Background
In the early 1900s, the industrialization of cigarette production rapidly created the first major expansion in tobacco consumption in modern times.
Aims
This article focuses on the ...“tobacco problem” as it was understood, debated and sought governed in Norway around the time of the First World War. I identify various attempts to define tobacco as a problem, including arguments put forward by the anti-tobacco movement, the medical profession and politicians. How were health, moral-aesthetic and economic conditions articulated and integrated in these arguments? What (if any) addictive elements of smoking were in focus? I also discuss the association between perceptions of the tobacco problem and political attempts to regulate it. There were repeated calls for a state tobacco monopoly to be introduced and municipal licensing system for the sale of cigarettes.
Data
The data are sourced from the journals Tobakskampen (The Tobacco Fight), the journal of the norwegian medical association and parliamentary documents.
Findings
The findings suggest that a) to the extent tobacco was perceived as a social problem, it was a moral one (vice), not a behavioural and dependency problem, which alcohol was perceived to be at the time; b) proposals to establish a tobacco monopoly were based on economic arguments only, and lacked any firm connection to social issues, health and morality; and c) the anti-tobacco movement was socially marginal and their commitment to the municipal licensing idea resulted in large regional variations in public support, too large in fact for the idea to be effective. Although the government did not introduce regulations in the 1920s, the industrialization of cigarettes and subsequent developments in advertising caused a “moral panic” among tobacco opponents and created the modern climate of opinion regarding tobacco.
Aim
To discuss how scientific confirmation of cigarette smoking as a major contemporary drug problem during the 1980s was preceded by a rising tide of clinical and pharmaceutical innovation dedicated ...to treating smoking as a problem of addiction.
Background
This current of innovation, commencing already in the 1950s, carried the smokers' clinic and nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) into the world, both of which were originally invented and pioneered in Sweden. It is argued that both of these inventions were vital for advancing the problematization of smoking as a matter of nicotine addiction. While the British doctor Lennox Johnston is well-known for his early attempts to demonstrate the reality of smoking as nicotine addiction through auto-experimentation, the historical significance of Börje Ejrup's founding of the first smokers' clinics in Stockholm in the late 1950s has not been widely commented upon. Attempting to remedy this situation, the rise and fall of Ejrup's clinics deploying lobeline substitution therapy as a cure for ‘nicotinism’ is outlined in the main body of the paper.
Findings
Although the clinical treatment of smoking as addiction lost momentum during the 1960s, the invention of Nicorette gum in southern Sweden at the end of the decade provided renewed impetus. Commencing in Helsingborg and Lund in 1970, the smokers' clinic and NRTs entered into the long-term service of each other; a new combination that in just over a decade would succeed in propagating the reality of smoking as nicotine addiction on to a global stage.
Background
Despite decades of intensive anti-tobacco initiatives, millions of people are still smoking. The health authorities are seeking new tools and extended knowledge. Screening programs may, in ...addition to the potential health benefits from early detection of smoking related diseases, also increase smoking cessation among participants. This study examines the effect of screening participation by comparing the smokers' cessation hazard in screening years to non-screening years.
Methods
All smokers (n=10,471) participated in a three-wave cardiovascular screening and were followed up over a maximum of 14 years. The panel was merged with administrative registers. We used a flexible discrete-time duration model to investigate the effect of the screening program while simultaneously accounting for the possible influence of personal characteristics, addiction indicators, economic factors, health status and health changes. Specifically, we examined and compared long-term smokers (LT; smoked ≥25 years) with short-term (ST; smoked ≤ 5 years) and medium-term (MT; smoked 10-20 years) smokers.
Results
We found that 29% of LT smokers quitted smoking during the follow-up whereas 32% of MT and 48% of ST smokers reported the same. The screening participation years stood out as especially important for all groups. The impact of the first screening was particularly high, and for the first two screenings, the effect was higher for long-term smokers than for the smokers with shorter smoking careers. Receiving an abnormal test result was not associated with a significant increase in cessation hazard for any group of smokers.
Conclusions
The substantial effect of being invited to and participating in a screening appears robust, and may prove useful when discussing future policies for smoking cessation. This paper suggests that further initiatives for consultations with health personnel, in this case through a screening program, could increase the quitting hazard.
Extended description:
Uveljavitev protitobačnega zakona in prepoved kajenja v vseh zaprtih javnih prostorih in na delovnih mestih; poroča Eva KOBE, S. FINŽGAR, A. HEFFERLE in P. JURCA; nepodpisane ...izjave; izjava Ivan MIKOLIN, Bachus; Rok MEŠL, Irish pub; Ana POLANC, ministrstvo za zdravje; Blanka KOSI, vodja blagajnikov v Intersparu Vič; opozorilo, nalepka (prepovedano kajenje).
HVALA, KER NE KADITE; Žur s cigareto; v enem izmed lokalov, zadnje ure; poroča PODJED.
Information:
Enforcement of anti-tobacco law and banned smoking in all closed public places and workplaces. Footage of one of the last parties with cigarettes inside of a closed public room - the last hours smoking the cigarette inside of a public place in one of the bars.
Original language summary:
Uveljavitev protitobačnega zakona in prepoved kajenja v vseh zaprtih javnih prostorih in na delovnih mestih. Zadnje ure ene izmed zabav s cigareto v enem izmed lokalov v Logatcu.
This book comprehensively covers the science and policy issues relevant to one of the major public health disasters of modern times. It pulls together the aetiology and burden of the myriad of ...tobacco-related diseases with the successes and failures of tobacco control policies. The book looks at lessons learnt to help set health policy for reducing the burden of tobacco-related diseases. The book also deals with the international public health policy issues which bear on control of the problem of tobacco use and which vary between continents. The editors are an international group distinguished in the field of tobacco-related diseases, epidemiology, and tobacco control. The contributors are world experts drawn from the various clinical fields. This major reference text gives a unique overview of one of the major public health problems in both the developed and developing world.