If you're thinking about quitting smoking, join the rush and click over to the Quit for Good Stop Smoking program but don't waste a good newsletter, read this first!

Previously quit, but struggling? You need this unique guide:
Never Think About Smoking Again

A quote to think about...

Smoking, weight and Christmas
Many smokers have weight challenges. Groan, so how can you enjoy the festive season?

Here's a handy food tip which worked like magic for Joanna.

She went to a health retreat where they had ONE MEAL A DAY, but... stay with me... each mouthful they had to CHEW 200 times.

So it was a loooong meal, blissfully enjoyed and much appreciated by all people and their tummies alike.

Something to contemplate as you slow down and chew...

For the first time in history, it was reported this year, there are now more overweight people in the world (more than a billion) than malnourished (around 800 million).

Never before in history has our culture consumed such vast amounts of sugar. Sugar is not a food. It's so refined our bodies have difficulty utilizing and digesting it.

On average in developed countries, 1/2 a cup of sugar is guzzled, quaffed and sprinkled by each person per day, which amounts to over 150lbs per year.

Puffing on Polonium
The nitty gritty is that not only was the former K.G.B. agent Alexander V. Litvinenko poisoned by radioactive polonium 210 recently, but smokers are also ingesting this horrifying stuff.

When Tobacco is grown using phosphate fertilizers, the plants absorb significant levels of polonium from the soil.

An average of .04 picocuries of polonium 210 is inhaled with each cigarette, or to use more technical words, "powerful radionuclide disgorging alpha particles"-- the most dangerous kind when it comes to lung cancer.

So along with the likes of hundreds of other toxins like cyanide and arsenic, a typical 20-30 a day smoker is also getting the equivalent radiation of 200-300 chest ex-rays per day.

Sadly when smokers die, they don't hit the headlines like Russian spies.
See article in the New York Times on 1 Dec 2006.

The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co family
As you may know from my website, I'm not an anti-smoker - strangely! I am more anti-bad-manners-lack-of-consideration. Otherwise I'm a firm believer in personal rights and responsibilities.

So smokers, smoke away, but when you want to quit, I lay the best at your feet to help.

But as an avid anti-smoker dead set on banning smoking from the face of the earth, you can't beat Patrick Reynolds, Smokefree America's founder and Executive Director.

Patrick is 3rd generation of the famous tobacco co R.J. Reynolds, makers of Camel and Winston. He watched many members of his family die from cigarette-induced emphysema and lung cancer, including his father, R.J. Reynolds, Jr., who died aged 57 from emphysema, and his eldest brother, R.J. Reynolds III, who died from emphysema in 1994.

Patrick Reynold's fascinating bio is worth reading.

See you in 2007 with the next Hot Quit Newsletter.