One, the world has gone to the dogs and quite literally so when researchers found out that one of the best compelling reasons for dog owners who smoke is to give up the habit of exhaling the poisonous carbon dioxide in the air with dogs around, which in turn can create health problems for their beloved dogs. The researchers however were silent on the affects to health of other human beings in the house.

After having beauty salons exclusively for dogs in many parts of the Western world, now a study published this week in Tobacco Control found that dogs' health is of prime concern to smokers as the likes of Sonny and Motu's health could also be affected in the long run if the pet owner is a smoker and concludes that giving up smoking by dog-owning smokers is one of a powerful reason to kick the butt.

According to the study, more than 28 per cent of smoking pet owners said that they would be motivated to quit if they had information about the harmful effects of second-hand smoke on their pets.

The exposure to second-hand smoke has been proved to cause health problems like cancer, allergies, and respiratory problems and cataract and more than 24 per cent of non-smokers said that the information would induce them to ask their cohabiter to go out of the house and smoke.

The researchers now plan to put their theory into action by conducting a follow-up research to find out how many smoking dog owners actually gave up smoking after having been given the information on the ill-effects of second-hand smoke to their pets or to find out if any change has been made in the smoking policies of the house.

If any changes are found, then the researchers would pass on the data and information to veterinarians and other pet-care providers to spread the antismoking campaign with this new information.

Second-money seems to be also a powerful reason to give up smoking as another study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine said that smokers tend to give up smoking if good cash incentives were offered to them.

The researchers conducted a study on the Connecticut-based General Electric Company, which employs 1,52,000 people in the US and spends around $50 million each year on health care for smokers.

In the study conducted on 878 workers at GE, 436 employees were told that they would receive up to $750 for not smoking up to 12 months and 442 workers were only told about the about the smoking-cessation programs, which did not involve any cash benefit.

To the surprise of researchers, the study found after 12 months that 14.7 per cent of people in the cash incentives group had quit smoking compared to 5 per cent of the people who only received information about smoking-cessation programs without cash incentives.

After six more months, researchers found that 9.4 per cent of the people in the cash incentive group were still not smoking compared to 3.6 per cent from the non cash incentive group.

With every smoker trying to quit and shocked by the results of the study, GE now wants to bring out a broader incentive programme in 2010 for GE employees worldwide as they feel that the program will start paying for itself as the company anyway spends $50 million a year on the health care for smokers.

The third and most powerful reason to quit smoking, was a study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, where it said that smokers who have been recently diagnosed with either lung cancer, stroke, type 2 diabetes or heart disease are more induced to give up smoking than people with no new diagnosis.

And according to them, the more diagnoses the smokers received, the more likely they are motivated to quit but advised them not to wait for a major disease to be diagnosed to be persuaded to quit.