The greatest decline is expected in New Zealand, followed by the UK, South Africa, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore and Finland. In Africa, only the South African market is expected to decrease. In the Americas, growth in Latin America is expected to compensate for declines in the USA and Canada, with the greatest increases in Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Uruguay.

In Europe, the forecast is mixed, with increases in some markets and decreases in others.

The biggest increase is expected in Norway, and the greatest decline in the UK.In the Middle East region, the highest growth is expected for Morocco, followed by Pakistan

and Tunisia. No country in this region is expected to experience a decline in consumption.

In South East Asia, Bangladesh will see the highest growth, followed by Thailand, while

consumption remains static in India.

In the Western Pacific, Vietnam tops the growth charts, while New Zealand, Hong Kong,

Australia and Singapore show the greatest decline. This transfer of the epidemic from rich to poor countries, with its health and economic consequences, is one that developing countries can ill afford. As long ago as 1986, the World Health Organization predicted that the differential in wealth between rich and poor countries would widen further as a result of tobacco, leading to compromise in sustainable development.

These projections are not inevitable; tobacco control interventions can make a difference.

Smoking has been portrayed by its sellers as a manly, masculine habit, linked to health, happiness,fitness, wealth, power and sexual success. In reality, it leads to sickness, premature death and sexual problems. Almost one billion men in the world smoke – about 35 percent of men in developed countries and 50 percent of men in developing countries. Trends in both developed and developing countries show that male smoking rates have now peaked and,slowly but surely, are declining.However, this is an extremely slow trend over decades, and in the meantime men are dying in their millions from tobacco. In general, the educated man is giving up the habit first, so that smoking is becoming a habit of poorer, less educated males. China deserves special mention because of the enormity of the problem. Comprising over 300 million male smokers, this huge market is, according to Philip Morris, “the most important feature on the landscape.” Overall 300 million men in China- equals to the entire population of the USA are smoker.

Trends In Some Selected Countries

The new smokefree law has been introduced to protect employees and the public from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.

Secondhand smoke is a serious health hazard, and there is no safe level of exposure. Every time someone breathes in secondhand smoke, they breathe in over 4,000 chemicals. Many are highly toxic. More than 50 are known to cause cancer. And, because 85% of secondhand smoke is invisible and odourless, even though you think your workplace, pub or club is not a particularly smoky place you may be at more risk than you realise.

Medical and scientific evidence shows that exposure to secondhand smoke increases the risk of serious medical conditions such as lung cancer, heart disease, asthma attacks, childhood respiratory disease, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and reduced lung function.

The penalties and fines for the smokefree offences set out in the Health Act 2006 are:

• Smoking in a smokefree premises or vehicle: a fixed penalty notice of £50 (discounted to £30 if paid within 15 days from the issue of a notice) or a fine by a court not exceeding level 1 on the standard scale (up to £200)
• Failure to display no smoking signs in smokefree premises and vehicles as required by the new law: a fixed penalty notice of £200 (discounted to £150 if paid within 15 days from the issue of a notice) or a fine by a court not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale (up to £1000)
• Failing to prevent smoking in a smokefree premises or vehicle: a fine by a court not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale (up to £2500)

The prevalence of paternal smoking was 73.7%. The prevalence of underweight and stunting was 29.4% and 31.4%, and of severe underweight and severe stunting was 5.2%, and 9.1%, respectively. After adjusting for child gender, child age, maternal age, maternal education, weekly per capita household expenditure and province, paternal smoking was associated with an increased risk of underweight (odds ratio (OR) 1.03, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01 to 1.05, p = 0.001) and stunting (OR 1.11, 95% CI 1.09 to 1.13, p<0.001) and severe underweight (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.10) p = 0.020) and severe stunting (OR 1.12, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.16, p<0.001).

Numerous population studies have reported on a strong dose–response relationship between cigarette consumption and severe diseases. In most studies, however, the lowest consumption group was set at 1–9 or 1–15 cigarettes per day.

One may argue that smokers in these groups clustered close to the upper limit of this consumption span, and that a threshold value might be found on a lower level.

