Anti-Smoking Measures Implemented by Educational Institutions and the Prohibition of Smoking and Protection of Non-Smokers Health Ordinance, 2002.

Various legislative measures have been taken in Pakistan to restrict smoking. The law prohibits smoking in public places, which include educational institutions, and provides the procedure and the punishments regarding its violations. Educational institutions, instead of observing the law, have devised their own anti-smoking measures. Consequently, educational institutions themselves determine guilt and impose and collect fines whenever students smoke on their premises. Thus, by implementing their own disciplinary processes and by themselves awarding punishments, educational institutions are acting contrary to what the law has ordained. In order to demonstrate the same, websites and other publically available documents of various educational institutions were consulted to obtain information regarding their anti-smoking policies and rules. The information confirmed that educational institutions are not acting in conformity with the law. It is recommended that awareness-raising campaigns must be launched for educational institutions and students in order for the law to take its course and achieve its objective.

Review of the Auricular Acupuncture Effects / 全日本鍼灸学会雑誌

A seminar was held with “the development of research on auricular acupuncture” as the main theme. In this seminar, the recent development of auricular acupuncture in Japan and abroad, its action mechanism, and clinical effects were reviewed, and the findings were comprehensively evaluated.<BR>Concerning basic research on the effects of auricular acupuncture on obesity, the relationship between the auricle and hypothalamo-autonomic system and individual variation associated with differences in the condition of patients receiving the treatment were reported. As for the action mechanism, leptin expressed in white adi-pose tissue (WAT) due to acupuncture stimulation of the auricle was reported to bind to leptin receptors (Ob-R) in both peripheries and the center and suppress food intake.<BR>Concerning clinical effects of auricular acupuncture, the results reported in Japan indicating its effectiveness for the treatment of obesity were presented. However, no overall conclusion was reached, because papers published abroad were not consistent in the therapeutic procedure or evaluation parameters. Auricular acupuncture appeared to be clinically effective for analgesia and the treatment of drug addiction but ineffective as an anti-smoking treatment.