Text messaging found to help smokers

REUTERS
October 8, 2009 05:01AMT

Text messaging can help smokers quit the habit, according to an international study.

A review of four trials conducted in New Zealand, Britain and Norway, found that programs to help people stop smoking that included text-messaged advice doubled the chances that smokers would be able to kick the habit for up to a year.

The trials, involving 2,600 smokers, used text messages as a way to give smokers daily advice and encouragement and also offered support when quitters needed it the most.

If they found themselves craving nicotine, for example, they could text "crave" to the program and get immediate advice on what to do.

"We know that stopping smoking can be really difficult and most people take several attempts to quit successfully," researcher Robyn Whittaker from the University of Auckland in New Zealand told Reuters Health.

"It is important to be able to offer lots of different options for extra support."
Two of the studies looked at programs that only involved text messages, finding that the service doubled the odds that smokers would quit over six weeks.

The other two studies focused on a program in Norway that used text messages, emails and a dedicated Web site. It found that smokers who used the program were twice as likely to report abstinence for up to one year.

The findings appeared in the Cochrane Library, a publication of the international research organization the Cochrane Collaboration.

However the studies found the majority of smokers taking part in the studies did not succeed in quitting, regardless of whether they had text-message help.

One of the programs in the study, called Txt2Quit, is running in New Zealand, with government funding, and automatically sends users two to three text messages per day shortly before a designated "quit date," and for one month afterwards.

A recent review of people who took part in the program's first year found that one-third did not smoke four weeks after their quit date. That figure dropped to 16 percent after 22 weeks.

Whittaker said it is estimated that only about 5 percent of smokers are able to kick the habit without any help.

But text messages could serve as one more tool in the smoking-cessation arsenal and may be effective for some people because they can get help when cravings strike.

"The frequent messages can also act as a good reminder and motivation to keep going," Whittaker said.

SOURCE

Health Rish Of Smoking...Death on the increase

'One of the major perenial epidemic confronting mankind is death from tobacco'

'Of the three bilion people who smoke daily worldwide, 250 are women, 22 percent of women live in developed countries and nine per cent of them in developing countries'

Nigeria's smoking habit

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Tobacco kills close to five million people yearly worldwide with over 70 percent of deaths occurring in developing countries including Nigeria where about 12 percent of the population are addicted to nicotine.

Now the Nigerian parliament seems to have responded with a tobacco control bill.

If passed, this could be the biggest tobacco crackdown in the history of Nigeria.

From Lagos, the BBC's Fidelis Mbah, reports.

Do you watch your intake?

Nigerian parliament debates tobacco restrictions

New tobacco control legislation is being debated in the Nigerian parliament with strong backing from anti-tobacco groups and health organisations.

The debate was brought about after an initiative by anti-tobacco campaigners to counter growing cigarette smoking, particularly among teenagers.

It is believed about 25 percent of Nigerian teenagers, which is double the smoking rate among men, are hooked on tobacco,

Individual cigarettes in Nigeria sell for seven cents each, and the Nigerian parliament is responding with a tobacco control bill that would impose smoking bans, increase taxes and impose advertising restrictions.

SOURCE

NIGERIA VERSUS BIG TOBACCO

On February 4, 2009, the National Tobacco Control Bill 2009 scaled through Second Reading at the Senate. The Bill sponsored by Senator Olorunnibe Mamora seeks to regulate the manufacturing, sale and distribution of tobacco products in the country. Essentially, the bill domesticates the provisions of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco (FCTC) which Nigeria signed on June 28, 2004 and ratified on October 20, 2005.

Senate President David Mark, apparently encouraged by the overwhelming support fellow senators accorded the bill during the Second Plenary Reading and in accordance with legislative practice, referred the bill to the Senate Committee on Health for fine-tuning before its passage. The Senate President and indeed several other distinguished senators who took the floor during the Second Reading spoke in favour of the quick passage of the bill. They enumerated the positive impacts the bill promised for public health and its potential for saving the lives of millions of Nigerian youths from tobacco addiction.

Specifically, the Senate President closed the plenary with an admonition to his fellow senators to shun every overture by Big Tobacco to undermine or delay the passage of the bill. He predicted that the tobacco industry will certainly do all within its powers to distract the Senate from working for speedy passage of the public health bill but that the Senate should stand firm for public health and the well-being of Nigerian.

True to the Senate President's prediction, since February the tobacco industry since February has deployed strategies to undermine the bill. The industry has engaged media spin doctors to feed Nigerians with a pot pouri of lies and propaganda. They have recruited surrogates and hatchet men to distort scientifically documented data on the impact of tobacco use on public health, the economy and the environment.

Page 60, THISDAY, Vol. 14, No. 5112Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Introducing: Nigeria National Tobacco Control Bill 2009

The Nigeria tobacco control bill is a comprehensive law when passed to regulate the manufacturing, advertising distribution and consumption of tobacco products in Nigeria.

It is a bill that s aimed at domesticating the Framework Convection on Tobacco Control (FCTC) because Nigeria is a party to that international convention. The keys highlights of the bill are prohibition of smoking in public places; to include restaurant and bar, public transportation, schools, hospitals e.t.c. A ban on all forms of direct and indirect advertising, prohibition of sales of cigarette 1000-meter radius of areas designated as non-smoking, mass awareness about the danger of smoking as well as the formation of committee that will guide government on the issue of tobacco control in the country.