【New York, June 16】Smokers trying to kick the habit may have a far better chance of success if they let the dock tell them when they may have a cigarette.

In a study, the strategy proved twice as successful in the long term as quitting cold turkey or allotting one¬self a certain number of cigarettes per day.

The dock strategy assigns smokers specific times of day for lighting up. They fol¬low a schedule with longer and longer intervals between cigarettes before they quit al-together.

"They're still going to get to smoke, they're just not go¬ing to get to smoke when they want to smoke," said re-searcher Paul Cindripini.

By repeatedly putting their nicotine urges on hold for manageable periods, smokers gain practice and self-confidence for when they quit altogether, said Cindripini, director of the smoking cessation program at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Cen¬ter in Houston.

He and other researchers report the study in the June issue of the Journal of Con-sulting and Clinical Psychol-ogy.

The researchers studied two versions of the clock strategy. The best result came from a version that forced smokers to cut back progressively before quitting. But the other version, in which smokers maintained their usual level of consun tion before quitting, work almost as well.

That suggests the benefit comes from the scheduling rather than the cutback in cigarettes, said Saul Shiffman, director of a smoking research group at the University of Pittsburgh

Congressmen move to limit nicotine

Washington, June 15-Two members of the U.S. Congress on Thursday intro¬duced a bill to try to wean America's 46 million smokers from tobacco gradually, saying the habit was too tough to kick "cold turkey."

Representatives Marty Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat, and James Hansen, a Utah Republican, said they wanted to force to-bacco companies to cut nico-tine in tobacco products to non-addictive levels over seven years.

The bill follows recent .re-ports that tobacco firms know far more about the ad¬dictive nature of nicotine than they disclose publicly, and that they manipulate nicotine levels to ensure addiction.

Backed by members of public health, heart, lung and cancer associations, the representatives said polls showed most smokers wanted to quit but addiction prevented it.

Both Meehan and Hansen said they recognized it would be difficult to get the bill past formidable opponents in Congress this year, such House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley, a Republican from tobacco-producing Virginia.

But Meehan said he hoped the bill would push the Food and Drug Administration in the direction of regulating nicotine as an addictive drug, despite Congress' antipathy to new rules.

World urged to give up smoking

The China News International News

Associated Press Geneva, May 30 - The World Health Organization is touting its annual tobacco-free day as an opportunity to reverse a growing smoking "epidemic."

A good place to start, U.S, Ambassador Daniel L. Spiegel asserted, is U.N headquarters in Geneva. On the eve of Wednesday's World No-Smoking Day, WHO noted a World Bank study showing tobac¬co costs the world US$200 billion a year - not including the cost of the loss of a breadwinner to a family.

"Tobacco costs more :han you think, it conclud¬ed."Each year, tobacco is respon-sible for tne deaths of 3 million people around the world； one death every 10 seconds," said Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, director-gen¬eral of the U.N. health agency.

At that rate, the death toll will rise to 10 million a year within 40 years, he said, and naif of today's smoking teen-agers will die by middle age if they don't quit the habit.

"The aggressive marketing of tobacco products, along with their increasing affordability, has been successful in enticing young people to begin smoking,' a WHO statement said. "By the time they realize the deadly repercussions of smoking, they are hooked on a highly addictive drug."

WHO appealed to governments to work harder for a tobacco-free world, including levying hicher taxes on .cigarettes and banning tobacco promotion.

Higher cigarette taxes adopted in 1991 have worked in France, a poll by the Paris-based IPSOS firm said. Fifty-three percent of the 1,000 teen-age non- smokers questioned cited cost as the reason for their abstinence, while 48 percent of young smokers trying to quit said high prices were the reason. The poll had a 3 percent margin of error.

Spiegel said the U.N/s European headquarters had responded inadequately to a permanent smoking ban proposed by the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Australia, Pakistan and Senegal.

The Geneva offices of WHO, UNICEF, the World BanH and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees already are smoke-free, the nations' amoassadors noted in a letter to Vladimir Petrovsky, director general of the U.N. Office in Geneva.