Quitting Smoking for Stoptober?

The 1st of October sees the launch of Stoptober, the annual public health campaign, which encourages people to give up smoking for the duration of October. It is hoped that having gone a whole month without a cigarette, or other tobacco products, people taking part will find it much easier to give up for good. Research suggests that individuals who go 28 days without smoking are around five more times likely to be successful.

The Stoptober Campaign

The Stoptober campaign aims to ride this wave of success by encouraging people to give quitting a go via social media, apps, TV campaigns and radio (Talksport). Quitting tobacco for good can be a challenge. However, Stoptober allows those taking part to access lots of advice and support on the OneYou page which will help to give you the best chance of success. The campaign will also send out support via email and text message to those who have signed up to take on the challenge, to encourage them to keep on quitting. It is believed that since the first Stoptober in 2012, the increasing use of social media and the support of celebrities have inspired over 1.5 million people to try and quit smoking.

Research from University College London found that smokers are increasingly beating their addictions, with record-breaking numbers of people quitting for good in the first half of 2017. The researchers reported that the rate of successful attempts to quit was now at 19.8% - above the 15.7% average for the last 10 years. This increase is thought to be a result of the introduction of plain cigarette packaging, the growing use of e-cigarettes and increased restrictions on where and when people can light up.

The Impact of Smoking on Your Health

Despite the fact that tobacco use is the single leading cause of preventable diseases and premature deaths, there are still around 7 million smokers in the UK. It is estimated that over one hundred thousand people die of smoking relating illnesses every year across the UK. Tobacco use increases your risk of developing cancer of the lung, tongue, throat and stomach. Smoking also causes the arteries in your body to narrow, which increases your blood pressure and the chance of stroke. Smokers are also at an increased risk of heart trouble and problems with their breathing. However, quitting can help your body to repair some of the damage caused by the toxins contained in tobacco smoke, and can help to reduce the risk you will experience one of these health problems.

Ways to Quit Smoking

If you don’t think you can manage to go cold turkey when quitting, nicotine replacement therapy may be the answer. The cravings you feel when you go without tobacco are caused by reduced levels of nicotine in your body. It is often these cravings that cause people to give in and start smoking again.

However, nicotine replacement treatments (NRT) such as nicotine gum, patches or lozenges can help to stop cravings by giving your body a small amount of nicotine. Over time, you can gradually reduce the strength of the NRT you are using until you are completely free of your addiction. For the first time, Stoptober is also recommending electronic cigarettes as a way to combat your craving for nicotine, pointing out that this method only carries a fraction of the risk posed by cigarettes.

Sheila Mitchell, Public Health England marketing director said: "There are now more ways to quit smoking than ever before, but e-cigarettes stand out as the most popular method, with half of all those taking part in Stoptober last year using one. For this reason, the Stoptober campaign, most notably the TV ad, clearly position e-cigarettes as a quitting aid."

How to Get Involved

Getting involved is easy. You just need to visit the Stoptober site to sign up. Once you have signed up, you can sit back and wait for your support pack and further information to arrive. Then, on 1st October, put down your cigarettes and look forward to the healthy life which awaits you.

If you would like further advice and information about treatments, which will help you to quit smoking for good, visit The Online Clinic today.

Is There Really an "Easy Way" to Stop Smoking?

It’s a question that thousands of smokers around the world ask themselves every day: Is there an easy way to stop smoking? Something that will prevent withdrawal symptoms and eliminate all those pesky cravings?

The short answer is no – but that doesn’t mean you should lose hope. Quitting smoking is a complex process that differs hugely from person to person, and how difficult you find it depends upon factors that include how much you smoke, and what kind of lifestyle you live.

Today, many "stop smoking" treatments are available – as well as other options, which are not treatments as such, like e-cigarettes. And unsurprisingly, all have been subject to various criticisms from both users trying to quit and the medical community trying to protect their health.

The E-Cigarette Argument

There’s been a great deal of controversy surrounding the safety of e-cigarettes. In 2014, the World Health Organization called for e-cigarettes to be banned indoors and advised that manufacturers not be allowed to market their devices as smoking cessation aids. But then last year, Public Health England declared that e-cigarettes were 95% safer than regular cigarettes, and recommended that the UK’s eight million smokers switch over to vaping.

Unsurprisingly, this was met with criticism, and earlier this year the British Medical Association echoed the advice of the WHO by recommending that vaping be banned indoors, a statement that has in turn been criticised by tobacco control experts keen to encourage smokers to quit.

Like any hot issue under debate by the medical community, the discussion around e-cigarettes is unlikely to die down for some time – and until more studies are carried out into the long-term effects of vaping on our health, we won’t have any firm answers about whether or not it’s a safe alternative.

Smoking Cessation Treatments Approved by the NHS

If you’re looking to quit smoking but you feel dubious about using e-cigarettes there are some other ways to kick-start the process.

*Nicotine Replacement Therapy*

Nicotine replacement therapy (or NRT) is available over the counter in any high street pharmacy. As most of us are aware, the addictive ingredient in cigarettes is nicotine; by substituting cigarettes with skin patches, chewing gum, inhalators, tablets or sprays that contain nicotine (but none of the other poisonous chemicals) you can start to break your smoking habit.

Taking nicotine replacement therapy regularly after you stop smoking helps to minimise cravings and withdrawal symptoms, and allows your body to adjust slowly. Normally NRT lasts eight to 12 weeks before the dose of nicotine is reduced, allowing you to wean yourself off.

Champix and Zyban

Two other stop smoking treatments are Zyban and Champix. Both these medicines come in the form of a tablet, taken daily, and work by breaking down your addiction to nicotine.

It is not completely understood how Zyban works; however, Champix is known to prevent nicotine from binding to the parts of the brain that respond to it. This helps to slowly diminish the pleasant "reward" feeling you get from smoking.

For treatment with Zyban or Champix to work, you should start taking your tablets seven to 14 days before you quit smoking. A full course of Zyban normally lasts for seven to nine weeks, and a full course of Champix normally lasts 12 weeks – however, further courses can be prescribed if you are at risk of starting smoking again.

The Online Clinic does not prescribe Zyban.

Additional Stop Smoking Tips

Other tips that can help you quit for good include:

• Downloading a "quit smoking" app to your phone that keeps track of your progress
• Avoiding foods that make cigarettes taste good when you’re having a craving (that means swapping out meat for cheese, fruit and vegetables)
• Avoiding drinks that make cigarettes taste better when you’re having a craving (that means avoiding fizzy drinks, alcohol and caffeine – sorry!)
• Creating an action plan for dealing with your worst cravings
• Exercising to combat cravings, withdrawal symptoms and low moods

Lastly, remember that asking for help is the best way to stop smoking for good – according to the NHS, smokers are four times more likely to quit if they use NHS services and resources.

You can also start your smoking cessation journey by requesting a prescription for Champix tablets through The Online Clinic. Click here to find out more.

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It would be hard to find a person today that is not aware of the health risks smoking brings with it. Every now and then a study comes out with a fresh perspective of how these risks have changed and reminds us why smoking risks should not be ignored. One of those is a recent large-scale study suggesting that since the 1960s female smokers have caught up with male smokers in terms of the risks of death due to lung cancer.

