Smoking

New research finds that quitting smoking is doubly hard if you are poor and uneducated. Pyschcentral.com featured an article on its website this week that highlighted the work of researchers from The City College of New York who followed smokers from different socioeconomic backgrounds after they had completed a statewide smoking cessation program in Arkansas.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will this week evaluate the health safety and risks of candy-like tobacco products such as lozenges and strips, HealthDay’s Denise Mann reports.

A new effort to help teens quit smoking will use one of today's teen's most constant companions, the mobile phone. Developed by smoking cessation experts, SmokefreeTXT is a free text message cessation service that provides 24/7 encouragement, advice, and tips to teens trying to quit smoking. The initiative is led by the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Sponsored by the American Cancer Society, the Great American Smokeout encourages smokers to use the date to make a plan to quit, or to plan in advance and quit smoking that day.
 

Most American adults who smoke wish they could quit, and more than half have tried within the past year, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A landmark study in mice identifies a biological mechanism that could help explain how tobacco products could act as gateway drugs, increasing a person’s future likelihood of abusing cocaine and perhaps other drugs as well, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study is the first to show that nicotine might prime the brain to enhance the behavioral effects of cocaine.

The Star-Telegram reported this week that Senate leaders and health officials are calling on Major League Baseball to get tough on tobacco.

About 70 percent of U.S. high school students don't get enough sleep on school nights and this is linked to health-risk behaviors, according to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fewer American adults are smoking cigarettes, according to a new Vital Signs report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also, daily smokers are smoking fewer cigarettes each day, it says.

HealthDay News reports that menthol cigarettes make it more difficult for smokers to quit, especially blacks and Puerto Ricans, a new study indicates.

Will graphic cigarette package warning labels significantly reduce demand? A new study highlighted in Medical News Today suggests it will.

Passing and adopting local policies contributes to comprehensive, environmental change, but can also present significant obstacles to community coalitions. To better understand this process, researchers Travis D. Satterland, Diana Cassady, Jeanette Treiber, and Cathy Lemp at the University of California Davis analyzed the major barriers and challenges associated with the California Tobacco Control Program (CTCP) and its local projects that attempted to pass outdoor smoke-free ordinances. The researchers found that political polarization, local political orientation and organizational barriers presented the greatest challenges to local CTCP projects.

A new report developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) providing state-by-state analyses of a wide range of behavioral health issues reveals that despite some wide variations among the states in the types and levels of problems they confront— every state must deal with these issues. For example, among those aged 12 and older, Iowa had less than half the current illicit drug use rate of Alaska (5.3-percent versus 13.5-percent) yet Iowa also was among the top 10 states with the highest levels of people age 12 and older currently participating in binge drinking (28.6-percent).