By researcher Paul Bergen of tobaccoharmreduction.org What anti-smokers never seem to quite understand is that smoking is a pleasure.  It is not, as some have characterized it, a disease.  And any solutions or alternatives to smoking that are based on the ludicrous idea that people don’t actually enjoy it are bound to have dismal success [...]

Over in Kiwi the Kiwi Blog is highlighting an article exposing faulty reasoning behind estimates of smoking costs. Estimates of smoking costs there have suddenly jumped from $350 million dollars to $1.9 billion dollars and one journalist was attempting to work out why. David Crampton found that the Ministry of Health arrived at the estimate [...]

The title above is not an exaggeration – if anything the opposite. An 88 year old women is having to leave her sheltered accommodation because she is a smoker. The Bishop O’Byrne Housing for Seniors Association, which runs the housing complex, has decided that smokers will just no longer be allowed. That includes an 88 [...]

New Zealand pulls electronic cigarettes from the hands of reformed smokers, forcing them back to cigarettes.

Would it make sense to ban something which may cause some harm in favour of something that we know for sure does cause a lot of harm? That’s what is proposed with electronic cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes have been smoked for long enough and in enough quantities that we know they do not have negative effects [...]

Healthy Habit or New Hazard? A new video questions whether E Cigarettes are a healthy or a hazardous habit. We discuss why they are missing the point.  As is often the case, the movie questions whether the e-cigarette is a healthy habit or an unhealthy one. For us, though, this isn’t the point – it [...]

New Zealand to ban E-Cig despite the all clear from Kiwi Researcher Stuff.CO.NZ is currently running a story about the E-Cigarette research by Kiwi researcher Murray Laugesen. The site has followed the product and the trials being held in New Zealand closely over the last few months. “All pointers so far show the device is [...]

I was talking to an eminent cancer doctor yesterday, and we discussed the end of life of a late, close friend of mine from lung cancer. The hospital made considerable efforts to make his last days as comfortable as possible, but he would go outside in apalling weather – to smoke another cigarette. The subject [...]

A fascinating site that our sales manager pointed out to me (after following links back from comments left on this blog!) is Tobacco Harm Reduction. We have got to be careful what we say here, but maybe we won’t get shut down if we just quote them! Nearly everyone knows that smoking is unhealthy, but [...]

Smokers paradox refers to the benefits that smoking has – a paradox because of the overall harm that smoking has on our health. Before the smokers amongst you get too excited, though, remember that is almost universally accepted that smoking does a lot more harm than good. Heart Attacks As we all know, smoking increases [...]