The minimum age for buying tobacco is to be raised from 16 to 18 in an effort to cut the number of teenage smokers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
The measure to place cigarettes on the same legal footing as alcohol will affect hundreds of thousands of smokers: up to 60 per cent of 16-year-olds are estimated to have tried cigarettes.
3o2bal 3enna
According to a survey conducted by the WHO in 2004:
About 46% of the survey respondents stated that they had never smoked. 20% reported having successfully quit smoking, 7% smoked occasionally and only 27% smoked regularly. Those who smoked regularly consumed 19 cigarettes a day on average. Those who smoked occasionally smoked an average of 10 cigarettes per day. Among smokers who named a preferred brand, Viceroy and Marlboro were the most popular, named by 25% and 22% of respondents respectively. Rothmans and LM followed, at 10% each. The proportion of smokers among male respondents was almost twice as high as among female respondents, at 36.3% versus 19.3% respectively.
And on helping out patients by providing counselling, medications and assisting materials:
Physicians in Jordan agreed that health professionals should be and indeed are role models in their attitude to smoking. When combining the responses of those who “strongly agreed” and those who “agreed”, the opinion was nearly the same among smokers and non-smokers. Treated separately, agreement among non-smokers was stronger. There was a slight difference in agreement over the statement that physicians who smoke are less likely to advise their patients against smoking. While 77% of non-smokers “agreed” with this statement, only 70% of occasional or regular smokers did so.
On the availability of interventions to help patients stop smoking, counselling was the option reported as most available. Other interventions, such as medication or self-help materials were less readily available, with 3.3% and 21% of respondents reporting them as available, respectively. However, uptake, defined as use where available, was high for all three. The high uptake levels (69% for medications, 94% for self-help and 97% for counselling) suggest that health professionals use self-help, counselling and medication for their patients when they are available.
Health professionals’ assessment of their preparedness to offer smoking cessation counselling is a powerful predictor of whether they will offer it to patients. Among those who reported feeling “prepared” to counsel their patients on how to quit smoking, 86% did counsel their patients on the subject, 23% provided them with self-help material and 8% used medication. Of those who reported feeling “not at all prepared” to counsel their patients on smoking cessation, 36% counselled them, 10% provided self-help material and 4% used medication.
And what was the result of the survey?
Physicians in Jordan have excellent knowledge of the harms of smoking. They recognize the importance of non-smoking health professionals as role models to assist patients in quitting smoking. They also recognize the role models that health professionals represent to others.
When interventions are available, which was not usually the case in the survey, physicians offered a range of effective smoking cessation interventions to their patients. Expanding access to medication and self-help, coupled with improved smoking cessation counselling training for physicians, would expand coverage of effective smoking cessation interventions in Jordan.More than 75% of health professionals in Jordan, both smokers and non-smokers, consistently agreed with the need to implement the elements of comprehensive tobacco control. For all but price increases, support was virtually unanimous. Thus, physicians (especially non-smokers) in Jordan are well positioned to advocate for and support the implementation of comprehensive tobacco control.
Before the “addicted” smoker can quit, he must appreciate what addiction is all about and how he can be weaned off smoking. This, of course, is in addition to the effort of changing one’s mindset and environment.
Understanding what tobacco dependence is all about can help the smoker change his habits. This is especially so because addictive behaviour has a direct influence on the bodily chemicals that affect emotions and behaviour.
Often, it is the emotional aspects that cause the smoking behaviour to continue. And thus the multitude of excuses which smokers offer such as it gives “a surge of energy”, or “acts to reduce tension” or even “gives a feeling of security”.
What it actually amounts to is that smoking maintains a certain level of nicotine in the smoker’s blood, especially in the brain.
This is, in fact, the key to understanding addiction as a result of nicotine inhaled from the cigarette. Under the influence of a high level of nicotine, all the above-mentioned excuses seem real. The smoker is emotionally satisfied by his smoking behaviour.
