoke has an impact on our molecular machinery and should help researchers in their efforts to prevent genetic damage from the biochemical assault posed by smoking.
    
    
  • 11/24/98 Uncle Sam Wants You to Quit Smoking The Washington Post
    
    The government, thanks to a 1989 ruling from the General Accounting Office, can "use appropriated funds to pay the costs incurred by employees participating in agency-sponsored smoking cessation programs," according to the Office of Personnel Management. Employees who want their agencies to buy them the stop-smoking gum or patches are advised to "provide [anti-smoking] program administrators with a written request.
    
    
  • 11/22/98 Study shoots down myth of smoking to lose weight Nando News Network
    
    Smoking does not help young people keep their weight down contrary to tobacco advertising, new research in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology said Sunday. A study conducted by Dr. Robert Klesges at the University of Memphis in Tennessee found unequivocally that both long-time and recent smokers do not lose weight, the journal reported in its December issue. . . But researchers found, as expected, that smokers who gave up the habit put on a lot more weight than those who stuck with the weed.
    
    
  • 12/02/98 FACTS & ARGUMENTS A daily miscellany of information Toronto Globe and Mail
    
    Four: One marijuana joint coats a person's lungs with four times as much tar as a tobacco cigarette. [This graph only]
    
    
  • 11/15/98 Adult and Prenatal Exposures to Tobacco Smoke as Risk Indicators of Fertility among430 Danish Couples. American Journal of Epidemiology
    
    It seems advisable to encourage smoking cessation prior to the attempt to conceive as well as during pregnancy.
    
    
  • 12/02/98 Changes in the Epidemiologic Profile of Sudden Infant DeathSyndrome as Rates Decline Among California Infants: 1990-1995 Pediatrics
    
    Objectives. To evaluate changes in the rates and epidemiologic patterns of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) after implementation of public health campaigns to promote back sleeping and reduce exposure to cigarette smoke and environmental risk factors for SIDS. . . Conclusion. California SIDS rates declined 20% for blacks and 41% for others between 1990 and 1995. Declines coincided with campaigns to reduce environmental risk factors for SIDS
  • 12/03/98 Smoking does not keep young thin Reuters
  • 12/01/98 Smoking to Stay Slim? Study Clouds the Issue The Washington Post
    
    So why do so many people think smoking makes them thinner? "That's because if you look at people who've smoked for many years, they weigh a bit less on average than nonsmokers," said Kenneth D. Ward, a member of the research team and a psychologist at the University of Memphis. The reasons for this weight disparity are unclear, Ward said, but it may result in part from the physiological effects of nicotine, which can speed metabolism.
    
    
  • 12/01/98 Scent Of Tobacco Smoke Found In Breast Milk The Washington Post
    
    The more a women smokes, the more her breast milk smells like cigarettes, according to a small study of lactating women by researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
    
    
  • 11/28/98Plastic coffin nails National Post
    
    Here's the theory: Give my mouth and hands a nicotine-free replacement for the cigarette and I'll soon toss that filthy habit aside. That's what the makers of Paipo, a "smart alternative" to cigarettes marketed by the Aruman Company in Canada say, anyway . . The next evening, I tried the truly smart alternative: Foregoing the Paipo, I bought Popeye candy cigarettes at the corner store. At 29 cents for 20 pieces of tubular gum, they left a much better taste in my mouth than $8 for three tubes of plastic ever could.
    
    
  • 12/01/98 TEXAS uses TIMONIUM firm for women's health videos The Baltimore Sun
    
    A video series on women's health issues produced by a Maryland company hits the shelves at Blockbuster Video stores throughout Texas this week. The majority of the 10-part series was produced by Timonium-based Milner-Fenwick Inc. for the Texas Governor's Commission on Women. Milner-Fenwick said patrons will be able to check out the series "Healthy Dose of Knowledge" free in Texas. The series covers such health issues as smoking, breast cancer, arthritis and menopause.
    
    
  • 11/16/98 He Dropped Vices Along With Extra Pounds Los Angeles Times
    
    At the same time, I was also winning my fight against beer and cigarettes. I was losing weight, and at the same time I was saving money. My most stubborn opponent was the cigarette. At first, I had an on-and-off battle with this habit. But common sense prevailed.
    
