Welcome to Smoke Free's Journal

The UPI reported today that people who start smoking before age 17 may increase their risk for developing multiple sclerosis, U.S. researchers said.

The study, from Johns Hopkins University, involved 87 people with MS who were among more than 30,000 people in a larger study. The people with MS were divided into three groups: non-smokers, early smokers who began before age 17 and late smokers, who started smoking at age 17 or older. They were matched by age, gender and race to 435 people without MS.

More than 32 percent of the MS patients were early smokers, compared to 19 percent of the people without MS.

The study author was Dr. Joseph Finkelstein.

Working to ensure that kids never start smoking!

2Smart 2Start is Univera Healthcare's innovative school-based program to keep kids tobacco-free.
Information for kids, parents and teachers is available on the Web at www.2smart2start.org . Roswell Park helps with these efforts with its outreach as well.

Recently The Buffalo News wrote an opinion piece about
how efforts to stop kids from starting is a good thing. What do you think?

Here's an interesting resource for a health paper. Check out this website for key Tobacco Industry Internal Documents The website shows how the industry works to get you to start smoking and how they create the advertising etc.