The smoking ban is considered as smoke-free laws which are implemented as a public policy including criminal laws and occupational safety and health regulations. This prohibits tobacco smoking in workplaces and other public places. As several studies have been conducted to investigate the implementation of the smoking ban. Effects of health, tobacco consumption, businesses, and prison smoking restrictions have been documented. The effect of smoking ban towards health has reduced the risk of coronary heart disease and heart attacks and with a lower rate of cardiac, cerebrovascular and respiratory disease hospitalization. The smoking restriction has reduced the rates of smoking through a combination of stigmatization and reduction in the social cues for smoking.  The smoking ban policy has no negative economic effect, but bar and restaurants have claimed that the restriction has a negative impact towards their profit. This has also reduced the healthcare costs to the prisoners although there are tension and violence associated with smoking restrictions inside the jail. A prediction has been made that there might be a widespread non-compliance and protests, but what has been reported in most jurisdictions is that smoke-free laws have high compliance.

There are many quitting options available for smokers who really want to quit. We will go over a few of these methods and then cover each one more in depth in later blog posts.

You can decide to quit gradually with products that aid in helping ween you off nicotine slowly or go the “cold turkey” route, which means that you just stop smoking abruptly.

Gradual Quitting Systems

• Nicotine Gum – This is a gum that you chew that contains nicotine. You start with a high concentration nicotine and then each week move down to lower concentrations as you gradually reduce the amount of nicotine needed to satisfy cravings. Once you get to the lowest concentration gum available, the next step is to just go to a gum with no nicotine. This system has proven effective as you slowly reduce cravings.
• Nicotine Transdermal Patches – This is a patch that contains nicotine that you stick to the upper part of your arm. It feeds nicotine into your bloodstream through the skin. It works the same way as the gum mentioned above, you gradually move down to patches with lower nicotine levels until the cravings have been reduced greatly.

Cold Turkey Systems

• Body Detox Systems – These systems use a combination of specially designed diet and supplements to flush nicotine out of your system. They are pretty rigorous and you will experience a bit of withdrawal at first, but after a few days, the cravings drop dramatically. Synergydetox.com is one site that provides these type of detox systems, and there are many others available as well.
• Prescription Medication – New prescription medications like Chantix are being introduced to the market. These have real statistics that show how much their success rate and some are quite good. However many of them do come with side effects, so you should consult your doctor before taking any of these.

An important note, any of these systems will not be effective unless you really want to put a strong effort into quitting smoking.

The society had a dramatic change in their behavior towards their use of tobacco. Their recent use has declined the incidence of cancer. According to a study, there are more deaths from non-communicable diseases. Tobacco smoking and second-hand smoke are one of the risk factors.

Thus, public health scholars came into conclusion that the recent use of tobacco smoking has been accelerated by the public policy interventions to reduce their tobacco usage. Their research has suggested that the most efficient way to reduce influences on tobacco use is to increase the financial cost of tobacco products, this can be done primarily through taxation, smoke-free policies, comprehensive advertising bans, and paid counter-advertising campaigns.

Therapies have been handed out to treat nicotine dependence and they have liberalized the access to the medical forms of nicotine that may address to the future tobacco use. Smoke-free zones are referred to areas where smoking is banned from providing effective protection from environmental tobacco smoke or second-hand smoke. Lung cancer, birth weight reduction to newborn babies, lesser maternal milk production are effects of second-hand smoke to non-smoking people.

How does tobacco smoking affect you, your well-being and your health?  It has a serious effect and it can potentially harm every organ of your body. It can compromise the function of the immune system, the body’s protection from infection and disease has been reduced, hence smokers are more likely to have infections. It has been in the studies that smoking has an effect on our bones, it weakens our bone condition that makes it susceptible to fractures.

A significant bone loss has been discovered to those individuals who smoke, it appears that the risk for low bone mass and fractures is reduced if the individual quits smoking. Breathing tobacco smoke can alter the blood chemistry and damage the blood vessels, thus this can damage the function of the heart. As the smoke is inhaled, the heart rate and blood pressure increases, meanwhile the blood vessels thicken and narrow. The damage of the chemicals in tobacco increases the individual’s risk for atherosclerosis, aneurysm, cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, peripheral arterial disease, and stroke. Every cigarette an individual smokes damage the breathing and contribute to scarring of the lungs.

Tobacco smoking causes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a disease that gets worse over time, emphysema, a condition in which the walls between the air sacs lose their ability to stretch and shrink back, chronic bronchitis, a condition that causes swelling of the lining of the bronchial tubes, pneumonia, asthma, and tuberculosis. You might not be expecting this but, smoking can affect an individual’s vision. Age-related macular degeneration, cataract, optic nerve damage, and even blindness are linked to smoking. As tobacco contains more than 7,000 chemicals, 70 of them are known to cause cancer. Yes, cancer. Tobacco smoking is the number one risk factor for lung cancer. However, it does not only affect the lungs, it can affect the entire body it has been known to cause cancer in the trachea, bronchus, esophagus, oral cavity, lips, nasopharynx, nasal cavity, larynx, stomach, bladder, pancreas, kidney, liver, uterine cervix, colon, and rectum.

Secondhand smoke is a combination of the smoke from the burning end of the cigarette and the smoke exhaled by the smokers. Homes, cars, workplaces, public places, and recreational facilities can be a source of secondhand smokes, thus there is no safe exposure to it. When a non-smoker is a person who is smoking, the inhalation of smoke can give the non-smoker the same danger as to the smoker.

Exposure to secondhand smoke can also cause the non-smoker the same negative effects to the smoker. An investigation has shown that the smoking ban laws have helped improve the public health since the law has restricted smoking in workplaces, restaurants, and bars. Secondhand smoke hurts and individual, and it does not take much and it does not take long. Pregnant women, babies, and children should be protected from secondhand smoke, for it can lead to low birth weight, serious health problems or worse, sudden infant death syndrome. Pregnant women are then advised to stay away from environments where secondhand smoke lingers.