People can give their opinion on a range of images designed to highlight the dangers of smoking on a website set up by the Department of Health.

Evidence shows that images have a greater impact than written health warnings alone, and they have already been introduced in some countries.

Images include diseased lungs, a dying smoker and a foetus in the womb.

People visiting the website will be able to choose images to support 14 health messages such as ‘Smoking causes fatal lung cancer’ or Smoking may reduce blood flow and causes impotence’.

The final images will cover 40% of the back of packets sold from autumn 2007.

“This measure will help deglamorise cigarette packs and let people know what they really get from smoking” Jean King, Cancer Research UK Send us your comments

Launching the impotence aids, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, said: “We have already made a lot of progress with the stark written warnings on cigarette packs.

“However, these messages become less effective over time so we now need to refresh our approach by introducing new hard-hitting images.

“We know that these type of warnings have already been successful in other countries such as Canada, Singapore and Brazil.

Experts hope the images will have a big impact

The government promised it would introduce picture warnings on cigarette packs in its Choosing Health White Paper in 2004.

Graphic pictures

Jean King, Cancer Research UK’s director of tobacco control, said: “The evidence from Canada, Brazil and elsewhere is clear - graphic picture warnings inform people of the risks of smoking and help encourage people to reduce their smoking or quit altogether.

“They also help minimise uptake by young people. This measure will help deglamorise cigarette packs and let people know what they really get from smoking.”

Amanda Sandford, impotence lipitor for impotence problem uk charity ASH welcomed the move but said the images should be displayed on the front, not the back, of the pack.

“The point of this is to deter people from buying them, especially young people, and they need to be visible at the point of sale.

The warnings could encourage smokers to quit

“Evidence from countries where the pictures are already in place shows it has a strong impact on smokers - for every purchase smokers are reminded of the health consequences of smoking.”

Dr Charmaine Griffiths spokesperson for the British Heart Foundation said: “We welcome this consultation as we know that graphic images can and do prompt people to take steps to quit smoking, as BHF’s successful ‘fatty cigarette’ campaign clearly demonstrated.”

Professor John Britton, Chair of the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group, also welcomed the announcement.

He said: “It is well recognised that strong images conveying the health impacts of smoking have a powerful effect on motivating smokers to quit. This simple initiative will save thousands of lives.”

Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said he was strongly opposed to graphic warnings as smokers were well aware of the dangers of smoking.

“The proposed images are erectile dysfunction causes
offensive and yet another example of smokers being singled out for special attention.

“What about fatty foods, dairy products or alcohol? If they’re going to target tobacco, there should be graphic warnings on other products too.”

The Consumers International lobby group accused drugmakers of using the methods to get doctors to prescribe products and persuade consumers they need them.

It said there was a “shocking” lack of publicity about where the $60bn (33bn) annual marketing spend went.

Drug firms say that they act within strict guidelines.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) told the BBC News website that for UK-based firms there was “a stringent and transparent code of practice that goes beyond the anxiety and impotence of UK law and the industry regulator”.

Sponsorships

Consumers International said it had analysed the selling techniques of many leading companies, including Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson.

The current regulatory framework is clearly insufficient to prevent systemic violations of marketing regulations Consumers International

Richard Lloyd, the group’s director general, said: “The pharmaceutical industry spends nearly twice as much on marketing as it does on research and development, yet consumers know next to nothing about where this money is going.”

He called for a revision of marketing regulations to achieve “more impotence in man from drug companies”.

In most Western markets direct advertising to consumers is banned.

But Mr Lloyd said there were other methods drug companies were using to influence opinion.

These include the sponsoring of patient lobby groups, funding disease awareness campaigns and use of hospitality packages for medical experts.

As producers of life-saving medicines it is important that we ensure doctors know full details ABPI

The report cites sponsorships by such firms as Eli Lilly and Pfizer. The latter, the maker of Viagra, sponsored a campaign by the Impotence Association which sported the Pfizer logo.