The study, which was published in New England Journal of Medicine, measured mortality trends during three time periods (1960s, 1980s, 2000s) and compared the findings with results from historical and current cohort studies concerned with smoking status. In total, the cohort data included 900,000 men and 1.3 million women from the US, who were classified as current smokers, past smokers and never smokers. The key findings indicated that there were gender differences in how the pattern of the risk of death due to lung cancer among smokers had changed over the years. Among women, the risk of death due to lung cancer had increased from 30/100000 in the 1960s to 506/100000 during the 2000s. In contrast to that, the risk of death due to lung cancer among men peaked during the 1980s but remained similar among the smokers of 2000-2010 and their past generation. These findings led the researchers to conclude that the risk of death was increasing among female smokers and reaching similar proportions to the current risk of death among male smokers. Although some newspapers have speculated as to why this may be, there is not enough data in the current study to verify any of those suggestions.

There are several issues worth considering when reading about the findings. The most obvious may be that this study covered an interpretation of findings from several other studies conducted during different time points and with different teams. No scientific study is ever perfect, so it is likely that each of those cohort studies came with their own flaws such as not following up whether the participants smoking status changed during the course of the study. Similarly, how smoking was seen and reported in the 1960s may vary from how it is seen today. Therefore, it would be worth critically considering how participants were selected, and what measures were taken to ensure that their reporting was reliable. Nevertheless, it is worth commending the researchers analysing enormous amounts of data across time periods in the United States. Given that all the studies were conducted in the US, the researchers managed to circumvent many obstacles that cross-national studies may have had. However, it came at the expense of the data being most applicable to Americans. You can read more information here.

We have had sight of a study that examines the relationship between smoking and anxiety. It has traditionally been accepted that smoking relieves stress (based on anecdotal evidence).  I am not aware of any empirical study out there that would corroborate this hypothesis but as nicotine is a psychoactive drug, it is likely that it affords the perception of stress reduction.  A new study by researchers at the King’s College London however has suggested that giving up smoking actually reduces anxiety, whereas failure to give up smoking causes anxiety levels to increase.

While the headline caught my attention, the study is so full of holes that it is difficult to know where to start. Sure, anxiety levels were measured and discovered to be at a lower level in the group that had successfully quit and anxiety levels increased amongst those that had failed to quit but I could not see anything in the study that explored the possibility that the stress levels recorded might be related to any factors external to the study. The nature of this study meant that it this sort of interrogation was not possible but this avenue of investigation really would be necessary to corroborate the hypothesis. The study was also very small – only 68 participants had abstained from smoking after 6 months.

I think that the researchers are onto something: smoking puts a lot of stress on the body so a reduction in perceived stress after a period of time is probably a correctly observed phenomenon but this does not explain the increased stress levels amongst the group that failed to quit. Clearly more work is needed if a conclusion is to be successfully drawn but no doctor that I know would ever be advising a patient to continue smoking to reduce anxiety levels so I am not sure what utility such a study would provide.

There is no denying that attempting to quit smoking can be challenging, and among the many avenues individuals can seek support, the role of mobile phones appears to be an area worth considering. A recent review suggests that individuals who receive encouraging text messages to quit their smoking maintain abstinence for longer than individuals who do not.

The review, which was published in The Cochrane Library, looked at 5 large-scale studies that combined had more than 9000 participants. Although there were differences between the studies, such as the age of the participants and how the intervention was conducted, the researchers still noted a trend with regards to text messages. Essentially, the smokers who received text messages were nearly twice as likely not to relapse within six months in comparison to smokers who did not receive these text messages. In the intervention groups 6-10% remained abstinent for at least six months, whereas this was only the case for 4-5% in the control groups. The text messages were received several times a day and were either of a motivational character or contained advice but it was unclear if any method was superior.

The findings from this study are interesting, as text message interventions are relatively cost effective and easy to implement in combination with other treatments. Moreover, given the rapid development of mobile phones it would be interesting to see how apps may provide support for individuals attempting to quit smoking. Although the findings indicate a rather low success rate overall, there is little reason to assume that they are not reliable given the total number of participants.

We believe that the process of quitting smoking is complex and at times challenging. As such we understand how important it is that a person seeks support where possible. Text messages and apps will not cause any harm, but they are also unlikely to be effective on their own.

That smoking is harmful to a person’s health in the short and long term is hardly a surprise to anyone today and we have previously reported how this may be particularly harmful to women. Until recently the reports of the long-term benefits of cessation remained scarce. Now, a large-scale study that has been published in The Lancet suggests that for women, the benefits of quitting smoking are substantial if it occurs before the age of 30.

The study, which goes by the name The Million Woman Study, was led by Professor Richard Peto of Oxford University. In total 1.3 million women from the UK were recruited between 1996 and 2001. Of those, 0.1 million cases were excluded on the basis that they had presented with a history of heart disease, stroke or had a current respiratory treatment. The participants were followed up with a postal survey three and eight years after entering the study. The key aspects considered included socio-demographic data, medical history and questions related to lifestyle. The participants that did not respond to the survey were still followed up via NHS records. Overall, the average follow-up was 12 years. The key findings indicated that women who stopped smoking before the age of 30 were able to eradicate 97% of all the risks of premature death that were associated with tobacco-related illnesses. Moreover, in women who stopped before the age of 40 this figure reached 90%. This led the team to suggest that stopping smoking, preferably before the age of 30, is to be recommended.

Although the findings may not sound novel, several aspects of the study are particularly noteworthy. In addition to having a large sample, the sample also stands out by being of a mature age. This of course, enabled the researchers to consider the life-long effects of smoking which has not been possible until recently as the increase of female smokers occurred in the 1950s and the 1960s. The study also benefitted from adjusting for socio-demographic factors, which have often been a concern in previous studies. It is also worth mentioning that these findings corroborate recent smaller studies from both the US and Japan and appear to be applicable to many other countries.

Although the findings are remarkable, it is important to have a nuanced interpretation of the implication of the results. Naturally, the findings are a cause for optimism, but they do not imply that smoking before the age of 30 does not cause any harm to a person’s body. In the report it was noted that the age at which a person starts to smoke affected mortality rates decades later and that the risks associated with smoking increase in a dose-response fashion. Therefore, it would be unreasonable to expect that cessation before the age of 30 instantly eradicates all the effects smoking has done up until that stage.

Although we are not surprised by the findings, we do find it refreshing that the report emphasizes the benefits of cessation rather than purely focusing on the harmful effects associated with prolonged smoking.

Among the many factors that can contribute to successful smoking cessation, medications such as Champix and Zyban appear to increase the likelihood of maintaining a continuous six month period of abstinence. This is according to a recent article in the journal Addiction, which claimed that smoking cessation is more likely to be successful if using medication.

The study, which included interviews with 2550 smokers from UK, Australia, USA and Canada, found that individuals using medications such as Champix were six times more likely to sustain their abstinence than smokers who had gone “cold turkey”.

The biggest problem that we encounter in helping patients giving up smoking is that they stop the medication too soon. Champix is supposed to be taken for 12 weeks and we recommend that patients complete the course. We see so many people who stop the medication as soon as they quit and they are back on the cigarettes before too long. Champix is a serious medication and it does work if used properly.

Time lapse photography has shown that the embryos of women who smoke grow more slowly than those from non-smokers. The pictures taken of the smoker’s embryos were shown to be a couple of hours behind the non-smoker’s embryos at all stages of development. Sometimes the slower embryos were up to 8 hours behind the healthier embryos. They were observed in the laboratory of an IVF clinic and show that the damage from smoking has been done even before these embryos are developing in the womb.

