Is it possible to quit smoking? Yes, but you have to go about it in the right way.
According to the ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) Newsletter of 27 September 2023, ‘The “vapes are 95 per cent safer than cigarettes” message has backfired.’ Indeed it has, as I pointed out in 2017. But first, a digression. ASH is misnamed. ‘Smoking’ and ‘health’ are incompatible. The one action they could take to improve the health of [...]
Why do some people, known as smokers, repeatedly every day inhale poisonous tobacco fumes – and continue doing so for years, decades, or even the rest of their lives? The short answer is because they find themselves unable to stop. Now let’s look at why they start this abnormal and potentially lethal behaviour. The simple reason is because [...]
Courtesy of that august organ, ASH Daily News, on 5 June 2023 we learn that the UK government is in a bind. On the one hand, ‘Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, this week announced measures to reduce vaping among teenagers’, and on the other hand, ‘Health officials believe that vapes can be a useful tool to help smokers [...]
Cancer is a serious problem and a tragedy for those suffering from it and for their loved ones. Many cases are due to smoking which has rightly been called the biggest single preventable cause of death and disease. Therefore, it is pertinent to ask, what should the government do about it? I am getting tired of repeatedly pointing [...]
I have written previously about the cock-eyed plan of bribing pregnant smokers to cease poisoning themselves with tobacco fumes. Now Mr Neil O’Brien, MP, the UK Minister for Primary Care and Public Health, has announced the latest wheeze to try and cut smoking rates. On the gov.uk website (11 April 2023) this what, with all due modesty, he [...]
This is the question posed by one Michael Burke. He has a doctorate in education and is a Certified Tobacco Treatment Specialist, no less. But I was set wondering what he actually knows about smoking when I came upon what he says as the Program Director of the highly esteemed Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center. As usual, I’ll [...]
In a story attributed to George Bernard Shaw, he asked a lady at dinner one night if she would go to bed with him for £1,000. The lady agreed. Then Shaw asked her if she would go to bed with him for £1. The lady became indignant and asked, ‘What do you think I am?’ Shaw replied, ‘We [...]
Professor Sir Chris Whitty, the UK government’s Chief Medical Adviser, lays it on thick. At a recent symposium on medical ethics, after reminding us that ‘Smoking is an appalling way to die, it kills people in multiple ways,’ he is reported as saying that ‘getting smoking down to zero and destroying the cigarette industry should be an aim [...]
If you’re a pack-a-day smoker, how many lungfuls of poisonous tobacco fumes will you inhale in a day, a month, or a year? Assuming one cigarette is consumed in ten puffs, the numbers are 200, 6,000, and 73,000, respectively. This dreadful situation raises the question: what can be done to help smokers cease and desist from such abnormal [...]
In previous blogs I have dealt with how vaping makes you feel bad, induces vulgarity, and is an activity from which you will get no satisfaction. Now I have to add another downside to this abnormal and potentially harmful behaviour: it can result in vapers being grumpy, as I shall explain. Do you know what INNCO means? It’s [...]
To help smokers in London stick to a New Year’s resolution to quit smoking, a campaign was announced towards the end of December 2020. It was called, appropriately enough, ‘Stop Smoking London’, though it’s not clear what’s so special about London in this regard as opposed to the rest of the country. Alas, the campaign is yet another [...]
Thanks to the ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) Daily News of 18 June 2020, we are informed of a new tactic to get smokers to quit: fear of Covid. Dr Ruth Sharrock, a specialist in respiratory medicine in the English city of Gateshead, is involved in a new campaign launched by an organisation with the pleasant-sounding name [...]
In California there’s an organisation with the amusing name of ‘Ash Kickers’. It’s a six-session programme intended to cure you of smoking. Sounds interesting, but six sessions? And how do they do it? It’s based on the ‘trans-theoretical model of behaviour modification’. Pardon? They explain: [This] helps smokers travel through the various stages of quitting smoking. These stages [...]
There are, it must be admitted, websites other than mine that claim to be able to cure smokers without nicotine, drugs, or willpower. What these sites offer are techniques. Don’t get me wrong. If smokers, after working their way through a ten-day course to learn how to replace the word ‘cigarette’ in their minds with the word ‘air’ [...]