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He started taking the medication, and a couple of nights later, as he was driving his pickup truck on a country road in Louisiana, Williams suddenly swerved left.

His girlfriend, Melinda Lofton, who was with him, later told him that his eyes had rolled back in his head and that it had seemed as if he was frozen at the wheel, accelerating.

Moments later, they were in a bayou, struggling to escape the murky water, Williams said.

“Since I was a kid, never had anything like this ever happened before,” he said.

“It never happened before, and it hasn’t happened since. And all the tests I’ve taken say I have nothing wrong with me at all.”

The nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices last week linked Chantix to more than two dozen highway accidents reported to the Food and Drug Administration, saying the mishaps may have resulted from such drug side effects as seizures.

The FDA had earlier issued a warning about suicidal thoughts and suicides among patients taking Chantix and is now evaluating whether it needs to expand and strengthen that precaution.

Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer, said that as early as May of last year, it had added a warning to the prescribing literature for Chantix that patients should exercise caution when driving or operating machinery until they know how the medication affects them.

But such admonitions apparently didn’t get much notice from busy doctors. Even some government transportation agencies missed them.

The Federal Aviation Administration continued, until last week, to list the drug as approved for pilots. The federal truck safety agency was also unaware of the risk.

“That is a problem,” said Janet Woodcock, head of the FDA’s drug evaluation center, adding that her office needs to find ways to communicate safety information more effectively.

The military, which bans Chantix for flight and missile crews, is considering whether other precautions are needed, Pentagon officials said.

Woodcock said the FDA believes the medication should remain on the market as an option for smokers trying to quit.

Approved two years ago, it differs from other smoking-cessation drugs by acting directly at sites in the brain affected by nicotine, blocking the pleasure that comes from smoking as well as the cravings.

But Williams, 28, said he was surprised that a drug he had hoped would help turn him into a healthier person instead, he believes, caused an accident in which he could have been seriously hurt, even killed.

Lofton is still struggling with a neck injury she suffered.

Williams, a telephone service technician, lives near Rayville, La., between Shreveport and the Mississippi River.

He said he went to see his doctor last year for help quitting his nearly two-pack-a-day habit. He’d started smoking in high school and had failed in previous attempts to quit.

But he knew people who recommended Chantix.

They were talking about how good it was supposed to be, and it seemed like the right thing to do since I was trying to quit,” Williams said.

The crash occurred July 15, two days after he started taking Chantix.

He said the last thing he remembers is heading home after checking on the house of a friend who was out of town.

“I woke up in the bayou, with water coming into the truck,” he said. “I didn’t know where I was.”

Lofton had gotten out first and was on the bank, calling to him. He followed the sound of her voice and paddled to safety.

Williams said he had no history of seizures and does not drink alcohol.

His doctor, who has treated Williams from childhood, made the connection to Chantix.

Williams said he was considering suing Pfizer. His lawyer, Kristian Rasmussen of Birmingham, Ala., said he was aware of at least one other Chantix accident, involving a deliveryman who fell out of a moving truck.

The FDA has received more than 3,000 reports of serious problems involving Chantix, but Pfizer said that had to be put into context, since more than 5 million people in the U.S. had taken the medication.

The company said that no direct cause and effect had been proved between the drug and the problems.

The FDA is most concerned about reports of mental health problems, including more than 400 cases involving Chantix users who reported suicidal thoughts and more than 30 who killed themselves.

Yet many patients report success with the medication.

Kathy MacInnis, 44, of Kingston, Mass., said she had been smoking for more than 30 years and quit on New Year’s Day.

“Without Chantix, I had never been able to quit,” she said. “It just put me in a calm place.”

She was smoking close to two packs a day when her 12-year-old daughter confronted her.

“She came home from school and said her health teacher asked her if her parents smoked, because she could smell it on her,” MacInnis said. “That was my turning point.”

MacInnis videotaped her story for Pfizer but she said the company did not pay her other than covering the costs of traveling to New York for an interview session.

She reported no unpleasant side effects while taking the medication, only vivid dreams that some call “Chantix dreams.”

“The first few days, I kind of felt funny,” said MacInnis. “You kind of feel high.”

Why not Smoke Away?

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A law extending a smoking ban in Turkey to most enclosed areas — including taxis, ferries and shopping malls — came into effect Monday in the nicotine-addicted nation.

As of midnight, outdoor smoking was also banned in locations such as stadiums and playgrounds. A ban on lighting up in bars, restaurants and coffeehouses will be implemented next year.

Smoking was already barred on buses and airplanes and in larger offices. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted government expanded the ban to most enclosed places as part of an attempt to reduce smoking rates in the country and the effects of second-hand smoke.