The research has ignited fears that the embryos of smokers might not implant but they cannot yet be certain about exactly what effects smoking has on the development of the embryo and the chances of successful IVF treatment.

It has always been known for some time that smoking makes it more difficult to become pregnant. The main message is to quit smoking if you are trying for a baby and definitely do not smoke while pregnant.

Inactivity (lack of exercise) is supposedly causing around the same number of deaths as smoking does according to a recent Lancet study but this seems an outrageous declaration!

Seemingly, smoking causes the death of 100,000 British every year and a lack of exercise is not far behind as a major cause of death with 90,000 dying as a result. The authors classify death from breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes and bowel cancer as the main fatal illnesses resulting from inactivity although surely there are other factors responsible including the social and genetic?

It is important too to reiterate what was said by a spokesperson for Cancer Research UK in response to the study. They remind us that although smoking and inactivity are said to kill approximately the same number of people, smoking rates are much lower than the number of people who live inactive lives and therefore people are still taking a greater risk smoking than they are being inactive so the study’s results are somewhat sensational.

The UK Faculty of Public Health stress that rather than rave on about the benefits of exercise and healthy lifestyles to inspire the masses, we should really be making clear the message that inactivity is dangerous and could be fatal. This is at least highlighted by the study and with the Olympics only days away there is no better time to embark on newer, healthier behaviour patterns.

A new report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine reveals that those who have quit smoking will live longer than those who haven’t regardless of how old they are. Even those who have had a lifelong smoking habit could increase the length of time they live by quitting. The study was carried out using data from previous studies which took place in 7 different countries around the world and between 1987 and 2011.

The analyses showed that smokers over the age of 60 were 83% more likely to die at any given time than those who never smoked at all. This was still the case, although to a lesser extent, in those over the age of 80 with 59% of those who did not smoke living at the age of 80 and only 26% of those who smoked alive at this age.

Older smokers feel like stopping smoking is futile at a certain point in their lives, having done all the damage they are going to do but this study challenges this view and highlights the need for support services and quit smoking campaigns that are geared towards helping the elderly. The study revealed that tobacco was the cause of death in 1 in 2 smokers who were elderly.

It is also thought that those who stop smoking before the age of 40 have the same risk of death as those who never took up the habit. This is very positive news and a great incentive for those who have smoked for so long they think they cannot benefit from stopping now.

Today is National No Smoking Day and a very good opportunity to remind ourselves of the New Year’s resolutions we made 74 days ago. Congratulations to those who have stuck to their promise to quit and who are probably feeling all the healthier for it too. We know that within 8 hours of quitting, levels of carbon monoxide in the blood return to normal and within 48 hours, nerve endings grow back allowing the return of the sense of smell and of taste. After one year off the cigarettes, these people will have reduced their risk of cardiac arrest by half!

The No Smoking Day charity and the British Heart Foundation also hope to put a stop to young people taking up the habit in the first place and hope that the day will create awareness around this issue. Furthermore, support will be provided for quitters throughout their smoke free next year.

Stacey Solomon is more than sorry it seems, for being caught having a cheeky fag whilst heavily pregnant. ‘Mum of the Year’ winner 2012, appeared on This Morning after the photographers had captured the activity on camera and after the images had spread quickly all over the internet shaming the young star and face of Iceland and she apologised before Holly and Phil for her irresponsible behaviour.

She claims that it is just too hard to kick the habit but that she has cut down her 5 to 10 per day habit to 1 to 3 a day. This effort has not prevented the celebrity from losing her title as the mother of the year which was given to her by Foxy Bingo.com. She accepts the sponsor’s decision to strip her of her title and she made it clear on the television appearance this morning that she does not condone her own behaviour.

In a report published in the Daily Mail today, one hundred million years of life will be lost in the UK if smokers continue their habit according to the Royal College of Physicians. They remind us that still today, one fifth of the population smoke. It is therefore estimated that smokers will lose, on average, 10 years of life per individual and half of all smokers will die from their habit.

This report was published on the 50^th anniversary of the first report on smoking and health and at least it can be said that there are fewer smokers today than there were in 1962.

It has always been thought that there might be a connection between smoking and damage to cognitive function and most recently, the habit has been strongly linked to dementia in men. Men who smoke are particularly at risk seemingly and their cognitive health declines at a much faster rate than that of someone who has never smoked before or who had kicked the habit 10 or more years before.

Surprisingly, there no link between women who smoke and a decline in their cognitive function in old age and experts say that this could be down to men smoking more tobacco than women. There is so little known about the relationship between smoking and cognitive decline in men due to the fact that many smokers die before they can fully descend into a cognitive decline and therefore the evidence is just not there. Other experts suggest that the cognitive decline could be related to cardiovascular damage or damage to the lungs which is caused by smoking in many cases.

It is now important to research the factors influencing such a decline that start early on in life, sometimes three decades before any diagnosis is made.

It will likely cause a controversy if it is ever approved by the necessary regulatory bodies but researchers at Cornell think their innovative, less toxic cigarette invention will be a resounding success on the market and a great benefit to those who cannot or find it tough to quit the habit of smoking. The research claiming that the composition of their cigarettes reduces the number of carcinogenic free radicals coming through the filter is published in the Journal of Visualised Experiments.

These carcinogenic free radicals have a huge impact on a smoker’s risk of cancer. The filters are thus composed of natural antioxidants, lycopene and grape seed extract, which the research shows to dramatically reduce the number of free radicals travelling through the cigarette filter.

For the New Year quitters who have already succumbed to their cravings, this is likely to be welcome news. However, over the month of January year in year out there are a multitude of support programmes and advice is plentiful. We recommend that patients make the effort to stop smoking and to consider approaches such as cessation drugs, nicotine patches or counselling. This less toxic cigarette might be a long time coming and will certainly never be ‘good’ for your health.

Recent research carried out by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention explains just how addictive smoking is and why it is so difficult to kick the habit. Alarmingly, only 6% of people who try to stop smoking actually have any success. Two thirds of smokers want to quit so this suggests very few actually make it. Very few even try to quit with 69% of smokers saying they want to quit and only half of them trying.

Interestingly, people are more likely to succeed if they have a degree, seek help or take medication. The research also showed that those who attempted to quit could have doubled and in cases even tripled their chances of quitting by seeking support or by taking medication, for example, Champix.

A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, reveals that stop smoking intervention programmes and nicotine replacement therapy are associated with cessation success. This is good news considering one of the reports highlighted the fact the rate of cessation has remained constant for the last 10 years. Smoking rates are far lower than they were 60 years ago but the numbers are not decreasing quickly enough for us to see a major drop in smoking related illnesses.

The latest smoking cessation product to be trialled is Tabex (cytisine) and it has shown some promise according to recent research carried out at UCL and the UK Centre for Tobacco Control using 740 participants who were treated with the drug or a placebo for 25 days. One year later, 8.4% of those who took the drug had quit successfully whereas only 2% of those taking the placebo has been successful in their attempt.

Considering the size of this trial, the drug will now need to be tested on a larger scale. The MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) has not received a license application from the manufacturers just yet but considering the results of this trial and the fact that the drug is known to be inexpensive, Tabex would be a welcome addition to the available smoking cessation products available on the market. It is already legal in Poland and Russia however there has not been any placebo-controlled large scale trials carried out on the smoking cessation drug before that have been run in accordance with today’s regulatory regime.