The report said only one of the firms studied, Orion Pharma, provided specific marketing budget information.

It also pointed to the “large numbers of serious, recent and repeated breaches of marketing codes”.

This showed the “current regulatory framework is clearly insufficient to prevent systemic violations of marketing regulations”.

However, the ABPI said the number of complaints raised showed the system, which had been impotence vitamins
this year, was working.

It said complaints from drug companies about fellow firms’ activities showed the muse for impotence
was effective.

But it also said it was vital for doctors to know about products.

“There is no point having innovative new medicines if they remain unused,” an association spokesman said.

Chief prosecutor Cedric Visart de Bocarme said Stacy Lemmens, seven, and Nathalie Mahy, 10, were murdered.

The girls disappeared during a street party. Their bodies were found 400 metres from where they were last seen.

The case has revived Belgians’ memories of Marc Dutroux’s paedophile killings, which included two girls from Liege.

“The news of this discovery awakens in all of our hearts a feeling of aversion, of sadness and impotence as well,” Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said in a televised address.

“We cannot understand what drives certain people,”

Mr Verhofstadt sent his condolences to the family and said priority would be given to finding the culprits.

It’s absurd that it took them more than two weeks to find them when they were so close by Andre Deaelcominette, Liege resident

A suspect turned himself in to police two weeks ago. He has been charged with kidnapping the girls, but denies any diabetic impotence
in their disappearance.

Police discovered the body of Stacy Lemmens under a manhole cover in scrubland beside railway lines at 1100 (0900 GMT).

A short while later, Nathalie Mahy’s body was discovered some 20 metres from her stepsister.

Post-mortem examinations are due to be carried out to determine the girls’ causes of death, although Liege prosecutor Anne Bourguinont said: “This can’t be considered to be an accident.”

Residents’ questions

“The hunt for the culprit or culprits is now a priority and everything possible will be done to shed light on the case as soon as possible,” Mr Visart de Bocarme told reporters.

The girls’ bodies were found near to where they disappeared

He said “everything was done to find them alive”, and they had refused to give up hope of a happy outcome.

“Prostate surgery impotence these hopes are today ruined by the discovery of the deceased, should I say murdered, children,” he said.

But shocked residents of Liege’s Saint Leonard man impotence
, where the girls disappeared, are asking why it took the police so long to find the bodies.

“It’s absurd that it took them more than two weeks to find them when they were so close by,” Andre Deaelcominette told the French news agency, AFP.

The two girls were last spotted in the early hours of the morning near a cafe where their mother and father were attending a street party.

Magistrates on Tuesday granted police more time to question the man charged with their kidnapping, Abdellah Ait Oud, a convicted paedophile whose girlfriend works at the cafe.

Belgium was deeply shocked by the Marc Dutroux paedophile case, in which two girls from Liege disappeared in June 1995.

Their bodies were not found until a year later - in Dutroux’s garden.

In 2004 Dutroux was found guilty of leading a gang that kidnapped and raped six girls in the mid-1990s, leading to the deaths of four of them.

On clear summer days, when the sun burns fiercely, what seems like half of Montevideo’s population migrates to the Ramblas, the waterside promenades that edge the peninsula city.

Matrons walking their dogs politely make way for joggers both young and old.

Children hurtle by on roller skates and bicycles.

And courting couples sit looking out over the calm waters of the River Plate, the broad estuary that separates Uruguay from Argentina.

Each couple cradles a thermos flask of hot water and a decorated gourd or cup.

With these almost ritualistic items, they take turns to drink mate, the bitter herb infusion without which no self-respecting Uruguayan - or indeed, Argentine - is complete.

In this hot season, the affluent middle classes who live in more fashionable parts of town stake their claim to what in winter is the preserve of more humble folk.

It is the latter who inhabit the rather grim and basic blocks of flats that line the downtown waterfront.

