Nicotine Monkey blog of many satirical articles on the smoking problem

Why NRT Makes it Harder to Stop Smoking

NRT, let me remind you, means so-called nicotine replacement therapy. Why ‘so-called’? Because nicotine is not a replacement for anything, nor is nicotine being replaced with something, so the name is wrong. It really means cigarette replacement but could equally well and more accurately be called nicotine maintenance therapy (NMT). The idea is that, since […]

Stopping Smoking is its Own Reward

In my research on smoking I recently came across a book and a website with the following titles: ‘Smoke-free in 30 days’ and ‘STOP SMOKING! in 28 days’, respectively. Here’s a quote from the latter: ‘Getting hooked doesn’t happen overnight and getting unhooked is best done in the same way: over a period of several […]

There’s Such a Craving for Cessation!

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 […]

Cold Turkey

So much activity in dealing with the smoking problem is directed towards trying to get smokers to stop. But you have to start doing something before you can stop doing it. In this regard it seems the official policy is to discourage young people from taking up the habit by various means, which according to […]

Guidelineitis Strikes Again! Or, How Not to Quit Smoking

I recently came across an interesting guideline for doctors who are trying to help smokers quit. It’s a publication from 2008 by the US Department of Health and Human Services called Treating tobacco use and dependence. The guideline is not just for any old smokers, mind you, but for ‘smokers unwilling to quit’. Here we […]

How Many Attempts Do Smokers Need Before They Quit?

How many centuries spent The sedentary soul In toils of measurement…? (W B Yeats) This curious concept is examined in a medical paper, the combined efforts of seven authors from Canada and the US, published in May 2016. Their answer: at least thirty. […]

The Hard Way to Quit Smoking

Do you know what the letters ATTUD stand for? It’s Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence, based in the US. We are further informed from their website that: ATTUD is an organization of providers dedicated to the promotion of and increased access to evidence-based tobacco treatment for the tobacco user. Before […]

Tobacco Treatment Specialist

If a doctor were to call himself a tobacco treatment specialist what would you think he does? It’s ambiguous. Is he treating a disease called tobacco, similarly to the way in which a cancer treatment specialist is obviously someone who treats cancer? Or, if you talk of an acupuncture treatment specialist, it’s clearly a practitioner […]

The Tragedy of Smoking

One conventional measure of ‘success’ in smoking cessation is the proportion of smokers who, when then have used the X method, are not smoking one year later. For example, many studies show that of smokers who quit using medicinal nicotine (gum or patches), around 16 per cent are still not smoking a year later. Not […]

How to Quit Smoking

I have just come across a brilliant feature from the Reader’s Digest: The 23 Best Ways to Quit Smoking. It’s really about hints or tips that might be helpful to would-be quitters. Here are some of them, with my comments: Set a quit date I have written a blog about why this is a bad […]

Tobacco Doesn’t Need to be Controlled; it Needs to be Abolished

These cigarette machines are ubiquitous in Japan. Note the ad for Parliament cigarettes. The attractive models imply that smoking is sexy. The wording says something like ‘vivid, strong menthol, crystal blast’. You can undergo this refreshing experience by crushing the menthol flavour capsule in the filter. The small print at the bottom, covering only about […]

Smoking and Drinking

Curing someone of smoking is easy, in my experience. However, treating alcoholism is a different matter. It’s not difficult to cure alcoholism – it’s impossible. Let me hasten to add that there are many things that can and should be done to help people with an alcohol problem. In this endeavor it’s important to keep […]

Do You Need Laser Treatment To Quit Smoking?

The photo shows the latest wheeze in smoking cessation for those who have ‘tried everything’: laser treatment. I predict this will be found to be ineffective.