Tabex is not as successful as Champix but it is considerably cheaper, which may be attractive to some patients. On the whole, we prefer recommending medication based on safety and efficacy rather than cost so we will have to look at the large scale trial results before we form a conclusion.

Considering the drug is available elsewhere and no major side effects have been reported in the 40 years since the drug has been in use, it looks likely that an official application will be made to the MHRA as soon as a more substantial trial is carried out.

When you have exhausted all avenues on the road to stopping smoking, there is another way according to Colin Farrell who had become as famous for the cigarettes that hung permanently from his nonchalant grin as he was for his blockbuster Hollywood film roles. Now we no longer see Colin Farrell with his once most staple of accessories and all thanks to what he describes as a sort of a break-up letter that he wrote his tobacco flavoured friends.

Supposedly, having spent one whole day with his packet of cigarettes alone and very consciously smoking his way through them, he then sat to write a letter to them, thanking them for helping him through the tough times etc. The actor has not looked back since and has managed getting over his addiction without the aid of such smoking cessation products as Nicorette patches or Champix.

The number of people trying to quit smoking using the help of the NHS programmes is three times the amount that it was 10 years ago but the success rates have plateaued over the last 2 years and are lower than they were approximately 10 years ago.

Perhaps Colin’s approach is worth a try before one is finally ready to give up on the greatest romance of their lives.

A large-scale study has shown that smoking does women more arterial damage than it does to men. 1694 men and 1893 women were observed from various countries surrounding Europe and ultrasound technology was used to test the levels of carotid thickening and carotid plaque in both sexes. The thickness of these walls is an indicator of atherosclerosis which is one of the main causes of cardiovascular disease and stroke.

The study shows that the thickness of the carotid is directly related to the amount of tobacco smoked throughout one’s life. The impact of cigarettes smoked throughout one’s life is doubled in women over men and the number of cigarettes smoked per day and their effects on the development of the disease is over five-fold in women as compared to men.

What are not taken into consideration in this study are factors such as age, weight, social factors and cholesterol/ blood pressure levels, although, the study is still of great importance according to the authors at the University of Milan considering that anti-smoking campaigns have had less of an effect on the numbers of women stopping smoking than in men. The reasons behind the greater effects of smoking on women is as yet unknown but is thought to be related to inflammation and atherosclerosis.

It is a fact that smoking while pregnant will have detrimental effects on the health of an unborn child, yet pregnant women still do so and worse, some admit to continuing the bad habit in the hope that they will give birth to a smaller child in the hope that it would make delivery easier.  This was reported by researchers from Southampton University at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Sweden.

In fact, rather than make the delivery process easier on the mother, it was stressed that there are often more complications when delivering babies from smoking mothers. The effect that smoking has on these babies would likely lead to serious health problems later on in adult life that have long been associated with their low birth weight.

Researchers at Southampton University have produced, for the first time, solid proof that women who stopped smoking when they found they were pregnant had protected the health of their babies. 50,000 pregnancies, birth weights and smoking behaviour were observed. Women who had continued to smoke throughout their pregnancy gave birth to babies that were significantly lower in weight. When compared with the weight of babies born to non-smoking mothers, the difference is staggering.

Babies of an average of 11oz were born to those who smoked more than 10 cigarettes each day while pregnant and babies weighing on average 7lb and 10oz were born to non-smokers.

It is astonishing that some women were smoking deliberately to get a lower birth weight baby without taking into account the potential lifelong harm that this could do to their child. While it is pointless castigating ignorance, we clearly need some public information campaign targeted at pregnant women informing them that a lower birth weight is not a good thing!

The Spanish smoking ban is set to be the strictest of implementations thus far compared with the other European smoking bans. This all out ban on smoking in public places means that no bar, nightclub, café or restaurant will be facilitating the needs of the smoker from January 2011 and furthermore, even smoking by actors on television will be banned – something that has not been legislated on in the UK.

Older laws permitted smoking in bars that were less than 1,100 square feet in size and included a smoking section in restaurants. Inevitably, larger venues suffered but now all businesses will compete on a level playing field as the same laws will be forced upon all kinds of enclosed public spaces.

It is predicted that the bar and restaurant sector will see 145,000 jobs lost and a 10% loss in income next year as a result however the effects have not been noted in other countries after the implementation of similar bans. Spain will no longer be a smoker’s paradise but no worse for it in my opinion.

Spending £4.5 million on a scheme to help smokers give up with a feeble result of one in three quitting their bad habit post all expenses paid might raise a question or two about the quality of such an endeavour. Whether it is without this or with that, smokers will only do their best if they really want to. The scheme spent £50 per month rewarding smokers. The campaigns entitled “Quit4U” and “GIVE It Up for Baby” have spent £4.5 million in the last five years but the investment is not working.

The Scotsman newspaper reported that £949,000 was spent on smoking cessation schemes by Tayside Health Authority in the last four years on top of the £790,000 spent in the region in the preceding year. The biggest focus goes on the most deprived areas but is there a better way of combatting the problem of nicotine addiction?

Other than good old fashioned willpower, Champix is the best option for most and 60% of our patients who take it are successful in quitting. This may be because they use their own money to pay for a private prescription so are more committed. Paying people to give up smoking is a totally ludicrous proposal and will just be used by people to scam the system as the Scottish madness reveals.

There is a lot of discussion about the electronic cigarette industry at the moment; cartridges of nicotine and some other chemicals with no tobacco that have been marketed as replacements for cigars and cigarettes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned the companies behind such devices that the products must be regulated and submitted for FDA approval. This has sparked fear of withdrawal of the products among the e- cigarette companies however the FDA is only interested in examining the safety and efficacy of this alternative smoking cessation product.

Upon inhalation, the liquid in the e-cigarette is vaporized by a battery and water vapour creates the illusion of smoke. The FDA seeks regulation of this product as it is a device used to carry a drug into the body and if a product can be labelled as a drug or a drug delivery device, it must be approved. In addition, they want to ensure the manufacturing of these cigarettes is carried out safely.

Five companies have been warned that they have 15 days to respond to the FDA. So far the companies have argued that it is unnecessary to be preapproved since they are replacing tobacco products and so should be treated in the same way that the tobacco products are. They are marketed as both alternatives to cigarettes and an aid to help one stop smoking. The nicotine hit from these cigarettes is 10 times faster than that of Nicorette gum or patches.

Champix on the other hand is a regulated prescription drug with no nicotine and it serves to bind to nicotine receptors, thus decreasing withdrawal symptoms of quitters. E-cigarettes are being marketed with a choice of flavours, which may attract children to use the product. Those who are not addicted to cigarettes could begin a new addiction. In the case of Champix however, it may only be prescribed to those who have a smoking addiction and removes the cravings whereas the e- cigarettes can perpetuate the feelings of addiction. Regulated smoking cessation aids are safer to use and Champix has a proven success rate.

Supported by the University of Athens and Harvard University’s School of Public Health, Greece has finally put in place a ban on smoking in all public spaces. Restaurant and café owners are outraged and state that this will make the current economic crisis even more unbearable as customers will be driven away.

