Ciggyfree Blog & Gov Alert

After 8 hours:

* Carbon monoxide in your body drops.
* Oxygen level in your blood increases to normal.

After 2 days:

* Your sense of smell and taste will improve. You will enjoy your food more.
* Your risk of heart attack begins to decrease.

After 3 – 4 days:

* Bronchial tubes relax and your lung capacity will have increased, making breathing easier.

After 2 weeks:

* Blood flow improves; nicotine has passed from your body.
Continue Reading »

Cigarette smoking kills approximately 300,000 in the United States each year, and most of these people are seniors. Lung cancer and emphysema are the best-known miserable outcomes. However, accelerated development of atherosclerosis is the most important problem resulting from smoking. This results in heart attacks and strokes, heart pains, leg pains, and many other problems. Pipe and cigar smoking do not have the pulmonary consequences that cigarette smoking does, but they do predispose to cancer of the lips, and tongue. Nicotine in any form has the same bad effects on the small blood vessels and thus accelerates development of atherosclerosis.

It is never too late to quit. Only two years after stopping cigarette smoking, your risk of heart attack returns to average. It has actually decreased substantially the very next day! After ten years your risk for lung cancer is back to nearly normal. After only two years there is a decrease in lung cancer risk by perhaps one-third. The development of emphysema is arrested for many people when they stop smoking, although this condition does not reverse.
Continue Reading »

In all tests of character, when two viewpoints are pitted against one another, in the final analysis the thing that will strike you the most, is not who was right or wrong, strong or weak, wise or foolish…. but who would go to the greatest lengths in considering the other’s perspective.

Secondhand smoke (SHS) causes premature disease and death in nonsmokers, including heart disease and lung cancer.

The Surgeon General has concluded that no risk-free level of SHS exposure exists; the only way to fully protect nonsmokers is to completely eliminate smoking in indoor spaces.

Studies have determined that levels of airborne particulate matter in restaurants, bars, and other hospitality venues and levels of SHS exposure among nonsmoking hospitality employees decrease substantially and rapidly after implementation of laws that prohibit smoking in indoor workplaces and public places.

Source: JAMA. 2007;298:1392-1394.

Myth: The most harmful component of secondhand smoke is what the smoker exhales into the air — the “smoker’s exhaust fumes,” so to speak.
Truth: The smoke coming from the end of the burning cigarette contains much greater concentrations of dangerous poisons and cancer-causing substances than the smoke exhaled by the smoker.

NASMHPD POSITION STATEMENT ON SMOKING POLICY AND TREATMENT AT STATE OPERATED PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS

Silently and insidiously tobacco sales and tobacco smoking became an accepted way of life not only in our society, but also in our public mental health treatment facilities.

Revenue from sales of tobacco provides discretionary income for facilities. Smoke breaks became an ‘entitlement’, deserved and protected, and are one of the only times consumers can practice relating to each other and staff in a ‘normalized’ way.

When, what, and how much to smoke are often the only choices consumers make as inpatients, reinforcing cigarette use by virtue of the autonomy it appears to allow. More troubling, cigarettes used as positive/negative reinforcement by staff to control consumer behavior.

While taking seriously and treating illicit drug use by those with mental illness for some time, a substance far more deadly and pervasive, and used disproportionately by this population, has largely been ignored.

And now, a few words about tobacco. It Kills. And, it kills those with mental illness disproportionately and earlier, as the leading contributor of disease and early death in this population.

Continue Reading »

He would, he says, never cheat on his wife. But each time he smokes a Camel Light, it feels like an infidelity. He promised to quit before they married.

He stubbed out his cigarette, washed his face with scented soap and for two months he abstained. He said his wedding vows, toasted her with champagne and honeymooned at a resort, all without a cigarette.

Back in Charlotte, as he faced work again, he felt an irresistible urge to smoke.

He opened his desk drawer and there it was, a pack of Camel Lights he had hidden. He reached in. With more desire than regret, he got up and returned to his old haunt, an alcove behind his office where he knew he would find the other smokers standing around a terra cotta flowerpot.

