News analysis
Canada: pharmacy tobacco sales to mentally ill people
Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, Alberta, Canada; cels@ualberta.ca
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The mental health community is finally waking up to the reality of mentally ill people being disproportionately affected by the tobacco epidemic. In Canada, about one in five people are affected by mental illness, and an estimated 50% of them (and up to 90% of schizophrenics) are smokers. They are also less likely to quit than the general population. For this group, too, the high cost of smoking often means that regular meals, family responsibilities, stable housing and other necessities are relinquished, leading to an inevitable exacerbation of a downward drift in society, with more social ills further marginalising them. To retain smokers and recruit new ones the tobacco industry has conducted extensive research on factors impacting on the mentally ill, who may be seen as an easy target - industry documents describe them as "anxious", "psychologically vulnerable", "angry", and "least likely to quit," to name only a few.
There
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Goldberg, J O, Van Exan, J
(2008). Longitudinal rates of smoking in a schizophrenia sample. Tobacco Control
17: 271-275
[Abstract] [Full Text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
