Smoking - slow, self medicated suicide - on the decline - at last

Worldwide, people are remarkably resistant to the health benefits of quitting smoking, or not even starting smoking . Smoking is blamed for 400,000 deaths a year, making it the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a study reported in September 2007 of 9 hospitals (covering 63% of all admissions for heart attacks) there was a drop of 17% in admisions for heart attacks. This included ;

• A 14% reduction in admissions for acute coronary syndrome among smokers.
• A 19% reduction among former smokers.
• A 21% reduction among people who had never smoked.

A University of Munster study reporting in December 2007 concluded that in Germany passive smoking (environmental tobacco smoke ETS) could be attributed to 1248 stroke deaths of women and 589 men - most in the 65-84 age range.

The Spanish Public Health Agency reported a study in 2002 concluded that ETS could be responsible for 1228-3237 deaths from lung cancer and ischaemic heart disease a year in Spain.

A French study in 1999 suggested how dangerous marriage was to non-smokers whose spouses smoked. They said that "Based on our best assumptions, we calculated that 1146 (839 females, 307 males) lung cancer deaths were attributable to exposure to spouse's ETS in the EU in 1990. "

Clare Frobisher, Ph.D., of the University of Birmingham, UK, has just published a study of 14,836 eligible survivors of childhood cancer in the National Registry of Childhood Tumors.Of the patients who replied , 20 % were current regular smokers and 29.8 % were regular smokers at some time in their life prior to the completion of the survey.

This confirmed a study by Karen Emmons, Ph.D., of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard School of Public Health in Boston as part of the U.S. Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, in which 17 % of adult survivors reported being current smokers and 28 % reported being heavy smokers.

...the good news is..

In Massachussets the The Department of Public Health commissioner John Auerbach, who is supervising the state's attempt to provide health insurance for nearly every resident, they concluded the primary-care doctor was at the top of the list of halping to make decisions about quitting smoking.

Now the state's medical program insures the poor to pay for smoking cessation counseling and nicotine replacement patches. A more potent factor in quitting has probably been an increase in State tobacco taxes of US$1 a 20 pack since the start of July.

Overall, the state also spent close to $13 million on tobacco control in the budget year that just ended.

Nearly 30 years ago, 4 in 10 men in Massachusetts smoked regularly now the figure is fewer than 2 in 10. Today the state report on an annual survey conducted by the state which shows that last year

Yesterday Joe Auerbach was able to report that nearly 8 % fewer Massachusetts adults smoked in 2007 than the year before, the steepest decline in cigarette use in more than a decade

Only California, Connecticut, and Utah have lower smoking rates.

There are of course other ways of people smoking, killing other people ..."In 2003 alone, there were over 4,000 smoking-related fires in the UK, as a result of which 123 people died, and over 1,400 were injured."