Doctors Launch New Online Resource To Get The True Facts Out About Tobacco

Did you know?

• When someone starts smoking, the risk of addiction to nicotine is greater than that of cocaine.
• Cigarette butts take one to five years to break down.
• If a medium level smoker ? 20 per day ? gave up smoking they would save over £1,000 a year.
  
• The tobacco industry has tried to stop or weaken health warnings being used on cigarette packets.

The BMA's Tobacco Control Resource Centre (TCRC) is today launching "Tobacco FactFile" http://www.tobaccofactfile.org. This launch coincides with the deadline for the first international treaty for public health, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which takes place on Friday 28 February. This treaty will commit governments worldwide to take concrete action to stem the tide of tobacco-related illness and death.

'Tobacco FactFile' is an online database designed for health professionals, educationalists, the public and the media. It is the first one-stop information source about tobacco of its kind.

The launch of 'Tobacco FactFile' will take place at midday at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The key speaker is Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).

All information produced by 'Tobacco FactFile' has a quality stamp as it has been peer-reviewed by 'Tobacco FactFile's' editorial board.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, BMA Head of Science and Ethics, said today: "In a world where misinformation and myth are common, 'Tobacco FactFile' presents the hard truth about the global tobacco epidemic. It can be difficult to get hold of reliable information on the true impact of smoking, especially when powerful commercial interests are at play."

Welcoming the project, Professor Sir Richard Doll, whose pioneering research first demonstrated the link between smoking and lung cancer, said: "Effective tobacco control policies must be firmly rooted in the evidence. 'Tobacco FactFile' presents reliable information on the true consequences of tobacco use. A treasury of information for tobacco control."

'Tobacco FactFile' differs from other databases currently available online. Rather than being a traditional bibliographic database, it can provide ready access to key pieces of information with the assurance that experts in the field have selected these. The database is also available in Spanish, German and French.

Visitors to 'FactFile' can sign up to receive a randomly selected fact every week or month. They can also put a banner on their own website; the banner displays a new fact each time the page is refreshed.

The European Commission funded the development of the database and this will continue until 2006.