However, after puffing on a stick of cigarette, the nicotine level in the smoker’s blood begins to decrease gradually. Over just about one hour, the level becomes almost negligible, seemingly resulting in a “loss” in energy, “increased” tension and “insecure” feelings. And the urge to smoke begins.
At this point, it is critical for the “addicted” smoker to find new strategies to distract himself from the urge to smoke. Try any one or all of these suggestions:
Before the five minutes are over, the urge will pass. Most urges are short. Once you understand and experience this, you will be better able to cope and resist the urge.
Because you are addicted, quitting smoking can prove quite challenging. The physical symptoms of withdrawal from smoking (like being irritable and edgy) may last between three to 10 days, with the intensity decreasing by the day. But the psychological aspect may last longer, weeks and even months. Over time, however, the urge will fade.
Relapses can occur if you are not careful, particularly when you subject yourself to the environment that habitually make you “light up”. Be aware of this and the circumstances that will make you do so, such as after a meal or when getting in the car. Keep the cigarettes away as suggested in last week’s article.
Most relapses occur within four weeks after a person stops smoking. The chief reason is most smokers are not prepared to make changes. The month of Ramadan should help Muslim smokers who want to give up.Fasting forces a smoker to change his mindset, his environment and his habit. Most routines are broken for a good part of the day over the next four weeks.
So, try to acquire new non-smoking behaviour during the Ramadan. Unlearn smoking. Take it a day at a time. If you succeed on the first day, you are likely to succeed again the next day. Before your know it, you are already a non-smoker.
The most vulnerable time, of course, is during meals, especially the breaking of fast. Consider some of these:
Good luck and happy fasting to Muslim readers
Via The National Poison Center
Also Check the Tobacco and Second-Hand Smoke Free Ramadan Campaign 2005
Tags: Smoking, Quit smoking, Ramadan
A recent study squashes the common belief that light smokers escape the serious health consequences faced by heavier smokers. According to the study, smoking just one to four cigarettes per day nearly triples the risk of dying from heart disease or lung cancer.
There is widespread belief among the lay public that a few cigarettes per day cannot harm them but this is not true. Researchers from the National Health Screening Service, USA, tracked the health and death rates of close to 43,000 men and women from the mid 1970s until 2002. All of them were in their 30s and 40s at the start of the study when they were screened for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The researchers found that both men and women who smoked between one and four cigarettes a day were almost three times as likely to die of heart disease as were individuals who never smoked.
The impact appeared greatest in women. Women who smoked one to four cigarettes a day were nearly five times as likely to die of lung cancer, and men smoking this amount were almost three times as likely to die of the disease as their non-smoking peers. Light smokers also had significantly higher death rates from all causes compared to never smokers.
For decades, it has been known that light smoking endangers health. In these studies, however, light smoking has been defined as smoking one to nine cigarettes per day.
The results from this and other studies should encourage smoking control policymakers and health educators to more strongly emphasise that light smokers are also putting their health in jeopardy.
Tobacco Control,
September 2005
About 1 out of every 5 deaths in the US can be attributed to tobacco products.
$72 billion was spent on tobacco related products by consumers in the U.S. in 1999.
Every eight seconds, someone in the world dies due to tobacco.
Every day about 2000 youths become daily smokers.
Every year cigarettes leave about 31,000 kids fatherless.
Every day about 4,400 kids age 12 to 17 try a cigarette for the first time.
Of current smokers in the U.S., 46,000 have lung cancer from smoking.
In 1999, one year after agreeing to stop billboard advertising, tobacco companies increased advertising spending by 33 percentin magazines with more than 15 percent youth readership.
In 1990, 72 million bottles of a popular mineral water were voluntarily recalled because of small traces of benzene. The smoke from one pack of unfiltered cigarettes has as much benzene as 169 bottles of the contaminated water.
