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Blacktown Smoke-Free Ordinance

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

cheapest chesterfield cigarettesLike many people, Alexander Larrarte started smoking cheapest Chesterfield cigarettes towards the end of high school and, also like many others, now that he is hooked he wants to give the deadly habit away. “I’m trying to cut back,” the 21-year-old from Mount Druitt said. “Now I smoke probably a pack a week, down from a pack a day.”

But Mr Larrarte isn’t turned off smoking by the fact it is the single largest contributor to premature deaths in Australia.

Nor is he worried by Health Department figures that show more residents from the Blacktown area are hospitalised by smoking-related illnesses than people anywhere else in NSW.

The smoker of four years wants to quit primarily to save money and said he could still quit before the symptoms affected him.

“I want to quit now so I don’t have to worry about it later on,” he said.

But it was the quitting that he was finding difficult, “especially since I hang out with a lot of people who smoke”.

Western Sydney director of population health Stephen Corbett told the Sun that the large number of smokers in Blacktown was one of the biggest factors contributing to poor health in the area.

Blacktown GP Yang Wang agreed with the diagnosis. Dr Wang pointed to health department figures that showed smoking was most common among the most disadvantaged people in society.

“Smoking is particularly bad in western Sydney due to socioeconomic stress,” he said. “And also, it’s a cultural thing that people pick up from friends.”

Smoking contributed to most of the diseases that kill a disproportinate amount of Blacktown residents, he said, including heart disease, lung cancer and emphysema.

The high numbers of women in Blacktown who smoked while pregnant also caused high levels of asthma in children, Dr Wang said. “A lot of people try to give it up but only about 20 per cent succeed,” he said.

“Nicotine is actually one of the most addictive substances, twice as addictive as heroin or marijuana.”

Smokers who wanted to quit should talk to their doctor about the many different treatments and support options available, Dr Wang said.

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Smoking Cessation Programs Encourage Parents to Quit

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

best quality virginia cigarettesResearchers say the results should encourage pediatricians to take advantage of their frequent encounters with parents, and try to get them to start a smoking cessation program.

“Because (pediatricians) can make use of the teachable moment of a child’s vulnerability to tobacco smoke, they may provide added benefit to helping this group of smokers quit,” said lead author Dr. Jonathan Winickoff, a professor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Winickoff and his colleagues combined the results of 18 different studies of smoking cessation programs aimed at more than 7,000 parents.

The studies included either medications, counseling or self-help materials, or some combination of the different approaches to quitting.

Most of the studies included an intervention in the hospital, a well-baby clinic or a pediatrician’s office.

The 18 studies followed parents for anywhere between several months and more than a year, and measured whether those who received the smoking interventions were more likely to quit than parents who didn’t get any additional help.

Only four of the studies found that the interventions improved the parents’ quit rates.

When the findings from all the studies were combined, 23.1 percent of the parents who received the anti-smoking aids successfully quit, while 18.4 percent in the other group gave up smoking.

In studies that included medications, parents were three times as likely to quit as parents who didn’t take the drugs.

The authors write in their report that the gains from the smoking cessation programs were “modest,” but Winickoff said they are worth pursuing.

“These are short-term studies,” Winickoff told Reuters Health. “There are stages of change and (parents’) readiness to quit. Over time we will enable almost every parent to quit smoking.”

“We know it takes multiple attempts over time,” said Sue Curry, dean of the University of Iowa College of Public Health, who was not involved in this study.

“To me (the study) says that we need to have realistic expectations, and we need to make sure we celebrate the successes of smokers that go through the process,” Curry told Reuters Health.

One of Curry’s studies was included in the current analysis, which is published in the journal Pediatrics.

Her research found that mothers who were given a quitting guide along with in-person advice and phone counseling from nurses were twice as likely to quit as mothers who didn’t receive this intervention.

Her study originated in a pediatric clinic, which Winickoff said is a good place to intervene with parents’ smoking habits.