    
  • 11/15/98 Tobacco, Alcohol Worse Than Crack During Pregnancy The Spokesman-Review
    
    The abuse of illicit drugs like crack cocaine by pregnant women has received more attention, but experts say the common, legal drugs -- alcohol and nicotine -- present some of the greatest dangers to unborn babies. ``It's our legal substances that are killing us,'' said Harvey Siegal, director of substance abuse treatment programs at Wright State University. . . ``The biggest substance abuse we have to deal with is not crack, it's not cocaine, it's not alcohol -- it's smoking,'' said Dr. Jeffrey King, medical director for Born Free, Miami Valley Hospital's program for pregnant substance abusers. ``I'll deal with the crack and the alcohol if we could get people to stop smoking.''
    
    
  • 11/14/98 Smoking Impairs Thinking The Baltimore Sun
    
    According to a report presented at the American Heart Association's 71st Scientific Sessions in Dallas, smoking can be added to the list of heart disease risk factors that also leads to a subtle decline in cognitive functioning. Researchers from the University of Maine-Orono . . . found that the more risk factors for heart disease the volunteers had -- including hypertension, diabetes, smoking and obesity -- the greater their mental decline.
    
    
  • 11/13/98Alcohol worse than cannabis says 'Lancet' The Independent
    
    The Lancet says in an editorial that patients are entitled to advice on the likely dangers of cannabis use. These include the risk of accidents when intoxicated, irritation of the lungs, dependence with daily use and subtle cognitive impairment with long-term use. However, compared to the damage wreaked by alcohol and tobacco, these dangers are not excessive. "It would be reasonable to judge cannabis less of a threat to health than alcohol or tobacco, products that in many countries are not only tolerated and advertised but are also a useful source of tax revenue."
    
    
  • 11/13/98Where there's smoke, no, er, fire Philadelphia Inquirer
    
    Despite recent news reports in which researchers and physicians drove home their long-held assertion that smoking is strongly linked to male f, Muir, 48, and some other local tobacco users insist that health advocates are just blowing smoke. "Look, I live right on this block, where anything can happen," said Muir, after lighting up outside his home near Broad Street and Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia. He said he was less worried about smoking and his virility than "what some of these fools out here might do to me."
  • 11/10/98 Campaign Links Tobacco to Impotence AP
    
    "What a terrible problem for the man because he is so physically addicted," said Elizabeth Whelan, director of the American Council on Science and Health, which opposes tobacco companies. "It will be interesting to see if this motivates men -- especially young men -- to disassociate themselves from that image of impotence." Statistician Steven J. Milloy, who regularly contradicts what he regards as "junk science" and frequently sides with the tobacco industry, said anti-smoking forces are distorting a 1994 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that concluded that smokers are twice as likely as nonsmokers to be impotent.
  • 11/10/98 One-in-Four Virginia Men Faces Heightened Risk of Impotence, Health Advocacy Group Warns PR Newswire
    
    Citing recent reports in The Wall Street Journal and on the CBS television program "60 Minutes" that cigarette smoking causes impotence in men, the VIRGINIA QUALITY HEALTHCARE NETWORK (VQHN) is calling for an increase in public education on the causes of male erectile dysfunction (ED).
  • 11/9/98 How Impotence Became A Weapon Against Smoking The Wall Street Journal (pay registration)
    
    Now publicity for Pfizer Inc.'s VIAGRA, the prescription drug for impotence, has transformed male sexual dysfunction from a taboo topic to a publicly discussed health concern. "Absent the Viagra debate, impotence wasn't a commonly discussed topic," says Carla Agar, deputy director of the California Department of Health Services in Sacramento. "I think the discussion surrounding Viagra has allowed us to take the issue of impotence into the public domain." Ms. Agar says her department has heard little criticism of the ad since its launch last summer.
  • 11/06/98Smoking Can Choke Up A Sex Life CBS
    
    Smoking has been linked to impotence around the world. Studies in France, Sweden, and South Africa all found a greater percentage of smokers in impotent groups than in the general population. Many American urologists, including Dr. Mulhall, say a high percentage of their impotent patients are smokers. When Mulhall informs his patients of this lesser-known side effect of smoking, they are not so much surprised as remorseful.. . Tune in 60 Minutes Sunday, November 8 at 7:00PM ET/PT (Check local listings) to see Wallace's full report.
  • 11/6/98 Add Impotence To The List Of Smokers' Ills-report Reuters
    
    In a report to be broadcast on Sunday on "60 Minutes," CBS News says a host of researchers and studies have found male smokers are about twice as likely as nonsmokers to suffer some form of impotence. "There is absolutely no question about it. It causes it very commonly," Dr. Cully Carson, chairman of the Urology Department at the University of North Carolina, told CBS about the relationship between smoking and impotence.
    
