Category Archives for "Nicotine Addiction"

Nicotine Addiction

Most smokers refuse to acknowlege the real reason they cannot quit smoking, it’s their addiction to Nicotine. Nicotine patches and gum are popular remedies, but only service to transfer smokers’ nicotine addiction from one form to another form.

Promotion of E-Cigarettes: Misleading and Irresponsible

An organisation called Yorkshire Cancer Research has put out a video entitled Vape to Quit. This video, though well meant, shows everything that’s wrong with the current approach to quitting smoking. I’ll transcribe some of the speech and add my comments. Why do you need a ‘way’ to stop doing something? ‘There’s (sic) various ways […]

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Just One Cigarette…

Persons who deliberately inhale cigarette smoke are known as smokers and those who use e-cigarettes are called vapers. But what about people who obtain their regular supply of nicotine from skin patches or chewing gum? Should we call them patchers and chewers, respectively? I propose, in order to simplify the terminology as well as more […]

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Smoking Trouble at North East

Thanks to the online Metro Radio publication (2 January 2018), we learn that in the NHS’s North East region of England, over 38,000 patients are admitted to hospitals every year as a result of smoking-related illnesses. Riding to the rescue of this deplorable situation is Dr Robert Allcock, a respiratory consultant at the Queen Elizabeth […]

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Is Smoking A Mental Illness?

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) would seem to think smoking is indeed a mental illness, since it has plunged into the debate about e-cigarettes. It takes a wonderfully fence-sitting position in its July 2017 submission to the ‘Inquiry into the use and marketing of electronic cigarettes and personal vaporisers in […]

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More Big Tobacco Hypocrisy

Laughing all the way to the bank Philip Morris International (PMI) claim their new ‘heat-not-burn’ tobacco product that goes under the name of IQOS isn’t an e-cigarette. They say this because e-cigarettes are prohibited in Thailand. The Managing Director of the Thailand division of PMI, Mr Gerald Margolis (pictured), argues that their new product ‘is […]

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FDA Monkey Nicotine Experiments: Cruel, Unnecessary, Shameful

Jane Goodall and friend The words in the title were used by Dr Jane Goodall, the distinguished primatologist and animal welfare campaigner, in a letter to the FDA Commissioner, Dr Scott Gottlieb, protesting about nicotine addiction experiments on monkeys. This is an extract: I was disturbed — and quite honestly shocked — to learn that […]

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Parliamentary Enquiry into E-Cigarettes

A headline in today’s online BBC news (so it must be true) announces ‘E-cigarettes: Cross-party group of MPs launches inquiry’. The main point of this exercise is to try and fill the ‘significant gaps’ in what is known about e-cigarettes including how effective they are as a stop-smoking tool and how they are (or should […]

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Inhale Poison to Stop Smoking

Since I’m on their mailing list, I’ve once again started receiving notices of the forthcoming 2017 version of the so-called Stoptober anti-smoking effort put out by Public Health England (part of the UK Department of Health). It’s not my intention to mock this campaign. Smoking is a serious problem and anything that helps people to […]

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Nasty Juice Yummier Than Fruit

There is no doubt that e-cigarettes are big business. The flyer I received recently about the forthcoming Vapexpo conference in Paris lists around two hundred brands of e-cigarette liquid from sixteen countries. Promoted on the misleading meme that e-cigarettes help smokers quit, if anyone has any doubts that vaping is drug addiction by other means, […]

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He Who Sups With Philip Morris Should Have A Long Spoon!

The words that came to me as I read this piece in today’s Financial Times were disingenuous, self-serving, cynical, and the like. Philip Morris International has pledged up to $1bn over the next 12 years to an arm’s-length foundation that will fund scientific research designed to eliminate the use of smoked tobacco around the globe. […]

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How to Solve the Problem of Smoking in Pregnancy

In October 2015 in the UK a report was published called Smoking Cessation in Pregnancy: A Review of the Challenge. It was endorsed by no less than twenty-one worthy organisations such as Action on Smoking and Health, Bliss (‘for babies born too soon, too small, too sick’), the Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association, and […]

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How Addicted Are You?

A little-known advantage of not smoking In the NHS Smokefree website there’s a section headed ‘Addiction test’. The purpose of this is to find out how dependent you are on nicotine. The underlying concept, however, is wrong. If you’re addicted to nicotine that sufficiently defines your problem. The implication that there are degrees of addiction […]

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How To Be Popular With Nicotine

I quote from British American Tobacco’s International Marketing Principles, 2015: We will not portray smoking as an activity that makes people appear more popular, appealing or successful. But they seem to have no qualms about portraying the use of their new product with the almost unpronounceable name of ‘glo’ as an activity that makes people […]

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