Gregory Connelly of Harvard University predicts that of the children today who are living in Greece, 350,000 will be killed before their time from smoking related illnesses unless action such as the smoking ban is put in place immediately. It is suggested by ASH, (a British Anti-smoking campaign group) that the benefits of the ban will be felt greatly in Greece more so than anywhere else as a result of it’s extremely high smoking rates. More than 42% of the population over the age of 15 is a smoker and smokes an average of 8 cigarettes per day. Across Europe, the equivalent number is 29%.

This is what the smokers shall suffer if they do not comply with the latest regulations. If you light up in a publicly enclosed space, you run the risk of being fined 50 to 500 euros with your name on an offenders list and businesses will be subject to losing their licences if the new ban is not adhered to. It will be interesting to see what happens since the partial bans of 2002/03 were ignored.

TV star Billie Piper has been slammed with criticism after she was pictured blowing cigarette smoke into the face of her 21-month-old toddler Winston.

The actress, currently starring in ITV’s raunchy Confessions of a Call Girl, was quoted in many magazines during her pregnancy as saying that she gave up the habit when she conceived her son with fellow actor Laurence Fox.

Piper has previously admitted that her greatest vices are ‘roll-up cigarettes and red wine’.  After she gave birth, she said that she moved from normal cigarettes to roll-ups, as she believes they contain less chemicals.

However, during an afternoon in the beer garden of a local pub, it seems that both she and her husband became less vigilant about protecting Winston from the consequences of their habit. The Daily Mail has reported that while at the start of the session, the couple took turns to look after their son if the other needed to go off for a cigarette, as time went on they grew more relaxed about moving away when smoking.

Anti-smoking campaigners such as ASH have said that children should be protected from second-hand smoke wherever they are, as it can put them at risk of illness later in life. There have even been calls for smoking to be banned in outside public areas, such as beer gardens.

So far, there has been no comment from Piper – but our guess is that she's feeling pretty embarrassed and guilty about the whole incident.

Friends of the troubled actress Lindsay Lohan have said they are very concerned as to how she will cope with her cigarette addiction during the 90-day stay in jail she is facing.

Lohan was told by Judge Marsha Revel that she needed to serve the jail term after a string of violations of the terms of an earlier sentence following a drink-driving incident in 2007. She has been told she needs to surrender herself to the women-only jail on the 20^th July.

The prison has a strict no-smoking policy and adopts a zero-tolerance approach to those breaking the rule. However friends have told gossip site TMZ that Lohan smokes at least two packets of cigerettes a day and for years hasn’t gone a day without smoking.

The source described her habit as a ‘serious condition’ and said they were ‘honestly scared’ for the star.

Friends have reportedly been urging her to give up now, so she can get acclimatised to the prospect of three months without smoking.

While in a similar case of extreme addiction to nicotine, a medication like Champix, Lohan is reportedly struggling with a severe dependence on a variety of other prescription medications, so medication probably won’t be an option to help her cope with her nicotine cravings.

She has also been told to attend  a rehab program as part of her sentence – hopefully this will help her change her lifestyle and get healthy!

A new study has shown that when the smoking ban was introduced, thousands of heart attacks were prevented.

The study is the first comprehensive examination of hospital admissions before and after the ban. The team considered all emergency patients admitted between July 2002 and September 2008, taking into account other factors, such as local population size or weather conditions.

The team discovered that there was a 2.4% drop in the number of people experiencing heart attacks after the ban was introduced.

The British Heart Foundation has estimated that this means on average, 3 fewer people do not experience a heart attack each day. Both smokers and those who were forced to inhale passive smoke in public spaces like pubs have benefited. In total, 100 people per month and 1,200 people each year fewer developed heart problems.

The research was carried out by researchers from the University of Bath. Their findings have been published in the British Medical Journal.

Anna Gilmore, the director of the Tobacco Control Research Group, said that even though the numbers were fairly small, when the large number of people suffering heart attacks each year was taken into account, even a relatively small reduction had ‘important public health benefits’.

Reports have suggested that the supermodel Kate Moss is trying to quit smoking in an attempt to get pregnant. Moss, who is in a relationship with The Kills guitarist Jamie Hince, has apparently agreed to see a hypnotherapist in an attempt to clean up her lifestyle.

The model already has one daughter with magazine impresario Jefferson Hack, named Lila. However sources suggest that her new partner is keen to start a family so she is eager to conquer her vices before falling pregnant.

Moss has always been an unashamed smoker, frequently pictured coming out of parties with a Marlborough between her fingers. Recently pictures showing her to be developing fairly extensive wrinkles about the mouth (which led some magazine editors to compare her to the considerably older Gillian Taylforth) indicated that her heavy habit and love of parties and late nights are taking their toll, though others came out to champion her, saying she was ageing naturally.

A friend told The Sun that Kate is aware that she smokes heavily, hence her visit to the hypnotherapist.

Kate is not the only celeb to try hypnotherapy to stop smoking – Prince Harry apparently used Paul McKenna’s hypnotherapy program to give up.

The source said that Lila wants a sibling and Jamie is ready for parenthood, so now that Kate has come round to the idea she is trying to cut out her bad habits.

Though this does beg the question, surely with a child already if Kate believes to be a good parent she needs to give up the drink and the cigs, she should have done so when she first got pregnant?

China has insisted that it will uphold a pledge to ban smoking in public places by 2011, which it entered into as part of an international treaty.

The health ministry issued a statement clarifying that the goal to end public smoking had been arranged as part of the World Health Organisation’s Framework: Convention on Tobacco Control. China ratified the treaty when it came into force in 2005.

In the treaty, nations that signed up vowed to introduce ‘effective legislation’ as well as take other steps to protect the public from second-hand smoke in indoor public venues. This means that all public spaces and offices as well as trains and buses will become non-smoking areas.

Many Chinese cities already have laws banning smoking in public spaces, but enforcement of the bans remains patchy. Yang Gonghuan, deputy director of the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, admitted to the Global Times that as law enforcement is not in place regulations exist ‘in name only’.

The World Health Organisation in December warned that only 17 countries have enforced bans on smoking, though 168 countries signed up to the FCTC.

China has a huge number of smokers. Out of a population of 1.3 billion, about 350 million people regularly smoke. Of all tobacco products sold worldwide, the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control estimates that the Chinese consume at least one third of these.

The association also claim that up to a million Chinese people die every year from lung cancer or heart disease directly relating to smoking.

New research has suggested that smokers who experience greater difficulty quitting or cutting down how much they smoke may have their genes to blame.

Several genes seem to be related to how likely someone is to start smoking and whether they will find it especially difficult to quit. Over the course of three studies involving data collected on 140,000 people, published in the journal Nature Genetics, it became clear that single-letter mutations lie in the region of the DNA molecule that contains genes that influence nicotine addiction.

Of the three genetic mutations pinpointed as being associated with smoking behaviour, two had not been identified before.

Each time a variant was noticed in smokers it seemed to increase by a small amount how many cigarettes they consume, roughly increasing it by half a cigarette a day. The mutations also seemed to increase the risk of the person developing lung cancer.

However the scientists warned that it was not entierely clear how the relationship between smoking behaviour, genetic mutations and lung cancer worked and advised that further research needed to be done to investigate the link.

The research was conducted by the University of North Carolins, Oxford University and the Icelandic group deCODE.

Cardiff researchers believe that fathers who have open discussions with teenagers about smoking may play an important role in stopping their teenagers taking up the habit.

Involving 3,500 teenagers between the ages of 11 and 15, the study showed that when fathers talk with their offspring about the subjects that matter to them, this impacted strongly on the youngster’s decision to smoke or not as they grew up.

