Tobacco reviews and buying cheap cigarettes
Monday, October 31st, 2018
When is it not OK to smoke a tobacco cigarette in Sebastopol, but OK to smoke a marijuana joint? The City Council will take up the issue Tuesday.
The council adopted new smoking regulations in August 2017. The city attorney is now recommending amending the ordinance to more clearly indicate that the legal use of medicinal cannabis is exempted.
The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St.
Monday, October 31st, 2018
In an effort to get more people to quit smoking the National Health Institute is tested cigarettes with varying levels of nicotine. A Massachusetts company has created the Spectrum brand test cigarettes with eight different levels of nicotine for research, from a nicotine content of 3 percent to 100.
The idea is to recruit smokers to use these cigarettes and see if these cigarettes encourage people to quit, or at the very least offer less inhalation of nicotine. One study of the test cigarettes will follow about 500 smokers over six months to see how it works.
Tobacco companies have concerns
Under a 2009 law the FDA could regulate tobacco levels in cigarettes.
“We really need to have good science to determine whether this might be a product standard, and to have good science, we need reduced-nicotine cigarettes,” said Dr. Hatsukami, who is also a member of the F.D.A. Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee.
A new kind of cigarette
The Massachusetts company is now seeking approval from the FDA to use their low nicotine cigarettes as a stop smoking aid. It’s the first time cigarettes are being considered as a healthy alternative.
Of course the “quit smoking” market is a big one. With nicotine gum, patches, electronic cigarettes, and medications like Zyban flooding the shelves, people have many choices to help them quit.
The future
“After 50 years of knowing cigarettes cause cancer, it’s nice to know we have a supply we can investigate,” Dr. Connolly said. “But the real issue is the F.D.A. should have begun a process two years ago to see if we can eliminate nicotine in cigarettes, at least for children. If we can put a man on the moon, we can get rid of nicotine.”
Monday, October 31st, 2018
The prevalence of tobacco use among school students in Dubai is 14.6 per cent, while the passive victims of smoking cheap Winston cigarettes among the school children are at 29.1 per cent, disclose latest statistics.
These are children under 20 years of age using tobacco regularly, as discovered by Dubai Health Authority (DHA) when it screened about 2,457 students from both government and private sector schools across the Emirate.
According to the survey, in terms of the type of tobacco used by the students, it’s estimated that about 11.2 per cent smoke cigarettes and another 2.2 per cent smoke shisha, while 1.9 per cent use the pipe, 0.8 per cent smoke cigars and 0.8 per cent use chewing tobacco.
The health authority is planning to reach out to 80,000 students across schools in Dubai over a period of six months through a massive anti-smoking initiative in 2019, announced a senior DHA official.
This is based on the findings in the wake of anti-smoking campaigns being conducted by the DHA since the beginning of 2017.
The DHA’s primary healthcare section conducted 98 anti-smoking campaigns in 2017, targeting 6,221 people across various schools, colleges, malls, government institutions as well as sports clubs.
Dr Hanan Obaid, head of Community Health Services Programmes Section at the DHA, cautioned that there was an urgent need to create regular community awareness activities with regard to tobacco use because of the significant number of youngsters using tobacco.
“The population’s future promise is at a high risk of developing several diseases caused by long-term use of tobacco products. There is a need to regularly reach out to the school students and adolescents. We plan to implement this policy in 2019,” she added.
“From the data collected and analysed, the DHA plans to intensify campaigns to curb the smoking habit by aggressively reaching out to the schools in Dubai. The anti-tobacco campaigns are being conducted regularly through DHA’s cessation clinics as adolescents are a high risk group,” Dr Hanan elaborated.
She explained that the target of the campaign will be children and adolescents from the age group of 12 to 21. This age group is more prone to using tobacco as a method of relieving stress.
“More schools and other educational institutions will be visited with the campaign, and follow-up sessions will be conducted to the earlier campaigns. Currently, the logistics of the project are being planned and will be implemented shortly.”
Dr Hanan revealed that the DHA had plans to open another smoking cessation clinic before the end of this year, in addition to the existing two cessation clinics, one of which is located at Rashid Hospital and the other at the Al Twar Health Centre.
For UAE nationals it is free of cost and for non-nationals the fee is nominal. The Smoking Cessation Clinic at Al Twar provides cessation programmes and counselling every Thursday while the clinic at Rashid Hospital provides counselling for patients once they book an appointment.
Smokers who would like to quit the dangerous habit are urged to contact the Al Twar Smoking Cessation Clinic.
Monday, October 31st, 2018
The Maricopa Community Colleges will ban all tobacco products next year to help boost the health of students and staff and to keep campuses cleaner.
Smoking is prohibited in all buildings, but there are designated smoking areas at the colleges. As of July 1, no tobacco products will be allowed on any of the system’s 10 campuses, which include satellite sites around the Valley, as well as the district’s two skills centers and its office in Tempe.
“This is a bold move, but it’s the right move for us,” said district spokesman Tom Gariepy. Over the next several months, he said, the colleges will provide help for students, staff and faculty who want to quit smoking, including cessation classes.
Bob England, director of the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, spoke in favor of the initiative at the district’s governing-board meeting last week. About one in four Arizonans ages 18 to 24 are smokers, a bit higher than the national average for that age group, he said.
The initiative, announced by Chancellor Rufus Glasper this month, was years in the making.
Michele Hamm, an exercise-science faculty member at Mesa Community College and a member of the Wellness Maricopa group that worked on the initiative, said the issue was first raised when voters passed a statewide smoking ban in 2006.
Much discussion and research followed, and the group gathered data from other colleges, including the Ozarks Technical Community College system in Missouri, one of the first in the nation to ban tobacco products, in 2003.
