Mental Health Zeitgeist

Reuters - Japanese investigators say that survival rates are better for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who never smoked than in NSCLC patients with a history of smoking. Other disease characteristics are different as well between the two populations.

Reuters - Chewing nicotine gum may not help pregnant women stop smoking, but it may help them cut back on the number of cigarettes they smoke each day and this may cut their risk of having a premature baby or a low-birthweight baby, US researchers report.

Reuters - Girls who take stimulants to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are less likely than others with the condition to start smoking or to abuse alcohol or drugs, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

AFP - Lawyers for the biggest US tobacco maker went before the Supreme Court on Monday to argue that Washington is to blame if anyone felt tricked into thinking that light cigarettes are less dangerous than regular smokes.

AFP - Tobacco use and smoke from coal and wood are likely to claim tens of millions of lives in China over the next quarter-century, according to a study published online on Saturday by the British journal The Lancet.

Reuters - Tens of millions of people will die from respiratory illness and lung cancer over the next 25 years in China if nothing is done to reduce smoking and fuel burning indoors, scientists warned.

AFP - Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, according to a report by a research charity Thursday, which called for a "serious rethink" of drug policy.

Reuters - India banned smoking in public places on Thursday in an attempt to fight tobacco use blamed, directly or indirectly, for a fifth of all deaths in the world's third-largest consumer.

AFP - The health minister for Switzerland's Geneva canton said Wednesday that it could take until 2011 to reinstate a smoking ban overturned by a federal tribunal.

HealthDay - Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Reuters - Smokers in Geneva were given a reprieve on Tuesday after the top Swiss court struck down a ban on smoking in public places, in force since July 1, saying the local government had overstepped its powers.

HealthDay - Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

HealthDay - Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

AFP - Smokers in Britain will be confronted with graphic pictures on cigarette packets from October, showing how tobacco damages health, officials said Friday.

AFP - The potential link between mobile telephones and brain cancer could be similar to the link between lung cancer and smoking -- something tobacco companies took 50 years to recognize, according to US scientists' warning.

Reuters - Financially lucrative commercial collaborations between tobacco companies and major motion picture studios beginning in the late 1920s are responsible for the smoking imagery so prevalent in "classic" movies, investigators report in the BMJ specialist journal Tobacco Control.

HealthDay - TUESDAY, Sept. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Young adults who are casual smokers are 16 times more likely than nonsmokers to be hazardous drinkers and five times more likely to have alcohol-use disorders (AUDs), a U.S. study finds.

AFP - Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Bob Hope, Henry Fonda and other stars of Hollywood's "Golden Age" were paid millions of dollars in today's money for promoting cigarettes, a study published on Thursday said.

Reuters - Physical exertion may help pregnant women stop smoking, researchers said on Tuesday, after two small studies showed a quarter of women who exercised regularly while expecting a baby quit smoking. The British scientists said the quitting rate was about the same as for people who use nicotine replacement.

Reuters - Physical exertion may help pregnant women stop smoking, researchers said on Tuesday, after two small studies showed a quarter of women who exercised regularly while expecting a baby quit smoking.