The children who took part in the survey, part of the three-year British Youth Panel survey, were asked to monitor how often they had discussions with their fathers on important subjects, rating the frequency from ‘hardly ever’ to ‘most days’.

The children were given license as to which subjects they considered to be significant and the topics varied from individual to individual.

Dr James White, who lead the study, said that health officials need to be more aware of how fathers can impact on their teenager’s choices over whether to smoke. He added that there still needed to be research done into how teenage parenting affects children’s decision over cigarettes.

Figures released yesterday have shown that Scottish doctors are writing increasing numbers of prescriptions for anti-smoking medications.

There has been a 31% increase in the number of smokers taking drugs to try to kick the habit over the past year, according to the statistics issued by the Information Services Division Scotland.  It has been suggested that the increase is due to the launch of a new service where local pharmacies can offer access to stop smoking treatments.

The Public Health Minister for Scotland, Shona Robison, said that smoking was the biggest preventable cause of death in Scotland and was responsible for over 13,500 deaths each year. She said that the increase in prescriptions being written showed that increasing numbers of people were seeking support to give up cigarettes.

Data also showed there has been an increase in the number of prescriptions being written for slimming tablets, mainly the fat-blocker Xenical (Orlistat). There was a 3% rise from the previous year, increasing by 3,041 prescriptions to 113,365. 78,000 of those prescriptions were for Xenical.

Ms. Robinson said that the decision to prescribe slimming pills or not is ‘between a doctor and their patients’ but added that the Scottish government had introduced a number of measures to improve health in Scotland, tackle obesity and encourage more exercise.

Anti-smoking campaigners have lambasted Gorillaz front-man Damon Albarn after he lit up a cigarette on stage during a gig.

While playing at the Portsmouth venue The Wedgewood Rooms with his cartoon band (not quite sure how that performance worked, but still) the ex-Blur star sparked up mid-way through his set. He then passed it to guest act Paul Simenon, who started off in punk band The Clash during the intimate gig.

Since the smoking ban was passed in 2007, it is illegal to smoke in public space. This means Albarn is now eligible for a fine of up to £2,500.  Heath experts from the anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health have called for both musicians to be suitably punished.

Sources told the Daily Mail that it was not only the artists should be fined, but the premises where the show took place.  They added that the problem was not just that Albarn broke the law, but that he was sending out a poor message to fans.

Amanda Sandford, spokewoman for the charity, said that there could be no excuse for the pair, as smoking was not relevant to the act.

The staff at the Wedgewood Rooms said that they had not been aware that any smoking had taken place during the act, nor had they received any complaints.

A policy think tank has called for tax on cigarettes to be dramatically raised, bringing the price of a pack of 20 to over £7.

Policy Exchange have published a report saying that the cost to the public of smoking is so great that its far outweighs the tax gains that come from cigarette sales. They estimate that every cigarette smoked costs the taxpayer 6.5 pence.

With the budget being released next week, the group believe that there should be a 5% in cigarette tax included, with additional rises over the next 5 years to ensure that smoking stays ‘revenue neutral’.

The report, written by head of the policy and social care unit Henry Featherstone, concluded that annually smoking costs £13.74 billion, a figure including not only NHS care for smoking related diseases but £2.9m for productivity lost during smoking breaks, £342 million spent on clearing butts, and £507 million dealing with smoking-related fires.

They said that as smoking only brings in £10billion a year, the treasury needs to make up the shortfall by raising taxes to generate over £400m.

Their recommendations would see the cost of a packet of cigarettes increase by 23% after the forthcoming budget, with an ‘escalator’ system creating an increase in cost of £1.29 over the course of the next Parliament.

Mr. Featherstone said that in order to balance income with costs, tax on cigarettes should progressively rise until the full cost to society through smoking is met through taxation.

It’s certainly an interesting proposal, especially since such expensive cigarettes would surely put off most smokers and potential smokers. It would also be worthwhile to apply the same principle to fast food, since the cost of obesity threatens to cripple the NHS in the near future...

Coinciding with today’s national No Smoking Day, fire officials have released figures showing that cigarettes are the cause of a third of deaths in accidental house fires.

Despite the shocking figures, a poll taken for the day showed that over half of all smokers were unaware of the danger and did not know that smoking is the biggest cause of all fatal house fires.

The Chief Fire and Rescue advisor for the Government, Sir. Ken Knight, said: “"People need to be aware of the risks of smoking in the home."

No Smoking Day has also seen a quit-smoking app launch on Facebook which promises to ‘make quitting fun’. The application will let users create rewards when they succeed, challenge friends to do the same thing, and even quit for charity, raising money through sponsorship when they succeed. When they trip up, they can also set up forfeits for themselves.

No Smoking Day has been running for 27 years and receives funding from a combination of government bodies, charities and not-for-profit organisations.

The president of No Smoking Day Duncan Bannatyne said his team believed that quitting is a challenge and that rather than being a chore,  it should be enjoyable and inspiring, hence the positive message of the Facebook app.

Well, we’re not sure if quitting will ever be enjoyable, but we wish the very best of luck to all those who are making the attempt. There are so many ways you can get help, from counselling groups to nicotine replacement to Champix, but the main thing is having the will power and the belief that your life can be better without cigarettes!

An 85-year old man has had his dying wish granted to him – that the hearse bearing his coffin should display the sign, ‘Smoking Killed Me’.

Dick Whittamore wanted the bleak message to act as a warning to youngsters who might be tempted to take up the habit. As the hearse drove through Dover towards the cemetery, passers-by stopped to watch.

Mr Whittamore, who worked as an assistant theatre manager, for many years suffered from the lung disease emphysema. The illness is painful and sufferers experience difficulty breathing and is caused by the toxins in cigarette smoke.

Friends said that while working for the Hippodrome theatre, Mr. Whittaker proved himself an inspired publicist, hence the bold move to make people more aware of the dangers of cigerettes.  He was a heavy smoker when he was younger and was eager to prevent people making the same mistakes.

He designed the sign to look like the warnings displayed on cigarette packets and the funeral directors, Sullivan and Sons,  were instructed to also leave the sign on his grave for a week.

The stop-smoking charity Quit applauded Mr. Whittacker’s actions, saying that he sent out a strong message to others to prevent them suffering.

Parents and carers who smoke could be subjecting their children to the dangers of ‘third-hand smoke’. Scientists have discovered that tobacco smoke can leave residues on everyday surfaces which can react with air indoors to create potent cancer-causing chemicals.

Children and especially toddlers are then exposed to the chemicals that cling to the clothes, hair, cars and furniture of smokers.  In tests, surfaces contaminated with cigarette smoke were shown to contain the chemical tobacco-specific nitrosamines, also known as TSNAs.

The scientists say that toxic particles from cigarette smoke can linger on surfaces a long time after the cigarette has been stubbed out. Children are at greater risk from the particles because being lower down, they are in closer proximity to them, not to mention likely to lick or suck the surfaces.

Researcher Lara Gundel , from the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, said that the residue even from smoking outside follows smokers back indoors and will stick to their hair and clothing. She warned that when the smoker returned and if their was nitrous oxide in the air (the same gas emited from car exhausts) then TSNAs would form.