The first couple of puffs tasted bitter the way he remembers his first cigarette in junior high. Then a familiar heady adrenaline rush kicked in, and he was hooked all over again.

He is The Closet Smoker, and that pack of Camel Lights in his desk is his dirty little secret.
Continue Reading »

How does smoking hurt you? (Circulation)

Narrowed and hardened arteries leading to atherosclerosis and gangrene, cold hands and feet, cold skin, decreased fitness, weakened bones,osteoporosis, peripheral vascular disease.

Smoking damages the blood vessels in the legs and arms leading to restricted circulation, ulcers, gangrene and even amputation of the limbs

Over 90% of cases of peripheral vascular disease which lead to amputation of one or both legs are caused by smoking - about 2000 amputations a year in the UK.

Source: Nosmokingday.org (UK)

Children with mothers who smoke cigarettes are more likely to be regular marijuana users by early adulthood, a new study suggests.

Part of the link seems to be explained by the fact that children of smokers were more likely to have been rebellious and aggressive as teenagers, the Australian researchers note.

Past studies have found that children of smokers are more likely than their peers to take up the habit themselves; less is known about whether parents’ smoking and drinking habits are related to their children’s marijuana use.

However, many people who use the drug first try it as a teenager, the authors note, and family environment is an important influence on teenagers’ behaviour.

Continue Reading »

Though the mustache in this picture is fake,
women who smoke at least one pack of cigarettes a day have a 50% chance of growing more facial hair. This was discovered at the Medical College of Wisconsin. It apparently has something to do with the effects of smoking on the ovaries and the production of hormones.

Sometimes changing one’s mind at its core can be experienced in a blazing
epiphany in a flash of a moment. But not often. The type of change to lose
the urge to smoke generally consists of acts not monumental, but
incremental. Bit by bit, piece by piece, those reasons can be removed from
the subconscious. Once that’s done, there is no reason left to smoke,
therefore no urge.
The difference between just stopping smoking and removing the reasons for
smoking is the difference between being a smoker living in denial and truly
being a non-smoker. The first has urges that are constantly, perpetually,
subconsciously denied. The second never has an urge because they never have
a reason creating one.
No matter how much a person says they like to smoke, I’ve never found one
who didn’t like not smoking even more.
We cannot change the past, but we can change the way we remember it, and how
those memories affect our lives today.

There are only two structures in the adult human body which, under normal circumstances, lack a blood supply in adult life.  These are the cornea of the eye (which gets its nutrition from tears) and the intervertebral disc (which obtains its nutrition from the convection and diffusion of nutrients from the end plates of adjacent vertebral bodies).
By smoking cigarettes nicotine and carbon monoxide infuse into the blood stream and then into body tissues.  These poisons have a particularly destructive effect on intervertebral discs (and corneas) because of their precarious nutritional status.

Read the rest of the Burton Report here:
http://www.burtonreport.com/InfSpine/Smoking.htm

When the urge to smoke strikes remember the 5 D’s:

1-DELAY for three to five minutes and the urge will pass.

2-DRINK WATER to fight off cravings.

3-DO SOMETHING ELSE to fight off cravings.

4-DEEP BREATHE It will relax you. Close your eyes and take 10 slow deep breaths.

5-DISCUSS your thoughts and feelings with someone close to you or a support group.

Myth: Children aren’t affected by secondhand smoke; it’s OK to smoke in the presence of your kids so long as you don’t blow the smoke in their face and open a window. The same goes for smoking around your pregnant partner.
Truth: Exposing a child to secondhand smoke is a form of child abuse. Although secondhand smoke is dangerous to everyone who comes in contact with it, fetuses, infants, and children are at greatest risk. This is because secondhand smoke can damage developing organs, such as lungs and brain.

Smokers have more wrinkles in their skin. Smokers tend to have particularly bad wrinkles around the mouth and eyes.  Smokers in their forties have as many wrinkles as nonsmokers in their sixties do.  Smoking affects the development of wrinkles even among people in their twenties and thirties.