“One concern was whether the ban would cause an enrollment drop,” Hamm said. “But there was no significant impact on enrollment.”
Campus cleanliness was a big part of the push, she said.
“The facilities directors emphasized how much time their staffs spend cleaning up after tobacco users – cigarette butts that miss the ashtrays or are put out on the walls. They have to sandblast to get the ash off,” she said.
Hamm said a committee will look at how other colleges handle enforcement. There are about 142,000 students and about 8,800 full- and part-time faculty and staff members districtwide.
“Some (colleges) have fines, and others have put it into the student code of conduct, where (violators) would meet with the dean,” Hamm said. “Another option is to have them complete a cessation class to waive the fine.
“We’re looking at some creative ways to not just say, ‘You’re bad, give us your money.’ ”
Diana Martinez is a program specialist in the Student Life and Leadership Office at Phoenix College, as well as that campus representative for IGNITE, a partnership with Tobacco Free Arizona that educates college students.
“We’re very diverse in our community here, and we have a lot of international students, and smoking is part of their culture,” Martinez said. “So it’s great to provide them the information here.”
Policy changes such as the tobacco ban are key to improving health, England said.
“Everyone knows that tobacco is a health risk. No one is unaware of that,” he said. “Education can only do so much, and, frankly, we’ve pretty much exhausted what you can do with individual education.
“But tobacco-related policies can have an enormous impact.”
England said the Smoke Free Arizona Act, which went into effect in 2007, proves that.
“The rationale for that was to protect workers from secondhand smoke, but it also demonstrated something else. The year it was implemented, the adult smoking rate in Arizona went down by 20 percent. One in five smokers quit.
“That shows that when you have policies that make smoking less convenient, that provides the incentives that many smokers need to finally kick the habit,” England said.
Friday, October 28th, 2018
Senior Elizabeth Nethaway works at the Prince Hookah Lounge and has observed the habits of smokers. The Alliance, Neb., native said smokers wait to light up until they are next to someone who is also smoking discount Viceroy cigarettes.
“It’s something you got in common,” Nethaway said.
“‘Hey, can I bum a lighter? Sure, let’s talk about something.’ It’s a real good way to strike up a conversation and make new friends.”
She added that she smokes the most when she is at work.
Nethaway said that her parents smoke and she always felt comfortable around smokers. She started smoking last November because the people she was around were smoking.
“I tried one and liked it,” she said.
The same social aspect of smoking can make it harder for a smoker trying to quit.
“If you are around a bunch of smokers and trying to quit, it is harder,” Nethaway said. “If one person lights up a cigarette, everyone lights up.”
Nethaway also said that she smokes more when she is around other people.
“I don’t smoke much by myself,” she said.
Nethaway, who is now trying to quit, said that she doesn’t smoke around her boyfriend at all because he isn’t a smoker.
Louisville junior Jasmine Taylor started smoking when she was a senior in high school.
“My friends smoked and that’s when we all started drinking and those go hand in hand,” Taylor said.
Taylor said that she isn’t a heavy smoker, going through a pack in two weeks.
“There is definitely a social aspect, when there is nothing to do, people are like, ‘Oh you want to smoke a cigarette?’” Taylor said.
Taylor said that she smokes more in a group and rarely by herself. Matt Whitman, a senior from Austin, Texas, said that he started smoking his freshman year of college.
“Sure, I smoke more frequently when I’m around people,” he said. “I would say that if you talk to other people, I’d be willing to place money they say that they smoke more when other people are smoking.”
Friday, October 28th, 2018
Children exposed to passive smoking are at risk of developing hearing deficiencies during their adolescence. Hearing deficiencies among adolescents occur mostly in the low frequencies.
The reason for this surprising discovery lies in the repeated ear infections caused by tobacco smoke during the early years of life.
Researchers in New York monitored adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19, all of whom answered a series of questions relating to their state of health and family history.
They also underwent hearing tests and a number of blood tests to determine their level of cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine.
The purpose of these blood tests was to determine their degree of exposure to tobacco. The results, which seem unambiguous, reveal that the higher their cotinine level, the greater the level of hearing loss.
Passive smoking increases the risk of repeated ear infections during early childhood, ear infections can cause damage to the ear drum and thus lead to hearing deficiency.
Passive smoking can also affect hearing development in the very young.
Friday, October 28th, 2018
Smoking will no longer be allowed in outdoor deck and patio areas at bars and restaurants where food and drink is served by wait staff. The board of health enacted the more stringent tobacco control regulation at a sparsely attended public hearing Oct. 13. The board had already held one public hearing in June and three workshops at regular meetings to iron out the details.
“My sense is that each member has given this a thorough review,” said board member John Livingstone. “I’m happy we’ve reached a consensus about what this regulation needs to be.”
Astrid Berg, owner of Pepe’s Wharf Restaurant, was the only one of the three people present at the hearing to speak. Opposed to the smoking ban on outdoor areas, Berg said that she has two decks but chooses to allow smoking discount Camel cigarettes on one. Only 10 percent of her 214 seats are in a smoking area. “I give my customers choices,” she said, adding that she has never had a complaint.
Board member Joseph DeMartino said that, though few showed up at the hearing, he has had discussions with members of the public who have come up to him on the street. “In private they have been unanimously in favor [of the change],” he said of the feedback he’s received. Member Ken Janson agreed.
“I’ve been very torn about this,” said board member Elizabeth Williams, adding that a lot of the people who have come up to her also were in agreement with the ban. “I’m disappointed not one member of the public came here to say thank you. I think it’s a very tough situation and my heart is with the business owners.”
The regulation goes into effect immediately, but the board will not enforce the provision until Jan. 1, to allow for a smooth transition.