Smoking

Everybody knows smoking is bad. Not just for the smoker him- or herself, but also for the people around him or her. This has prompted governments in recent years to consider and implement several measures against smoking.

Recently, the six most often used anti-smoking measures have been critically investigated by the European Network for Smoking Prevention.

Six Measures Against Smoking Investigated

• Smoking tax: the most effective measure is raising taxes on cigarettes and other smoking apparel. It effects mostly young smokers and people with lower incomes. Of course, different countries apply different taxes, which could stimulate cigarette trafficking.
• Public smoking prohibition: prohibiting smoking in public places, on trains, at the job and in bars, is an efficient and scientifically grounded measure which is not expensive. The job site is the most preferred place to implement a smoking prohibition, which is quite logical considering people tend to spend most of their days there. Employees are encouraged to smoke less due to this measure and some of them might even quite smoking altogether.
• Government campaigns: media and school campaigns, supported by the government are only effective if they are systematically repeated, which costs a lot of money. Most of the time, however, they reflect one-time only elective stunts, dramatically reducing their effectiveness.
• Commercial ban: banning television commercials issued by tobacco companies could potentially be effective, as could reducing the places that sell smoking apparel. The tobacco lobby, however, will try everything to prevent this from happening, and they are quite powerful. Furthermore, there is an extensive distribution network and bar owners who offer smoking goods to their customers. All these groups would put pressure on the government.
• Health warnings: the basic thought here is to make cigarettes and the like less attractive by adding horrible pictures to the package, such as lungs of a smoker, and so on. It turns out that these pictures only have an effect on people who were already planning to quit. People get used to anything.
• Individual stops: it could help if physicians would more often casually encourage their smoking patients to stop. Sadly, most physicians don’t do this. Most doctors tend to see smoking as habitual behavior, for which the smokers themselves should be hold accountable. Research states that regular encouragement of a physician could potentially convince 2% of smokers to stop, which is actually a decent result. If the physicians would also provide some support in the form of regular meetings to follow the efforts of the patient, this chance could even double.

Pixabay

Conclusion

The government push to stop smoking has only increased in the past several years. It is rather odd, you cannot smoke at stadiums, but they are filled with firework smoke.

Smoking has been outlawed in parks in many cities not to mention several cities have outlawed smoking on outdoor sidewalks. Even though there is no real proof that second hand smoke in the outdoors could affect anyone. But cigarette smoke does smell, as does marijuana smoke, yet that seems to be acceptable in the states where marijuana is legal now.

One of the best ways to quit smoking is using an E-cigarette, known as vaping. But the anti smoke group is now adding vaping to the anti smoking laws, even though there is no second hand smoke associated with E-cigarettes, in fact there is no smoke at all with E-cigarettes. Vaping is no different than seeing your breath on a cold day. Much of this has to do with the large pharmaceutical companies that sell stop smoking drugs like Chantix, which includes many health dangers and concerns, plus nicotine gums and nicotine patches.

E-cigarettes are certainly safer than smoking a real cigarette. By burning tobacco, this creates more than 4,000 dangerous compounds including tar into the lungs. With E-cigs, a person does not get these dangerous compounds and tar into the lungs. Plus, nicotine does not cause cancer.

References

• European Network for Smoking Prevention (http://www.ensp.org/)
• Sigsgaard, T.; Clancy, L.; Forastiere, F.; Heederik, D.; Janson, C.; Lundbäck, B.; Jiménez Ruiz, C. & Viegi, G. (2010). 20 years of research and advocacy for a healthy and tobacco-free environment. European Respiratory Journal. 36(1), pp. 1 – 3.
• Treasure, T. & Treasure, J. (2010). Smoking Cessation (Editorial). BMJ. 340: b5630.
• BBC News