Thanks to the BBC, we learn of one of the greatest breakthroughs since lunchtime, if you’ll pardon the cliché, in smoking research. The headline is: ‘Sons worst affected by smoking in pregnancy.’ So there. If you’re going to smoke in pregnancy, better make sure you’re going to have a girl. Incidentally, I do wish dear old Auntie [...]
What is the best way to quit smoking?This very question highlights a regrettable lack of understanding in official circles about why smokers smoke in the first place, and how they can quit this abnormal behaviour.It needs to understood that you don’t need a way, method, or technique to quit smoking. You just need to quit smoking. (The word ‘method’ in [...]
Part 1. How to fail to quit smoking Quitting smoking is very hard. In fact, many former smokers say it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever done. However, if you follow the steps described below in the NHS Stopvember yearly anti-smoking campaign and refrain from smoking for 28 days, you’ll be five times more likely not to fail in [...]
The problem of denormalising smoking, as I discussed earlier, can be summed up like this: will people stop buying cigarettes because they’re no longer available, or will cigarettes no longer be on sale because no one wants to buy them? The picture shows a street sign near where I live in Tokyo outside a convenience store, announcing that [...]
Thanks to that fount of medical wisdom, The British Medical Journal (BMJ), we learn from the 23 November 2024 edition that ‘a new treatment option is proposed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to help people stop smoking.’ (At least they don’t say they’re going to roll out the new treatment.) This refers to cytisine, [...]
The UK Government wants to enact legislation to ban the sale of single-use vapes from 1 June 2025, for the two good reasons stated on the gov.uk website: Making the sale of single-use vapes illegal, delivers on the Government’s commitment to act on this important issue, and kick-starts the push towards a circular economy and helps to curb [...]
The way to solve the smoking problem is obvious I have asked this question before, but no one seems prepared to answer it: If tobacco is merely to be controlled rather than abolished, this implies there are some circumstances where tobacco use is legitimate or acceptable. And what, pray, are these? Furthermore, to talk of tobacco harm reduction [...]
The 2024 WHO Clinical Treatment Guideline for Tobacco Cessation in Adults has just been published. This scholarly endeavour starts with the usual mantra: ‘Tobacco kills more than 8 million people per year.’ The problem, then, is what should be done about this dreadful situation? It’s put in a nutshell by WHO: Although globally there are still 1.25 billion [...]
Do you know why vaping is such a big problem with school children? Because they're buying vapes, especially the brightly coloured disposable kind with child-friendly names and flavours, and getting hooked on them. And why are they engaging in this idiotic behaviour? Because vapes are easily available for purchase, online and at vape shops, and any enterprising youngster [...]
When I first glanced at an editorial headline in the venerable The British Medical Journal (BMJ) of 4 May 2024, I thought common sense was at last beginning to appear in dealing with the smoking problem. It said, ‘Stop tobacco…’ Perhaps they were following in the footsteps of those environmental campaigners who make such a nuisance of [...]