How do infants avoid secondhand smoke? “At some point they begin to crawl.” – Tobacco Executive 1996
In as little as 2 weeks nicotine changes the brains chemistry and addiction can begin.
In 2001, tobacco companies spent about $11 billion marketing their products. That’s about $1.5 billion more than the year before.
In 1990, a tobacco company put together a plan to stop Coroners from listing tobacco as a cause of death on a death certificate.
Cigarette smoke contains 69 chemical compounds that are known cause cancer.
There are about 12,711,000 current and former smokers in the U.S. with a tobacco related disease in the.
There are about 5,412,000 current smokers with a tobacco related disease in the U.S.
1 out of 3 smokers are estimated to eventually die from a tobacco-related disease.
Of current smokers in the U.S., 1,273,000 have emphysema from smoking.
Over 50,000 people a year die from secondhand smoke in the US alone.
Cigarette smoke contains the radioactive isotope Polonium-210.
In 1989, millions of cases of imported fruit were banned after a small amount of cyanide was found in just two grapes. There’s thirty-three times morecyanide in a single cigarette than was found in those two grapes.
An internal tobacco company marketing report from 1989 said quote “We believe that most of the strong, positive images for cigarettes and smoking are created by cinema and television.”
In the mid 90’s, a major tobacco company planned on boosting sales of their cigarettes by targeting a new consumer market: gays and homeless people. They called their plan Project Sub-Culture Urban Marketing. Also known as Project SCUM.
Cigarettes will eventually kill a third of the people who use them.
Tobacco signage is often placed at a child’s eye level.
One tobacco company developed a genetically altered tobacco with twice the addictive nicotine of regular tobacco. They code-named it “Y-1.”
In 1984, one tobacco company referred to new customers as “replacement smokers.”
Over 80 percent of all adult smokers started smoking before they turned 18.
Tobacco companies make $1.8 billion from under age sales.
Pee contains urea. Some tobacco companies add urea to cigarettes.
Tobacco companies make a product that kills 440,000 Americans a year.
Tobacco companies make a product that kills 1,200 Americans a day.
2,000 teens start smoking everyday.
Tobacco companies make a product that kills about 50Americans each hour.
In the 1970s, tobacco companies started making light cigarettes by putting tiny holes in the filters to let extra air mix with the smoke. They found they could get low readings of toxic agents from FTC-type cigarette testing machines.
In 1980, a tobacco company considered looking at itself as a “drug company.”
Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.
Every 8 seconds, someone in the world dies from tobacco.
Since 1964 there have been 12 million tobacco related deaths in the U.S.
Smoking during pregnancy results in the deaths of about 1000 infants each year in the U.S.
70 percent of smokers want to quit. Only about 5 percent actually succeed every year.
The impact of nicotine is jacked up because tobacco companies add ammonia.
In the 1980s, tobacco companies started working on making fire-safe cigarettes. Ones that would be less likely to ignite furniture or clothing and cause fires. As of 2002, only one of the hundreds of U.S. cigarette brands uses fire safe technology, and cigarettes are still the number one cause of fire-related deaths.
Every year, 95 percent of people who try to stop smoking are not successful.
In the US, smoking causes about 445 new cases of lung cancer every day.
Tobacco kills more Americans than AIDS, drugs, homicides, fires, and auto accidents combined.
Cigarette smoke contains benzene, carbon monoxide, arsenic, hydrogen cyanid
By Mohammad Ghazal
AMMAN — Everyone in the chest clinic in Jabal Amman noticed that Adnan Mohammad was having great difficulty in breathing. Whenever he took a breath his shoulders instinctively arched up. With his palms resting on his knees, Mohammad would pause for a moment to retain his composure before exhaling slowly.
As a patient diagnosed in the advanced stage of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which causes airflow obstruction and breathing-related problems, Mohammad, 75, now struggles to do the simplest of tasks.
