Tobacco and sugar

Flavorings, especially sweeteners, have been used in US tobacco products for decades, to mask the true taste of the tobacco. The FDA has recently banned some flavourings - specifically those designed to tempt young people to start smoking.

Oregon's Junior Senator, Jeff Merkley, highlighted another tobacco industry trick. In addition to the candy-flavored tobacco, he recently exposed the problem of candy with tobacco in it. Tins of candy, with each one containing a small amount of dissolvable tobacco, have been recently test marketed in several U.S. cities, including Portland.

Merkley, working with Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio won unanimous Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approval of an amendment directing the FDA to refer the matter to the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee.

Their amendment calls for the FDA to investigate“The issue of the nature and impact of the use of dissolvable tobacco products on the public health, including such use among children.” Their amendment was attached to the bill granting the FDA authority to regulate tobacco products.

They followed up with a June 26 letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg in which they explained:

“Dissolvable tobacco products such as Camel Orbs … come in mint and caramel flavors and look like the candies that come out of a PEZ-type dispenser. … Rather than the traditional smokeless tin that leaves a noticeable ‘ring’ in one’s back pocket, these products look like cell phones in a student’s pocket.

“We believe these products are being used as a gateway to addict children to nicotine and graduate them to cigarettes and other tobacco products. In addition, dissolvable tobacco products are being used to discourage current smokers, both youth and adult, from quitting. These types of products allow children to continue their addiction to nicotine when they are in smoke-free places such as classrooms.”

Thank you Senator Merkley...

Not even wrong

When scientists come across something spectacularly stupid, they refer to it as 'not even wrong'.

I was troubled to see an editorial in the CSU's Rocky Mountain Collegian asking the FDA to reverse its decision to ban the manufacture and sale of falvoured cigarettes. The basis for this demand: the ban is an affront to 'personal liberty'.

This demand is 'not even wrong'. Nothing is preventing the author from favouring his own cigarettes, should he or she wish, and nothing is preventing them from buying other flavoured cigarettes - in fact, all US cigarettes are flavoured with sweeteners, to mask the taste of the tobacco.

On the basis of this argument, nothing could be prohibited: coke, crack and crystal meth would all be legalised. Sadly the author does not explain how this exciting new public policy initiative would work.

The author claims that if the FDA really cared about 'the children' they would ban smoking outright, but wouldn't this be a further erosion of liberty? I think the FDA, along with public health workers, oncologists, cardiologists, pulmonologists and surgeons would love to ban smoking, but with 45m Americans addicted to this drug, prohibition is impractical.

With an outright ban not on the cards, we are left with a relatively small menu of options to deal with this public health catastrophe: prevention and cessation campaigns, smoking bans, advertising bans, plain packaging, elimination of 'power walls', taxation and de-normalisation.

So here's the argument against flavoured cigarettes:

1. Smoking kills around 5m people every year, therefore...
2. For tobacco companies to continue to make money (and boy, are they good at making money!), they need to find fresh meat to compensate for those killed by smoking
3. It is very difficult to get adult non-smokers to start smoking, therefore...
4. Tobacco companies need kids to start smoking - it's a commercial imperative and therefore...
5. Tobacco companies need to develop products that appeal to kids, for example, cigarettes with cool-sounding flavours and cellphone-like packaging

By banning flavoured cigarettes, we will not reduce youth smoking. We will stop it from getting even higher though.

Every DAY 3,500 American kids will smoke their first cigarette. For 1,000 it will turn into a life-long drug addiction and it'll kill half of them. That's why it is not only right, but also a moral imperative, to uphold this ban.

David vs. Goliath

Yesterday I attended a meeting of municipal smoking cessation workers in Ontario, Canada.

I was struck by two things: firstly, by the dedication, passion, humour and integrity of the attendees, and second, by the laughable mismatch of resources and money between these wonderful people and the tobacco industry.

If these guys had access to 1% of the money the tobacco industry spends on fighting tobacco control legislation, smoking would be a thing of the past.

