The leading tobacco manufacturers could knowingly advertise cigarettes on YouTube. Using the Internet for advertising, tobacco companies were able to skillfully ignore the law, says a team of scientists from New Zealand.

Tobacco companies have found ways to circumvent the ban on video advertising of their . The leading cigarette manufacturers spread their ads on video portals, reported the BBC.

The researchers studied 163 video on the video portal YouTube. According to them, about 20 videos posted in the website are made very professionally.

The most popular brand on YouTube was Marlboro, which is owned by Philip Morris. According to the study, each video, in which there is this brand of cigarettes, was watched at least by 104,000 people. The most popular video with Marlboro was viewed by 2 million people. The next popular brands are L&M, Winston and Mild Seven.

Scandal has rocked the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, which offers grants to charitable and health related organisations, after it came out that the chairwoman of one of their project partners, the International Development Research Centre in Canada, has links to a tobacco company.

Barbara Mcdougall, formerly external affairs minister in the Canadian government, was working with the foundation on stop-smoking research and tobacco control programs in Africa. However it has emerged that until last month, she sat on the board of Imperial Tobacco Canada.

Since then, the foundation has announced that it is withdrawing the remaining funds from its initial grant, worth .2 million.

All About the Nicotine Patch

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of one of the nicotine patch, one of the most popular NRT’s (nicotine replacement therapies) available on the market today.

The patch first became available in the U.S. by prescription only in 1992, and by 1996 could be bought over-the-counter.
The nicotine patch looks like a square tan bandage. Applied once a day in the morning to clean, dry, non-hairy skin, the nicotine patch is left on all day, and removed just before bed. Nicotine patches are also available in a clear material, making them less visible on the skin.

Wearing the nicotine patch to bed at night can disrupt sleep and cause vivid dreams.