Heena Sharma Blog

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), among the four Indian states with the highest prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), recorded tobacco sales worth Rs 5,530 crore over seven years to 2017-18, according to state sales tax data exclusively accessed by IndiaSpend. This is the equivalent of the funds needed to construct four state-of-the-art hospitals along the lines of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Jammu. COPD, typified by coughing, wheezing and breathlessness, is the second most frequent killer disease in India, responsible for the death of almost 1 million Indians in 2017, IndiaSpend reported in March 2018, citing the Global Burden of Disease study by the University of Washington, US. Caused by the inflammation of the lung’s airways, it destroys the air sacs that extract oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Air pollution and smoking have been established as the primary reasons for COPD in India, according to a 2018 study published in The Lancet.

Trying to quit smoking? Spend time with people who use e-cigarettes . The University College London research has found that smokers who  were regularly exposed to vapers (as opposed to other smokers) were around 20 percent more likely to have reported both a high current motivation to quit and made a recent quit attempt. The findings have been published in BMC Medicine. "Our results found no evidence that spending time with vapers discourages smokers from quitting, which should help to alleviate concerns about the wider public health impact of e-cigarettes," said the study's lead author, Dr Sarah Jackson. Around a quarter (25.8 percent) of smokers in the study said they regularly spent time with vapers. Of these, around a third (32.3 percent) had made an attempt to quit smoking in the previous year - a higher rate than was observed among smokers who did not regularly spend time with vapers (26.8 percent). Read Complete Article Business Standar

Pregnant women are more likely to smoke if they live in areas with a number of cigarette selling shops, according to a new study. Conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, the findings appeared in the journal Tobacco Control . Pregnant women living in Scottish neighbourhoods with the highest availability of tobacco products are 70 per cent more likely to smoke than if they live in areas where no tobacco is sold, researchers say. The team examined maternity records - which include details of expectant mothers' smoking behaviour - for the more than 700,000 births in Scotland between 2000 and 2015. They focused on women who had at least two babies during the period and moved neighbourhood between pregnancies. The data was analysed in tandem with information on all the tobacco outlets in Scotland. Researchers found that the risk of women smoking during a pregnancy increased in line with the local availability of tobacco products. Read Complete Articl

Turns out, E-cigarettes can indeed help people give up smoking faster than any other methods out there. A recent study by the University of Exeter and University of Melbourne and funded by Cancer Research UK, confirmed that in order to stop people from smoking, e-cigarettes should be advertised more openly. The study appeared in the Harm Reduction Journal . Hannah Farrimond, from the University of Exeter, who led the research said, "There are real opportunities for stop smoking services to use e-cigarettes more actively to help people give up smoking, but for this to happen policies around the country need to be consistent, and people need to share best practice and know what others are doing." Farrimond further mentioned that for the smoking cessation work to succeed the initiative should go beyond specialist clinics where only a few smokers go to. Experts believe that this initiative should support smoking cessation in psychiatric units, community ment

The step comes after the Delhi High Court slammed the Health Ministry for not taking regulatory measures on the manufacture, import, sale and trading of e-cigarettes in the country Current Affairs News : In order to crack down on the artificial nicotine products, the government on Tuesday issued an advisory against the sale of vapes , e-cigarettes , e-nicotine flavoured hookah , heat-not-burn devices , e-sheesha and other similar devices in the country. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare advisory issued to all the states and Union Territories, manufacturing, distributing, trading, importing and advertising of any artificially produced nicotine products -- Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) -- will be brought to an end soon. The step comes after the Delhi High Court slammed the Health Ministry for not taking regulatory measures on the manufacture, import, sale and trading of e-cigarettes in the country. The Ministry stated that in