Ciggyfree Blog & Gov Alert

It was the Iranian’s who started the first democratic revolution of the twentieth century. Democracy is not a commodity you can place on top of a tank and send to a nation. This culture should be established by the people themselves and we should allow the people to make their country democratic on their own. –Shirin Ebadi

Smokers tend to quit in groups, according to a new study. One person who quits can have ripple effects across his or her entire social network, prompting others to kick the habit.

The New York Times offers this delightfully evocative explanation of how the process works:
As the investigators watched the smokers and their social networks, they saw what they said was a striking effect — smokers had formed little social clusters and, as the years went by, entire clusters of smokers were stopping en masse. So were clusters of clusters that were only loosely connected.

Study co-author Dr. Nicholas Christakis described watching the vanishing clusters as like lying on your back in a field, looking up at stars that were burning out. “It’s not like one little star turning off at a time,” he said. “Whole constellations are blinking off at once.”

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For Nora King, a former chain-smoker with a master’s degree, it was neither a harrowing visit to her doctor nor a disturbing news article on the latest findings about the damage of cigarettes that caused her to put down her smokes once and for all.

It was a television commercial she saw a year ago in her New York City apartment that vividly illustrated what goes on inside a smoker’s body that made her decide to try to quit though a new study suggests the academic work she did years ago may have helped, too.

“The commercial showed the white stuff that builds up in smokers’ arteries,” King, 44, said. “It was really graphic and gross, and I would turn my head every time it came on.”

Visual images in stop-smoking ads have been a mainstay of stop smoking campaigns for years, but researchers at the University of Wisconsin recently found they may be more effective helping those with a college degree than those with a high school diploma or only some college.

“Smoking rates have declined steadily since 1966 for college-educated smokers with some college, but they have declined far more slowly for people who have high school, and we wanted to know why that is,” said Dr. Jeff Niederdeppe, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin’s department of population health sciences and an author of the study.

Cigarette smoking has declined among adults in the United States from about 42 percent of the population in 1965 to about 21 percent in 2005 (the latest year for which numbers are available), according to the American Cancer Society. Figures from the society’s Web site show that about 45 million adults currently smoke cigarettes - and 24 percent of men and 18 percent of women are smokers.

For their study, Niederdeppe’s team interviewed a representative sample of smokers: some who had a college degree, some who had some college experience, and some who had a high school diploma.
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Please quit smoking while you still have the choice.

(NaturalNews) An April press release from Cancer Research UK reports that an extract of the mushroom Phellinus linteus has been found to halt the growth of breast cancer cells in vitro. Previous studies have also shown the species to be effective against prostate, skin, and lung cancer cells, but up until now nobody knew how it worked.

Researchers at Methodist Research Institute in Indianapolis appear to have shed some light on this problem. With the conclusion of their latest study, a team led by Dr. Daniel Sliva found evidence that the extract augments the action of an enzyme known as AKT, which controls cell and blood vessel growth vital to the survival of cancer cells. The study was published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Phellinus linteus, which is commonly called Mesima in the West, has been used for centuries in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and other ancient systems of medicine. This study is exciting because it finally brings us to an understanding of why the mushroom works — prerequisite knowledge in order to conduct clinical research in modern Western medicine.
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Risk of death from tobacco related diseases or cancers declines dramatically five years after kicking the habit. Women who quit smoking reduce their risk of dying from heart disease and tobacco-related cancers.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed data on 105,000 women over 24 years, taken from the Nurses’ Health Study, a long-term survey that began at Harvard in 1976. Stacey Kenfield is lead author of the new report. She says the data show harm from smoking can be reversed over time to the level of a non-smoker. “For coronary heart disease for example, your risk declines to a non-smokers’ risk within 20 years. For all causes it declines at 20 years. For lung cancer it is after 30 years.”

Kenfield says scientists observed almost immediate benefits when the women kicked the habit. “We saw a 47 percent reduction in risk for coronary heart disease within the first five years [of quitting] and a 21 percent reduction in lung cancer death within the first five years.”Kenfield says the data also indicate that smoking is more dangerous the younger a woman is when she starts. “If you start before you are 17, you have a 21-fold higher risk than a non-smoker. But if you start after the age of 26 you only have a 9-fold higher risk of dying from lung cancer.”

Based on that evidence, Kenfield recommends high schools offer more programs to help students quit. “If you would like to see the whole potential benefit from your cigarette cessation, you really need to quit as soon as possible.”

Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. The World Health Organization attributed 5 million deaths to smoking in 2000. That number is expected to climb to 10 million tobacco-related deaths by 2030. Kenfield’s study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Source: Voice of America News

China has imposed a partial ban on smoking in public places in line with its aim to hold a smoke-free Olympic Games. Melissa Chan reports from Beijing.

It’s Time to Call a Halt to the SPP!! North American Standards and Regulatory Area, NASRA. by Tom Deweese of Canada Free Press

The “Three Amigos” are attempting an old-fashioned switcheroo, much like the 1930’s grifters portrayed by Newman and Redford in “The Sting.”

Frustrated that alert and clear-thinking Americans and Canadians see the nefarious purposes behind the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP),” President Bush has apparently concluded “that dog won’t hunt” - at least not under the moniker of “SPP.” In a surprisingly simple-minded approach, the President has apparently decided changing a skunk’s name changes the fact that it still stinks. Shame on President Bush! If he weren’t up to his neck in treachery, he would not need to hide his activities from the nation.

Last year’s secret SPP summit meeting in Montebello focused on finding ways to get the people to swallow the idea of the collaboration leading to the North American Union, and to quiet its critics. Presumably, these were the topics of discussion when members of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) met with the leaders behind closed doors. The NACC is a largely secretive advisory council to the SPP consisting of representatives of such companies as Wal Mart, Chevron Oil, and Lockheed-Martin.

An internal memo from Canada’s Foreign Affairs and Internal Trade ministry documents that the NACC was urged to launch a public relations campaign to counter growing criticism of the trilateral cooperative that is a cornerstone of the building North American Union. According to the memo, “Leaders discussed some of the difficulties of the SPP, including the lack of popular support and the failure of the public to understand the competitive challenges confronting North America.” The memo emphasized the “NACC members should (play) a role in communicating the merits of North American collaboration.” Am I the only one who remembers the definition of “collaboration,” at least as it applies to nations and their citizens?

Further, in point of fact, these “competitive challenges” do not face North America…they face global corporations doing business in North America. The SPP has nothing to do with ensuring the security and prosperity of the United State’s citizens, or U.S. corporations would first and foremost conduct business as Americans. The “Partnership” is between government and business; it values the nation’s citizens only as human resources.
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