    
  • 11/12/98 Esophagus Cancer Rises in White Men AP
    
    The study, released Thursday and published in the journal Cancer, reported that annual cases of adenocarcinoma rose from 0.7 cases per 100,000 in 1974-76 to 3.2 cases per 100,000 in 1992-94. . . The researchers suggested one reason for the jump is an increase in obesity among white men over 65, and perhaps smoking. . . The study claimed smoking may be to blame as well, but the rate of another esophagus cancer linked to smoking, squamous cell carcinomas, has declined from 3.4 cases per 100,000 to 2.2 cases per 100,000. Adenocarcinoma rates in black males increased from 0.4 cases per 100,000 to 0.6 cases per 100,000. . . Among women of all races, cases of esophageal adenocarcinomas rose from 0.1 to 0.4 cases per 100,000.
    
    
  • 11/12/98 Race Gap Rises in Heart Disease AP
    
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in the 35-to-44 age group, 38.2 blacks per 100,000 died of heart disease each year from 1981 to 1985, compared with 24.3 whites. The CDC researchers blamed a higher prevalence of risk factors among blacks such as smoking, diet and diabetes. They said the disparity also could reflect genetic and biological differences as well as less access to medical care.
    
    
  • 11/12/98 Smokers Continue To Light Up After Heart Surgery Science Daily
    
    Almost three in five smokers who undergo surgery for heart disease continue to smoke after their procedure, according to a study presented today at the AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION'S 71ST ANNUAL SCIENTIFIC SESSIONS. . . "We thought that individuals who needed the operations would have been shaken up enough to stop -- but that was not the case for almost 60 percent," Weiner says. . . "It was their first procedure, but many had a long history of heart disease." In this study, it was up to physicians and nurses to encourage patients to stop smoking by referring them to programs, says lead author SHERYL F. KELSEY, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
    
    
  • 11/11/98 National Survey Shows It Takes Smokers an Average 11 Attempts Before They Quit for Good Business Wire
    
    Data from a national poll conducted by the HAZELDEN FOUNDATION show how challenging it is for smokers to give up their habit. On average, it took former smokers 18.6 years before they finally quit. The average former smoker tried to quit 10.8 times before he or she was able to abstain from smoking tobacco products.The poll also indicates that two-thirds of current smokers (66.8 percent) have seriously tried to quit smoking at least once. On average, current smokers said they have tried 3.4 times to give up their habit.
    
    
  • 11/11/98 'Lifestyle' Drugs Can't Cure Erratic Sales New York Times
    
    Immediacy is also crucial for smoking cessation drugs. "Smokers get a more immediate feedback with Nicorette than the patch," said Dr. Peter Proctor, a Houston cosmetic dermatologist who used Nicorette 14 years ago to quit smoking. "You get oral gratification with Nicorette, something you want after giving up cigarettes, and you don't really have that with the patch." Even when smokers want smoking-cessation drugs, dealing with their insurance companies can be discouraging.
    
    
  • 11/11/98 UK: SB to help smokers Times of London
    
    SMITHKLINE BEECHAM is to spend £12 million on the UK launch of its smoking cessation patches, which are to be offered with specially tailored advice for each smoker who uses them. The nicotine replacement patches, which will be called NiQuitin CQ in the UK, will come with a free phone number that will allow customers to give details of their smoking habits to SmithKline Beecham. After analysing the information, the healthcare company will within 48 hours despatch a "behavioural support plan" to give the most appropriate advice.
    
    
  • 11/10/98 ADVISORY/UCSF to Host Lung Cancer Awareness Rally Business Wire
    
    To help raise public awareness and support for the nation's deadliest cancer, people living with lung cancer, nationally recognized experts in the field, and representatives from the American Lung Association, will join together on National Lung Cancer Awareness Day at UCSF/Mount Zion Medical Center.
    
