Cigarettes are smallish white cylinders, filled with the dried leaves of the tobacco plant. Predominantly sold in batches of 20, the boxes they come in demonstrate a wide variety of colours and designs, from the ubiquitous red chevron of Marlboro to the arched dancer holding her tambourine, featured on the classic blue design of the French brand, Gitanes. Tobacco can also be bought loose in pouches and rolled into cigarette papers to approximate the aforementioned cylindrical shape.

Cigarettes are smallish white cylinders, filled with the dried leaves of the tobacco plant. Predominantly sold in batches of 20, the boxes they come in demonstrate a wide variety of colours and designs, from the ubiquitous red chevron of Marlboro to the arched dancer holding her tambourine, featured on the classic blue design of the French brand, Gitanes. Tobacco can also be bought loose in pouches and rolled into cigarette papers to approximate the aforementioned cylindrical shape.

For some, smoking is a pleasure. For others, it’s abhorrent. Indeed, smoking cigarettes has become a contentious activity, with health issues of paramount concern. For instance, the issue of smokers passing on their toxic smoke to the non-smokers in their community is, as they say, a hot potato.

Smoking is undoubtedly bad for the health and passive smoking isn’t much good either. But on the other hand, in a world full of pollution and man-made health hazards, created by smokers and non-smokers alike, should non-smokers dictate to smokers just how to live their lives?

And what exactly is the right way to live a life, anyway?

Why Smoke?

It is difficult to know the reasons why people smoke. Non-smokers could rightly point to the deleterious physiological effects that prolonged and consistent smoking undoubtedly have and wonder…’Why?’ Why on earth would we choose to physically do harm to our own bodies? Non-smokers don’t smoke because they might not like the tobacco smell, or have tried it and just didn’t like it. But generally they won’t smoke because fundamentally, smoking cigarettes is bad for the health. Is smoking a cigarette, then, a wilful act of self-mutilation, that at best merits derision?

It is often the case that we are not responsible for the environments we inherit, both socially and emotionally. Smoking cigarettes may be just one of the many ‘imperfect’ responses humans have to living in an increasingly ‘imperfect’, difficult world.

The question ‘Why Smoke’ is not an easy one to answer, indeed, it borders on the downright philosophical. If non-smokers wonder ‘why?’ (as in ‘Why the hell would you want to smoke?’), so too smokers may wonder, ‘why not?’. Or perhaps smokers may be tempted to examine their habit objectively and then ask themselves the question, ‘Just why am I smoking?

An Act of Volition?

But the fact remains that many people do smoke. Certain groups from most cultures in most parts of the world today have found occasion to light up. As we’ve seen, there could be many possible reasons for this:

–  smoking as a kind of ‘rite of passage’ displacement for the modern-day youth;

–  smoking as part of social bonding;

–  smoking as an aid to contemplation; ceremonial and ritualised smoking;

–  smoking as a self-destructive reaction to depression or unhappiness;

–  or smoking just for personal pleasure.

Smokers may smoke because they choose to. It’s an act of volition, an expression of an individual freedom to make choices. Or is it? One could argue the opposite, that smokers smoke because they are duped in to doing so.

An iron-lunged pensioner has celebrated her 100th birthday by lighting up her 170,000th cigerette from a candle on her birthday cake. Winnie Langley started smoking only days after the First World War broke out in June 1914 when she was just seven-years-old – and has got through five a day ever since.

She has no intention of quitting, even after the nationwide ban forced tobacco-lovers outside.

Speaking at her 100th birthday party Winnie said: “I have smoked ever since infant school and I have never thought about quitting.

“There were not all the the health warnings like there are today when I started. It was the done thing.”

Winnie, from Croydon, South London, claims tobacco has never made her ill.

She has outlived a husband, Robert, and son, Donald, who died two years ago aged 72.

The former launderette worker said she started the habit in 1914 – just weeks after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28 – which sparked the First World War.

The 100-year-old, who is awaiting her telegram from the Queen today, said smoking helped calm her nerves during the two World Wars.

She said: “A lot of people smoked during the war. It helped steady the nerves.”

Despite the numerous health warnings, Mrs Langley insists she’s never suffered because of the habit as she “has never inhaled”.

December 21, 2017 – Dutch researchers have found that men who screen negative for lung cancer are a bit less likely to try to quit smoking than men whose scan is inconclusive and requires follow up.

The findings in the European Respiratory Journal add to the debate over whether patients will perceive negative results in a lung cancer screen as a license to smoke or a chance to quit.

A U.S. study out last month suggested imaging the lungs of heavy smokers with a special type of CT scanner could catch cancers early and reduce individuals’ risk of dying from the disease by 20 percent compared to ordinary X-rays. Caught early, lung cancer can be cured surgically, but it causes vague symptoms and usually is not diagnosed until it has spread. Globally, lung cancer kills 1.2 million people annually, and it will kill 157,000 people in the United States this year, according to the American Cancer Society.