Only a few prospective studies have reported on the health consequences of smoking fewer than five cigarettes per day.1–3

However the studies revealed that adjusted relative risk (95% confidence interval) in smokers of 1–4 cigarettes per day, with never smokers as reference, of dying from ischaemic heart disease was 2.74 (2.07 to 3.61) in men and 2.94 (1.75 to 4.95) in women.The corresponding figures for all cancer were 1.08 (0.78 to 1.49) and 1.14 (0.84 to 1.55), for lung cancer 2.79 (0.94 to 8.28) and 5.03 (1.81 to 13.98), and for any cause 1.57 (1.33 to 1.85) and 1.47 (1.19 to 1.82).

In both sexes, smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day was associated with a significantly higher risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease and from all causes, and from lung cancer in women. Smokingcontrol policymakers and health educators should emphasise more strongly that light smokers also endanger their health.

Around 106,000 people in the UK are killed by smoking every year, accounting for one fifth of all UK deaths.

Mortality from smoking in developed countries 1950-2000

Smoking is the main cause of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). 80% of deaths from the disease are attributed to smoking. In 2002, 23,878 people in the UK died from COPD as a result of smoking.

Lung cancer kills more people than any other type of cancer and around 90% of deaths are caused by smoking. Around 33,600 people die from lung cancer in the UK each year.

Tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, including tar, nicotine, benzene, carbon monoxide, ammonia, formaldehyde, and hydrogen cyanide.

(The EPA classifies tobacco smoke as a known human carcinogen)]

Deaths caused by smoking in the UK were five times higher than the total of those arising from traffic accidents, poisoning and overdoes, alcoholic liver disease, other accidentally deaths, murder, manslaughter and suicide during 2002.

The average smoker will lose about 10 years of life because of their smoking.

Within a year of stopping smoking risk of heart attack falls to about half that of a continuing smoker, and within 10 years risk of lung cancer falls to half that of a smoker.

82% of respondents to consultation feel that further action is needed to reduce exposure to second hand smoke in Scotland.

* 80% said they would support a law making enclosed public places in Scotland smoke free.

*56% said there should be no exemptions if a law was introduced in Scotland.

30 minutes exposure to second hand smoke is sufficient to reduce coronary blood flow in otherwise healthy adults.

Acute effects of passive smoking on the coronary circulation of healthy young adults

Non-smokers exposed to passive smoking in the home have a 25% increased risk of heart disease and lung cancer.

Environmental Tobacco Smoke exposure and ischaemic heart disease: an evaluation of the evidence

Passive smoking can be a cause of lung cancer and ischaemic heart disease in adult non-smokers, and a cause of respiratory disease, cot death, middle ear disease and asthmatic attacks in children.

Blood cotinine levels among non-smokers exposed to second hand smoke are associated with a 50%-60% increased risk of heart disease.

Passive smoking and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke; prospective study with cotinine measurement

Around 120,000 men in the UK are impotent as a result of smoking. Smoking increases the risk of impotence by around 50% for men in their 30s and 40s.

Female smokers’ chances of conceiving fall by 10%-40% per menstrual cycle.

Women who smoke during pregnancy:

* Have a 27% higher chance of a miscarriage

* Increase by 33% the risk of perinatal mortality

* Are twice as likely to experience premature labour

* Are three times more likely to have a low birthweight baby (on average 200gms or around 7oz lighter on average)

* Are more likely to have children who suffer breathlessness and wheezing in the first six months of their life.

Men who smoke have a lower sperm count than non-smokers, and their semen contains a higher proportion of malformed sperm.

Smoking is a causal factor in cervical cancer, the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide.

Damage to DNA in cervical epithelium related to smoking tobacco [British Medical Journal 1993/ Yang X et al International Journal of cancer 1996]

Exposure to second-hand smoke – passive smoking or Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) – is associated with:

* Acute respiratory illness in early childhood

* Chronic cough, phlegm, and wheeze in children

* Chronic middle ear effusions in children

* Reduced levels and growth of lung function in children

* Increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

* Increased bronchial hyper-responsiveness in asthmatics

* Increased lung symptoms in asthmatics

* Decreased lung function in asthmatics

* Irritation to the eyes, nose, throat

* Increased risk of lung cancer and heart disease with long-term exposure

42% of children in the UK live in a home where at least one person smokes.

Parental smoking and lower respiratory illness in infancy and early childhood

Children’s mental development – reading and reasoning skills – was affected even a low levels of smoke exposure.

Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and cognitive ability among US children

Passive smoking is a cause of bronchitis, pneumonia, coughing and wheezing, asthma attacks, middle ear infection, cot death, and possibly cardiovascular and neurobiological impairment in children.

Did You Know

The average smoker spends £1,750 a year on cigarettes.

Smoking is a costly habit in more ways than one. The financial cost of smoking should not be underestimated, and giving up can give you some immediate financial benefits.

Think about it, if you smoke an average 20-a-day, you will smoke 7,300 cigarettes a year. Even if you buy cheaper brands, that still means you spend at least £1,500 on cigarettes every year. So the cost of smoking really mounts up.

What could you buy with that? A holiday, maybe. Or a new wardrobe?

If you’re a younger smoker, stopping could still mean you’re around £8 per week better off. The average weekly cost of smoking for a teenager is roughly the same amount as the cost of a CD or DVD.

The cost of smoking

The cost of smoking can be a burden on your household budget. One survey found that if both you and your partner smoke, you could be spending as much as 15% of your income on tobacco.

There are other costs of smoking that you might not have thought about before. Some savings are less obvious:

Long-term, because you’re less at risk of developing a smoking-related disease or disability, you’re also less likely to need to take time off work from ill health, or have to retire early.

You will pay less for insurance premiums.

There is reduced risk of damage to your home from fire, and you will save money on cleaning and redecorating to get rid of nicotine stains and the smell of smoke.

But it’s not just you who stands to gain from stopping. Every year Scottish employers lose:

£450 million in productivity due to smoking

£40 million from smoking-related absences

The cost of smoking also affects the NHS – £200 million a year in hospital care. Cigarettes and matches are a common cause of fire – several million pounds worth of fire damage to Scottish homes each year is the result of fires caused by cigarettes left burning. Finally, cigarette ends, packets and matches are the most commonly found items of rubbish and therefore add to the cost of keeping our cities and towns tidy.

Nicotine isn’t equally addictive for everyone. A lot of people do not smoke because they never liked it to begin with. Then there are “chippers,” who smoke occasionally but never seem to get hooked. But most people who smoke will eventually do it all day, every day.

New discoveries in genetics may explain why certain people take to smoking with such goes to and end up so addicted. Some people, for instance, produce a gene-encoded enzyme that clears nicotine from their bloodstreams rapidly, so they tend to smoke more and develop stronger addictions. Others possess special receptors in the brain that bond extra tightly with nicotine, giving them an especially intense high that makes it harder to quit.

Drug makers are exploiting the science of addiction to create novel treatments to help smokers stop. The newest stop-smoking medication, the first to be approved in 10 years, is called Chantix. Available by prescription, Chantix masquerades as nicotine well enough to occupy the brain’s nicotine receptors, where it may lessen cravings. Real nicotine, when it comes along, cannot find enough free receptors to do its thing.

Chantix seems to have a higher success rate than Zyban, an antidepressant that helps to balance dopamine levels. And recently released federal guidelines to doctors for helping smokers quit reported that the drug, combined with the nicotine replacement patch and use of nicotine nasal spray or gum as needed, produced higher long-term abstinence than the patch alone.

Doctors have written millions of prescriptions for Chantix, though enthusiasm for the drug was tempered by reports of suicide and bizarre behaviors in people taking it. The reports prompted the Food and Drug Administration to issue a safety warning about Chantix early in 2008.

Continued research should help to resolve lingering concerns about the safety of Chantix. Meanwhile, experts continue to recommend the old standbys: nicotine replacement gums, patches, nasal sprays, inhalers and lozenges, which have been proved to be safe.

Nicotine by itself does not cause cancer, heart disease or other major health problems linked to smoking; other chemicals in tobacco smoke are to blame. Nicotine replacement can be used alone or with prescription medications or, for best results, combined with counseling. Recent evidence suggests that using two forms simultaneously, like the patch and gum together, works better than either alone.

Although nicotine replacement products do not require a prescription, the F.D.A. limits where and how they are sold. They are also expensive.

Still, no treatment works for everyone. And even with the most successful treatments, only about 30 percent of attempts to stop last more than six months. Compared with willpower alone, however, that’s a huge improvement. Fewer than one in 10 smokers who go it alone manages to go six months without a cigarette. Most do not make it past a week.
When longtime smokers finally do stop, they soon realize that not smoking doesn’t necessarily make them nonsmokers. That’s what counseling is for — learning to function without nicotine and to cope with the cues that trigger smoking urges.