    
  • 11/9/98 CESSATION: Smoking Parents-to-be 'Should Consider Quitting Together' BBC
    
    Dr Peter APPLETON, of the University of Wales, and Professor Peter PHAROAH of the University of Liverpool, questioned women who were smoking at the beginning of their pregnancy and after they had had their children. They found that a third of the women's partners reduced or quite smoking and this had a big impact on the women. . . Dr Appleton said: "Addiction is not the only reason women find it difficult to quit. Having other people around who also smoke - partners, family members, friends, workmates - is a known risk factor for continued smoking." . . . The survey, published in THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY, found that partner smoking was independent of social class, emotional support given by the partner and joint planning of the pregnancy.
    
    
  • 11/10/98 CESSATION: PATENTS: Time-locked cigarette case ($) U.S. Patents via NewsEdge
    
    Abstract: A time-locked cigarette case has time-controlled locking mechanism which is manually adjustable by the user and also has a first latch rod which normally retains the case in a closed condition and a second latch rod which moves to retain the case in a closed condition if the first latch rod is jolted to an open position so as to prevent the case from being opened by jolting before the manually set time delay has expired.
    
    
  • 11/10/98 New MATRITECH Test Aids Veterans in Battle Against Bladder Cancer PR Newswire
    
    Like most veterans who were encouraged by military superiors to "smoke 'em if you got 'em," THOMAS MUNROE had no idea of the link between cigarettes and bladder cancer. Now he knows. And he'd like other chain smoking veterans at high risk for bladder cancer to visit their local Veterans' Administration hospitals to learn more about the disease and take a simple urine test called the NMP22.
    
    
  • 11/10/98 Guidelines Offer an Earlier Blueprint for the Battle Against Bone Loss New York Times
    
    According to guidelines issued last week by the National Osteoporosis Foundation, it is now possible to determine a person's propensity for fracture far in advance and offer preventive treatments for most people at risk of developing osteoporosis. This is not a problem to be dismissed lightly. . . Based on studies of many thousands of people, the foundation lists the leading risk factors as: a personal history of fracture as an adult, regardless of what caused it; a history of fracture in a first-degree relative (parent or sibling); current cigarette smoking; and having a small, thin frame [this graph only]
    
    
  • 11/10/98 Nicotine-Like Drugs Can Enhance Learning, Memory In Rat Model Of Alzheimer's Disease Science Daily
    
    DUKE behavioral pharmacologist EDWARD LEVIN said in a report prepared for presentation Sunday (Nov. 8) at the SOCIETY OF NEUROSCIENCE annual meeting that nicotine-like compounds can actually help restore the ability to learn and remember in rats that have brain lesions similar to those found in Alzheimer's disease patients.
  • 11/10/98 Tapping Benefits Of Nicotine / New Compounds Improve Memory Newsday (Long Island, NY)
    
    Reporting at the Society for Neuroscience meeting Sunday in Los Angeles, Edward Levin and his colleagues at Duke said they also performed another study that suggested a protective role for these substances. In rats, they cut a brain fiber that transports acetylcholine, and the animals that received the compound had no problems learning tasks, compared with others that didn't receive the drug.
  • 11/9/98 Study: Nicotine Can Help Memory, Save Brain Cells Knight Ridder/St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press
    
    The long-vilified chemical, and designer molecules that mimic it, can improve memory, prevent brain cells from dying and -- as smokers have long known -- markedly reduce stress. The new research on animals explains anecdotal evidence that smoking helps schizophrenics function better, that smokers are less likely to develop the motor disorder Parkinson's disease and that people with Alzheimer's disease using nicotine patches focus better on tasks.
  • 11/9/98 Nicotine-like drugs may slow Alzheimer's Electronic Telegraph (London, UK)
    
    Inspired by how smoking can help combat the effects of Alzheimer's disease, scientists have developed nicotine-like compounds to separate this beneficial effect from the hazards of tobacco. . . Dr Edward LEVIN, of DUKE UNIVERSITY Medical Centre, North Carolina, told the SOCIETY OF NEUROSCIENCE annual meeting in Los Angeles that rats given a drug called AR-R 17779 performed significantly better than untreated rats on standard learning and memory tests. The compound was developed by ASTRA ARCUS USA, a pharmaceutical company based in Worcester, Massachusetts, which also supported the research study.
  • 11/9/98 Nicotine raises Alzheimer's hope Times of London
    
