Progress in reducing tobacco use is a key indicator for measuring countries’ efforts to implement the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control – target 3.a under the Sustainable Development Goals agenda. Countries have adopted this indicator to report progress also towards the tobacco reduction target under the Global Action Plan …
Babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy have the same nicotine levels as adult smokers and almost certainly spend their first days of life going through withdrawal symptoms. This study done at the Mont-Godinne University Hospital, Namur, Belgium by Laurence M Galanti and his team reports that the child …
It is very well known that alcohol and cigarettes are ancient companions, but the reason for the link is not well understood. Scientists recently discovered that both these chemicals affect the same protein in the brain, explaining why alcoholics are seven times as likely to also be heavy smokers when …
In a desperate bid to stop mushrooming legal claims against the industry, the British tobacco firm, BAT Industries PLC, is considering settling compensation claims brought by Americans who are suffering from smoking-related illnesses. The company's shares fell sharply after a jury in Florida ordered its US tobacco unit to pay …
sekap, the Greek cooperative cigarette manufacturing company, has developed a cigarette filter which it claims will drastically reduce adverse effects of smoking. George Delikonstantinos, one of the three researchers who invented the benign filter, said, "Smokers who use normal filters retain 1.75 ml of tar in their lungs. The bio-filter …
One of the biggest tobacco lawsuits was set in motion in the US recently with lawyers sending notices to potential claimants. These include former and current flight attendants on US airlines consistently exposed to second-hand smoke. A mass mailing exercise has begun to identify non-smokers among 120,000 flight attendants who …
Two independent Boston-based research teams have linked cigarette smoking to age related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness among older people. People who smoked 25 cigarettes a day suffered from AMD two and a half times more the rate as non-smokers. Even those who quit smoking developed the …
after the Americans, the French have followed suit. Recently, families of two lung cancer victims filed separate lawsuits against seita, the company that makes France's most famous brands of cigarettes. They have charged the company with inadequately warning consumers about the relation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. It is …
after three decades of painstaking research, a team of American researchers has at last been able to establish a direct link between smoking and lung cancer. Mikhail F Denissenko, Annie Pao, Moon-shong Tang and Gerd P Pfeifer have reported in Science (Vol 274, No 5286) the first direct evidence showing …
Alcoholics are often heavy smokers too. The link has its roots in the brain, say researchers. Neuroscientists at the Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, US, have found that alcohol and nicotine, the chemical in tobacco, affect the same protein, the acetylcholine receptor molecule, on a brain cell. Experiments conducted …
new forays into the much-heard-of link between smoking and cancer has established beyond doubt that there is a definite and clear relationship between the two. Researchers from the University of Texas and Beckman Research Institute, California, working on the p53 gene, which is known to prevent proliferation of cells leading …
it is a known fact that smoking is injurious to health, but it is only recently that nicotine, the neuroactive compound in tobacco, has been proved to be addictive. Nicotine was often thought of as a weak reinforcer when compared to other drugs like cocaine and heroin and was therefore …
US tobacco companies are gearing up to fight a ruling which awarded US $750,000 in damages to a lung cancer patient Grady Carter who smoked for more than 40 years. A six-member jury in Jacksonville, Florida recently passed the verdict against American Tobacco whose cigarettes were smoked by Carter. Until …
What if the nurturer herself turns into a polluter? Smoking and / or drinking mothers poison the foetus. Alcohol consumers expose the foetus to alcohol syndrome, which engenders congenital malformations and low birth weight in newborns. Smoking during pregnancy passes cancer-causing chemicals to their foetus' blood where these linger for …
Tobacco companies in the UK got a temporary reprieve when the Legal Aid Board, which grants public funds to needy litigants, refused to fund a case filed by smokers seeking billions of dollars in damages. Unless private money can be found to fund the case, 300 people suffering from lung …
if you smoke and are on the younger side of life, take another look at the mirror on the wall. You might just be sporting a wrinkled face with gaunt looking features. A grim face with prominent underlying bones and a shriveled skin that is grey with purplish blotches, could …
Smokers will find it all the more difficult to take a puff as a recently enforced law prohibits smoking in enclosed places. But the law does not carry any punitive measures in case it is broken. The Congress passed a law last month, sanctioned by President Cardoso, which bans smoking …
McNeil Consumer Products of Fort Washington, US, has come out with Nictrol NS, aDasal spray containing 100 mg of pure nicotine to 'wean off people &om; smoking. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the product on the condition that it will be sold by prescription to adults who want …
NICOTINE is often cursed as the most addictive drug. Recent discovery of an important bio-chemical difference in the brain tissues of smokers suggests another factor - independent of nicotine - by which smoking can become addictive. Researchers in the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, Louisiana, us, discovered an enzyme, monoamine oxidase …
Bungling up of data on secondhand smoke has landed a us company, Healthy Buildings International, in the dock. A federal grand jury is investigating whether the company, which monitors air quality for federal and private buildings, made false statements to the federal government regarding the risks of secondhand smoke and …
