New Zealand Based Individual Nicotine Replacement Therapy And Population Level Tobacco Essay

Tobacco has and still is the most important public health issue faced in Australia and internationally. (Jochelson, 2006). Many countries such as North America, England, Australia, Canada and Ireland have introduced policies regarding smoking in public areas and restriction of smoking in indoor areas. (Thomson, Wilson & Edwards, 2009). The government, community leaders and policy makers work towards introducing policies that will stop consumers from smoking in public areas. (Pizacani, maher, Rohde, Drach & Stark, 2012). Government intervention should extend public smoking bans so that second hand smokers can be safe, a better environment and less death incidents relating to smoking.

This essay is aimed to explore, analyse and discuss smoking in adults. Smoking is a public health issue as such is one of the major contributors to high mortality and ill-health in the adults which is preventable (Health and Excellence Care (NICE) (2012). The United Kingdom (UK) is known to have the highest number of people with a history of smoking among people with low socio-economic status (Scriven and Garman, 2006; Goddard and Green, 2005). Smoking is considered a serious epidemic in the UK and the National institute for Health and Excellence Care (NICE, 2012) stated that 28% of adults with low economic status are tobacco smokers compared with 13% of those with economic status or having professional

Tobacco has been around in the world for over 2.5 million years. It was not until a few hundred years ago when the tobacco industry decided to put these crops into use and conjure up tobacco products for the community. A popular tobacco product in society is cigarettes, as they are cheap and simple to use. As long as one is over eighteen, acquiring cigarettes is a straightforward process for a reasonable price, albeit the sin tax. It was not until recently when cigarettes became widely controversial due to the plant containing nicotine, an addictive drug to the body. Aside from containing nicotine and other hazardous chemicals to the body, cigarettes also cause a whole host of health implications

Smoking is recognised as the largest single preventable cause of death and disease in Australia. It is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, emphysema, bronchitis, asthma, renal disease and eye disease. Tobacco contains the powerfully addictive stimulant nicotine, which can make smoking a regular and long-term habit that is not easy to quit (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014). Statistics show

This is essentially why the Council of Australia created a partnership between all levels of Government, to work with the aboriginal communities to ‘close the gap. In 2012, the “close the gap” campaign, managed by Mr Justin Mohamed chair of the NACCHO, stated that the smoking rate of aboriginals is at 47% and in 2013 the ‘close the gap’ campaign has activities in place such as “Develop Regional Implementation”, which “cut down smoking by 20%” of those over the age of 15 who smoke. This has decreased the chance of cancer and lowers mortality rates and is slowly closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous men and women of Australia. The new anti-smoking campaign for 2016 was released on the 2nd of May, which looks at smoking in all Australian people and has also included advertisements with indigenous people talking about their aim to be healthy and give up smoking and not to become a statistic. According to the Victorian Health Department, indigenous people over the age of 15, are “2.8 times more likely to be daily smokers” (Healthgovau, 2016)than any

“Smoking rates have halved in Australians over the past 30 years, falling below 16%. Except for in Indigenous populations, smoking rates have remained at more than twice this level, with even higher rates reported in remote communities” (RACGP, 2013) The inequality that has been faced by Indigenous people is still at an unacceptable level, and has “been identified as a human rights concern by the United Nations” (Dick, 2007). Smoking is a major issue because, “it is the most preventable contributor to the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples” (Ivers, 2011). “Smoking contributes to 17% of the life expectancy gap” (Australian Government: Department for Health and Welfare, 2011). The socio-economic disadvantage faced by Indigenous people leads to the addiction of tobacco, which can be caused by many factors including; their position on the social gradient, education, social exclusion, their employment status and their social support. There is a lack of developed personal skills on the health risks of tobacco, “some Aboriginals don’t identify smoking as a health issue” (Korff, 2014), due to the history of Aboriginal people around smoking. As well as first hand smoke, passive smoking also contributes to poor health, especially for children. Smoking is the major cause for heart disease, stroke, some cancers, lung diseases and a variety of other conditions (HealthInfoNet.ecu.edu.au, 2013). “If we could reduce tobacco consumption levels