Make smoking a thing of your past. Make the first move towards quitting smoking by visiting us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Flavoured tobacco products banned

Today the FDA fired its first shot across the bows of the tobacco companies by banning all flavoured tobacco products with the exception of menthol.

Quoting from an 'historic' internal tobacco company memo which plainly states plans to directly target children, Dr. Laurence Deyton of the FDA said that teen smokers are three times more likely than adult smokers to favour flavoured tobacco products.

I wonder whether they'll ban those disgusting tobacco-flavoured cigarettes?!

Whether you are smoking TwistaLime, Strawberry, Vanilla, Winter Mocha Mint or Marlboro Light, you can quit easily using Allen Carr's simple, drug-free Easyway method.

American tobacco vs. Canadian law - you decide

Rep. Jim Battle of South Carolina's article published on scnow.com serves as a reminder of how influential the tobacco industry remains at all level of politics.

His article bemoans the impact that the Canadian government's decision to ban flavoured tobacco products, which have been specifically designed to appeal to young people, will have. He says that this will have an effect on South Carolina's revenues as a major tobacco producer and must be stopped.

It is mind-boggling that anyone would place the interests of tobacco companies over public health and in particular, youth smoking. Then again, Mr. Battle is a good friend of Big Tobacco and his work in defence of them has netted campaign contributions from Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Lorillard, US Tobacco and Brown & Williamson.

Rather than propping up an industry that is already spectacularly profitable and that kills nearly half-a-million North Americans every year, perhaps South Carolina's legislators ought to be looking for new opportunities to replace the tobacco industry, which, like many of its' customers is in terminal decline.

Gosh, politics really is a dirty game...

Nicotine Replacement Therapy

Yesterday we received an email from Ann Garner of Pittsburgh, PA. She wrote: "I'm a smoker who has just become pregnant and my doctor keeps recommending that I use the nicotine patch to quit, but I've done some research and I'm not convinced it's going to help me. What should I do?'

Whilst we are reluctant to question the advice of doctors, it's difficult to understand how Ann's baby will benefit from regular doses of an addictive drug, so this is a great question.

Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) was first introduced as a quitting aid in the 1980s. Today, it comes in a variety of forms: nicotine patches, gum, nasal inhalators, lozenges, e-cigarettes, nicotine water, nicotine lollipops - the list is endless.

The idea behind NRT is that the smoking problem has two components; physical addiction to nicotine, and the psychological 'need' to smoke. Nicotine replacement is used to maintain the physical aspect of the addiction while giving the addict the chance to deal with the psychological aspect. Once that is successfully dealt with, then they can address the physical side. The only problem is that this theory is complete nonsense: nicotine addiction is the problem, how can it also be the solution? Would you give an alcoholic alcohol to get off alcohol or crack to a crack addict to help him stop using crack?

According to Clive Turner, Director of Action on Smoking and Health and long-time advocate of NRT, the long-term success rate for NRT products is around 6%. An article on whyquit.org shows that the success rate for second- or third-time NRT users is less than using nothing at all.

By contrast, Allen Carr's simple, drug-free Easyway method delivered via webcasts, books and live seminars has a 12-month success rate of 63.6% for a pack-a-day smoker. This rises to 75.8% for people who are able to take advantage of our support programme.

For a commonsense approach to quitting visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Does Allen Carr's Easyway work?

There are literally thousands of stop smoking programs, seminars, books, websites, drugs, patches, inhalers, gum, nasal sprays, and other nicotine replacement therapies, subliminal CDs, motivational DVDs, hypnotherapy, herbal remedies, laser treatments, psychological therapies, and the like. All of them have their seductive sales pitch and all of them "claim" to work. The truth is, none of them really do. Out of all the quit smoking techniques mentioned above few of them have long-term success rates much above 10%.


So what makes Allen Carr's Easyway different? Well, don't listen to us - we're biased! Instead take a look at some of the thousands of inspirational quit smoking stories from some of the millions of former smokers who have been through Allen Carr's simple, drug-free program...