“For almost five years now I have been unable to do any activity,” said the patient, a smoker since the age of 15.
“I can no longer walk upstairs any more, I can’t do any of the activities I used to enjoy such as working on my car. I can’t do anything without getting short of breath.”
According to the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD), conducted under the auspices of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank, the worldwide prevalence of COPD in 2002 was estimated to be 11.6/1,000 in men and 8.77/1,000 in women.
The GBD study estimated that in 2002 COPD resulted in a total of 2.75 million deaths globally, representing 4.8 per cent of all recorded deaths.
Since Mohammad retired from his job at the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company 14 years ago, his condition has steadily deteriorated.
His doctor, Abdul Rahman Anani, said Mohammad first came to his clinic four years ago complaining of coughing and a bad chest, believing these symptoms were normal for someone who had been smoking all his adult life.
“Almost every smoker in the world believes it is normal to cough, wheeze, get short of breath and produce more phlegm,” said Anani, a pulmonary diseases specialist.
But these are the symptoms of COPD, the fourth leading cause of death in the world, the doctor explained.
By 2020, the disease is set to become the third leading cause of death, according to the WHO.
By the time Mohammad had his first diagnosis, said Anani, almost 60 per cent of his lungs were irreversibly destroyed, which the doctor described as typical of COPD sufferers.
Anani said the late detection rate is due to a number of factors, including a lack of awareness on the part of both sufferers and physicians, who often fail to detect the disease in its early stages.
“Though I was smoking for more than 50 years I had never heard about this disease. I thought the coughing and wheezing was normal, but almost five years ago the coughing became painful, it was then I decided to go to the doctor,” Mohammad explained.
In a recent speech at a scientific seminar, organised by the Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceutical Company, Anani claimed that “around 20 per cent of smokers are likely to be infected with COPD and 90 per cent of COPD patients are previous smokers.”
“I advise every smoker aged 40 and above to undergo a spirometry test because the possibility that they have COPD is great,” Anani said.
The prevalence of COPD is highest in countries where cigarette smoking has been, or still is, very common, according to the WHO website. Jordan is one such country.
Abu Rumman, director of the Chest Diseases Department at the Ministry of Health, confirmed that there are currently no studies on the prevalence of COPD in the Kingdom.
However, the ministry estimates that 10 per cent of the population suffer from pulmonary diseases, of which 4 per cent suffer from COPD.
According to Ministry of Health figures, around one-third of the Kingdom’s 5.5 million population are smokers.
Director of the ministry’s Anti-Smoking Department, Heba Ayyub, said 50 per cent of males over the age of 25 are smokers, while the proportion of females smoking in the same age group is 18 per cent, which she said is probably far higher as women tend to conceal their habit.
Moreover, 34 per cent of children aged between 13-15 smoke cigarettes and other tobacco products such as the hubble-bubble, she said.
In an attempt to highlight the disease and increase early detection rates, Abu Rumman said the ministry is currently compiling an information booklet, which will be distributed to the Kingdom’s 1,000 healthcare centres next year.
The booklet is designed to upgrade the diagnosis skills of doctors and raise awareness among smokers.
When Mohammad and many other sufferers began smoking no such information was available.
“I wish I knew about it because it would have been easy to stop it since I was not a heavy smoker in the beginning,” Mohammad said.
When asked by The Jordan Times whether he now warns others against the dangers of smoking, Mohammad replied: “There is no need to say it in words, they just have to look at me to know where smoking is taking them.”
What is COPD?
* COPD is a slowly progressive disease of the airways characterised by a gradual loss of lung function. It usually occurs as a result of cumulative exposure to tobacco smoke, occupational dusts or vapours, and indoor or outdoor air pollution.
* COPD is usually not diagnosed until it is clinically apparent and moderately advanced.
* Almost 90 per cent of people with COPD are previous smokers.
* Morbidity due to COPD increases with age and is greater in men than women.
