Cigarette Addiction

Any addict will assure you that cigarettes are harder to quit than heroin. Among the 4,000 or more chemicals in a cigarette are sulfuric acid (a car battery ingredient), benzene (a petrol additive), and formaldehyde (embalming fluid). Nicotine in tobacco has a powerful dual effect on brain chemistry, relaxing you and stimulating you at the same time. You can feel an immediate reduction in anxiety, and yet feel more alert than before. No wonder tobacco is so seductive.

When someone stops smoking, the body begins to repair itself, and the delicate lung tissue begins to clean out the debris from the cigarettes. You cough. You spit. You clear your throat. The little cilia that were stunned into inactivity by the cigarettes are coming alive again, moving waste through the lungs and out. Your need for oral satisfaction may lead to overeating.

When you were supplying nicotine regularly, parts of your nervous system turned off. Why produce what's provided for it without effort? Without nicotine appearing regularly, the body goes through some days, maybe even weeks, of irritability, fatigue, lack of concentration, insomnia, headaches, indigestion, nausea, and maybe depression. For some days, there will be cravings that come and go for different amounts of time with different people.

We are particularly eager to help people whose cigarette addiction impacts their family, which it inevitably does if the smoker smokes inside the home. The fact alcohol and cigarettes are legal addictions doesn't make them any less deadly and destructive to the fabric of a family's life. Second-hand smoke, for example, transforms a personal habit into not only a method of slow suicide, but also a vehicle for manslaughter.

CARA has designed a treatment program to address the cravings by satisfying the demands within the nerve's receptor sites. We provide the body with needed nutrients that result in cigarettes tasting like cardboard. We help the psychological aspect of smoking by teaching the smoker acupressure massage that stimulates a feeling of peace and wellbeing. These special acupuncture points, accompanied by verbal statements of the core reasons for smoking, help the brain to release the habit almost effortlessly.

"We don't smoke [it], we just sell it. We reserve that right for the young, the poor, the black and the stupid." R.J. Reynolds, as quoted in The Times of London, 02 August 1992

Cigarettes in the Movies

The facts are distressing:

• Despite growing public awareness about the dangers of cigarette smoking and legislation designed to limit exposure to cigarettes in public venues, teens are being exposed to more cigarette smoking than ever – in the movies!


• Smoking in the movies has skyrocketed since 1990 when the smoking companies supposedly agreed to stop paying for their products to be seen in the movies.


• Smoking in movies rated G, PG and PG-13 has increased the most in the past five years, exposing more and more young children and teens to this glamorized addiction.


• 50% of teens start smoking as a result of seeing it in movies.


• One third to one half of all teens who try cigarettes will become addicted.


• One third of all teens who smoke will eventually die from a tobacco-caused disease.

CARA’s campaign
Cara is conducting a multi-level campaign to increase public awareness about the dangers of on-screen cigarette smoking in the movies. We are targeting the viewing audience, the film writers, producers and directors and the entertainment conglomerates that own the motion picture studios. Our lobbying efforts are focused on disseminating information to the general public and entertainment industry professionals through the Internet and industry organizations and associations.

Our goal is to encourage the reduction or elimination of on-screen tobacco use in theatrical pictures viewed by children and young teens.

In the movies, the glamorous and powerful people smoke without consequence.

In the real world, it’s far more often the poor and less-educated people who smoke and die from smoking.

CARA believes it’s time for Hollywood to get real!
If you also believe it’s time for Hollywood to disconnect smoking from glamour, please contribute to CARA’s media campaign.

Additional resources:

Smoke Free Movies aims to sharply reduce the U.S. film industry's usefulness to Big Tobacco's domestic and global marketing — a leading cause of disability and premature death. Smoke Free Movies is a project of Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Glantz is co-author of The Cigarette Papers and Tobacco War and director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

Hollywood Unfiltered, a project of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), the mission of which is to educate professionals in the entertainment industry about the impact on-screen smoking has on young people and to encourage them to take action to reduce the glamorization of on-screen smoking.

Scene Smoking rates movies based on the amount of cigarette usage in them. Their rating of currently released films is updated on a weekly basis.

Tobacco Free Kids presents information about anti-smoking activities on the local, national and international level. Their Youth Action initiative provides teens with advocacy tactics to fight Big Tobacco. It also honors the outstanding work of young people who have taken the lead in holding the tobacco industry accountable for their efforts to market their products to youth.

Smoke-Free Kids is the non-profit foundation formed by Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, the former chief scientist at Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation who went public with what he knew about the tobacco industry to the FDA, the Department of Justice and to the American public through CBS/60 Minutes.

The Foundation for a Smoke-Free America was founded in 1989 by Patrick Reynolds, a grandson of the founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. A former pack-a-day smoker, he saw his father, oldest brother and other relatives die from cigarette-induced emphysema and cancer. Concerned about the widespread death, disease, and economic hardship caused by tobacco, Patrick Reynolds divested his RJR stock, quit smoking and became, in the words of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, "one of the nation's most influential advocates of a smoke-free America."