Smoking in Japan

As I have mentioned before, the Japanese are on the whole a considerate people. Near where I live in Tokyo I recently noticed an sign inviting you to ‘Nelson’s, the local pub’. It reminded me of English pubs called The Lord Nelson. The sign pointed down an alleyway so I went to investigate. Peering through […]

Why Cigarettes ‘Go With a Drink’

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 […]

How Not to Stop Smoking – Part II

What does the US National Cancer Institute have to say about stopping smoking? On their website there’s a long section titled ‘How To Handle Withdrawal Symptoms and Triggers When You Decide To Quit Smoking’. This implies that you may indeed suffer such symptoms and that ‘triggers’ are also something you will need to be aware […]

What’s up with ASH?

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in their 2008 report draw attention to a well-known but nonetheless shocking fact: Products which are known to kill one in every two of their life-long users are available for sale in shops throughout the land. What to do about this scandalous situation? The obvious thing they dismiss: As […]

Why Do Smokers Smoke?

The other night I was eating with a friend in a local restaurant—non-smoking of course—and had occasion to observe my fellow diners. There was a party of what are known in Japan as ‘salarymen’ (company employees), consisting of about ten middle-aged people who were evidently enjoying themselves with good food and drink and animated conversation. […]

The Latest Wheeze in Tobacco Control

Cancer Research UK, bless their cotton socks, wants Big Tobacco to be obliged to ‘cough up’ to the tune of £500m, the equivalent of one penny per cigarette sold in the UK. The intention is to make up the current government deficit in health funding and would be used in public health services to help […]

The Curious Idea of Controlling Tobacco

Did you know there is a scholarly journal calling itself, indeed, Tobacco Control? The very title shows the wrong-headed approach to the smoking problem: tobacco doesn’t need to be controlled; it needs to be abolished. In a recent edition there is an editorial and a research paper complaining that the full list of ingredients in […]

Japanese Ashtray

Non-smoking restaurants and cafés are becoming more and more ubiquitous (!) in Japan, which, of course, is a good thing. And the Japanese, being on the whole a considerate people, make provision, as far as practicable, for other people’s needs. Outside this particular café a bench is provided together with an ashtray, partially filled with […]

Why it’s a Bad Idea to Set a Smoking Quit Date

Nearly all stop smoking methods will tell you to pick a date in the near future when you intend to quit. This is a bad idea. Here’s why: First, it reinforces the widely held but mistaken notion that stopping smoking is terribly difficult: you have to prepare yourself for it and work up your will-power […]

Oh the Pangs, the Pangs!

I stopped smoking more than fifty years ago when we were taken on a teaching round of 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 […]

Ballooning

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 […]

How to Keep Smoking

On opening the cover of the august organ Tobacco Control of November 2015, I was confronted with what at first glance looked like an ad for a packet of washing powder. Closer inspection, however, revealed it’s an illiterate puff for ‘extra strength gum for enhanced craving relief’. In other words, it’s for chewing gum containing 6mg of […]

How to Avoid Cigarette-Induced Lung Cancer

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 […]

Millions and Millions of Vapers

In support of the suggestion that e-cigarettes (‘vaping’) should be available on the NHS, there is a clip shown on the BBC Radio 5 Alive program (19 August 2015) featuring Professor Kevin Fenton from Public Health England. He points out that “more than 2.5 million smokers have already purchased their own e-cigarettes…some are using them […]

Smoking and Schizophrenia

According to an article in the British Medical Journal (10 July 2015), smoking may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, a severe type of mental illness called psychosis. An association between cigarettes and psychotic symptoms has been noted before, but is this because patients take up smoking as a way to try to counteract symptoms […]

World Expert on Smoking and Addiction

With such a billing, who might this be? It’s Professor Robert West, a psychologist and self-styled world expert on smoking and addiction who thinks unless e-cigarettes are made available we’re condemning smokers to death (BBC interview, April 2014). He published a book in 2013 with the intriguing title The SmokeFree Formula, A Revolutionary Way to […]

Smoking Cessation on the NHS

There’s a stop smoking promotion by NHS England called ‘Stoptober’, presumably because this scheme was launched in the month of October. Stoptober is the conventional approach – discouraging. They seem to recognize this fact and try to make a joke of it: Welcome to Day 1 of Stoptober. Now, it’s fair to say that this […]

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