The US Senate passed a bill that extends healthcare coverage to 4 million children and the bill met with overwhelming approval of the US House of Representatives today.  Passage in both chambers of Congress allows President Barack Obama to sign…

Smoking cigarettes is a bad idea and medical science is continuously proving it’s even worse than originally imagined.  Science has proven that smoking often kills the smoker, by way of inhaled (first-hand) smoke.  Second-hand smoking is both annoying and dangerous…

The latest word from the World Health Organization (WHO) is that cancer is outpacing heart disease as the leading cause of death around the world.  The organization expects cancer to claim the lives of 7.6 million people this year alone,…

In conjunction with the upcoming 2008 Great American Smokeout (November 20), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a status report of the national effort to reduce smoking to no more than 12% of the population…

Presidential campaigns aside, the campaign against smoking has a sure winner.  Every smoker with a desire to quit, said to be 70% of all American smokers, is a winner but most will require medical intervention to see success at the…

Not everybody who smokes cigarettes lights up every day.  Almost one in five smokers only smoke during social occasions, such as on weekends or at social events during the week.  Some of these social smokers say they indulge in smoking…

San Francisco recently passed a city-wide ordinance that bans the sale of all tobacco-based products in pharmacies, such as Walgreens. The ban, scheduled to take effect October 1, has stirred up a fire at the nationwide pharmacy chain, Walgreens leading…

It’s generally understood that smoking cigarettes dramatically increases one’s likelihood of developing lung cancer. But people who’ve never smoked also get lung cancer. Theories abound but there’s no generally accepted reason, other than second-hand smoke, as to why nonsmokers get…

While the evidence is unavoidably clear that smoking cigarettes increases a person’s risk of having a stroke, there is relatively little data that identifies the dosage amount that places a smoker in the danger zone. Researchers at the University of…

Almost one in five teens recently surveyed said it’s much easier to purchase prescription drugs than it is to purchase beer, cigarettes, and marijuana. Another 25% of the study participants said marijuana is the easiest party drug to buy. It…

People who catch a buzz off their first cigarette are more likely to develop an addiction to nicotine, than are people who do not feel any sense of pleasure from the experience, according to a new study conducted at the…

The United States House of Representatives voted 326 to 102 on Wednesday to take the power of regulation out of the hands of the tobacco industry and place all tobacco products under the regulatory powers of the US Food and…

Nobody likes secondhand smoke (SHS).  It’s annoying, nasty, and it can make nonsmokers sick.  Being around it a lot can increase a nonsmoker’s risk of coronary heart disease.  A newly released study provides evidence it can increase the risk of…

A new law in the Netherlands makes it illegal to smoke cigarettes in a public place but smoking marijuana at licensed cannabis cafes is still legal, as long as there is no trace of tobacco in the marijuana.