Symptoms
* These can range from chronic cough and sputum production to severe disabling shortness of breath.
Therapy
* The first step to recovery is to quit smoking.
* There is no 100 per cent recovery and each patient needs his/her own treatment depending on the severity of the case.
* Therapy includes inhalers that dilate the bronchioles, antibiotics and the flu vaccine.
* In severe cases when the lungs are completely destroyed a lung transplant is essential.
Source: www.who.int
Via Jordan Times
Very disturbing eh?I don’t blame the tobacco industry because I know they do it for money, I blame smokers who in addition to gaining nothing, they lose a lot. And nobody can force a smoker to quit, he has to do it himself, which is sad.
Tags: Quit smoking, Smoking
Children as young as nine seek help to quit smoking
Dubai: Children as young as nine are seeking help to kick the habit of smoking, reflecting the rising global trend that more teenagers and children are taking up smoking, according to senior health ministry officials.
The 2002 Global Youth Tobacco Survey, conducted by the Ministry of Health found that 23 per cent of boys and 31.3 per cent of girls in the UAE tried smoking before the age of ten.
World Health Organisation statistics state between 80,000 and 100,000 children start smoking every day, and half of them will go on to smoke for the next 15 to 20 years.
Tags: Quit smoking, Smoking
British American Tobacco is partnering with the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority to establish the first-ever Youth Smoking Prevention City in the Middle East. BAT has promoted a similar initiative in Saudi Arabia and worked with the Kuwait Teachers Society to prevent underage smoking.
While organisers are well aware that reducing the number of smokers is an uphill task, their main aim is to ban the sale of cigarettes on campus
By Sara Asad
AMMAN — Students and faculty members at the University of Jordan have decided to take a stand in protest against what they say is the campus’s increasingly smoke-polluted atmosphere.
Sinan Al Khatib, one of the student organisers, said the committee responsible for organising the campaign has put together a petition calling on the university administration to ban smoking on campus and forbid the sale of cigarettes.
“We hope this will be a step to a cleaner campus environment,” said Khatib.
The campaign, which ran from Monday to Wednesday, also featured discussion sessions providing helpful tips to those wishing to quit the habit.
Sessions featured speakers such as Amjad Korsha, from the faculty of Sharia, chest disease specialist Abdul Rahman Al Anani and President of the National Centre for Rehabilitation of Addicts, Jamal Al Anani.
A part of the campaign a walk was organised under the theme “of course we can.”
In addition, Pfizer Consumer Health Care, a company that aims to reduce the number of smokers, handed out “Nicorette” to students, which is thought to make quitting easier.
While organisers are well aware that reducing the number of smokers on campus is an uphill task, their main aim is to ban the sale of cigarettes, and more importantly, to enforce rules that already exist, but are ignored, even by faculty and professors, and university officials.
Although no smoking signs are to be found in some of the campus’ buildings and toilets, they are completely ignored, said the organisers.
Organisers said the majority of smokers on campus are male, but an increasing number females also smoke, albeit more discreetly.
“I don’t think I would ever be comfortable smoking on campus; I smoke at home around my parents, but smoking at the university, for a female would result in finger pointing, and possibly even name calling,” one female smoker told The Jordan Times.
She said many females on campus smoke but prefer to do it in the toilets, away from watchful eyes.
Some students interviewed by The Jordan Times were pessimistic about the chance of the campaign having any positive effect on reducing the number of smokers on campus.
Lana Janho, a non-smoker, said the campaign would be ineffective and would not bring about any change on campus.
According to Ministry of Health figures, an estimated one-third of the population are smokers. 48 per cent of Jordanian males over the age of 25 smoke, while the proportion of female smokers in the same age group is18 per cent. Figures also reveal that 34 per cent of the country’s doctor’s are smokers.
Two thumbs up. While results may not be significant as it takes more than one campaign of course but surely thats a great step forward. I’m so happy and really proud!
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