Given that parents of young children frequent the pediatrician’s office for routine check-ups and vaccinations, kids’ doctors should screen parents for smoking and help them find resources to stop.

Winickoff added that helping parents to quit smoking could have an enormous impact not only on their own health, but on the health of their children.

Another paper in the same issue of Pediatrics, for instance, found that children whose parents smoked during the pregnancy have thicker arterial walls, which is linked with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Smoking is “associated with pneumonia, asthma, developmental delay, school absenteeism, dental decay, sudden infant death, hearing loss and a range of other illnesses that are too numerous to list,” he said.

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High Price of Cigarettes Urges Smokers to Quit

Monday, January 16th, 2012

tax free wind cigarettesThe reasons people give are family and health but what has driven them to quit now has been the cost. Sarah Woods, QuitlineOther health reasons, but hit to wallet proves most effective. As tax free Wind cigarette prices skyrocket, Rotorua smokers are giving up the habit to cut costs and start the year smokefree.

National stop-smoking support service Quitline said 159 people from the Bay of Plenty and Lakes District Health Board regions registered to quit in the first week of 2012.

Nationwide 2422 people contacted the service in the same period, with registrations running 5 per cent higher than the same time last year. Of those who contacted Quitline, 509 were Maori and 133 Pacific Islanders – two groups with a high number of smokers.

The high cost of cigarettes is believed to be one of the main reasons people are giving up.

The latest price rise saw tobacco go up $2 on average for a 20 pack of cigarettes. Ms Woods said packs of 20 Holiday-brand cigarettes had gone from $12.60 to $14.40 while a 30g pack of Horizon loose tobacco jumped from $27 to $31.50. At a pack a day, smoking could now cost more than $5000 a year.

January is always a busy time for Quitline as people resolve to start a new year healthy and smokefree. The last of three tobacco tax rises, that came into effect on New Year’s Day, has given many an added motivation to kick the habit for good.

Quitline’s Sarah Woods said the cost of cigarettes have encouraged people to give up smoking. “The cost increase is a big factor, it’s the tipping point. The reasons people give are family and health but what has driven them to quit now has been the cost,” Ms Woods said.

Rotorua woman Jenni McGowan, 36, knows first hand the benefits – financial and healthwise – of giving up. After 20 years of smoking she successfully quit on her first attempt last June, with the help of Quitline.

She said her decision to quit was not down to increasing prices, even though her 25-30 cigarette a day habit was getting more and more expensive.

“I just gave up other stuff when prices went up. I went without so I could smoke,” she said.

“The more prices would go up I would just buy a cheaper brand.”

However, she soon found she was saving at least $50 a week.

Ms McGowan said she had heard of more people deciding to quit after this month’s price hike, including her cousin who was also registered with Quitline.

Despite this she doesn’t necessarily thing tax hikes are a good idea.

“They will lead to far too much poverty. People are going to buy them anyway, they are addicted,” she said.

The single mother quit for the sake of her 12-year-old son, Josh, after she was rushed to hospital with severe asthma last winter.

“I saw his heart break when he left me in hospital that night. The next day when I got home Josh said ‘Mum, I prayed for you last night’. I bawled and promised him that by the time he turned 13 I would give up,” she said.

She smoked her final cigarette days later, and when Josh turns 13 next week his mum will have been smokefree, and asthma-free, for more than six months.

Ms McGowan said she could not have done it without the help from Quitline. She used the subsidised nicotine patches, lozenges and gum and found their regular text messages particularly helpful.

“They are always there if you need them and are very supportive.”

According to Quitline, 21 per cent of people they helped were still smokefree after six months, up to five times higher than the success rate for those who tried to give up without professional support.

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Tobacco Cessation Benefits in Medicaid Money

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

winston cigarettes onlineIncluding comprehensive tobacco cessation benefits in U.S. Medicaid insurance coverage can result in substantial savings for Medicaid programs, researchers say.