Opponents have vowed to continue their protests.

And it is the left-wing slogans of the radical parties that many of them support which provide the inspiration for local graffiti artists.

But the seafood restaurants that have been multiplying in recent years rely on the custom of more prosperous families, driving in from the suburbs.

Hungry people on a tighter budget head inland, to one of the low-cost ‘buffets’, which allow customers to eat as much as they want, and have a glass of juice, all for a flat fee, typically about 150 pesos - almost $6.

Wine or beer is extra. These buffets have proved immensely popular among the very young, the very old, the very poor and the very fat.

My favourite, opposite the Dickens English language school, is a vast hangar-like affair, much frequented by students. It offers not only 30 different types of hot dishes, and a salad bar, all of which you can help yourself to, but also a couple of grill counters. There, cooks will prepare steaks, chops and sausages to order, all included within the fixed price.

The amount of meat that Uruguayans can consume is staggering to organic impotence Europeans.

Uruguay is as physically vulnerable to its giant neighbours as a walnut caught in a nutcracker.

Of course, you find the same thing in Argentina and southern Brazil, though the Uruguayans claim that their meat is much better.

“Besides, in Brazilian buffets they charge for the food you eat by the kilo!” one outraged patron of the buffet opposite Dickens’ said to me the other day.

As this particular gentleman had the demeanour of a rampant bull, red-faced and at least a hundred kilos, perhaps 16 stone, himself, I meekly nodded assent.

I did not dare confess to him that when in Brazil, I have often eaten in those drug that cause impotence that are so mean that they weigh the food you consume.

Rival nations

Actually, that has always struck me as rather a good idea, and it certainly avoids wastage by customers whose eyes are bigger than their stomachs.

But in Uruguay, it is often not wise to profess admiration for Brazil or, worse still, for Argentina.

This isn’t just a matter of football rivalry, though that can get pretty heated. Uruguay is as physically vulnerable to its giant neighbours as a walnut caught in a nutcracker.

Erectile dysfunction treatment against the pulp mill spread in Argentina

Perhaps partly as a result of this, Uruguayans are passionately proud of their country and its culture.

“Which Uruguayan painter is most popular in Britain?” one local journalist asked me the other day.

He was incredulous when I replied honestly, “Well, er, no-one!” This fervent impotence youth is rather endearing in a nation of just three million people. It can comes across as arrogance from a nation of 30 million - Argentina, for example.

And it is absolutely insufferable from a nation of 300 million. Let’s not mention any names.

The irony is that Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay are meant to be forging closer links through a South American common market called Mercosur.

This infant organisation has its headquarters on one of the Montevideo Ramblas, in a wedding-cake of a building that was an old fashioned hotel when I first visited the city, more than 20 years ago.

The Mercosur secretariat exudes inactivity, and one can almost hear the snorts of derision from the joggers running by.

One way to guarantee an explosion of offended pride is to ask a Uruguayan what he or she thinks Mercosur has done for their country.

Recently, the first meeting of a new Mercosur acupuncture impotence treatment assembly was held in Brasilia, at which the Brazilians said they wanted to inject new life into the organisation.

But when the Uruguayans protested that the Argentine blockade of bridges linking the two countries was strangling Uruguay’s economy, the Brazilians metaphorically threw their arms in the air and declared, “What can we do about it?”

The raging bull in the buffet opposite Dickens’ literally threw his arms in the air when I asked his view about this Brazilian impotence. “Well,” he replied, to the admiration of nearby diners, “What do you expect from a nation which charges for food by the kilo?”

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 25 January, 2007 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

Boots the chemist is prostatectomy impotence a trial scheme at three of its branches in Manchester.

Men aged between 30 and 65 will be able to buy four pills for 50 after a consultation with the pharmacist.

But Dr Jeff Hackett, chairman of the British Society for Sexual Medicine, said many men were entitled to the drug on the NHS, without paying.

