Smoking Cessation News

Money Might Motivate Smokers to Quit Long Term By Robert PreidtHealthDay Reporter THURSDAY, July 18, 2019 (HealthDay News) -- Financial rewards for quitting smoking do help smokers -- including pregnant women -- kick the habit and remain smoke-free, a new study confirms."Rewards, such as money or vouchers, have been used to encourage smokers to quit, and to reward them if they stay stopped. Such schemes have been used in workplaces, in clinics and hospitals, and within community programs," said study lead author Dr. Caitlin Notley. She's with Norwich Medical School of the University of East Anglia

Banning flavors and lowering nicotine levels in electronic cigarettes is a strategy that could backfire, a new study suggests.

Supporters believe the ban will reduce underage use of e-cigarettes, while critics say it will make it more difficult for adults to buy an alternative to regular cigarettes.

Women ages 18-49 who smoked had a more than 13 times higher chance of having a major heart attack than did those who didn't smoke. Men in this age group who smoked had an 8.6 times higher risk than nonsmokers.

The e-cigarette blast was strong enough to break bones and blow out teeth.

The goal is to reduce youth use of e-cigarettes until the Food and Drug Administration completes a review of the effects of e-cigarettes on public health, the Associated Pressreported.

A bill to raise the minimum age for buying any type of tobacco product, including electronic cigarettes, from 18 to 21 was introduced Monday by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

This new technology is still under development, but shows how artificial intelligence may have a future role in medicine.

Over time, one expert said, exposure to high amounts of such contaminants can prompt the onset of progressive lung illnesses such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis and asthma.

Research has linked vaping with increased risk for heart attacks, strokes, respiratory disease and, possibly, cancer.

All told, more than 1 in 4 high school students and about 1 in 14 middle school students used a tobacco product in 2018, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Many smokers who had tried to quit said it had been a year or more since their last attempt, and most who did quit relapsed within a year. Most inmates who quit did so without treatment.

Teens addicted to vaping must rely on methods that have been shown to help tobacco quitters, but it's not clear that those methods will be useful when it comes to e-cigarettes.

Going “cold turkey” with no nicotine can make it difficult to deal with withdrawal symptoms. Having some kind of nicotine replacement improves your chances of quitting, a study author said.

The increased health risks linked to e-cigarette use held strong even after researchers accounted for other potential risk factors, such as age, excess weight, diabetes and smoking.

Because the products are not properly labeled, they could pose a risk to people who take nitrates for high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol or heart disease.

In a small new study of people who vape, about half said they had a cigarette occasionally but did not consider it a complete relapse into smoking.

Smoking among teens dropped off dramatically after e-cigarette use became more widespread in 2013, according to one new study. This is counter to previous arguments that electronic cigarettes could be a gateway to smoking.

Smokers who regularly spent time with e-cigarette users (vapers) were about 20 percent more likely to be highly motivated to quit and to have made a recent quit attempt, a new study finds.

Between 2011 and 2018, the number of high school teens who started vaping, as e-cigarette use is called, increased from 220,000 (1.5 percent) to just over 3 million (20.8 percent), according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that it will limit or ban access to flavored e-cigarettes, menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.

Earlier in November, media reports suggested that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would soon ban sales of most flavored electronic cigarettes in retail stores and gas stations across the United States.

The agency will also mandate age age-verification measures for online sales to prevent minors from buying the flavor pods.

U.S. smoking rates have fallen to the lowest levels ever, federal health officials say. Among adult smokers, the smoking rate fell from 15.5 percent in 2016 to 14 percent in 2017. That rate was 67 percent lower than it was in 1965.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been going after e-cigarette makers for marketing that appeals to teens.