Tobacco.org

• Legislature overrides County Exec’s Veto on Tobacco 19  

Syracuse, New York (WSYR-TV) - The Onondaga County Legislature voted on Tuesday to override County Executive Joanie Mahoney’s veto of the Tobacco 19 law. The law makes it illegal for vendors to sell tobacco products to 18-year-olds.

Jump to full article »

Local advocates target car smokers  

Give Heidi Henson a badge and a police cruiser, and there's little doubt what she'd do. "Every time I see a parent smoking while driving with kids in the car, I want to pull them over and talk to them about the dangers of secondhand smoke," said Henson, the tobacco cessation coordinator at MultiCare and a member of the Tobacco Advisory Board of Pierce County.

"They need to know it's not OK to poison children," she said.

Washington smokers, harried from one sanctuary to another over the past few years, soon might lose one of their last remaining safe spots to light up.

Anti-smoking groups and health officials are rounding up sponsors for a bill in the upcoming legislative session that would outlaw smoking in vehicles when children are passengers.

Jump to full article »

Are Smokers Being Unfairly Targeted? 

North Dakota already outlawed smoking in restaurants and other enclosed public places, though many bars are exempt.

But if a group of Williston students have their way, smoking will be illegal in a car that`s also carrying someone who`s under 16.

Kincaid says, "I choose not to if I have kids with me. I won`t smoke in my car. That`s already my choice. But somebody saying that I can`t? I don`t know about that."

The bill`s legislative sponsors admit that it will probably be a tough law to get passed. But smokers are already being affected by something that requires no legal permission.

Jump to full article »

Dangers of Third Hand Smoke 

Arkansas is a relatively small state compared to the rest of the country, but in terms of tobacco use, we rank tenth, with 20% of high school students who smoke and 22% of adults who smoke.

"Both of those rates have been coming down, but obviously we have a long way to go," Dr. Carolyn Dresler with the Arkansas Department of Health said.

According to the health department, smoking puts a big toll financially on the state. The annual health care costs in Arkansas directly caused by smoking is $812 million. $242 million of that is covered by Medicaid. Arkansans are paying 564 dollars per household for the state and federal tax burden from smoking caused government costs, and the productivity lost from smoking in Arkansas is over one billion dollars.

Jump to full article »

Student who smoked forced to leave 

IPOH, MALAYSIA - A few months before M. Reuben was to sit the Penilaian Menengah Rendah examination, his father caught him smoking with a friend. As "punishment" his father pulled him out of school. The 15-year-old didn't sit the PMR, and he has no problems with that.

"I'm not disappointed. I consider myself lucky. I would have failed the examination anyway, just as I did the UPSR (Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah)," he laconically told the New Straits Times.

Reuben is neither studying nor working now. He is content just to hang out at home. . . .

Counsellor Nanthini Ramaloo from the centre's headquarters in Kuala Lumpur said almost half of the school dropouts in the country were Indian youths who left after the PMR examination.

"There are books to buy, notes to photocopy and class trips to attend at school. When they can't afford it, they just leave school."

More than half turn to crime when they can't find jobs, which worsens their problem if they get a criminal record, she said.

Jump to full article »

Tobacco-Free Kids activity kits available  

Schools and community groups that want to participate in Tobacco-Free Kids Week 2009 can reserve free Activity Planning Kits from the Anne Arundel County Department of Health. The kits can be requested from the Learn To Live Line, 410-222-7979, or the TFK Week page of the Smoking Stinks Web site, smokingstinks.org.

The county's 14th annual Tobacco-Free Kids Week will be March 1 to 7. . . .

Tobacco-Free Kids Week is part of Smoking Stinks, a Learn To Live program of the county health department.

Jump to full article »

• TAIWAN: Media guilty of promoting smoking, research study says 

The media may be guilty of promoting smoking among young people, with many cartoons ranking among the top television programs that show characters smoking, a recent study found.

The study on cigarettes and smoking conducted by the Bureau of Health Promotion monitored various types of television programs, television news, movies, magazines, marketing events and electronic games between July and September. The results showed that cigarette smoking scenes showed up an average of 12.55 times in movies this year. This is 20 to 26 times as much media exposure as in television shows, National Communications Commission commissioner Chung Chi-hui said.

Several movies that have topped box office sales contain scenes with characters smoking, including Cape No. 7, Lust, Caution, Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, she said.

From 1999 to last year, 171, or 73 percent, of movies and television programming produced by the Walt Disney Company or one of its divisions contained smoking scenes, the study showed.

Jump to full article »

Group to continue fight for ban on smoking in cars 

AN anti-smoking lobby group will continue to lobby for smoking to be banned in cars to protect children, despite failing to persuade the Government to introduce the prohibition.

ASH Ireland launched the campaign to outlaw smoking in cars last February, after a study revealed children were breathing in deadly amounts of tobacco fumes when travelling in cars with parents who smoke.

The lobby group believed a study by the Tobacco Research Unit in Ontario, Canada, was more than enough to convince the Government to introduce a car smoking ban to protect children under the age of 16.

The study had revealed children who travel in cars while their parents smoke are breathing in air containing 100 times the "safe" level of pollution.

And it further showed children are still at risk from harmful levels of pollutants, even if parents opened the windows or put on air conditioning while smoking.

Jump to full article »

• Survey: Smoking on the decline in Denmark 

Smoking is on the decline in Denmark where roughly one in four people smoke daily, a new survey published Monday said. A record number of Danish smokers also want to quit the habit, the survey said.

