To help smokers in London stick to a New Year’s resolution to stop 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 [...]
Vaping – the activity whereby you repeatedly inhale a nicotine-laced aerosol – is big business. And as one would expect, there’s an online publication that promotes the interests of the vaping industry, Vaping Post. In a recent edition I came across the headline, ‘Asia-Pacific Groups Create Petition Urging WHO to End Lies About Vaping.’ Well, there’s a challenge! [...]
The WHO, bless their cotton socks, in December 2020 launched a ‘year-long global campaign for World No Tobacco Day 2021, “Commit to Quit”, and as part of this splendid effort we're informed that ‘The campaign will support at least 100 million people as they try to give up tobacco.’ Come now, Dr Symonds, surely this is not going [...]
Since I first wrote about the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study how far along have our intrepid researchers got? They now proceed, we are informed, not in steps or stages, but in waves. We’re now at Waves 1–3 with a paper released in March 2020 by Saul Shiffman and Mark Sembower. These gentlemen work for an [...]
Potential progress in the fight against smoking was announced The British Medical Journal (10 September 2020) with the headline, ‘US doctors support bid to ban menthol cigarettes.’ We learn that the American Medical Association (AMA), together with the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, and the UK charity Action on Smoking and Health, have brought a lawsuit against [...]
The American Cancer Society, whose answer to the question, ‘Why is it so hard to quit tobacco?’ I critiqued earlier this year, poses another question on its website: ‘How do I get through the rough spots after I stop smoking?’ So you can expect to have rough spots. Thanks for the encouragement. Now for the advice on how [...]
This was my first impression when I glanced at a headline of the venerable ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) Daily News of 19 August 2020. But then I realised I was indulging in wishful thinking. The actual wording was, ‘Pow threatens tobacco firms over litter.’ Pow is the surname of the British Conservative MP for the constituency [...]
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 [...]
You could be forgiven for thinking that it's almost impossible to quit tobacco if you look at the website of the cheerfully named American Cancer Society: A subheading raises the ominous question: Why is it so hard to quit tobacco? Well, that’s encouraging for a start. Quitting tobacco is so hard. Now we find out why: Stopping or [...]
An earnest young woman, Kylie Lindorff, gazes out at us from a photo in the 2019 Annual Report of the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA). This is made up of the organisations – there are nearly 500 of them – which work on the ‘development, ratification, and implementation’ of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). [...]
The current woeful state of understanding of the smoking problem is shown in the online Daily News (10 March 2020) of the UK charity, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). According to this, Mr Ciaran Osborne, who as ASH’s director of policy and communications ought to know what he's talking about, apparently thinks that what smokers need [...]
This idea is set out in an eighty-two page Guidebook commissioned by the Framework Convention Alliance on Tobacco Control (FCATC for short), written by an outfit modestly calling itself Sovereign Border Solutions. The latter name reminds me of a company proclaiming it deals with ‘fluid transfer solutions’ instead of saying they sell hosepipes. Let’s take a further look [...]
One of my smoker patients said to me, ‘The pleasure of smoking may be an illusion, but it’s a very nice illusion!’ It is really? It’s no illusion, and certainly wouldn't be nice, if you contracted a smoking-induced disease. Yet it’s extraordinary the lengths to which smokers will go to justify their smoking. Here’s what some of them [...]
It is a truth that appears not to be universally acknowledged that in order to stop doing something you have to start doing it first. People are not born smokers. Public health organisations are much exercised to appeal for funding to run stop smoking clinics. They have a modest success with smokers who seek their help in supporting [...]
It has been claimed that 'The English tobacco control/smoking cessation community is internationally regarded as being utterly, hopelessly smitten with e-cigarettes. It's become almost cult-like.' See https://www.nicotinemonkey.com/hopelessly-smitten-with-e-cigarettes/ Now it seems this community is about to take leave of its senses. A certain Martin Dockrell, the Tobacco Control Programme Lead of Public Health England, is quoted (Daily Mail, 23 [...]
