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 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 […]
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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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