More Interesting Facts On Smoking

These smoking tidbits inspire quitting:

• Smoking hand-rolled cigarettes raises the odds of developing lung cancer, according to a study of Norwegian lung cancer patients presented at the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Seoul, Korea.

• $375 million was added to the global anti-smoking campaign by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ($250 million) and Microsoft founder Bill Gates ($125 million) in July 2008.

• Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ex-smoker, on August 15, 2006 announced plans to donate $125 million to help the world stop smoking: Worldwide Stop Smoking Initiative. "Tobacco is the world's leading killer. . . it doesn't just hurt smokers, it also harms and can kill people around them," Bloomberg said.

• The struggle continues. . . Heather Crowe champions Canada's anti-smoking battle even after her death. She recieved the Canadian Public Health Association's 2007 National Public Health Hero award, posthumously.

• Popular print ads end. RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company said that it will no longer advertise in newspapers or consumer magazines starting in 2008. Its brands include Camel, whose advertisements use colorful cartoons; past ads include hip, edgy characters like Joe Camel. These ads have caused a firestorm of controversy because critics claim they target young, underaged kids.
  * Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio and Maryland are suing RJ Reynolds over their Camel ad in for Rolling Stone. They say it violated the landmark 1998 tobacco settlement and the pledge not to use cartoons in cigarette ads.

• War on smoking. . . A squad of 8 full-time "smoking police" has been recruited for £90,000 by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (Scotland) to get people to stub out their cigarettes on NHS grounds.

• Australia's ALP gives an additional $15 million to the National Tobacco Strategy to escalate the attack on smoking.

• $50 per person every year on advertising and marketing is what tobacco companies spend in the United States alone, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

• Graphic anti-smoking ads saved early 60,000 lives according to a study by the Cancer Council. 190,000 people quit smoking in the 6 months following the first graphic anti-smoking ads aired on national television in 1997.

• California saved $86 billion in health care costs in the first 15 years its large-scale tobacco control campaign.
  * $9.2 billion in cigarette sales were lost by the tobacco industry between 1989 and 2004 due to California 's tobacco control campaign.

• Anti-smoking messages will appear at the beginning of films for rent rated G, PG or PG-13 and have smoking scenes smoking.

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• Smoking is inextricably linked to poverty, according to the campaigning group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Smoking is the biggest killer in England, and it kills more people in poorer communities than in richer ones, says Deborah Arnott, director of Ash.

• Raising socio-economic status of Indigenous Australians can help them quit smoking, according to a study by Dr David Thomas of the Menzies School of Health Research and colleagues in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.

• Malaysian Health Minister Chua Soi Lek gave Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and JT International 2 weeks to end what he said was a price war after meeting with them. The government had hoped high taxes on the price of cigarettes would produce a drop in demand, but tobacco companies responded with heavy price discounts. Malaysia may counter by fixing cigarette prices to cut smoking (April 6, 2007).

• Stop smoking, get rich. In Germany, a Bavarian man who quit smoking three years ago and chose to buy lottery tickets with the savings, won 1.17 million euros (1.8 million dollars) in the Game 77 version of the state lottery (EARTHtimes.org, March 2008).

• Smokers of 30 cigarettes a day in the UK could save about £250 a month by quitting or £3,108 a year in a typical variable rate saver account.

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