Photo owned by Department of Health, DH England.

For over 40 years, researchers and tobacco corporations have known that cigarettes contain radionuclides. The contamination is sourced in naturally occurring radioactive radon gas which is absorbed and trapped in apatite rock. Apatite, or phosphate rock, is mined for the purpose of formulating the phosphate portion of most chemical fertilizers. Polonium releases ionizing alpha radiation which is 20 times more harmful than either beta or gamma radiation when exposed to internal organs.

Every time you inhale smoke from a cigarette, you kill some of the air sacks in your lungs, called . These air sacks are where the oxygen that you breathe in is transferred into your blood. The alveoli will not grow back. So if you destroy them, you permanently have destroyed part of your lungs.

Smoking paralyses the cilia that line your lungs. Cilia are little hair like structures that move back and forth to sweep particles out of your lungs. When you smoke, the cilia can not move and can not do their job. So dust, pollen, and other things that you inhale they sit in your lungs and build up. Also, there are a lot of particles in smoke that get into your lungs. Since your cilia are paralyzed because of the smoke and can not clean them out, the particles sit in your lungs and form tar.

Check out How to prevent lung disease

It began six years ago this morning, the morning that causes us all to grow silent.

~William McKenzie [Dallas Morning News]

Senior counsel Sharon Eubanks, a 22-year veteran attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, quit her job on the cusp of the most significant legal victory of her career. She left in December 2005, just eight months before a judge would decide the huge tobacco case she had devoted six years to prosecuting.

She was not the only lawyer to leave a Justice post abruptly, citing interference from politicians in the Bush administration. Echoes of Eubanks’ allegations reverberated in this year’s scandal involving accusations that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and his top deputies fired nine U.S. attorneys for failing to follow the administration’s political line. Gonzales has apologized for the manner in which the attorneys were fired, but insists that “nothing improper occurred,” according to CNN.

Eubanks’ decision to leave such a high-profile case could not have been easy. She led the largest civil racketeering and conspiracy case in U.S. history: United States of America v. Philip Morris Inc. et al. (Civil No. 99-CV-02496).

The massive litigation included three years of discovery and trial preparations. Both parties processed millions of documents and generated thousands of exhibits, including complex animations.
Continue Reading »

“It appears that smokers have an altered opioid flow all the time, when compared with non-smokers, and that smoking a cigarette further alters that flow by 20 to 30 percent in regions of the brain important to emotions and craving”

Smokers enjoy their habit because it stimulates the flow of “feel good” chemicals in the brain, according to a new study involving just a handful of test subjects.

A number of studies show that smoking is related to the difficulty getting and maintaining an erection. Many toxins present in cigarettes especially carbon monoxide, can damage the circulatory system, which hinders the flow of blood in the penis which is necessary for erection.

In addition, smoking is one of the major causes of erectile dysfunction. A study published in the Journal of Urology in 2000 found out that 68% of men with high blood pressure aged 40-79 experienced erectile dysfunction. At least 45% of these cases were considered severe sexual ailments.

High blood pressure in men may lead to low testosterone levels, which is a male hormone that plays a crucial role in the sexual arousal. Low testosterone levels lead to decreased arousal and sexual performance.

Toxins found in cigarettes may also harm the testes. Smoking may affect the semen and the sperm, reducing their mobility and quality. Men who smoke tend to have lower sperm counts and malformed sperms than their non-smoking counterparts.

We first posted about Eric volz in late April of this year.  Here is today’s update:

A Foundation To Build on…Day #291 for Eric in prison

For those of you who read Eric’s last letter (http://www.friendsofericvolz.com/updates.htm#aug8letter ), unfortunately his instincts were correct when he said there would probably be a repressive response by the authorities to the fact that he published such a straight-forward description of how he has become a political prisoner.

We have just been informed that his access to phone calls has been cut to one 15 minute call per week. He must now choose between calling his attorney or his family.