“We have some regulations at the moment that allow a large number of patients to get the drug free on the National Health Service,” he said.

“One of the problems for pharmacists will be to identify these patients who actually shouldn’t be paying who are legally entitled to get it free and that’s quite a challenge.”

Hour-long consultation

Men seeking the drug from the pharmacist will have to undergo some basic medical tests, and anyone wanting a repeat prescription would have to consult a doctor.

Boots pharmacist James Longdon said the men would have an hour-long consultation, including blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol checks.

He added that they would also be made aware that men with certain medical conditions could obtain the drug free of charge with a prescription from their GP.

Boots claims that only 10% of the three million men who suffer from impotence are being treated.

It said offering Viagra without a prescription could help to improve those figures.

The chemist also claimed the move would be a good way to monitor men’s health, as erectile impotence problem was often a marker for a more serious underlying medical condition.

For decades, khat, or miraa as it is popularly known across East Africa, has been the lifeline for farmers in eastern Kenya, but pressure to convince them to abandon the trade is now mounting.

The growing numbers of young adults chewing the mild stimulant has become a major concern among anti-drugs campaigners who fear dependency could ruin a generation.

Some 30 tonnes of khat are harvested each day by both small- and large-scale khat farmers who cultivate the crop in Meru District. Most of the crop is consumed in Kenya, but some is exported to Somalia and United Kingdom.

Somalia

Traders say some 3,000kg of khat are flown to Somalia’s capital everyday where its chewing has become the norm at social gatherings across Mogadishu.

PHOTO GALLERY In pictures: Growing khat Widow turns to khat

Some blame it for Somalia’s misfortunes.

During Islamist rule last year it was banned and the streets were the calmest for decades, but there was resistance.

Most militiamen have a high dependence on the stimulant and it is argued that it causes them to be irrational and easily provoked.

When the Islamist militia seized a consignment worth about $40,000 and set it on fire to mark the beginning of the ban, there was a riot and a curfew had to be imposed to contain the upheaval.

But since the Islamists were defeated at the turn of the year, exports of khat from Kenya have resumed and so has its consumption.

Kenya

Now the pressure to have khat banned is being stepped up in Kenya, where its consumption is on the rise.

FACTS ABOUT KHAT There are two main types of khat - miraa and hereri Miraa is grown mainly in Kenya Hereri comes from Ethiopia A bundle of khat costs about 3 ($6) in Britain Khat is illegal in the US and a bundle there sells for between $50 (28) and $80 (41)

A survey done by the government drug watchdog, National Campaign Against Drugs Abuse, shows a big rise in new users on the coast and in the capital, Nairobi.

“Reports by our officers show that when a khat ban was enforced in Somalia the local dealers become very aggressive and were off loading the surplus products into the local market,” the watchdog’s national co-ordinator Jennifer Kimani told the BBC.

Now her organisation is advising the government to initiate a process where khat farmers are gradually encouraged to switch to other cash crops.

Apart from the negative health effects to the user, which include loss of appetite, lack of sleep, hallucinations, mental health issues and sometimes impotence, khat is also blamed social problems.

For instance in khat-growing areas, cases of boys dropping out of school are rampant.

“Boys choose to work at khat plantations or sell the stimulant instead of going to school because there they make quick money,” Ms Kimani says.

Casual workers at a khat farm can earn up to $20 a shift while small-scale traders in markets across Kenya may earn 10 times that in daily sales.

Problems

In Mombasa, special restaurants, as seen in Yemen, have been designated as khat joints where groups of adults converge daily to chew the shoots and chat or cut business deals.

I have not treated anybody suffering from ailments caused by its use Dr Samuel Murega

But women complain of the long hours their husbands spend in these joints.

Imam Arshad Salim Imam says that numerous cases have been brought before religious leaders by women who report that their husbands have abandoned their family erectile dysfunction injection
.

