Utah lawmakers on Tuesday passed a proposed ban on smoking in a vehicle in which children are riding. HB82, sponsored by Rep. Jay Seegmiller, D-Sandy, would bar smoking in the vehicle when a child younger than 8 and requiring a restraining device is present. The proposed penalty is a $45 ticket. Several lawmakers argued passionately for keeping children from breathing various chemicals in cigarette smoke, and Seegmiller said the children have no ... Jump to full article >>

Not only does cigarette smoke cause lung cancer, it worsens the disease by increasing lung inflammation, U.S. researchers have found. The team at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine conducted tests on mice with early lung cancer lesions and found that those repeatedly exposed to tobacco smoke developed larger tumors — and developed tumors more quickly — than those that weren’t exposed to tobacco smoke. Lung tissue in ... Jump to full article >>

Low levels of fine particulate matter from either cigarette smoke or other air pollution may be associated with an increased risk for mortality from CVD. The researchers examined an analytic cohort of approximately 1 million participants from the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II (217,000 were current smokers at the time of enrollment). Using a Cox proportional hazard regressions model, they adjusted for education, body mass, in ... Jump to full article >>

In an age when smoking has been outlawed in most public places – government buildings, bars and pool halls – a person’s home is one of the few places you can puff in peace. Until now. A Dallas woman has filed a lawsuit seeking six figures from a former neighbor and landlord for damage she says was caused by cigarette smoke wafting through adjoining walls of her high-end townhome. “Smoking is not a right, it’s a privilege,&# ... Jump to full article >>

Two recent reports on the health impacts of public smoking bans reinforce the sound policy decision local elected officials made when they limited indoor smoking here in Beaufort County. Two separate analyses released last week found that the rate of heart attacks fell within a year after public smoking bans were put in place. In one analysis, the average rate of heart attacks fell 17 percent after one year. After three years, the rate fell abou ... Jump to full article >>

THE ban on public smoking has caused a fall in heart attack rates of about 10%, a study has found. Researchers commissioned by the Department of Health have found a far sharper fall than they had expected in the number of heart attacks in England in the year after the ban was imposed in July 2007. In Scotland, where the ban was introduced a year earlier, heart attack rates have fallen by about 14% because of the ban, separate research has shown ... Jump to full article >>

Research by UC Riverside scientists is first to link passive smoking to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A team of scientists at the University of California, Riverside has found that even second-hand tobacco smoke exposure can result in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a common disease and rising cause of chronic liver injury in which fat accumulates in the liver of people who drink little or no alcohol. The rese ... Jump to full article >>

“Classification of tobacco as a drug should be avoided at all costs.” 1974 British American Tobacco memo After three tobacco cessation classes, Gulf County Sheriff Joe Nugent was hanging on. So was his staff. He and almost a dozen of his support personnel, investigators and deputies, along with other city and county employees, were halfway through their series of tobacco cessation classes. And they hadn’t lost that focused inte ... Jump to full article >>

Casino owners and others opposed to expanding the state’s smoking ban filed petitions Monday that could have enough signatures to require a public vote on the issue. The law passed earlier this year by the South Dakota Legislature would ban smoking in bars, casinos in historic Deadwood and video lottery establishments. It extends a ban that has outlawed smoking in workplaces and most public areas since 2002. The expansion is scheduled to t ... Jump to full article >>