Still, 300 smokers would have to be screened to save just one based on the U.S. study, and it is unclear if the scans, at about $300 each, will be cost-effective. The screens also come with a high rate of false alarms, raising questions about the risk to people who undergo unnecessary medical procedures as a result.

For the new study, Carlijn M. van der Aalst of Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, and colleagues tapped into data from an earlier trial on lung cancer screening.

PAPER: The impact of a lung cancer CT screening result on smoking abstinence, C.M. van der Aalst ([email protected]), R.J. van Klaveren, K.A.M. van den Bergh, M.C. Willemsen and H.J. de Koning, European Respiratory Journal published online before print December 9, 2017, ABSTRACT..

That trial included a third test outcome, “indeterminate,” in addition to negative and positive for patients with small lumps in their lung that might be scars or tumors. Patients with such inconclusive results were referred to another CT scan a few months later.

At a two-year follow-up, the Dutch researchers found men who had tested inconclusive tried to quit more often than the group with negative results, with 1.9 attempts versus 1.5. Nine percent of men in the negative-results group reported prolonged abstinence, compared to 12 percent among men with inconclusive results. The difference was not statistically reliable, though, and might have been due to chance.

However, the researchers found some hints that the more inconclusive test results a man had gotten, the more likely he was to be smoke-free. Prolonged abstinence climbed from 11 percent of men after one indeterminate test, to 16 percent after two or more inconclusive results. The researchers said this increase might reflect a teachable moment to encourage smokers to quit.

“More research is needed to investigate the opportunities of lung cancer screening in current as well as former smokers to promote health risk-reducing behavior change and to prevent relapses and to investigate what the most cost-effective approach is in this screening population,” they write.

The tax on cigarettes will nearly quadruple, and the tax on cigars, pipe tobacco and snuff will a little more than double. Palace not keen on higher taxes on cigarettes – Spain has raised its cigarette tax, cut wind power subsidies and brought. said after the weekly cabinet meeting on Friday that the increased tobacco tax would raise an extra 780m a year assuming constant consumption.

A separate government. Cigarette tax supporters saw the passage as the end of a more than 10-year journey to raise the levy on cigarettes. The tax is expected to raise 125 million in new revenue, which is supposed to be dedicated to health care for the poor in South Carolina.. Kansas City Star Spain raises tax on cigarettes Financial Times Spain has raised its cigarette tax, cut wind power subsidies and brought forward pension reform in the latest measures to reduce the budget deficit and convince financial. Book Bytes – 12: It’s Income Tax Time for Americans: And Time. Tobacco world news: Spain plans tobacco tax hike to cut deficit-source Wall Street Greek: Greek Public Sector Corruption and Tax Evasion Lowering income taxes while raising pollution taxes reaps. Lowering Income Taxes While Raising Pollution Taxes Reaps. Snus News Other Tobacco Products: South Carolina.
Spain plans tobacco tax hike to cut deficit-source. Spain’s government is planning to raise tobacco taxes, a government source said on Friday, as it fights to cut its high budget deficit and calm investor concerns that it could need a. If you’re looking for a true stinker of a campaign slogan, you couldn’t do much better than “Vote for me, I’ll raise your taxes. to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, could be a winner both for public health and for cash-strapped states at least if all the tax burden fell on cigarette sales..

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Spain raises tax on cigarettes – Financial Times House votes to raise tax on cigarettes 1 per pack This not only justifies raising taxes on cigarettes, which claim 4.9 million lives per year worldwide more than all other air pollutants combined, but it also provides guidelines for how much to raise them. In 2002, 21 U.S. states raised cigarette taxes.. Spain raises tax on cigarettes Financial Times Business. Despite the Irish bailout, European debt markets continued to sell off hard in the other PIIGS countries Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Benchmark 10-year borrowing costs jumped 144 basis points to 5.42 percent in Spain,. The chairmen of President Obama’s debt-reduction commission have been unable to win support from any of the panel’s elected officials for their proposed spending cuts and tax increases, underscoring the reluctance of both parties to risk short-term. Cigarette sales in the European Union fell 5.5 percent in the first nine months of 2017, mainly due to declines in Greece, Poland and Spain, Philip Morris International said. The company blamed tax rises, some imposed as part of austerity measures. Economic crisis feeds Portuguese “saudade” -. for levels below 2000 EUR, frozen the retirement age for men and women were equalized and brought on average from 61 to 65 the value added tax VAT was increased taxes were raised on alcohol, cigarettes and fuel.. Weekdly Money Market Review: Market focus shifts to debt woes in Europe – Peninsula Wealth and Health From a 1 Cigarette Tax TIME Healthland Updates with details on tax increase in ninth paragraph, airports in 10th. Dec. 3 Bloomberg — Spains Cabinet raised tax on tobacco. The Cabinet passed an increase in the tax, which will raise 780 million euros 1 billion, and pledged to send a.

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