Set up a neatly laid out plan if you’re already determined to give up the smoking habit. Learn lessons from those who have tried but failed. Indeed, there are several ways to stop smoking but only a few kick the habit for good.

Aetna (NYSE:AET) announced that it is distributing ‘Advising Smokers To Quit’ toolkits to more than 8,500 family-practice and internal-medicine physician offices in Southern New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. The kits are intended to not only encourage a dialogue between physicians and patients on smoking cessation, but also to provide information and tools to aid physicians with management of their patients who smoke. [click link for full article]

Have you ever managed to quit smoking? For how long? If you want to quit smoking once and for all, Cig-Arette focuses on reducing all major causes for smoking interruption failure and is therefore considered one of the best systems for smoking abatement.

Doctors in Northern Ireland have welcomed the NI Health Minister’s announcement, to consult on raising the age for the purchase of tobacco products here.Dr Colin Hamilton, Chairman of the BMA’s Public Health Committee in Northern Ireland, said: “We are pleased that the NI Health Minister, Michael McGimpsey MLA, has decided to go out to consultation on raising the age of sale of tobacco products. [click link for full article]

A new study suggests that smokers have a higher risk of developing psoriasis.US researchers found that heavier smokers have a greater risk of the skin condition and this only falls back to normal 20 years after quitting. The study of 79,000 nurses published in the American Journal of Medicine also found that people with psoriasis who smoke suffered more serverely from the disease. [click link for full article]

Although smoking rates in teenagers has been down for years, researchers have found that girls are starting to smoke in the hope of losing weight.According to a recent study by the American Journal of Health Promotion teenage girls dieting during the two-year study were almost twice as likely to take up smoking than those not dieting. Conversely, the study found that teenage boys turned to cigarettes after attempting and failing at dieting. [click link for full article]