We already have voluminous research on the effects of smoking. We already know more than enough about the harmful effects of smoking. To what end is it hoped further research will lead?
Learn about second hand smoke, passive smoking, lung cancer, and the other dangers of smoking.
As a qualified medical doctor and former smoker, Dr. Gabriel Symonds is the best authority on smoking cessation. Find out what he has to say.
I recently came across a curious piece in an online publication, Broadly, (26 February 2019) written by a smoker, one Brandy Jensen. Rather than being an apology, justification, or excuse for smoking, it seems to be a defiant declaration: I’m a smoker and proud of it! We are off on the wrong foot from the very title: Smoking [...]
Imagine you are sitting in your flat (apartment) on a warm summer’s evening, enjoying the fresh air with the window open, when suddenly your nose is assailed by a horrid stink—someone in a nearby flat is smoking! What to do? Close the window and try to ignore it? Go round to the neighbour and politely ask him or [...]
Here’s a remarkable piece of news that came my way today about the war on tobacco. It’s a report of recent activities of an organisation called the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA). In case you’ve never heard of this, I’m sure you’ll be interested to know that it ‘works on the development, ratification, and implementation’ of an international treaty [...]
Have you ever wondered why, if you go into a room where someone has been smoking even a long time ago, there's a horrid stink? Second-hand smoke Now we have the answer. You've probably heard of second-hand smoke. It consists of the smoke emitted from the lit end of a smouldering cigarette mixed with the fumes breathed out [...]
Here are some facts about a natural disaster, tuberculosis. According to WHO, in 2016: 10.4 million people fell ill with TB, and 1.7 million died from the disease. And now here are some facts about an unnatural disaster, smoking. Tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year. More than 6 million of those deaths are the result [...]
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 Hospital in Gateshead, [...]
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 Australia’ of the [...]
The Nursing Times (13 November 2017) brings us news of a great way to raise awareness of lung cancer for the citizens of the historic city of Leicester in England. Specialist nurses will run a stall at a shopping centre where they ‘will be promoting e-cigarettes to the public…as part of efforts to boost smoking cessation.’ One of [...]
Bhutan: sale and purchase of tobacco products prohibited! I wrote about the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study on 17 June 2017 (https://www.nicotinemonkey.com/up-the-garden-path-to-prove-the-useless-about-e-cigarettes). Here is another paper about it in, where else, Tobacco Control (July 2017). It’s written by a no less than forty-one American authors from thirteen different institutions. The conclusion of this astonishing collaborative [...]
How proud Dr Margaret Chan (Director-General of the WHO) and Helen Clark (Administrator of the UN Development Programme) must feel of their ringing rhetoric in warning of the catastrophe facing China! (Foreword to Health, Economic and Social Costs of China’s Tobacco Epidemic, WHO 2017) Tobacco use kills six million people every year and is a threat to health [...]
Is smoking harmful, or isn’t it? Or is it, perhaps, good for you? In particular, the weighty question needs to be considered: is there any connection between passive smoking (breathing cigarette smoke-polluted air produced by other smokers) and dementia? A headline in an online publication called Care Appointments says: ‘[The University of] Wolverhampton secure (sic) funding to assess [...]
Here’s an amazing news story. No, it’s not the Flat Earth News, but comes from the hallowed pages of The Scottish Sun. (Online edition, 25 January 2017.) First, the surprising headline: GPs telling smokers how soon they will die ‘makes them three times more likely to quit’. Now hang on a minute. How is it that GPs have [...]
Here we have the delusions of smoking in full flight, by a—I presume tongue-in-cheek—article by Allan Massie in the current edition of the entertaining Taki’s Magazine. He thinks it’s better to smoke and be happy—even if you die young from heart disease or cancer as a result— than from Alzheimer’s disease which he believes kills more old people [...]
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as usual, has got it right. Any substance addiction will affect your inner peace and health. Nicotine and alcohol addiction are often linked in people’s minds and may be reflected in their responses to a suggestion that they should stop smoking: ‘I smoke, but I don’t drink.’ – so that’s all right then. [...]
Last year in a little town in New York state I had occasion to visit a friendly neighbourhood pharmacy. There I chanced upon a pamphlet with the inviting title, Let’s Quit Together. In case one might wonder what the ‘quit’ refers to it tells you in the next sentence with a question: ‘Are you ready to quit smoking?’ [...]
Except they don’t. But this is what smokers often say. Let me put it slightly differently: why cigarettes go with a drink—or with anything else you happen to be doing (or not doing)—every forty minutes of every day if you’re a twenty-a-day smoker, or pro rata if you smoke more or fewer than twenty cigs daily. Gentle reader, [...]
I stopped smoking more than fifty years ago when I attended a teaching round on the chest ward of the hospital where I trained. Nonetheless, for professional purposes I subscribed to the NHS ‘Smokefree’ motivational emails. Except they aren’t. This is discussed in my new book, Smoking is a Psychological Problem. Once you’re on their mailing list they [...]
It is extraordinary how the scholarly journal, Tobacco Control, from its curious title to much of the content, continues to be muddle-headed about the tobacco problem. Let me illustrate with an example from the March 2016 edition. In the section labelled ‘Worldwide news and comment’ we learn of allegations against British American Tobacco (BAT). They have been accused [...]
There is an organisation in Britain called the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT). They have put out a short film which is part of a training module called ‘Very Brief Advice on Smoking [Cessation]’ which is aimed at people who want to be smoking cessation counsellors. It’s a very sad film about a young boy [...]