“We have women who complain that they do not get their conjugal rights because their husbands remain occupied most of the night chewing khat,” says Imam Salim

He further notes that a lot of family income is committed to the habit at the expense of other needs like education, food and health.

For this reason, Imam Salim insists that the government should impose a ban on khat just like neighbouring Tanzania where it illegal to sell or consume the stimulant.

Defence

But Dr Samuel Murega, a medic and khat farmer in Maua, eastern Kenya, believes calls to ban the stimulant are misguided.

Instead of banning the plant, he thinks the government should license and encourage its growth.

He also denies negative health claims.

“I run an active health clinic here… but I have not treated anybody suffering from ailments caused by its use,” says Dr Murega.

“Some people mix khat with other narcotic drugs to get high and they end up in undesirable state. And since they were chewing it openly then the blame goes on the stimulant and not the drugs they have taken which is unfair,” argues Dr Murega.

At present the trade is probably too lucrative for an imminent ban, but the remarkable changes in behaviour seen in Mogadishu when khat was banned has given officials plenty of food for thought.

What do you think? Should khat be banned? Tell us your experiences using the postform below.

The effects of khat chewing are less than those of smoking. Therefore before considering imposing ban on khat chewing, we should ban tobacco smoking first. Secondly, it’s a major cash crop and only income earner in some parts of Kenya. Myself I don’t see any problem in its consumption and I have friends who routinely chew it with no notable side effects.
Peter Karenju, Zanzibar

Banning khat overnight is completely unrealistic - the reality is that many people in eastern Ethiopia rely on khat production for financial support, and would suffer if they did not have this means of income. It is true that for the many men, women and children who chew khat, it can be incredibly destructive to their health (an estimated 80% of ‘psychotic’ patients in Ethiopia’s only mental hospital are the result of khat-induced psychosis), as well as their impotence and vacuum, and the health of their marriages and relationships. But banning the addictive substance will not solve anything - if khat is eradicated, it will happen with the support of the Ethiopian government, (which incidentally takes in millions in khat taxes each year).

The government must condemn khat use and conduct research and spread public health messages about the negative health ramifications of khat, but must impotence lipitor support farmers and coffee growers so they do not have to rely on khat to produce a sustainable income, support education so children will have a greater incentive to go to school, rather than sell khat on the street, and support widows who are the sole bread winners of the family, so they do not have to resort to the khat trade to support their families. Only through a impotence solution approach to this region-wide addiction will there be any progress in the growing fight against khat.
Elizabeth Arend, Jijiga, Ethiopia

There is no need of banning khat. Instead, the Kenya government should regulate and market it as a cash crop since it has the potential of earning substantial foreign exchange. In spite of the negative publicity it is receiving here, khat is not even listed in the handbook of recreational drugs. As compared with synthetic and processed hard drugs like cocaine, heroine, LSD and amphetamines, khat is but a mild stimulant. Nacada has always justified its existence by spreading alarmist messages and recommending solutions that are not only impractical, but also out of touch with reality.
Kipkoriony Rutto, Matsuyama, Japan

Maybe we can liken the propensity to chew khat to the huge appetite for beer in the Western world. Which is the better of the two evils? At least khat is not manufactured. Temperance, however, would be an essential if not critical element here to consider.
Larry Whyte, Kingston, Jamaica

Having lived in Ethiopia I enjoyed the ceremony surrounding khat consumption. It was nice for the community to somewhat shut down on Saturday afternoon and sit with friends to enjoy their company.
Understanding that there are other issues, why not look at the level of cigarette consumption in Africa countries, or better yet, alcohol. Those are far greater problems.
DS, US

For me it’s good news if it’s true that miraa is about to be banned. It is the major source of social problem in Mombas, Kenya as well in Yemen. I personally saw from my father. He would chew khat the whole night and sleep during the day. And when he woke up every body was his enemy till he got another supply and life went on like that. A huge loss to the family income.
Hashim, Dubai, UAE

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