Smoking lobby group Forest however remain sceptical about the findings, questioning whether the there was any evidence that the low levels of TSNAs were harmful. Simon Clark, director of the group, said, “The real danger is not third-hand smoke but propaganda dressed up as science”. Slightly less creditably, he suggested that scientists and campaigners should stop telling smokers how to live their lives until ‘the evidence of harm is irrefutable’. (I think by now, refuting the evidence is pretty much impossible, actually).

Cancer Research UK were more positive about the research, calling it an ‘interesting’ study that adds the possibility of an extra level of harm from cigarette smoke.

It was suggested today that by 2020, cigarette manufacturers will be forced to sell their product in plain packaging, part of host of measures to be introduced to reduce the number of smokers over the next 10 years.

Health secretary Andy Burnham announced a series of commitments the UK Government would be making to reduce smoking in Britain, pledging to cut the percentage of the British population who smoke from 21% to 10% over the next decade.

In addition to getting people to stop smoking, he also said that they were determined to reduce the number of young people who begin smoking. At the moment 200,000 young people take up the habit each year. Mr. Burnham said that particular focus would be paid to reducing the amount of cheap tobacco that is smuggled into Britain on the black market, as well as banning the sales of tobacco through vending machines, often a source of cigarettes for teenagers.

The packaging on cigarettes will be totally plain, with just the brand name shown in text. Mr Burnham described the packets as ‘the only remaining method’ for advertising, after mainstream advertising for the product was banned.

The law over public smoking will also be reviewed, with the possibility raised that areas like entrances to buildings, some homes and cars might also fall under the smoking ban.

Pro-smoking group Forest called the existing laws ‘draconian’ and expressed concerns that increased restrictions on smoking would further increase the decline in trade in pubs and clubs.

However the Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson, who has made tackling smoking a key goal of his time in the role, vowed that they would continue to push harder for a tobacco-free Britain and warned that the momentum gained after the smoking ban was introduced must not be lost.

While of course quitting smoking massively benefits health, a new study has suggested that quitters can dramatically increase their chances of developing type 2 diabetes , as they pack on the pounds comfort eating.

Scientists at John Hopkins University have discovered that those people who managed to give up cigarettes were 70% more likely to develop diabetes within six years than those who had not gone through the quitting process, partly due to the weight they gained in the months and years after they first gave up.

The team monitored 11,000 middle-aged people for 17 years and discovered that those who stopped smoking were most at risk of diabetes in the first three years after they threw away the cigerettes, as the average smoker put on an average of 4kg and saw their waistline increase by about 1.7 inches.

However there have been warnings that those who were planning on using the new year as the extra impetus they needed to quit not to be discouraged by the study. Health advisor Natasha Marsland, who works for the charity Diabetes UK, said that people definitely should not use the ‘theoretical’ results of the study as an excuse not to give up.

The study is especially interesting as it shows the extra pitfalls that smokers can face when they quit. It can be so easy not to realise that you’ve substituted food for cigarettes until the scales are screaming it at you, by which point it can be very hard to lose the extra weight.

However, perhaps if people were more aware that they were likely to eat more when they quit they could take extra precautions to ensure that their laudable efforts to get healthy do not have unexpectedly unhealthy consequences, such as chewing gum rather than eating biscuits or substituting fruit for fatty comfort snacks.

The World Health Organisation today said that most of the world’s population were not protected by anti-smoking laws, leaving them exposed to the most prevalent preventable cause of death.

In a report entitled Global Tobacco Epidemic, the WHO said that second-hand smoke prematurely kills 600,000 people each year, as well as causing painful and debilitating diseases and costing the economy tens of billions of dollars.

While they acknowledged that progress had been made, as more and more countries introduced smoke-free laws, they warned that governments needed to act quickly to prevent more deaths. At the moment 2.3% of the world’s population are protected by anti-smoking laws.

So far 17 countries across the world have introduced anti-smoking laws, with Columbia, Djibouti, Guatemala, Mauritius, Panama and Zambia signing up to the policy in 2008.

The report called for urgent action to be taken to control the tobacco epidemic, warning that unless drastic measures were taken annually 8 million people could die by 2030. They added that 80% of those deaths would occur in low and middle income countries, where it would be hardest to prevent and deal with such losses.

The WHO added that they were concerned that the disparity between the amounts gained by governments through tobacco taxes and the amount spent on stopping smoking was so large.

As smoking rates fall in the West, experts have warned that tobacco use is set to double in Africa over the next 12 years.

At the moment though Africa makes up 14% of the world’s population, it only accounts for 4% of the world’s smokers. However a joint report by the Global Smokefree Partnership and the American Cancer Society has shown that tobacco use is set to double in the continent over the coming years.

The two organisations have warned that 90% of the population have no protection against second-hand smoke and have called for smoking bans to be introduced, similar to those brought in in America, the U.K and Europe, banning smoking in public places. They have also said that tobacco should have higher taxation and the price of cigarettes should be doubled.

The report however praised certain countries for their efforts to prevent smoking-related deaths, marking out Kenya and Nigeria for legislation introduced over the past year banning smoking in public spaces. South Africa also introduced the laws in 2007.

The report also indicated that many Africans were unaware of the dangers of second hand smoke, citing a survey in Nigeria which showed that 55% of school students were unaware that second-hand smoke was injurious to health.

The American Cancer Society warned that in 2010, 6 million people would die from smoking-related conditions, 72% of those in low-and-middle income countries.The report suggested that doubling the price of cigarettes through taxation in the developing world could cut the rate of smoking by 60%.

The government is gearing up for the vote on the Health Bill today, which if passed will see the display of tobacco products banned in shops across England.

It is becoming likely that there will be a rebellion from Labour backbenchers over the proposal, as many are concerned that the measures could severely damage trade for small businesses and newsagents.

They are apparently planning to defy the Labour whip who are eager to see the law, which will force shops to keep cigarettes out of customer’s sight, passed.

Some sources are suggesting that 1 in 10 backbenchers are intending to vote against the relevant clause in the bill, influenced by small retailers in their constituencies who have argued that the move would boost the dominance of supermarkets and encourage illegal tobacco sales.

One of the backbenchers leading the rebellion, David Clelland from Tyne Bridge, said that small retailers would suffer from having to renovate their premises and would experience a loss of trade just at the time when pubs and clubs in England have been badly hit by the smoking ban.

However health experts have greeted the bill enthusiastically. In a letter to The Times, experts and health charities came together to say that smoking-related illnesses were responsible for more deaths that alcohol, obesity, drugs and road accidents combined.

A report from the NHS has shown that 1 in 20 hospital admissions is attributable to smoking.  The study, published by the NHS Information Centre, showed that between 2007 and 2008 there were 1.4 million people over 35 who were admitted to hospital suffering from smoking-related diseases.

In the same period, the NHS estimated that 18% of all deaths amongst over 35s were caused by smoking, a total of 83,900 people.  The report’s authors said that 35% of all deaths caused by respiratory disorders and 29% of all deaths from cancer were attributable to smoking addiction.

Though there has been a slight drop in the number of smokers since 2006 – falling by 1% from 22% of the population to 21% - health experts said that many diseases were slow to develop, so the health problems caused by the  high smoking rates of the 1970s and 80s were only now becoming apparent. Over the last decade, smoking-related admissions have risen by a fifth.

The NHS Information Centre was also fairly damning about the impact the smoking ban had had on the number of smokers, saying that when smoking rates six months before the ban  were compared with six months after there was ‘no significant difference’ in the number of smokers.