Study leader Leighton Ku of the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services said the research shows investing in smoking cessation programs can result in lower levels of smoking cheap Winston cigarettes, which in turn lead to reductions in hospital admissions for heart related problems and significant savings for Medicaid.

The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, found every dollar spent in program costs resulted in an average program savings of $3.12, which represents a $2.12 return on investment.

“Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States,” Ku said in a statement. “Millions of low-income smokers in the United States are insured by Medicaid. In 2004, smoking-related Medicaid expenditures for all states combined was $22 billion, which represented 11 percent of all Medicaid spending.”

The researchers came up with their estimates using data from the 2002 to 2008 Medical Expenditure Survey and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Surveys.

A smoking cessation program in Massachusetts, which offered a wide range of smoking cessation medications, as well as individual and group counseling for Medicaid recipients, was estimated to have saved an average of $388 per user per year, Ku added.

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Nicotine Patch Can Improve Memory in Older Adults

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

nicotine patches onlineThe nicotine patch designed to help people quit smoking can also improve memory in older adults with mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, a small clinical trial found.

The trial involved 67 non-smokers with MCI, which is considered an intermediate between normal aging and dementia. People with MCI are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Half of the patients wore a skin patch that delivered 15 milligrams of nicotine per day; the other half wore a placebo patch. The study was double-blinded, meaning both the patients and the researchers were unaware who was getting the drug.

After six months, patients who wore the nicotine patch regained 46 percent of their age-adjusted “normal performance” on long-term memory tests, whereas patients in the placebo group worsened by 26 percent.

“We’re pretty excited that we got a strong sign of improvement, and we think it has great implications going forward,” said Dr. Paul Newhouse, director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Cognitive Medicine and lead author of the study published today in the journal Neurology.

Nicotine stimulates receptors on neurons involved in learning and memory, called cholinergic neurons. In Alzheimer’s disease, those neurons die off. In an earlier study, Newhouse showed intravenous nicotine could improve memory in Alzheimer’s patients.

“We reasoned that if it helps in early Alzheimer’s, we might be able to move back even further into patients with mild memory loss,” he said.

Drugs approved to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, such as Aricept, act by inhibiting the breakdown of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that stimulates nicotine receptors as well as other kinds of receptors.

“Theoretically, the nicotine receptors are more closely related to the changes that occur in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Peter Whitehouse, a neurologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland and one of the first to investigate the role of nicotine receptors in Alzheimer’s. “Basically, it’s more focused, more specific.”

By specifically activating those remaining receptors, nicotine can boost the function of surviving neurons. And research done in cells suggests it might even protect neurons from Alzheimer’s disease.

“The jury’s still out on whether nicotine is disease-modifying,” said Newhouse, describing the ability of a drug to actually slow the progression of a disease rather than merely treat symptoms. “But there’s never going to be one single silver bullet. We’re going to have to treat patients with a complex brain disease with multiple approaches.”

The six-month trial suggested the nicotine was safe. But Newhouse cautioned that smoking or unsupervised use of the patch is not.

“People with mild memory loss should not start smoking or using nicotine patches by themselves, because there are harmful effects of smoking and a medication such as nicotine should only be used with a doctor’s supervision,” he said. “But this study provides strong justification for further research into the use of nicotine for people with early signs of memory loss.”

Newhouse is conducting a one-year follow-up study of the same MCI patients. He hopes to publish the results later this year.

In the next two years, other researchers will reveal the results of two clinical trials of disease-modifying drugs targeting beta-amyloid, a protein that builds up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

“Those are very important studies,” said Dr. William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association. “We’ve known for a long time that the cholinergic drug system is important in Alzheimer’s. But eventually, the impact of these drugs is overwhelmed by disease. They don’t change the outcome.”

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Cigarettes Price Hike, Tobacco Smokers Shocked

Monday, January 9th, 2012

discount prima lux cigarettesA record number of people have quit smoking discount Prima Lux cigarettes in the first week of the New Year, according to Quitline. The national stop-smoking support service said more than 2400 people have given up the habit using its services at the start of 2012 – a 5% rise on last year.

