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ASH Daily News for 21 November 2007

Local health officials announce that more smokers are giving up

Calderdale's health officials have announced that 1,000 people gave up smoking last year and hundreds more have quit since the smoking ban came into effect.

But the district still has more smokers than the national average, with 262 smoking related deaths recorded last year.

Andrea Cadwell, tobacco programme manager for Calderdale's stop smoking service, said the smoking ban seemed to have helped people quit.

"More people have managed to quit and that's because they can't smoke in the places they tend to go to," she said.

Last year the service helped 1,149 people quit smoking, more than half of the 2,185 that came to them for advice.

The year before they saw 2,282 people and helped 1,199 stop.

These results make the health trust one of only two in West Yorkshire to beat targets. And they are hoping to beat those figures this year, already seeing 1,471 people between April and September.

The period, which covers the time the smoking ban came in, saw the health trust help 766 people to quit.

The trust want to reduce the number of smokers in Calderdale, currently 29 per cent of the population, to 21 per cent by 2010.

Miss Cadwell said, "We have a lot of work to do. People can often make six or seven attempts to give up but taking the first step is what's important and getting the right help to do it."

"You are up to four times more likely to succeed in quitting with the support of your local NHS stop smoking service and a stop smoking product than you are by willpower alone."

Source: Halifax Courier, 20 November 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2mydhe

Smoking and mental health: A Hidden Epidemic

Smoking is responsible for five million deaths worldwide and while most people are aware of the harmful effects of smoking few are aware that smoking is concentrated among people with mental illness, often compounded by substance-abuse disorders such as alcoholism.

Go to most Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and the room will be so full of smoke that you can cut it with a knife. Ask the members, and they will tell you that it was much easier to stop drinking than to stop smoking. Indeed, nicotine, the addictive component of tobacco smoke, is as habituating as cocaine or heroin, and it has a similar effect on chemical receptors in the brain.

For years, mental health professionals ignored smoking. One reason is well intended but uninformed compassion. After years of tolerating, and even encouraging smoking among people with mental illness, mental health professionals are beginning to recognise the hazards of smoking. Two things have been especially powerful: the spread of facts about the dangers of secondhand smoke and a recent analysis showing that people with chronic mental illness die 25 years earlier than the rest of the population, with many of those lost years attributable to smoking.

So, what can be done to help people with mental illness stop smoking? Although their odds of actually quitting are not as high, about half that of smokers who don't have mental health conditions, there are many success stories. There is a growing trend in the United States to make mental health hospitals smokefree, both indoors and on their campuses. For the first time ever, more than half of these institutions in the United States are now smokefree, and those numbers are increasing. Predicted complications of increased violence and the need for disciplinary actions in the wake of going smokefree have proved false. In fact, removing smoking as a cause of staff-patient friction has meant fewer violent incidents and more opportunity for staff to interact therapeutically with their patients. Tools to help smokers quit, including counselling and drugs such as nicotine replacement, buproprion and varenicline are available but are still greatly underused.

It will not be easy to reverse the long alliance of smoking and mental illness. But the fact that mental health clinicians and patient and family advocacy groups have recognized the problem and are willing to address it is an essential first step toward wellness

Source: Washington Post, 18 November 2007 
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2j24qg

USA asks appeals court to uphold tobacco verdict

The United States government has asked a federal appeals court to uphold a ruling that Altria Group Inc.'s Philip Morris USA and other U.S. cigarette makers violated anti racketeering laws by marketing low tar cigarettes as healthier alternatives to full flavoured brands.

U.S. District Judge, Gladys Kessler in Washington issued her 1,653 page decision in August 2006. The manufacturers won a delay of the ruling while they appeal.

The government said in a filing with the appeals court in Washington that the district court's opinion reveals a decades long coordinated campaign to deceive American consumers about the toxicity and addictiveness of cigarettes."

The government argued that Kessler didn't abuse her discretion when she ordered the cigarette makers to stop labelling products as "light" or "low-tar." It also asked the court to reconsider a decision it made before Kessler's ruling that the cigarette makers won't have to forfeit ill-gotten gains from misrepresenting their products.

The government said the companies intended to defraud consumers and that their actions weren't protected by the Constitution's 1st Amendment free speech clause.

Kessler ruled after a nine month trial ending in 2005 that the cigarette makers violated U.S. racketeering laws and barred them from violating them in the future. She said they must stop marketing products in packaging or advertising as "light," "low tar," "mild" "natural" or "ultra light."

She ordered them to place full page adverts in more than 30 newspapers across the country containing corrective statements, regarding the health effects of smoking.

In March, Kessler expanded her decision to rule that the cigarette makers can't market cigarettes as "light" or "low-tar" overseas. She declined to extend the advertising requirement beyond the U.S.

In briefs filed with the appeals court, the tobacco companies argued that they couldn't be found to constitute a racketeering conspiracy under the law and that Kessler applied a wrong legal standard in finding that they were likely to commit future racketeering violations.

They also argued that her judgment conflicted with the Federal Trade Commission's policies and that the labels were not meant to defraud consumers.

Source: Chicago Tribune, 20 November 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2g928x

Northern Ireland: A tenth of children smoke

The health minister, Michael McGimpsey, has said that a tenth of children aged under 16 have taken up smoking with some as young as 11 becoming addicted to tobacco.

He warned there was an unhealthy attitude towards tobacco use which is contributing to many premature deaths.

The minister is considering raising the minimum age for tobacco purchases to 18, in line with Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

"Too many lives are lost prematurely each year due to the use of tobacco and as a society I believe we need to reassess our unhealthy attitude towards its use," he said.

He added that in Northern Ireland 11 per cent of children aged 11-15 took up the habit.

Source: U TV, 21 November 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2tgjr8