However they discovered that a third of smokers now stay at home to smoke, rather than going out, meaning that fewer adults are being exposed to second-hand smoke in pubs, clubs and restaurants. This supports the claims of pub landlords that their business has been severely damaged by the smoking ban.

Scientists have warned that men with high cholesterol and those who smoke may be risking their life span being cut short by ten years compared to their healthy counterparts.

The study, which was based in the UK, showed that men with unhealthy lifestyles could be seriously curtailing their life expectancy. The researchers from Oxford University examined data taken from 19,000 civil servants aged between 40 and 69 and then followed them to discover what happened to them over 30 years later.

They discovered that there were three risk factors that had a serious impact on how long they lived, which were: high blood pressure; high cholesterol; and whether or not they smoked. All three are strongly associated with the lifestyle choices people make, as both high cholesterol and high blood pressure are often caused by an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise.

Published in the British Medical Journal, the study was originally set up in the late 1960s, a period when vascular heart disease was rife. The civil servants had their heaight, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose measures taken and were then asked about their lifestyle and medical history.

When they were traced in 2005, 13,501 of the volunteers had died. The scientists discovered that there was a 15 year life expectancy difference between the 5% with the lowest risk factors and the 5% with the highest risk factors.

The team said that their findings showed that men aged 50 with the three risk factors could expect to live to 74, which those with no risk factors were likely to survive until 83. They added that men who took steps to reduce the risk factors in their life, by attempting to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol and stop smoking, could expect to significantly prolong their lives.

The British artist David Hockney has called for a review of the smoking ban, saying that it is destroying bohemia. The 72-year-old has come out in public support of a cross-party group of MPs seeking to amend the current smoking laws in the UK.

The group has called for designated smoking rooms to be permitted in order to protect the trade of pubs, which many landlords say has been severely damaged since the ban was introduced in 2007. Speaking to the BBC’s Politics Show, Hockney said that he missed smoking in his favourite East Yorkshire cafe, mourning that the management of the cafe were even afraid to let people smoke while sitting at the outside tables for fear that the smoke might come inside and so breach the ban.

He added that he loathed Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for interfering with his life and promised that though he and the PM did not move in the same circles, were they to meet he would happily let Mr. Brown know his views.

Mr Hockney said the ban was another part of the government’s ‘nanny state’ attitude and made a reference to the famous bon viveur and chef Keith Floyd, who recently died from a heart attack. He speculated that if ministers had told him to give up rich food, alcohol and cigarettes in order to live longer, the chef would have told them “that’s not what I call living.”

The Conservative MP for East Yorkshire, Greg Knight, said that he supported a review of the law as, without a relaxation of the ban, hundreds of pubs and clubs might be forced to close due to lost trade from smokers.

New research has found that nearly all children who have a parent who smokes wish they would quit. Results of a poll carried out by the Department of Health revealed that almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of children would rather their parents quit smoking than give them more pocket money.

Martin Dockrell, director of research and policy at Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said: "Smokers don't just harm themselves but they harm the people around them…The only way that we can effectively protect kids from second hand smoke is by convincing their parents to quit."

The good news, added Dockrell, is that since the ban on tobacco advertising in 2003, children are more clued up on the dangers of smoking than ever before.

For those people still struggling to beat the addiction a hard-hitting campaign aimed at encouraging parents to stop smoking has been launched.

The advertising campaign is targeted specifically at adults and is unusual in that it features appeals by real children to their parents asking them to stop smoking. The advert launch coincides with research revealing a new "smoke-free" generation of children claim they would never try a cigarette.

The Public Health Minister Gillian Merron said, "I hope this new campaign will give mums and dads the encouragement they need to realise they can do it with help from the NHS, and support from their children.

"You are four times more likely to quit if you use the free NHS stop smoking service. The facts are clear - every week 2,000 people die from smoking-related diseases and this has a devastating effect on children's lives."

The research conducted on behalf of NHS Stop Smoking Services, polled 1,000 children in England aged 8-13.

The outlook for the future is looking positive despite the prevalence of tobacco addiction. Figures show that the number of people who successfully quit smoking through NHS Stop Smoking Services in the past year reached over 337,000.

Government health officials had a boost today when new figures were released showing that the number of health attacks has fallen since the smoking ban was introduced.

The Sunday Times reported that early results from a study commissioned by the Department of Health showed that there was a 10% drop in heart attacks in the year following the ban’s introduction. In Scotland a separate study indicated that there was an even steeper drop of 14%.

Other countries who also introduced smoking bans have also seen similar falls in heart attacks. In France there was a 15% fall in the number of emergency admissions for heart attacks, while in Italy and Ireland there was a reduction of 11%.

The study has been greeted enthusiastically by health experts, with John Britton, Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, saying that though they had been expecting rapid health benefits to result from the smoking ban they were amazed by how “big and how rapid they are.”

Ellen Mason from the British Heart Foundation said that heart attacks have fallen as exposure to smoke induces rapid changes in blood clotting, making people more prone to heart conditions.

She said that in people with narrowed or damaged coronary arteries, the exposure to smoke could “tip the balance” and push someone over into having a heart attack.

A new study has shown that the addictive drug in cigarettes, nicotine, tricks the brain into creating memories linking smoking with a feeling of wellbeing.

Pleasant events such as drinking alcohol, eating with friends or even driving home from work can then act as cues that make people want to have a cigarette. Smokers have often complained that they find it so hard to give up because certain aspects of their daily routine are strongly associated with smoking, so the study gives a clue as to how those associations come into being.

Dr John A Dani, who lead the study, is a professor of neuroscience at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine. The results, which are published in this month’s edition of the journal Neuron, was gathered after mice were fed nicotine and their subsequent brain activity recorded.

The mice were allowed to roam through a space with two compartments. In one they received nicotine while in the other there was a saline solution. The scientists recorded how long they spent in each compartment and was their brain activity was in each one.

They discovered that nicotine strengthened neuronal connections by up to 200%. The connections underlie how new memories are formed.

Dr. Dani said that when we act in a way that contributes to our well-being, the brain sends out a reward signal. The nicotine “commandeers” this process so we begin to act as though smoking is a positive action.

He suggested that the discovery could have an impact on how we understand memory and might lead to the development of a treatment for memory disorders, such as Alzheimers.

Prince Harry has struggling with his smoking habit for years. The royal was on 20 a day, but managed to kick the habit for a year. Now, however, the pressures of training to become a pilot with the RAF and the stresses of exams have lead him to fall off the wagon, and recently he was pictured smoking at the wedding of friend Nicholas van Custem.

The gossip columns are now reporting that the prince has turned to celebrity hypnotherapist Paul McKenna in a last ditch attempt to ditch the fags once and for all. McKenna has written a best-selling book called Quit Smoking Now, a copy of which was given to Harry by a friend.

The book has proved popular with other celebrities, including Rolling Stone lothario Ronnie Wood and film director Guy Ritchie, and apparently the program appeals to the red-headed heir to the throne because it helps “retrain your mind”.

Harry started smoking while at the boarding school Eton and continued when he joined the RAF. Prince Charles is said to be shocked that Harry began in the first place, though he is in good company – his stepmother Camilla is notorious for her Silk Cut habit.

He has been following the advice laid out in the book and using the CD that came with it and a source close to Paul McKenna told the News of the World that he would be happy to meet with the prince in person.