The New Zealand medical journal
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Smokers need new products and policies to escape smoking's risks. And the next generation needs policies that will better protect them from becoming smokers. Low-nitrosamine tobacco snuff (hereafter termed 'snuff') is 20 times less dangerous than cigarette smoking. ⋯ Tax each class of tobacco products proportionate to the respective risks of each. (Tax cigarettes at 20 times the snuff rate, instead of at the same rate.) Legislate, to expand the Smoke-free Environments Act's aims to include ending the sale of cigarettes and ending smoking deaths--i.e: Allow oral snuff to compete with cigarettes for market share (and for the smoker's nicotine receptors). Reduce addiction to smoking, by decreasing the nicotine content of cigarettes by 5% every 6 months. (Below 20% of current levels, most smokers will quit or switch to snuff.), Allot cigarette supply quotas to manufacturers and importers, decreasing by 5% every 6 months, on the grounds that cigarette smoke is irremediably toxic. The summed effects of these changes could end cigarette sales within 10 years, and prevent 90% of cigarette deaths within 22 years thereafter.
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To estimate the effectiveness of colorectal cancer screening with faecal occult blood testing (FOBT), flexible sigmoidoscopy (FS), and combinations of FOBT and FS in preventing colorectal cancer (CRC) deaths. ⋯ There is high-quality evidence showing that guaiac-based FOBT screening reduces mortality from CRC. No such evidence exists for screening with FS either alone, or in combination with FOBT, but this should be re-evaluated once data become available from four large ongoing trials.