"It worked for me and about 20 other people I know. Seriously." Jason Mraz, Artist


Click here to visit our Testimonials page

How to quit smoking

Got this email from Ted Fenton (www.goseeted.com)...

"I attended your seminar on November 19, 2005 in Los Angeles and was a heavy 40 to 50 cigarettes a day smoker. I have not had one since. I can't even imagine now, that I used to smoke the way I did...it's amazing! I had also tried to quit a bunch of times before....this seminar works.

Thanks for extending my life."

If Ted can do it, why not you? To find out more about Allen Carr's simple, drug-free approach to quitting, please visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Patrick Swayze

Astonishingly, some members of the anti-smoking lobby have used this tragedy to criticize Patrick Swayze for not quitting smoking.

Personally, I don't really care whether or not smoking initiates or merely accelerates pancreatic cancer, yesterday we lost a prince - a truly good man: that's what we should be focusing on.

Our condolences and thoughts are with Mr. Swayze's family at this trying time.

How Anthony Hopkins quit smoking

Oscar-winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins quit many years ago using Allen Carr's Easyway method. He became such a fan that he offered to provide a voice-over for the introduction to Allen's first video.

He describes the method perfectly: "Being a smoker is like being trapped in a complicated maze. You want to get out, but you don't know where to start or which way to turn. It's as if Allen Carr has a map of this maze and can help you navigate your way out."

For a simple, drug-free quit, visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Thought for the day...

What happens to all those cigarette butts that just get tossed onto the sidewalk?

When I was a smoker I didn't give them a second thought, but cigarette butts are easily the world's biggest source of litter with 4,500,000,000,000 (that's 4.5 TRILLION) being discarded annually.

Keep America Beautfiul (www.kab.org) estimates that cigarette butts constitute 34% of all litter (food wrappers came in second place, with around 10%). On a monthly clean-up of a small section of Boynton Beach in Florida, over 5,000 butts are collected daily.

Cigarette butts contain arsenic, acetone, lead, formaldehyde, benzene, ammonia and cadmium. These chemicals seep out on contact with water, making them deadly to marine life. The filters are made of cellulose acetate, which takes decades to biodegrade.

So before you toss your butt away, think about holding onto it and throwing it in a trash can...

Or, even better, quit smoking with the world's most effective stop smoking method - Allen Carr's Easyway. For more information about this simple, drug-free approach to quitting, visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Allen Carr's Easyway live seminar in LA

We are delighted to announce that the next Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking seminar date for Los Angeles is Saturday September 26th.

The session will be held in Santa Monica at the Georgian Hotel on Ocean Avenue. The seminar runs from 10am until 4pm. As is standard at Allen Carr's Easyway seminars, attendees will be welcome to smoke throughout.

The session will be led by Damian O'Hara, President of Allen Carr North America. "I love doing sessions on the West Coast." he said "There are always tons of interesting people who attend in LA."

Allen Carr's Easyway clientele reads like a who's who of Hollywood with Oscar-winning actors and Grammy-winning musicians heading the list.

Space at the seminar is extremely restricted, with just 20 spots, 15 of which have already been reserved, so smokers wishing to attend should book now to avoid disappointment.

To find out more information about our LA seminar or to make a reservation, please visit us at http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/Seminars/GroupSessions/LosAngelesseminars.aspx

Another happy non-smoker

Today, we received this email from Jenny Evans, who attended one of our live seminars in NYC.

She says: "I never thought I could stop smoking after 45 years. How could I handle life? I didn't even remember what it was like to be a "Non-Smoker". Well, I have been smoke-free for 2 months now using the "EasyWay", and I feel great! This has been the most empowering gift I have ever given myself. I believe if I can do this.....anyone can!!!!!! I really mean that."

Thank you Jenny for sharing this inspirational story.

To find out how Jenny did it, and how you can too, please visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Tobacco is tobacco is tobacco...

In his blog at the right-wing, libertarian Cato Institute site Cato@Liberty, David Boaz says that because Philip Morris is not fighting alongside their fellow tobacco companies to overturn new advertising restrictions, we should say that this is not about "Big" Tobacco, but "Medium" Tobacco.