Juul Labs is the nice scientific-sounding name of the company that makes the nicotine poison delivery device with the catchy name of Juul. It’s especially popular with school kids. Now hold on a minute, Dr Symonds! Nicotine a poison? Everyone knows it’s no more harmful than coffee! Anyway, it’s such fun to suck nicotine-laden vapour into your lungs [...]
Juul Labs is the nice scientific-sounding name of the company that makes the popular—especially with school kids—nicotine drug delivery device with the catchy name of Juul. Now hold on a minute, Dr Symonds! Nicotine a poison? It’s no more harmful than coffee! Anyway, it’s such fun to suck nicotine-laden vapour into your lungs hundreds of times a day, [...]
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 [...]
The highly esteemed tobacco company, Philip Morris International (PMI), in January 2019 published an anonymous fifty-five-page document entitled Public Health – Much Harder than Rocket Science. They modestly call it a White Paper, as if it’s an official government report, and it’s padded out with eighteen artistic black-and-white photos of no relevance to public heath except for one [...]
The two-faced André Calantzopoulos, CEO of Philip Morris International (PMI), is at it again. He’s written an open letter to the Global Leadership Community, whatever that is, in which he presents himself and the repulsive company he heads as the saviour of the world. It’s not difficult, however, to see through the lies, distortions, and false emotional appeals [...]
Some illuminating insights can be gained into the smoking problem by different people’s comments on my answer to a question posted on Quora (a US based question-and-answer website). The question was: What is your opinion on vaping and e-cigarettes? I answered thus: E-cigarettes should be seen for what they are: drug (nicotine) delivery devices. There’s enough trouble already [...]
Earthlings’ curious ritual If you were a visitor from another planet you would soon notice that many of the human species engage in a curious ritual. They take a small white cylindrical object known as ‘a cigarette’ out of a packet, set fire to one end of it, put the other end into their mouths, and suck the [...]
Do you know what formaldehyde cyanohydrin is? The answer will be revealed shortly, but first, kind reader, consider the following: A BBC news item (20 September 2018) shows TV presenter Jeremy Kyle sitting at his desk, looking rather serious. He boasts he’s quit smoking twenty cigarettes-a-day after thirty-five years: ‘I am proud to say that I quit 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 [...]
A recently released short film, produced by a number of local health authorities in the north of England, is titled ‘Don’t be the 1’. This is an admonition not to be the one of the one-in-two smokers who will die from a smoking-related illness. It made me feel quite angry—not with the makers of the film I hasten [...]
It seems these days everyone is jumping on the e-cigarette bandwagon – the debate is swirling back and forth. Are e-cigarettes harmful or good for smokers? If they’re harmful, how much less so than smoking? Should vaping be permitted/banned everywhere/on public transport/in classrooms/hospitals? Should they be regulated, and if so, how and by how much? As an example [...]
When you think of charities, what usually occurs to you next? That they are, no doubt, deserving, and the fact that they all want money. For example, the Tibet Relief Fund, Yorkshire Cat Rescue, or the National Trust – all worthwhile charities in need of funding from the philanthropic public. Now, let us take the so-called New Nicotine [...]
In The Times (2 September 2018) there's an article by the liberal democratic politician, Norman Lamb, MP (pictured), with a title that it must have given him a chuckle to write: ‘It’s time to stop tarring e-cigarettes and tobacco with the same brush.’ Mr Lamb is a solicitor. Nonetheless, he is Chair of the Science and Technology Committee [...]
You will not have not heard of this organisation because it’s still in the process being set up. When the Board of Trustees is established – Dr Gabriel Symonds has volunteered to be the honorary Chairman – we intend to apply to the UK Charities Commission for registration. The main aim of ANA is to educate the public [...]
In the venerable New Yorker (24 May 2018) there was an article about the emerging problems with the latest nicotine delivery device that looks like a USB stick, called Juul. The article starts by parroting a myth, twice: Nicotine is both a stimulant and a relaxant: it peps you up when you’re tired, and if you’re anxious it [...]