    DRUGS that act like nicotine could help to restore the memories of patients with Alzheimer's disease, according to American researchers. They have used a nicotine-like compound to improve the memory of rats, even restoring memory lost as a result of brain damage. Edward Levin, of Duke University in North Carolina, presented the results yesterday to a meeting of the American Society of Neuroscience in Los Angeles.
  • 11/8/98 Compounds Found to Boost Memory AP
    
    Nicotine-like compounds can improve memory and might one day be used in pills to treat disorders like Alzheimer's disease, according to research on laboratory animals. the scientists told reporters Sunday at the SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE annual meeting that they're encouraged they can design medications to capitalize on the benefits of nicotine without cardiovascular and other side effects. . . That ability of nicotine to emulate acetylcholine and in essence "trick the brain" has led scientists to target nicotine-like drugs that stimulate the same receptors, said DARWIN BERG, a researcher with the University of California, San Diego.
    
    
  • 11/8/98 YEFIM SHUBENTSOV: A RASPUTIN for Smokers New York Times
    
    Even people who have been cured by Shubentsov have a hard time explaining how he did it. "It was so weird," the novelist ALICE HOFFMAN said. "I was one of those really bad smokers. I was like the sort who sneaked cigarettes during labor. I left there and I had no desire for the thing I'd had before. For a long time I couldn't even talk about it, like if you talked about it, you'd break the spell."
    
    
  • 11/3 Smoking boosts diabetic's risk of high BP Reuters
    
    The report, published in the September issue of the American Journal of Hypertension, found that diabetic smokers had significantly higher blood pressure and heart rates than a group of diabetic nonsmokers. The study is the first to link smoking and blood pressure in diabetes, according to a statement issued by the journal. ``Taking the well-established close association between blood pressure increase and development of diabetic nephropathy into consideration, our findings may suggest that smoking acts as one of the risk factors for development of nephropathy (kidney disease) through elevated blood pressure,'' state Dr. Per L. Poulsen and colleagues at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark.
    
    
  • 11/2 REAL AUDIO: Marketing Menthol National Public Radio
    
    "All Things Considered" features Dr. Michael Cummings of Roswell Park Cancer Institute on menthol cigarettes and the higher rate of lung cancer in blacks.
    
    
  • 11/2 CA: Stop smoking effort San Diego Union-Tribune
    
    The American Lung Association and Nicotrol nicotine replacement products are joining forces to help 35,000 smokers nationwide quit through a program called "On Your Mark, Get Set, Quit!" In San Diego, the ALA chapter will provide 250 smokers with the tools and choices they need to stop smoking by combining the association's "Freedom From Smoking" behavioral change program with a free, six-week treatment of Nicotrol patches or other products.
    
    
  • 11/6/98 Add Impotence To The List Of Smokers' Ills-report Reuters
    
    Despite attempts by tobacco advertisers to make smoking appear sexy, scientists say its effect can be just the opposite -- impotence. In a report to be broadcast on Sunday on ``60 Minutes,'' CBS News says a host of researchers and studies have found male smokers are about twice as likely as nonsmokers to suffer some form of impotence. ``There is absolutely no question about it. It causes it very commonly,'' Dr. Cully Carson, chairman of the Urology Department at the University of North Carolina, told CBS about the relationship between smoking and impotence.
  • 11/9/98 How Impotence Became A Weapon Against Smoking The Wall Street Journal (pay registration)
    
    Now publicity for Pfizer Inc.'s VIAGRA, the prescription drug for impotence, has transformed male sexual dysfunction from a taboo topic to a publicly discussed health concern. "Absent the Viagra debate, impotence wasn't a commonly discussed topic," says Carla Agar, deputy director of the California Department of Health Services in Sacramento. "I think the discussion surrounding Viagra has allowed us to take the issue of impotence into the public domain." Ms. Agar says her department has heard little criticism of the ad since its launch last summer.
  • 11/10/98 One-in-Four Virginia Men Faces Heightened Risk of Impotence, Health Advocacy Group Warns PR Newswire
    
    Citing recent reports in The Wall Street Journal and on the CBS television program ``60 Minutes'' that cigarette smoking causes impotence in men, the VIRGINIA QUALITY HEALTHCARE NETWORK (VQHN) is calling for an increase in public education on the causes of male erectile dysfunction (ED).
  • 11/10/98 Campaign Links Tobacco to Impotence AP
    
