Smokescreens

Recent decades have seen a welcome reduction in the smoking habit in North America. One reaction of the tobacco industry to this loss was to encourage sales in India and China, etc. A few years ago, tobacco barons, Camel in the U.S., Imperial Tobacco in Canada, introduced SNUS (pronounced snooze) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus to aid those having difficulty contending with non-smoking restaurants and other public non-smoking areas. The recalcitrant smoker can now chew SNUS, a nicotine derivative, which does not require the user to spit like a baseball player! Some smokers interviewed said they had not given up cigarettes entirely, but were now, when forced into non-smoking areas, using SNUS. This seems to mean that smokers trying to respect non-smoking laws, and trying even harder to quit the addiction, can resort to SNUS. One young man interviewed on 60 Minutes said he still smokes twenty cigarettes a day but fills the time in restricted areas with the comfort of SNUS! It is not hard to see the new addiction will keep the addicted under control, i.e. still controlled by cigarettes - and less likely to quit. This approach, started in Sweden, is called "reducing harm." Reducing - but not eliminating. A controversial idea.

I hope that this news will do two things. First, it will urge people to sue tobacco companies for encouraging their addiction. That is long overdue. Secondly, people with self-induced illness and disease, resulting from tobacco consumption, will be denied public health care. It seems totally unfair to expect other citizens to pay for restoring health to those who have freely invited deadly disease by their own hands. The companies who are encouraging this should also be held equally responsible. http://www.smoke-free.ca/Filtertips-6/snus.htm

Smoke Signals

Two short items in this week's press are complementary. The World Health Organization confirmed that 5 million people will die this year from smoking cigarettes. The other item, resulting from extensive research with Israeli soldiers, found that smokers have lower IQs than non-smokers. Am I surprised?