BBC NEWS | Health | Global tobacco treaty takes force

*Expletive*...how did I manage not to hear or read anything about this till now?!!

BBC calls it Kyoto with teeth but I personally have my doubts. Considering the measures that Singapore has already taken (which makes up most of the treaty's proposals), we haven't seen the kind of drastic reduction in smoking as most proponents has hoped.

In at least one respect, upping the prices may have had a substantive negative effect. If you were in NS about the same time as me, you might remember the price hike somewhere near the end of 2003 (and the accompanying curses of the smokers in camp). What happened was that many of them switched to cheaper cigarettes which as far as I'm aware, a higher tar/poison content. What was worse was some of them started rolling their own cigarettes and simply buying their own tobacco. The lack of filters would substantially increase the amount of tobacco smoke (and hence Carbon Dioxide, Monoxide and Smoke Particles amongst other nasty things) in the smoker's lungs.

Well here's to a smoke free society and hopefully a corresponding lowering of tobacco related deaths (4.1% of annual deaths)

Cheerios!