Todays news and blogs at a glance..

Simon Thurlow met with the Welsh Department of Health. The benefits of Nicotine. A Smokers Tale with 72 years experience. Jo Lincoln and Argvargen on Smoking and Mental Health. The Daily Digest from NSP. Another E-Cig friendly Stop Smoking Service

A Meeting with the Welsh Dept of Health

Great report on Simons meeting with the Welsh Department of Health

New Year, new challenges, same barriers to overcome. It may now be 2015, but the battle against the insane proposals by the Welsh Government to ban vaping in public enclosed spaces rages onward. Throughout 2014, a group of us had been meeting with different AM’s to explain our point of view about why they should oppose any proposals to ban vaping in public enclosed spaces. We had met with a great deal of success in this matter, bringing those AM’s to our point of view and gaining their support. Now I was preparing to go into the Lion’s Den. I was about to sit down and discuss the issue with the Tobacco Control people at the Welsh Department of Health. I have to admit that I have done this so many times over the last few months that I no longer feel nervous at all in these meetings and have got very used to them occurring…..

The benefits of Nicotine

A brilliant read as always from The rambling thoughts of an Irish Grandad-

It is a known medical fact that all diseases are “smoking related”.

Everything from Athlete’s Foot through to Yellow Fever is on the list and it makes life a lot easier for the Anti Nazis.  If your death is non-accidental then it has to have been a smoking related disease which is all good for business and even better for propaganda.  Even if you have never smoked but die from Bubonic Plague then you must have been in contact with cigarette smoke at some stage in your life [two seconds is enough, as we all know there is no safe level yada yada yada]….

THE SMOKER’S TALE

I am 72 years old now, and in fact I am nearer to 73 than to 72, I first started smoking when I was about 10 or 11, through peer pressure, the bad lads did it so I wanted to smoke as well.

At that age it was just the odd cigarette, now and again, when and if, I had the money to get hold of some cigarettes, in which case I would get one of the older boys to buy me some cigarettes….

The milkmen (and women) of human kindness do their rounds…

Jo Lincoln in response to the smoking ban in mental health facilities:

This is kind of a revisit to a previous post. A previous post which dealt with the inhuman notion emanating from the bowels of Public Health England whereby institutionalized mental health patients would be banned from smoking for the duration of their stay. A stay which, in many cases, is mandated under the UK’s Mental Health Act. In other words it’s hardly voluntary….

Fenton!……Fenton!…..Fenton!…Oh Jesus Christ…FENTON!!!

Argvargen following on from Jo Lincoln-

I have worked at Alzheimers’ institutions. It’s tough. I have not worked in a mental health facility, but I can only imagine how much tougher, more frustrating, potentially dangerous and above all thankless the staff’s task must be. To offer the care required involves patience, mental & sometimes physical strength, levels of understanding and people skills that many of us simply couldn’t envisage, and a whole lot of support. To do this job with a whole bunch of people that are told on arrival that they can no longer smoke or vape is simply making things more difficult than they already are for everyone involved…..

Bristol E-Cig Friendly Stop Smoking Service

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Nicotine Science and Policy – Daily Digest – Mon, 19 January 2015

The study at the University of Texas Medical Branch estimated the prevalence of secondhand smoke exposure worldwide among teens who had never smoked, and found that one third of those teens are exposed to secondhand smoke inside the home….

The lives of nearly 18,000 Ohioans end each year as a result of the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death….

Long-term use of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) has been approved in several countries for smokers who are unable or unwilling to quit smoking….