Category Archives: Smoking

Tracey Emin on her cancer: ‘I will find love. I will have exhibitions. I will enjoy life’

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As she recovers from a brutal summer of cancer treatment, Tracey Emin takes us round her new show – and imagines spending the next 30 years painting in her pyjamas to the sound of birdsong

‘I am so lucky,” says Tracey Emin as we stand in the grand galleries of the Royal Academy. I can tell, from her brown eyes, that she’s smiling beneath her face mask. As we roam rooms painted moody blue for her new exhibition, in which her paintings, bronzes and neons are juxtaposed with the oils and watercolours of Edvard Munch, Emin adjusts her stoma bag occasionally and laughs a lot. “I’m in love with Munch,” she says. “Not with the art, but with the man. I have been since I was 18.”

This is not what I expected. Minutes earlier, walking through this London gallery’s courtyard, I felt darkness descending everywhere. England was re-entering lockdown, Biden hadn’t yet won Michigan and the last visitors to the Royal Academy for a month were heading out into the night. I expected the 57-year-old artist to be at death’s door, defeated by disease and circumstance. She is, after all, putting on an exhibition hardly anyone will see: “They sold 16,000 advance tickets but when Boris announced the second lockdown, we knew we couldn’t open.” All she can hope is that the gallery will open in December, but that is uncertain.

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North Korea bans smoking in public places to safeguard ‘hygienic living’

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Measure comes despite more than 43% of the country’s male population being smokers, including leader Kim Jong-un

North Korea’s supreme people’s assembly has introduced smoking bans in some public places to provide citizens with “hygienic living environments”, state media KCNA reported.

The tobacco-prohibition law aims to protect the lives and health of North Koreans by tightening the legal and social controls on the production and sale of cigarettes, KCNA on Thursday quoted the legislature as saying.

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Lifestyle changes could delay or prevent 40% of dementia cases – study

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Addressing 12 factors such as excessive drinking and air pollution exposure may have significant effect, experts say

Excessive drinking, exposure to air pollution and head injuries all increase dementia risk, experts say in a report revealing that up to 40% of dementia cases worldwide could be delayed or prevented by addressing 12 such lifestyle factors.

Around 50 million people around the world live with dementia, including about 850,000 people in the UK. By 2040, it has been estimated there will be more than 1.2 million people living with dementia in England and Wales. There is currently no cure.

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Why smokers and vapers – and those around them – may face higher Covid-19 danger

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New reports cast doubt on early claims smoking offered protection from disease

At the beginning of the pandemic, smokers may have thought they had little to worry about, as there was a sliver of good news for them: a study circulating on social media suggested smoking could be associated with a lower risk of contracting Covid-19. That’s not the full story.

Related: Biden predicts Trump will try to 'steal the election' by fighting mail-in voting – live

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Jordan bans smoking and vaping in indoor public spaces

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Decision follows recent revelation country has highest rates of tobacco use in the world

The Jordanian government has banned smoking and vaping in all indoor public spaces a week after a Guardian investigation revealed tobacco use in the country had become the highest in the world.

The country’s health ministry said on Wednesday all enclosed public areas would now be “100% smoke-free environments”, building on an existing but widely flouted ban on smoking inside government buildings, and ending an exemption for hotels, cafes and restaurants provided they separated smokers from non-smokers.

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South Africa tobacco ban greeted with cigarette smuggling boom

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With tobacco sales banned in effort to curb coronavirus, illegal trade has surged on border with Zimbabwe

South Africa and Zimbabwe have stepped up border patrols in a bid to stop cigarette smuggling, which has boomed since Pretoria banned the sale of tobacco in March.

The country claimed smokers were more prone to Covid-19 – something that has been challenged by tobacco companies – but the illegal trade has increased, despite South Africa erecting a R37m (£1.7m) 25-mile fence across the border in April as part of its measures to curb the spread of coronavirus. Smugglers have been crawling through broken sections of the fence and taking advance of the particularly porous Beitbridge/Musina crossing point.

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‘Big tobacco wants our youth’s lungs’: rise of smoking in Jordan

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Despite one of the world’s highest smoking rates, many politicians believe a ban will effect the economy

When patients quit cigarettes at the King Hussein Cancer Center’s smoking clinic they are asked to be patient with their children. Often their offspring have been exposed to so much secondhand smoke that they have become addicted, too.

“For every four cigarettes their parent has smoked, the child has smoked one,” says Firas al-Hawari, a physician who directs the clinic. “We can control the parents with medication, but the kids are going through withdrawals because we don’t have them on medication.”

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British American Tobacco circumventing ad ban, experts say

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BAT seems to be running accounts to promote e-cigarettes after crackdown on hiring influencers

British American Tobacco (BAT) is marketing e-cigarettes and heated cigarettes with pictures of attractive models and using hashtags such as “I dare you to try it”, despite a crackdown last year after it paid social media influencers to promote its products.

