Customer Reviews

Empty Cribs: The Impact of Smoking on Child Health

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This is another book I was given so to interview the author. I found the topic interesting never having thought about smoking causing SIDS or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Did you know that a child should not sleep in the same bed as a smoker? Makes sense to me now that I think about it. The child would be breathing the toxic breath of the smoker. Hmmmm. Consider this also... when a baby's lungs are first developing, how difficult could this be when breathing second-hand smoke?

Dr. Dean goes way beyond discussing SIDS or the toxic effect of smoking on children. He also has chapters on why the big tobacco companies can continue selling their poison (Money Talks); the different states and how they are dealing with smoking issues (The States and Smoking); how cigarettes come from the tobacco being grown and processed to being packaged and sold (From Farm to Finger) and more.

One of the things in the book I didn't even consider was who are the biggest sellers of cigarettes (as of that writing) ~ They include Wal-Mart, 7-11 (is that a surprise?), Sears Holding, i.e. K-Mart, Kroger, Alberson's, Safeway, then the petroleum companies, followed by Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens.

He also talks about advertising in magazines, many of which focus on children since the tobacco companies want to get them hooked as young as possible. Magazines that accept advertising which are read by youngsters are (as of this writing): People, Sports Illustrated, Cosmopolitan, Ebony, Maxxim, Car and Driver, Glamour, Playboy, Rolling Stone and many, many more.

This book is a very good first step in researching how smoking affects you and your children's health; how the tobacco companies target their markets and what you can do about it.

Revvell