Around 40 percent of Turks over the age of 15 are smokers, consuming around 17 million packs a day, according to Yesilay, an organization devoted to fighting alcohol, drug and tobacco abuse.

The government says around 160,000 people die annually in Turkey from smoking-related ailments.

The law, passed by Parliament in March, calls for a fine of 50 Turkish lira (about $40) for people who light up in smoke-free areas.

But enforcing smoking bans has in the past been difficult and it is not unusual to see people lighting up next to no-smoking signs in public places.

Taxi driver Huseyin Erdogan, who is not related to the prime minister, says he does not think the bans will help him get off cigarettes.

“I don’t know how much of a deterrent these laws will be,” he said. “I cannot quit smoking, I’ll only quit when I go to my grave. I have to smoke.”

According to the World Health Organization, nearly two-thirds of the world’s smokers live in 10 countries led by China and India and followed by Indonesia, Russia, the U.S., Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.

Turkey is also among the world’s main tobacco growers along with China, India, the U.S. and Brazil, and one of the top exporters. Several major cigarette producers blend Turkish tobacco in their products.

“To smoke like a Turk” is a common expression in many European countries to describe someone who smokes a lot, and hookah smoking — a legacy of the Ottoman era — has experienced a revival with several hookah cafes opening up in major Turkish cities over the past decade.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Women who quit smoking cut the biggest risks of death from heart disease “significantly” within five years and have a 20 percent lower chance of dying from related cancers in that time.

The study’s authors, led by Stacey A. Kenfield of Harvard University’s School of Public Health in Boston, analyzed post- 1980 data from the Nurses’ Health Study, a survey of almost 105,000 nurses conducted starting in 1976. The study will be published in the May 7th issue of JAMA

Researchers found that the risk of death was reduced by 13 percent within the first five years after quitting smoking, mostly due to a lower chance of dying from coronary heart disease, and dropped to the level of a person who had never smoked after 20 years.

“Our main message here is that the harms of smoking are reversible,” Kenfield said in a telephone interview from Boston yesterday. “For some causes of death, the reduction is much higher within the first five years. So it’s never too late to quit smoking. But we also saw a reduction in other diseases, so the message is that it’s never too late to stop even though you may have been smoking for many, many years.”

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death across the globe, with more than 5 million people dying from lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses annually, according to the World Health Organization. That figure may rise to 10 million a year by 2030.

Follow-Up Studies

The chance of dying from lung cancer dropped 21 percent within five years after quitting when compared with people who continued to smoke, although additional risk didn’t disappear for 30 years, the study said.

Former smokers who had quit 20 to 30 years earlier had an 87 percent lower chance of dying from lung cancer when compared with current smokers, the study said. The risk dropped to the same level as a person who had never smoked after 20 years for all smoking-related cancers, which include lip, mouth and stomach cancers.

The risk of death from respiratory disease dropped 18 percent within a decade after quitting, and approached the same level as a person who had never smoked after 20 years.

Unlike previous studies, the authors followed up with the survey respondents every two years to ask about their smoking status, which Kenfield said made the findings more accurate.

Other studies “did not see a drastic decrease in risk especially with people that had quit smoking for a long time,” Kenfield said. For chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer, “we saw a very nice decline in risk down to the level of a non-smoker over time.”

As a follow up to a previous article in which the makers of Smoke Away  preached the benefits of quitting smoking and living longer, this article certainly supports that assertion.

The makers of Smoke Away realize that the smoking cessation is very crowded. As well it should be, with an average of 400,000 people year dying from smokng related ilnesses and Big Tobacco continuing to manufacture cancer sticks, there is ample room for plenty of companies who want to help people quit smoking.

When Smoke Away was first created almost 10 years ago, it was with one thing in mind, and one thing only. That was, to help as many people as we could to quit smoking.  Over that period of time, we have learned a lot on what it takes to help keep people nicotine free. As much as Smoke Away helps, there is also a healthy dose of reality involved in helping you keep the quit. The reality being, if you don’t quit smoking now, today, this week, whatever, you will die eventually, that is the sad fact.

It has been written over and over and over. Smoking cigarettes will stunt your life. It will cause you to die sooner than if you did not smoke. Period. The sooner you get this thru to your thick skull, the sooner the makers of Smoke Away can help YOU quit smoking.

Sure you can try other smoking cessation methods and products. But chances are, the success that you have had is one of the reasons why your are reading this now. The reality? it didn’t work. That’s why you are here. You are looking for answers. Generally what we do is tell people who want to quit smoking, go visit Smoke Away Support and talk regular people just like you. It’s a forum with almost 3,000 people who have quit smoking, or are in the process of stopping smoking. Find out why Smoke Away worked for them, or maybe why it didn’t. The important thing is, start the dialogue now and find out why you need to ask yourself, Why not Smoke Away?