Most important, former smokers have to rediscover that it is possible to enjoy life without cigarettes, although the yearning may never die completely.

This report presents the results of a survey on smoking behaviour and attitudes carried out in 2000. The survey is the latest in a series of surveys carried out as part of the ONS

Omnibus Survey for the Department of Health. The surveys in the series were designed to explore views on passive smoking, smoking restrictions and giving up smoking.

Other key findings are outlined below.

Giving up smoking

· Seventy-one per cent of current smokers said they would like to give up smoking – this was not significantly different to the 1999 figure (72 per cent).

· About nine out of ten smokers who wanted to give up mentioned at least one health-related reason for doing so.

Forty-one per cent said they wanted to give up because theycould not afford to smoke or considered smoking a waste of money.

· Nearly half (48 per cent) of smokers said that they intended to give up smoking within the next 12 months. These smokers tended to be younger, light smokers and aware of the effect of passive smoking.

· Over two-fifths (41 per cent) of current smokers who intended to give up in the next 12 months thought they would have actually done so.

· Over three-quarters (78 per cent) of current smokers had tried to give up smoking in the past, and a half (50 per cent) had made a serious attempt in the past five years. A fifth (20 per cent) of ex-smokers had given up within the past five years.

Knowledge and views about passive smoking

· People had a high level of knowledge about the effect of passive smoking. Ninety percent of respondents thought that a child’s risk of getting chest infections was increased by passive smoking and over 80 per cent thought that passive smoking would increase a non-smoking adult’s risk of lung cancer, bronchitis and asthma. The percentages were similar to those found in 1999.

Non-smokers’ attitudes towards people smoking near them

· Over half (50 per cent of men and 60 per cent of women) who did not smoke said they would mind if other people smoke near them. This was similar to the percentages found in 1999 (54 per cent) and 1997 (56 per cent).

Smokers’ behaviour in the company of non-smokers

· Sixty-seven per cent of smokers said they do not smoke at all when they are in a room with a child and 25 per cent said they would smoke fewer cigarettes in the presence of a child.

· A statistically higher proportion of smokers said they do not smoke at all in front of children in 2000 than in 1999 (67 per cent and 60 per cent respectively)

· Smokers said they would modify their smoking in the company of adult non-smokers – 50 per cent would not smoke at all and 34 per cent would smoke fewer cigarettes. This was similar to the proportions found in 1999 (49 per cent and 34 per cent respectively).

· Over two-fifths of respondents (44 per cent) who were in work said that smoking was not allowed at all on the premises where they worked – slightly lower than the 48 per cent

reported in 1999, and nearer the 1997 figure of 42 per cent.

· Over four fifths agreed that there should be restrictions on smoking at work (86 per cent), in restaurants (88 per cent) and in other public places such as banks and post offices (86 per cent). A smaller percentage of respondents, 53 per cent,thought that smoking should be restricted in pubs.

· Forty-five per cent considered whether or not a place has a non-smoking area as an important factor when deciding where to go for a meal.

· Twenty-two per cent said they would take account of whether a place has a non-smoking area when selecting a place to go for a drink. This was a small but statistically significant increase from 1999 (18 per cent).

Atarax and scopolamine attach to the millions of extra nerve endings created by chronic smoking, and block the excess acetylcholine that is produced while smoking and immediately after quitting. Blocking the nerves prevents the messages associated with nicotine withdrawal from being sent to your brain and body organs, somewhat like the way Novocain blocks pain messages when you are at the dentist’s office.

Atarax and Scopolamine Block the Physical Withdrawl Symptoms.The initial dose is supplemented with two weeks of follow-up anticholinergic medicines to maintain therapeutic effectiveness while nicotine is removed from your body. Although it only takes approximately three days for your body to break down nicotine, the symptoms remain until the acetylcholine concentration and receptor numbers return to normal levels - about two weeks.

Since nicotine also influences the memory and pleasure center of your brain, there is a Psychological side to the addiction that needs management.

Medical Stop Smoking Center helps you with the Psychological cravings by providing extensive help and resources.