But I think there's a much more interesting observation here: Why aren't Philip Morris fighting along with the rest of the industry? Why are they now accepting the same advertising restrictions that througohut the 1970s and 1980s they fought tooth and nail against? I hate to sound cynical, but if all advertising is banned, no-one will ever be able to take over Philip Morris's No.1 position as market leader. No wonder Philip Morris want this ban just as much as the tobacco-control advocates, albeit for completely different reasons!

Is PM's position altruism or self-interest? You decide.

Plain packaging - the tobacco industry's worst nightmare

While American tobacco companies are going to court to try to avoid putting proper health warnings on cigarettes, there is a much bigger drama being played out in Europe, where tobacco control advocates have proposed the implementation of plain packaging for cigarettes - no camels, no colour, no chevrons, no fancy typrefaces, nothing. Just plain grey packaging with the name of the brand in simple black text.

The tobacco industry is a lot more worried about plain packaging than they are about health warnings. They know that older smokers ignore the health warnings and that younger smokers and experimenters feel that they don't apply - "I'll quit years before that happens" they tell themselves...

On the other hand, their branding, logo and typeface is really all they have left to try to appeal to customers. That's why the tobacco industry spends so much money developing sexy packaging...hot pink, cellphone shaped packs. Good thing they aren't trying to appeal to kids!

To quit smoking easily and enjoyably visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Tobacco companies and freedom of expression

I was reading Dave Melson's blog entry which described his concerns over limits to free expression in the light of the current court case in which tobacco companies are attempting to have loosened recently imposed advertising and packaging restrictions.

I share his concerns, but feel this might be a special case...

This was Allen Carr north America's response...

"I totally understand the almost visceral reaction to any potential threat to freedom of expression, but with their guiding principles of fairness and equality, if the Founding Fathers had seen the way that First Amendment rights had been so egregiously abused by certain people, institutions, industries and companies, they wouldn't have hesitated for a second to legislate against them.

The tobacco industry is surely one such case: Smoking has a truly catastrophic human, financial and societal cost. An estimated 400,000 Americans die from smoking-related diseases every year (part of the nearly 6m worldwide) to say nothing of the 8m Americans living with smoking-related health problems, the millions of loved ones left behind or the estimated $100bn spent every year on caring for smokers.

The links between smoking and cancer and heart disease were established in the early 'sixties. For FORTY YEARS the tobacco industry publicly and energetically denied, while privately acknowledging, these and hundreds of other scientific findings. Big Tobacco have used their First Amendment rights to deceive, distort, deny and lie with stunning effect.

We have a right to bear arms, but if you are convicted of a gun crime, then you are likely going to be prohibited from owning a gun in the future. I think most people would agree that this makes sense.

Likewise, if someone has been found to continually and cynically use their First Amendment rights over a forty-year period to promote an addictive product they know to cause death and disease, why wouldn't it be equally correct that their right to free expression be limited and subject to oversight in the specific areas they have been found guilty of lying in?

Don't get me wrong, this is not a sanction I would take lightly, but I feel that special cases sometimes need extraordinary actions, and in this case I sense the punishment very much fits the crime, so to speak.

Incidentally, all this bill really does is to bring the US a little closer to where every other developed nation is on tobacco control already. The Australians, Canadian and Europeans have had these warnings and this type of advertising restrictions for years.

By the tobacco industry's deeds shall ye know them. Sometimes you know the right side of an argument just by seeing who is on the other side..."

Quit smoking success rates: Nicotine patch

Every day we get visitors to our site asking about the success rate for other quit smoking methods, so today I would like to focus on one of the most popular (and least effective!) quit smoking aids: the nicotine patch.

The nicotine patch is an adhesive patch that releases nicotine into the bloodstream. It is marketed as a quit smoking aid, and for years manufacturers have claimed that the patch "double your chances of quitting" (this claim appears on the US Surgeon General's office, Health Canada, Cancer Society and Heart Assocation websites) but double it from what to what? From 50% to 100% or from 1% to 2%?