Tobacco has a long history in the Americas and date back to somewhere between 600 to 900 A.D. Native American Indians smoked tobacco through a pipe only for religious and medical purposes. Following, European’s immigration to North America, tobacco was rapidly spread around the globe (Jacobs, 1997) due to addictive properties of the chemical, Nicotine present in plant Nicotina tobacum (Boffetta et al., 2008). Only the mode of delivery has changed. In the eighteenth century, snuff was prominent; the nineteenth century was the age of the cigar; the twentieth century saw the rise of the manufactured cigarette, and with a greatly increased number of smokers. At the dawn of the twenty first century approximately one third of adults in the world,

In Australia, tobacco is the largest single preventable cause of diseases and death (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013). According to the National drug strategy household survey 2013, the prevalence of daily smoking in Australian population over 14

Within the Maori population in New Zealand which take up a sixth of the total population close to 50% of the community were daily smokers (Grigg, Waa & Bradbrook, 2008). They also mentioned that cessation of smoking or not smoking at all would have prevented many of the causes of deaths within the community. The discrepancies impacting the community was due to the low socio-economic situation of the people, similar to Australia. In Canada, a similar situation is occurring. According to Tjepkema (2002), the rate of smoking within the aboriginal is not decreasing with 51.4% of aboriginals smoking. Although broken down into light, heavy and occasional smokers (27.2%, 19.3%, 9.9% respectively), these statistics translate into the aboriginal population about 1.9 times more than the non-aboriginal population.

NRT is useful to that population who wants to quit smoking and beneficial to health by reducing active or passive smoking related diseases. Smoking kills more people in NZ each year than road accidents, alcohol, AIDS and other drugs. So, quitting of smoking is one of the best things you can do for your health. To reduce tobacco consumption and improve health of new Zealanders, public health directorate of the ministry of health funded the scheme of Nicotine Replacement Therapy programme. The New Zealand Guidelines for Helping People to Stop Smoking (the Guidelines)

Cigarette consumption is heavily prevalent in Indonesian society and culture. Indonesia ranks as the fifth largest market for tobacco in the world and remains as the only member of the Southeast Asian nations who has not ratified the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Unfortunately, this has led to a high tobacco prevalence among Indonesian youth. Data from the Indonesia Global Youth Tobacco Survey 2014 reported that one in five students were tobacco users. (World Health Organization) Many begin smoking habits at a young age and later suffer from tobacco addiction. The impact on youth is drastic upon their health and socioeconomic status.

Tobacco has been used for over two thousand years among South American and North American countries. In South America, the Mayan culture found different uses for tobacco such as using it for religious ceremonies, medication, as well as recreational purposes. Over time, these cultures gave tobacco as gifts to welcome foreigners to America. Eventually, the foreign countries became familiar with the plant’s purposes and saw how the people abused it. With the widespread diffusion of the powerful plant, a label was created led to plant being illegal in several countries (McCay and Kittleson, 113). Maybe it was because of the effects it had on the people who started to smoked tobacco. Smoking can have numerous effects on the human body such as addictions, smoke related health problems, and the introduction to other drugs. Many people do not realize that cigarettes are not one of the most known and identifiable addictions in society, (DiFranza, 1) but is one of the factors that lead to other addiction.

Let travel back in time, tobacco has only been around for a couple centuries to become popular in modern society. Whereas virologists have speculated that smallpox evolved from an African rodent poxvirus 10 millennia ago. Over the centuries the disease spread widely, especially to developing countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Its spread was attributed to trade and exploration during the early centuries. And if any of you may be able to recall, it was the Englishmen who brought smallpox to Australia during the colonisation period and with the help of other methods, had drastically reduced the Aboriginal population by 90%.

As a result of this, the tobacco companies and society have been very effective in promoting smoking as being socially acceptable. This may seem all the more peculiar, given that most smokers believe smoking is hazardous; indeed, even in 1968 (Horn, Note 1), 53% of smokers reported that they would like to stop. That the antipathy does not necessarily depend on scientific data is evident from the response of Solomon Islanders and Saharan Africans: Though uninformed of the evidence

The arrival of Europeans made many differences in the life pattern of Maori and developed many health problems. Until the 1930s, the Maori lived in the rural area, but after that they moved to urban areas because of loss of land and consequently job opportunity (Ellison-Loschmann & Pearce, 2006). Brooking (2004) identified that geographical changes also leads to develop many diseases like smallpox, cold, flu and so on. Maori spent their life on eating, smoking and sleeping which made them physically unfit. In the late nineteenth century, the habit of tobacco smoking was increased among Maori, and it leads to develop many disease conditions like lung cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, coronary artery disease, hypertensive heart disease (Lange (1999).