Stop-smoking drugs, modes getting better

GOTCHA, Published in The Philippine Star, Monday, November 26, 2007

Quitters like me are stauncher advocates against smoking. Knowing how hard it is to kick the habit cold turkey, we often encourage those who are still hooked to try anything and everything. Hypnotherapy, patches, candies — one of them just might work. Fortunately for them, science is fast gaining against substance abuse. Pfizer has done it again, in fact. Following the success of its, no, not Viagra, but nicotine chewing gum, the drug maker has come up with a tablet that’s even better. While the gum gives off small doses of nicotine so that the chewer hopefully won’t need to light a stick for a high, the new pill cancels any more need for nicotine. With the substance varenicline tartrate, it simply dampens both the craving for the addictive ingredient and the withdrawal symptoms.

I’ve seen eager crowds at Pfizer booths in hospitals. The pill gives hope to addicts. Smoking accounts for 85 percent of lung cancer deaths. Smokers are more likely to get lung ailments than non-smokers. In 2003, 56 percent of fatalities from heart attack and 57 percent from stroke were smokers. One premature death is avoided by every two smokers who quit.

I remember my doc assuring me that, after trying for years, my odds of trashing the filthy pack could increase by 65 percent with nicotine gums. The new drug surpassed chance in clinical tests: 65 percent of volunteers quit within 12 weeks.

And the price? At P45 per tablet, it’s about the same as a pack of premium cigarettes — sans the nicotine, tar, disease, bad breath, yellowed teeth, and angry stares from disturbing second-hand smoke. Doctors advise potential quitters to take only one tab a day. But good old will power is still best because costless.

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Margarita “Ting-Ting” Cojuangco, president of the Philippine Public Safety College, reacts to my piece Wednesday on bad cops. Excerpts:

“I would like to answer your questions. First, ‘...do they still give premium to training and performance?’ At PPSC we do. So do our police, fire and jail student-officers. They’re disciplined and studious. PPSC, under the DILG Act of 1990, serves as premiere school for the Philippine National Police, Bureau of Fire Protection, and Bureau of Jail Management. For better education, we link up with such schools as Ateneo de Manila, de Davao, de Zamboanga; Letran-Calamba; Xavier-Cagayan de Oro; Notre Dame-Jolo. We oppose the transfer of the PNP Academy and the Police National Training Institute, both under PPSC, to the PNP. Training of public safety officers must be concentrated on a bureau.

“Second, ‘...transforming sloppy pulis patola into accessible, attentive and able mamang pulis is easier said than done. Undoing the bad habits of bad cops needs not only re-indoctrination and retraining, but also higher pay and better equipment. Yet there never seems to be enough money for it.’ Even with meager funding, PPSC immerses new officers and inspectors in communities for six months. This bridges the gap between classroom theories and the realities of patrol beat, intelligence and investigation, and traffic duty. PPSC spends, not the officers, for travel to their new postings. We forbid loans during the officers’ schooling so that no one resorts to — I hate to use this word — kotong to augment his pay.

“Lastly, ‘...it’s not evidence they lack, but knowledge of forensics, equipment — and most of all the drive.’ One of PPSC’s six units is the National Forensic Science Training Institute that offers special courses on crime investigation and detection. To beef up skills, we link up with the US Dept. of State, FBI, Japanese, Australian and British police. For livelihood training of policemen, six of every ten of whom are poor, we tap grants from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.”

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University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila made it to the Top 500 Universities of the World in 2007. Graded by the Times Higher-QS World University Rankings, the state-owned U.P. notched 398, while Jesuit-run ADMU was 454th. U.P. scored 34.7; ADMU, 30.8.

De La Salle University of Manila and University of Santo Tomas, which previously made it to the top 500, didn’t figure this year. They scored 23.9 and 20.8, respectively.

The top 20 universities of the world were: Harvard, US; Cambridge, UK; Yale, US; Oxford, UK; Imperial College of London; Princeton, US; California Institute of Technology; University of Chicago; University College-London; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Columbia, US; McGill University, Canada; Duke, US; University of Pennsylvania; Johns Hopkins, US; Australian National University; University of Tokyo; Hong Kong University; Stanford, US; Cornell, US; Carnegie Mellon, US.

Fifteen universities in Southeast Asia made it to the top 500: two in Singapore, five in Thailand, four in Malaysia, two in Indonesia, and two in the Philippines.

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A bishop in Cebu was so scandalized by a giant poster of the Nativity scene with Gloria Arroyo as Mary and Erap Estrada as Joseph that he had it torn down. It’s not true that the cleric is replacing it with a Calvary scene in which two… never mind.