Believe it or not, it is actually much harder than you think to find out even something this straightforward. The reason for this is that researchers rarely quote an actual success rate. Instead they compare the success of a treatment to placebo or to no treatment and quote the difference as an Odds Ratio (OR). So if a treatment is twice as effective as placebo, it has an OR of 2. If it's half as effective the OR would be 0.5.

There have been hundreds of studies looking into the effectiveness of the nicotine patch. Cochrane's Review, an independent body examining evidence-based treatments, identified 111 trials covering over 40,000 smokers and concluded that the nicotine patch has an OR of 1.66 vs. placebo.

So, if you slap a nicotine patch on, then you have a 66% better chance of quitting than if you wore a patch with no nicotine. This is interesting to me. If nicotine replacement really worked, you would expect it to be two, three or even five times higher than placebo or using nothing at all.

Clive Bates, Director of Action on Smoking and Health in the UK and one of the most vocal supporters of nicotine replacement therapy sheds some light on this issue. In a post on a discussion thread in April 2002, Mr. Bates wrote: "The unaided quit rate is about 3% success per attempt. NRT doubles that to 6%."

So, according to one of its biggest supporters, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) has a success rate of 6% or, put another way, a 94% failure rate.

Allen Carr was dismissive of NRT from the beginning. He said "Telling a nicotine addict to stop using nicotine by taking nicotine is a bit like telling an alcoholic to drink beer instead of wine."

Ellen DeGeneres said it best: "The nicotine patch only works when you put one over each eye so you can't find your cigarettes!"

For a simple, no-BS, drug-free approach to quitting, visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Leopards never change their spots

Today I would like to thank the tobacco industry for reminding everyone how 'moral' they really are as their court case against the FDA kicks off in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

According to the tobacco companies who are the plaintiffs in the case, President Obama's Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act intrudes on their first amendment rights.

The Act, which was signed into law on June 22nd 2009, brings the US into line with the rest of the developed world in curtailing tobacco advertising and introducing graphic health warnings on pack.

There are three aspects of this case I find interesting: firstly, Philip Morris - America's biggest tobacco company, is not involved. Why not? Well, believe it or not, they actually want the legislation to be enacted. Why? Because they are the market leader by far and if advertising is banned, then that's the way it'll stay.

Secondly, the industry has chosen a Kentucky jurisdiction because as a key tobacco state, they feel it more likely that they'll get a sympathetic hearing.

Thirdly, the industry insists that it only markets to adults, and that all communication are aimed at adult smokers, trying to encourage them to switch brands. But this is clearly nonsense. Why spend billions of dollars every year competing for a sector only worth a few hundred million?

The tobacco industry has targeted kids for decades. In their own words...

"…the lower age limit for the profile of young smokers is to remain at 14."

"If you are really and truly not going to sell to children, you are going to be out of business in 30 years."

"[Brown & Williamson] will not support a youth smoking program which discourages young people from smoking."

"We have been asked by our client to come up with a package design... a design that’s attractive to kids.

"We reserve that right [to smoke] for the poor, the young, the black and the stupid."

R.J. Reynolds was once asked if they were targeting junior high school kids or younger. The reply? "They got lips? We want them."

Richard Daynard, a professor at the Northeastern School of Law in Boston and chairman of its Tobacco Products Liability Project, said: ''They want this stuff stopped in its tracks so they can keep pitching cigarettes to kids."

Business as usual then...

How Ashton Kutcher quit smoking...

Ashton Kutcher: actor, director, prankster and now...non-smoker!

Listen to Ashton talk about how he quit smoking using Allen Carr's unique Easyway method. You can see him talk about it on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno by clicking here. You will also find testimonials from Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sir Richard Branson, Ellen DeGeneres, Jason Mraz, Lou Reed, Stewart Copeland and David Blaine.

We want to thank Ashton - and all our other celebrity fans - for going public with this and for spreading the word.

To find out more about this simple, drug-free approach to quitting, please visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com