BAT had come under fire after hiring young models to sell its products despite having an explicit policy banning under-25s from appearing in adverts.

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Stop smoking campaign in England axed after health budget cuts

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Charity decries government’s ‘foolhardy’ decision to reduce anti-smoking budget by 24%

The government has been accused of undermining its ambition to make England smoke free after an anti-smoking campaign was cancelled following a 24% cut to the public health marketing budget.

Health Harms, a Public Health England (PHE) scheme, has previously sought to harness new year resolutions in January to encourage the 6 million tobacco smokers in the country to quit through vaping and visualising how cancer-causing chemicals and tar are inhaled.

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US teens may be barred from buying vape pens and cigarettes

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Anti-smoking advocates say industry support for legislation is a calculated effort to head off even harder-hitting restrictions

Congress is moving to pass the biggest new sales restrictions on tobacco products in more than a decade, with support from two unlikely backers: the Marlboro cigarette maker, Altria, and the vaping giant Juul.

The legislation would raise the minimum age to purchase all tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, from 18 to 21 nationwide, a step long sought by health advocates. But in the past year Juul and Altria have emerged as the biggest supporters of the measure, blanketing Capitol Hill with lobbyists and advertisements touting their support for the “Tobacco 21” law.

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We’re quitting smoking, so why is big tobacco booming? – video

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Smoking rates are falling in the UK, US and much of Europe. Forty-five per cent of Brits smoked in the 60s and 70s, compared with just 15% today. You would think this was bad news for cigarette profits, but tobacco companies are making more money than ever. They claim they no longer market traditional cigarettes, but behind-the scenes tactics suggest otherwise. Leah Green explains how the most successful business enterprise in history has weathered its fall from grace

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US health officials urge people to stop vaping as third death reported

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Officials are investigating more than 450 possible cases of a severe breathing illness among otherwise ‘healthy young people’

US health officials warned people not to vape until they determine the cause of a severe respiratory illness, which has killed at least three people and hospitalized many more.

Officials are investigating more than 450 possible cases of a severe breathing illness among otherwise “healthy young people”, they said on Friday. Possible cases have been identified across 33 states and one US territory.

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Outdoor smoking ban escalates war over Barcelona’s restaurant terraces

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Restaurateurs say ban on top of new regulations on outdoor space threatens their survival – while residents claim the city’s real issues are being ignored

Enjoying a refreshing drink or a cup of coffee on the sunlit terrace of a bar or restaurant is a cherished pastime in Barcelona – and a fundamental feature of Mediterranean life.

“Terraces are part of who we are and how we live,” says Roger Pallarols, president of the Barcelona restaurateurs association. “For many people, the terrace is like their living room, especially as most of us don’t live in large apartments. If France is Europe’s kitchen, Spain is its terrace.”

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How secondhand drinking ruins lives: ‘Every family has been touched by this’

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Passive smoking is treated as a serious hazard. So why have we been so slow to wake up to the dangers alcohol poses to those who live with – or have a devastating encounter with – a heavy drinker?

Helen Witty thought she had taught her children all about the dangers of drinking. She was raised with the knowledge that her great-grandfather’s alcoholism had led him to suicide. “It’s in the family,” her mother warned her. In a classic expression of the ripple effect of harmful drinking, Witty kept her own consumption modest. And she taught her two children to understand and to be careful of the long shadow cast by other people’s drinking.

But what none of the family had prepared for was the day when Helen Marie, Witty’s 16-year-old daughter, stood in the drive of their Florida home wearing her skates; she wanted to destress before a big school play. She flipped around, blew her mother a kiss and said she would be right back.

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Vaping twice as likely as gum to help smokers quit, research finds

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Study shows 18% success rate with e-cigarettes, compared with 10% with other methods

People are almost twice as likely to succeed in quitting smoking if they use e-cigarettes than if they rely on nicotine replacement patches and gums, a new study has shown.

The research, focused on nearly 900 long-term smokers seeking NHS help to quit, was hailed as a landmark by experts in public health in the UK who believe e-cigarettes have already helped bring down the smoking rate. However, there was less enthusiasm in the United States, where there is concern that vaping nicotine is addictive and may cause children to start smoking.

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Organic Tobacco Market to Discern Magnified Growth During 2026

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Future Market Research analysts have considered land under cultivation vs. land under organic across seven regions to get an overview of the global organic tobacco market in the recently published report titled "Organic Tobacco Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026" that forecasts the global organic tobacco market for a period of 10 years. The numbers we have mentioned in the report represent consumption of organic tobacco by value and volume , while the market values have been derived by studying the pricing captured at the manufacturer level and the price at which smoking and smokeless tobacco producers purchase from crop producers.