Do you know why vaping is such a big problem with school children? Because they are buying vapes, especially the brightly coloured disposable kind with child-friendly names and flavours, and getting hooked on them. And why are they engaging in this idiotic behaviour? Because vapes are easily available for purchase, online and at vape shops, […]
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Courtesy of that august organ, ISH Daily News, for 10 January 2024, there is both good and bad news about Wirral, part of the city of Liverpool in northwest England. First, the good news: ‘Fewer pregnant women in Wirral were smokers when they give birth, new figures show.’ This means that maternal smoking rates fell […]
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ISH (Inaction on Smoking and Health, formerly known as ASH (Action on Smoking and Health)) is well named. You can see it in their repetitively and badly written policy statement, ‘What we do’: We work by using our dedicated team of tobacco policy experts to work collaboratively: Information, networking and support: working with others to […]
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Evidence or Common Sense? – Part II Momentous news! Later this month the 2023 iteration of The E-Cigarette Summit UK will take place under the auspices of the Royal College of Physicians, no less. This is what it’s all about: The E-Cigarette Summit has a single aim of facilitating respectful dialogue and thoughtful analysis of […]
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Last month the UK Department of Health and Social Care published a paper with the encouraging title: Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smoke-free generation. There are two main strands to this laudable aim: helping current smokers stop poisoning themselves with tobacco fumes by encouraging them to switch to vaping; and stopping […]
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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 […]
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I pointed out the muddle-headed approach of the World Health Organization in 2021, but they’re still at it. They recently issued a 248-page document, WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2023: Protect people from tobacco smoke. It’s full of boastful repetitive wordy statements such as the following: No treaty, no set of public health […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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In November 2022 the UK government put out a document with the hyphen-challenged title, The Smokefree 2030 ambition for England. The ‘ambition’ is to make England smoke-free by 2030, but they do not mean that after this date no one in England will smoke; they mean the smoking prevalence will be no more than 5 […]
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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 […]
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Does the Symonds Method make smokers feel ashamed? Smokers, if they’re honest with themselves, are already ashamed by their apparent inability to stop poisoning themselves with tobacco fumes – a great misfortune. I recently received a message from a smoker in Australia that was rather critical of my approach to helping smokers become non-smokers again. […]
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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. […]
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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?’ […]
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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 […]
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If you’re a pack-a-day smoker, how many lungfuls of poisonous tobacco fumes will you take in a day, a month, or a year? Assuming one cigarette is consumed in ten puffs, the numbers are 200, 6000, and 73000, respectively. This dreadful situation raises the question: what can be done to help smokers cease and desist […]
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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 […]
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Here we go again. An article on BBC News (14 June 2022) shows everything that’s wrong with the current approach to smoking and vaping. Let’s start with the headline: ‘Vaping – it is a risk-free option?’ An option for what? For a way of taking nicotine into your body? You don’t need options for this […]
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I wrote a critique of the so-called New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) in March 2018. What have they been up to lately? NNA Board of Trustees’ Bios Let’s start with the Board of Trustees on their website. Five names are mentioned, but of one, Mary Stamp, we are told nothing except that her bio is to […]
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The Tobacco Advisory Group of the highly esteemed UK Royal College of Physicians has produced a report called Smoking and health 2021 with the intriguing subtitle, A coming of age for tobacco control? It’s an impressive document, written by fifty-one contributors, running to 169 pages, and includes 1,295 references. The authors are all highly qualified […]
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I have just read a book called Allen Carr Easy Way To Quit Vaping. But taking a second glance at the cover one can discern in small print the words ‘with John Dicey’. Did they both write the book? Obviously not, since it was published in 2021 and Allen Carr died in 2006 (ironically, from […]
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Vapid thinking about the vaping problem is shown in a seven-author Research Letter in an online publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association called Network Open (2 April 2021). Six of the authors are Doctors of Philosophy and one has a Master of Science degree. (It’s part of the PATH study about which […]
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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 […]
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Vaping—the activity whereby you repeatedly inhale a nicotine-laced aerosol—is big business. And as one would expect, there’s an online publication which promotes the interests of the vaping industry, the 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! […]
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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 are informed that ‘The campaign will support at least 100 million people as they try to give up tobacco…’. Come now, Dr […]
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Since I first wrote about the PATH (Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health) study (https://www.nicotinemonkey.com/up-the-garden-path-to-reduce-tobacco-related-death-and-disease/) 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 […]
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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 together with the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council and the UK charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), have brought […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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