General News Ray Winstone quits smoking

British actor Ray Winstone has suffered a setback in his attempt to give up smoking after struggling to get to grips with an electronic cigarette. The Departed star has decided to kick his longtime addiction and opted to swap real smokes for a battery-powered device. However, the actor was dealt a blow when he realised he didn't know how to work his e-cigarette. Winstone tells Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper, "I bought one of those false ones and I put the oil in the wrong end. I puffed on it and all the oil went in my mouth. It's like I was not destined to give up (smoking)."

Survey addresses smoking on park playgrounds

Do you think smoking in city playgrounds and spray grounds should be permitted? A survey is hoping to gauge the general attitude of residents concerning the issue in Louisville Metro.
In a release from Public Health and Wellness, Director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt said, "We want to measure public sentiment for protecting our children in outdoor spaces where they play."
In 2013 signs that read "children at play, thank you for not smoking" were placed in Cherokee, Iroquois and Shawnee Parks. Public Health and Wellness staff said the number of cigarette butts left in the park decreased after the signs were posted.
In order to gather more information they are asking residents to take their survey by March 31.

Smoking is leaving these fancy places, these big urban areas,” said Ali H. Mokdad, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and an author of the study. “But it has remained in these poor and rural areas. They are getting left behind.”

Americans with a high school education or less make up 40 percent of the population, but they account for 55 percent of the nation’s 42 million smokers, according to a New York Times analysis of health survey data obtained from the Minnesota Population Center, at the University of Minnesota. Since 1997, the smoking rate for adults has fallen 27 percent, but among the poor it has declined just 15 percent, according to the analysis. And among adults living in deep poverty in the South and Midwest, the smoking rate has not changed at all.

Health experts say this finer understanding of who still smokes shows that public health officials need to refocus antismoking efforts on the poor and working class. Michael P. Eriksen, dean of the school of public health at Georgia State University, who ran the federal Office on Smoking and Health under President Bill Clinton, said public programs aimed at struggling Americans were patchy, even as tobacco companies successfully targeted them. Researchers have shown that tobacco companies make corporate contributions to local causes, aim advertising campaigns at low-income areas and even sell cigarettes more cheaply in those areas.

With the national smoking rate stabilizing in more recent years, experts say that reaching poor and working-class smokers, whose problems often include alcohol and drug abuse and mental illness, is crucial to achieving further declines and reducing the heavy financial burden that smoking puts on the health care system.

“The real conclusion here is we need to figure out clever ways to reach these groups,” Mr. Eriksen said. “The effort has been pitiful so far compared to the potential benefit to society from getting these people to stop smoking.”

Clay County, where just 7 percent of residents have a college degree and the poverty rate is double the nation’s, is trying. Manchester, the county seat, a small cluster of gas stations, municipal buildings and fast-food restaurants, banned smoking in restaurants, stores and bars in 2012. The hospital runs a smoking cessation program that offers free nicotine patches and gum in an effort to reach low-income smokers.

Still, progress has been slow. By the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s analysis, Clay’s smoking rate in 2012, at 36.7 percent, was the highest of any United States county with a population of at least 15,000, and had not changed much since 1996.

“Smoking cessation is our biggest uphill battle,” said Jeremy Hacker, the hospital’s community outreach coordinator. While smoking is no longer normal in big cities, he said, in Clay, “it’s not viewed as a problem.”

PDA calls for review of self-selection plans following e-cigarette furore

1) The PDA have asked the GPHC to make ecigs part of the inspection.
2) The PDA have done this because the RPS have advised pharmacy to shun ecigs.


The RPS is a boil (in need of lancing) on the rear end of pharmacy. It represents some pharmacists not all. They have done little to promote, represent or support pharmacy when we needed it. RPS guidance is just that, guidance. It is not a ruling by any regulatory body.


The GPHC are already inspecting pharmacies. The PDA should know that many pharmacists have been left in shock at GPHC expectations/ demands. Does the PDA really think we need to add more to these inspections? The PDA should be representing members that have been forced to sell ecigs against their better judgement. That is all.

If the RPS and PDA want to "promote and maintain the health, safety and wellbeing of members of the public" (GPHC's job) then these two organisations should be lobbying the govt to ban ecigs entirely until they have been regulated.

The PDA should be representing its members, not making life more difficult.
The RPS should be allowed to disappear in ignominy.

Tobacco firms' secret lobbying

And the plan is that this rate will have dropped further – to under 5pc – by 2025.
According to the Department of Health, they are in the process of drafting the standardised packaging legislation.
Standardised packaging means that all forms of branding – trademarks, logos, colours and graphics – would be removed, except for the tax stamp, other legal requirements, brand name and variant, which would be presented in a uniform typeface for all brands on the market.
Over 5,200 people die here every year from disease caused by tobacco use, with 44pc of the deaths attributed to cancers.
ASH Ireland is in favour of plain packaging as is the the Irish Cancer Society.
However, the plan is not being welcomed with open arms by the tobacco companies who will be directly affected.
NECESSARY
Among those who sent correspondence were JTI Ireland, a leading tobacco company in the Irish market.
Among the global flagship brands it sells are Benson and Hedges, Silk Cut, Winston and Camel.
John Freda, GM of JTI Ireland, wrote to Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore, Social Protection Minister Joan Burton, Health Minister James Reilly, Jobs Minister Richard Bruton and Finance Minister Michael Noonan, with concerns about plain packaging last year.
In his letter to the Health Minister James Reilly last July, he wrote: "JTI believes that appropriate and proportionate regulation of the industry is both necessary and right. JTI shares a common goal with regulators; minors should not smoke, and should not be able to obtain tobacco products."
However, he also said so-called plain packaging represents an "extraordinary deprivation of JTI's most valuable assets – its brands and trademarks."
Mr Freda's letter to Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore last June, warned of the danger to Ireland's global business reputation. He wrote: "International investors would rightly be wary of investing in a country that fails to protect basic business freedoms and destroys intellectual property wholesale.
"No Government should introduce a measure depriving businesses of key assets without clear and reliable evidence it will work."