    ``What a terrible problem for the man because he is so physically addicted,'' said Elizabeth Whelan, director of the American Council on Science and Health, which opposes tobacco companies. ``It will be interesting to see if this motivates men -- especially young men -- to disassociate themselves from that image of impotence.'' Statistician Steven J. Milloy, who regularly contradicts what he regards as ``junk science'' and frequently sides with the tobacco industry, said anti-smoking forces are distorting a 1994 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that concluded that smokers are twice as likely as nonsmokers to be impotent.
  • 11/13/98 Where there's smoke, no, er, fire Philadelphia Inquirer
    
    Despite recent news reports in which researchers and physicians drove home their long-held assertion that smoking is strongly linked to male impotence, Muir, 48, and some other local tobacco users insist that health advocates are just blowing smoke. "Look, I live right on this block, where anything can happen," said Muir, after lighting up outside his home near Broad Street and Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia. He said he was less worried about smoking and his virility than "what some of these fools out here might do to me."
    You can download a humorous cartoon on this subject here
    
    
  • 10/13/98 Adherence to the European Code Against Cancer in Relation to Long-Term Cancer Mortality: Intercohort Comparisons From the Seven Countries Study Cancer and Nutrition. Here's the Abstract & Introduction
    
    the European Code Against Cancer was introduced as a series of guidelines that, if followed, could lead to a reduction in the incidence and mortality of cancer. . . 1) do not smoke; 2) moderate alcohol consumption; 3) increase intake of vegetables, fresh fruits, and high-fiber cereals; 4) avoid becoming overweight, increase physical activity, and limit intake of fatty foods; 5) avoid excessive sun exposure; and 6) apply regulations aimed at preventing exposure to known cancer-causing substances[2].
    
    
  • 10/13/98Trace Amounts Of Nicotine Raise Blood Pressure In An Animal Model ScienceDaily Magazine
    
    Minuscule amounts of nicotine--comparable to the trace amounts found in the blood after only fifteen minutes of exposure to second hand smoke--can trigger the release of chemicals that raise blood pressure in an animal model, report researchers from the University of Chicago in the October 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. . . When Peng exposed frog neurons to minute doses of nicotine, they responded by releasing massive amounts of a neurotransmitter called lutenizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH).
  • 10/13/98 Activation Of Nicotinic Receptor-induced Postsynaptic Responsesto Luteinizing Hormone-releasing Hormone In Bullfrog Sympatheticganglia Via A Na+-Dependent Mechanism Abstract, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    
  • 10/13/98 From Ab Initio Quantum Mechanics To Molecularneurobiology: A Cation-[Pi] Binding Site In The Nicotinic Receptor Abstract, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    
    
  • 10/12/98 CESSATION: Man Quits Chewing Tobacco After Using Computer Game Wire Service: AP
    
    Guard quit chewing tobacco with the help of a prototype program developed by Herbert Severson, a behavioral scientist at Oregon Research Institute in Eugene, who has been studying "smokeless" tobacco addiction for a decade. He collaborated with computer programmer Tom Jacobs and producer Steve Christiansen of Intervision, a Eugene-based multimedia company. They were supported by a grant from The National Cancer Institute. Prompted by a narrator, program users answer questions about their level of addiction and reasons for quitting. The program creates and prints a detailed personal game plan based on the answers.
    
    
  • 10/11/98 Study Fails To Link Passive Smoking With Cancer Electronic Telegraph
    THE World Health Organisation has finally published a study which shows that there is no significant statistical link between passive smoking and lung cancer. As reported by The Telegraph in March, the 12-centre, seven-country European study failed to prove the anti-tobacco lobby's assertion that there is a significant correlation between passive smoking and lung cancer.
    • 03/08/98 Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official Electronic Telegraph
      
      
      THE world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect. . . The study, which has been published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and is the largest of its kind in Europe, shows that there is "no relationship between childhood exposure to second-hand smoke at home and lung cancer". And it found a "statistically non-significant positive association" between exposure to spousal smoking and lung cancer and for those who work with smokers. The IARC scientists said in March that their findings translated into a 16-17 per cent relative risk of contracting lung cancer if you lived or worked with a smoker. But they now concede that 16-17 per cent is statistically non-significant, implying that it could have been produced by random chance.
    
    
  • 10/09/98 Oral Cancer Detection System Endorsed By FDI World Dental Federation P