Of the 2422 people who contacted Quitline, 509 said they were Maori and 133 said they were people of Pacific Island origin.

“This is particularly pleasing given the high number of smokers among these populations,” said Quitline marketing manager Bruce Bassett.

Quitline research found that most people decided to give up smoking for family or health reasons, however the recent tobacco price hike has also provided another reason to quit.

“Tobacco products have risen by more than the 10% tax increase, and this has been a shock to a lot of people,” said Bassett.

The cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes has increased by about $2 (from $12.60 to $14.40 or from $14.40 to $16.50) and 30g of loose tobacco by around $4.50 (from $26.50 to $31 or from $27 to $31.50), said Bassett.

In January 2011, when the second of the three tiered increases on tobacco tax came into effect, 9383 people quit smoking with the help of Quitline – almost double the number who used the service in January 2010.

Quitline said that those that use its support services are five times more likely to succeed in quitting smoking than those going it alone. It also found that 80% of smokers wished they had never started smoking.

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Tobacco High Tax and Smokers Habit

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

cigarettesSmokers hit by hefty price rises are flooding Quitline with calls for help. Twenty South Canterbury smokers contacted the quit group over the first three days of the year. Staff expect that figure to reach 200 by the end of this month, compared with 140 for the same period in 2011 and 62 in January 2010.

Nationally, 1200 people have signed up to quit in the first three days of January.

The last of the three tiered increases in the tobacco tax came into effect on January 1, pushing the price of a pack of 20s to $14.

Tobacco firms wore some of last year’s 10 per cent rise but not this year, with the average increase about 15 per cent. The average cost of cigarettes is now $13.80 for a pack of 20 and $31 for a 30-gram pack of loose tobacco.

Smokers puffing through nearly a pack a day could save about $4500 a year if they quit.

Quitline chief executive Paula Snowden said that amount equated to a tank of petrol a week. Over a month it averaged a week’s rent or a car payment – “serious money out of the family budget”.

“Those who use Quitline support are up to five times more likely to succeed than going it alone. Eighty per cent of smokers wished they had never started smoking and we expect the January tax jump will be a trigger for many to quit,” she said.

“January is always our busiest time and, with the cost of tobacco rising again, we are expecting the whole month to be extremely busy. In January 2011, 9383 people quit smoking with the help of our phone and online-based service.

“This is almost double the number of people we helped in January 2010.”

Price rises are a key factor in the increasing numbers of those choosing to quit, she said. “Price is the tipping point. It’s certainly got people to get in touch with us.”

Timaru tobacconist Murray Gibson started work in 1963, when 50 grams of tobacco cost the equivalent of 45 cents. It now cost closer to $50.

Price increases would not hit his customers until next Monday as his store was still selling last year’s stock.

He said the continuous rises were unfair on low-income households. “I think they’re going without other things; they’re also rolling smaller cigarettes.”

At Moyle’s Pharmacy on Dee St, owner Ross Carrick said prescription numbers were increasing for more modern methods of helping smokers quit.

Those methods included Champix and Zyban tablets, which were designed to reduce cravings.

“We can sell gum, patches and electronic cigarettes. It still boils down to a bit of willpower. If you haven’t got the desire to quit then it’s not for you.”

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Mr Carrick said he understood going cold turkey was the most common method.

An Australian report released this week backed his comments. Public health researchers at Sydney University found more than two-thirds of smokers gave up permanently using the method.

Officially labelled “unassisted cessation”, the cold-turkey method was shown to be the most successful way to quit, Dr Sally Dunlop said.

A two-year study has been launched by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council into how and why smokers chose different methods for giving up. “We believe it is time to pay much closer attention to the potential role of the cold-turkey method,” Dr Dunlop said.

The study will concentrate on data from interviews with former smokers who have quit for a minimum of 12 months and a maximum of five years, with a focus on those with nearer to five years continuous abstinence.

“We also intend to study a smaller group who are attempting to quit unassisted during the study period.”

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