The findings also indicated that there is support for hiking tobacco prices - such a move was supported by 59 per cent and opposed by just 19 per cent.

In all 23 per cent of Danish nationals over 15 years of age smoke daily, totalling roughly 1 million people. In addition some 200,000 people, or 5 per cent of the population, smoke occasionally, the new survey said.

A year ago, 24 per cent of the Scandinavian country's some 5.5 million people were estimated to smoke daily.

Smoking was less prevalent among younger sections

Jump to full article »

Teens are influenced by health risks of smoking  

Teenagers who underestimate the risks of smoking -- or overestimate the social value -- are substantially more likely than their peers to take up the habit, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among 395 high school students they followed for two years, those who thought the health risks of smoking were fairly low, or the social benefits fairly high, were about three times more likely than their peers to start smoking.

The fact that these perceptions influence teenagers' likelihood of smoking makes sense, but until now it hadn't been clear whether this was the case.

"This is the first paper that really shows that perceptions truly predict behavior," senior researcher Dr. Bonnie L. Halpern-Felsher told Reuters Health.

The findings also show that teens' ideas about the long-term and short- term consequences of smoking are equally important, said Halpern-Felsher, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.

Jump to full article »

• Teens Girls Smoke Now, Pay Later With Larger Waistlines As Adults 

Remember the cool girls, huddled together in high school restrooms, puffing their cigarettes? Well, here's consolation for the nerds in the crowd: Those teen smokers are more likely to experience obesity as adults, according to a new study from Finland.

Girls who smoke 10 cigarettes per day or more are at greatest risk, particularly for abdominal obesity. Their waist sizes are 1.34 inches larger than nonsmokers' waists are as young adults, according to the study in the February 2009 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

But smoking in adolescence did not necessarily predict weight problems for men, according to the study.

Scientists know a correlation exists between women's weight and smoking, said lead study author Suoma Saarni, a researcher with the Department of Public Health in Helsinki.

Jump to full article »

• Teenage smoking at record lows  

Where Big Tobacco once called the political shots, state programs are cutting into the cigarette companies' future customer base.

North Carolina's anti-smoking programs have cut teenage smoking to record low levels, according to a new study by researchers at UNC Chapel Hill's medical school.

The percentage of middle school students who smoke dropped from 5.8 percent in 2005 to 4.5 percent in 2007; the share of high school students who smoke fell from 20.3 percent to 19 percent, according to what's billed as the first comprehensive independent evaluation of the state Health and Wellness Trust Fund's anti-smoking efforts.

Smoking among kids in ninth through 12th grades has declined nationally from a peak of 36.4 percent in 1997. That drop flattened in 2003, a trend bucked by the recent declines here.

The trust fund gets a quarter of the state's payments from the 1998 national settlement . . .

Among several recommendations, they said the state needed to do more to reach young adults who aren't in college. The trust fund plans to do more about adult smoking, with test programs set to launch in January that will target smoking among two groups that are particularly vulnerable: pregnant women and people with mental illness.

For now, the trust fund has three anti-smoking initiatives: a set of programs aimed mainly at teens; another set aimed at college students; and a free telephone counseling service called QuitlineNC to help those who want to quit or help someone else quit.

At Broughton High School in Raleigh, students walk across the street to a spot known as "Smokers Corner" to light up.

Jump to full article »

Editorial: Health sign for teens 

A decline in teenage smoking is a positive sign for North Carolina and the health of young people who are forgoing tobacco use now and, more than likely, will continue to do so in the future.

The gains cited recently by researchers at UNC Chapel Hill's medical school showed up among two critical age groups — middle school and high school students. . . .

The group and others like it around the state are funded through the state Health and Wellness Trust Fund, which gets payments from the 1998 national settlement with tobacco companies. The decline in teen smoking shows that the trust fund money directed toward these efforts ($17.1 million this year) is well spent, especially as it helps spread the anti-smoking message among more young people. Most tobacco users pick up the habit in their youth. A decline in teen tobacco use now should translate into a healthier population in the future — and medical savings for society as whole.

Jump to full article »

Study: Teenage smoking down in North Carolina  

Programs designed to reduce teenage smoking in North Carolina are having an effect, according to a new study by researchers at the medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reports that the study showed the percentage of middle-school students who smoke dropped from 5.8 percent in 2005 to 4.5 percent in 2007. The number of high school students who smoke fell from 20.3 percent to 19 percent.

The results come from what is being called the first comprehensive independent evaluation of the state Health and Wellness Trust Fund's anti-smoking efforts.

Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue, chairwoman of the trust fund since its creation in 2001, called the results gratifying and a "tremendous sign of progress" for an initiative that has sometimes had to buck North Carolina's pro-tobacco forces.

Jump to full article »

Perceptions of Smoking-Related Risks and Benefits as Predictors of Adolescent Smoking Initiation 

Results. Adolescents who held the lowest perceptions of long-term smoking-related risks were 3.64 times more likely to start smoking than were adolescents who held the highest perceptions of risk. Adolescents who held the lowest perceptions of short-term smoking-related risks were 2.68 times more likely to initiate smoking. Adolescents who held the highest perceptions of smoking-related benefits were 3.31 times more likely to initiate smoking.

Conclusions. Smoking initiation is directly related to smoking-related perceptions of risks and benefits. Efforts to reduce adolescent smoking should continue to communicate the health risks of smoking and counteract perceptions of benefits associated with smoking.

Jump to full article »