A couple of weeks ago, Eric had his first asthma attack in 10 years. Apparently it was pretty intense and the prison doctor prescribed medicine and asked us to purchase a nebulizer that Eric could keep in his cell for emergencies. We purchased the nebulizer and the medicines and were able to get them to Eric. Two days later the prison warden gave orders to take the nebulizer and the medicines from Eric. That night he had a serious episode and had no medicine.
Continue Reading »

Pakistan is one of 146 countries that have ratified the global tobacco treaty, and in doing so has taken a great step forward in protecting the health and lives of its citizens from the tobacco epidemic.

Formally known as the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the treaty aims to reverse the tobacco epidemic by changing the way tobacco corporations operate around the world.

“In China, we are looking at something like 100,000 people dying a year from passive smoking, and about 45 percent of that will be from chronic lung disease.”

“The rest are from coronary heart disease and lung cancer.”

~K.K. Cheung, Birmingham University in Britain

A person’s increased risk of contracting disease is directly proportional to the length of time that a person continues to smoke as well as the amount smoked. However, if someone stops smoking, then these chances gradually decrease as the damage to their body is repaired. A year after quitting, the risk of contracting heart disease is half that of a continuing smoker.

~American Heart Association

Fluffy, Fido, and Tweety all suffer from the secondhand smoke of their owners, according to a growing body of literature that has looked at the issue, said Carolynn MacAllister, a veterinarian with the Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension Service.

Cats are twice as likely to develop malignant melanoma if they live with smokers as with nonsmokers. This form of cancer kills three out of four felines within a year of its onset. Cats also are more likely to develop mouth cancers.

MacAllister said that cats’ grooming habits contribute to their risk. “Cats constantly lick themselves while grooming, they lick up the cancer-causing carcinogens that accumulate on their fur” and deposit relatively high concentrations of those chemicals into their mouths.

Continue Reading »

“Some of the carcinogens (cancer-causing chemicals) in tobacco smoke are absorbed from the lungs and get into the blood. From the blood, they are filtered by the kidneys and concentrated in the urine.”
~Dr Visal A Khan

“A cigarette is a euphemism for a cleverly crafted product that delivers just the right amount of nicotine to keep its user addicted for life before killing the person.”
~WHO

A study of 456 infants in The Netherlands showed that, by age 2 months, babies born to mothers who smoked had higher systolic blood pressures compared to those whose mothers didn’t smoke and weren’t exposed to smoke during pregnancy.

“Our findings indicate maternal smoking during pregnancy has a direct substantial impact on systolic blood pressure in early infancy and is another reason for women not to smoke during pregnancy,” said Caroline C. Geerts, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care at the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands. “This association appears to occur in utero and doesn’t appear to be due to the postnatal environment of the infant.”

~American Heart Assoc. Journal Report 7/30/2007

While cigarette companies are subtle in their approach, they have aggressive intentions. The industry spends an estimated $239 million annually for marketing in Indiana alone. They need to find replacement smokers, because their loyal customers are dying every day.

~ Our View - IndyStar
Camel No. 9 sounds pretty, but it’s not

If all pregnant women in the United States stopped smoking, stillbirths would be reduced by 11 percent and newborn deaths would be reduced by 5 percent, according to the U.S. Public Health Service. Cigarette smoking not only passes nicotine on to the growing fetus, it also prevents up to 25 percent of the oxygen from reaching the placenta. With less oxygen, the baby may grow more slowly than normal, resulting in low birth weight.

~Genesee County Health Department, Michigan

“I would be willing to have my photo put on cigarette packets. I am trying to do all I can while I am alive to persuade people to quit.”

~Maureen Hamilton

Dying ex-smoker Maureen Hamilton, is now unrecognizable from her former glamorous self, and said she would be happy for her photograph to be used on cigarette packets in a bid to try and persuade people to quit.

The 57-year-old is suffering from deadly emphysema, and is now a bedridden invalid who relies on a ventilator to breathe. She can only eat baby food and forceps have to be used to remove mucus from her airways to stop her choking.