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Saudi man divorces wife over cigarette found in her bag Husband insists on parting ways after finding cigarette inside wife’s bag Manama: A husband divorced his wife just three months after their marriage after he found a cigarette inside her bag. A relative of the wife said that her husband became furious after he discovered the cigarette and decided to divorce her despite her pleas and her claims that she did not smoke and that the cigarette was not hers, Saudi daily Okaz reported on Sunday from the southern city of Jizan. The husband has insisted on the divorce and...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed Monday to shave a quarter off his 75-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes to appease African-American aldermen concerned about the illegal sale of loose cigarettes. The decision to reduce the tax from 75 cents a pack to 50 cents continues Emanuel’s pattern of tinkering at the margins of his city budgets to appease critics without giving away too much............. ........Last week, the mayor appeared to slam the door on compromise. He called the 75-cents-a-pack increase that would have left Chicago with the nation’s highest combined state and local tax on cigarettes a “health care feat” on par with...

The town of San Rafael, Calif., has passed a ban on smoking that city officials have called the most stringent in the nation. The new ordinance makes it illegal for residents to smoke in their own homes if they share a wall with another dwelling. The ban applies to owners and renters alike, and it covers condominiums, co-ops, apartments and any multi-family residence containing three or more units. Rebecca Woodbury, an analyst at the San Rafael City Manager's office, helped craft the ban, which took effect Nov.14. "We based it on a county ordinance," she told ABC News, "but we...

Fewer American high school students smoked cigarettes in 2012 compared to 2011, according to a study released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, at the same time, more high school students were smoking cigars, pipes, electronic cigarettes and hookahs. Overall, 23.3 percent of high school students (grades 9-12) said they had used a tobacco product at least once in the 30 days before they were surveyed in 2012, said the study published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. That was down from the 24.3 percent who said they had used a tobacco product at least...

Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News Jan. 29, 2013 at 4:35 AM ET About 13 percent of double-lung transplants in the U.S. came from donors who were heavy smokers, a new study finds. Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe. What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already...

Calls were made this week for Berlin to follow New York state in raising the legal smoking age to 21. Johannes Spatz of anti-smoking campaign group Forum Rauchfrei told The Local why this will not be easy. Berlin Christian Democrat (CDU) politician Cornelia Seibeld told regional newspaper the BZ this week that Germany should follow New York’s lead and increase the minimum smoking age from 18 to 21. … Spatz agreed, and told The Local that Germany should indeed “look to New York for a positive role model” for dissuading young smokers. “If a person starts under the age of...

WALNUT CREEK -- Citing his oath to uphold the Constitution, Councilman Justin Wedel says Walnut Creek voters, not elected leaders, should decide where people can smoke and whether shoppers can choose paper or plastic. Wedel aims to get two initiatives on the June ballot -- one that would repeal a portion of the city's recently adopted secondhand-smoke ordinance and another to prevent a ban on plastic shopping bags in Walnut Creek. "This is not a smoking or plastic bag issue; this is a government-intrusion-into-our-daily-lives issue," said Wedel, elected to his first term in 2012. "I swore an oath to protect...

Smokers younger than 21 in the nation's biggest city will soon be barred from buying cigarettes after the New York City Council voted overwhelming Wednesday to raise the tobacco-purchasing age to higher than all but a few other places in the United States. City lawmakers approved the bill — which raises from 18 to 21 the purchasing age for cigarettes, certain tobacco products and even electronic-vapor smokes — and another that sets minimum prices for tobacco cigarettes and steps up law enforcement on illegal tobacco sales. "This will literally save many, many lives," said an emotional City Councilman James Gennaro,...

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York state parks officials must stop enforcing their recent ban on outdoor smoking, a state judge ordered, agreeing with a smokers' rights group that the state exceeded its authority. The February rules establishing no-smoking areas at various parks, including popular beaches and all nine state parks within New York City, aren't supported by any policy set by the Legislature, state Supreme Court Justice George Ceresia said. The city has a separate outdoor smoking ban for its parks and beaches that wasn't challenged in this lawsuit. The judge noted that while lawmakers enacted restrictions on indoor smoking,...

Patients are being denied minor treatments because they smoke, The Mail on Sunday has found. In one case, a healthy middle-aged man was told he could not have a ten-minute operation to cut a small benign growth off the side of his head because of his habit. Paul Merrett thought it would be no problem to get the inch-long fatty lump, called a lipoma, removed. … But when he attended King George Surgery in Stevenage, his GP said he could not have the minor operation—which doctors often do under local anesthetic in their own consulting rooms. Mr. Merrett, 46, said:...

This week, low-income minority residents of Cambridge public housing learned a cold, hard truth about their “homes.” These apartments aren’t their homes at all. They belong to the government. And because the liberals who run Cambridge government don’t like smoking, the citizen-residents of Cambridge’s housing projects must learn to not like it, too. Smoking has been banned. The new policy takes effect next August. Massachusetts software businesses just learned a similar lesson. For years, these businesses overwhelmingly gave their political contributions to Democrats. Those same liberal pols turned around and hit these Obama-supporting, Prius-driving computer geek friends with the “tech...

President Obama’s plan to raise the federal cigarette tax by 94 cents a pack would put 2 million low and middle-income kids through preschool, a new report has concluded. Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal calls for a near doubling of the tax, from $1.01 to $1.95 per pack, with the proceeds going toward an expansion of early childhood education. Taxes on other tobacco products would increase proportionally, bringing the estimated additional revenue to an estimated $78 billion over the next decade.“Taken together, these two measures would help ensure a future of smart, healthy kids nationwide and in every state,” according...

American TV drama series Mad Men has triggered a dramatic boom in the sales of Lucky Strike cigarettes, causing outrage among anti-smoking campaigners. Sales of the world-famous cigarettes, owned by British American Tobacco, reached 33 billion packs last year compared to 23 billion in 2007 when the show first aired. Mad Men features New York ad agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in the 1960s and their turbulent relationship with iconic cigs brand Lucky Strike. …

The federal government is spending more than $13 million on studies designed to determine how a variety of groups can learn to quit smoking.This month the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a five-year study to Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I., to examine how exercise can get depressed smokers to stop. The first grant amounts to $581,991.The depressed are not the only ones to receive attention.The agency is currently funding cessation studies for American Indians ($2,899,954); Chinese and Vietnamese men ($424,875); postmenopausal women ($4,151,850); the homeless ($392,322); Korean youth ($94,580); Schizophrenics ($266,554); Brazilian smokers ($174,637); Latino HIV-positive smokers ($223,265); and...

<p>Terrie Hall, a cancer patient who made a bold appearance in a hard-hitting national anti-smoking ad campaign, has died at the age of 53.</p> <p>In a graphic public service announcement last year, Hall demonstrated her morning routine of putting on false teeth, a wig and a hands-free valve for her stoma, an opening in her throat. The spot was part the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) first-ever national tobacco education ad campaign, and was intended to show the disabling and disfiguring effects of smoking-related illness.</p>

Starting Jan. 1, Bert Fish Medical Center will no longer hire tobacco users, joining two other local hospitals in telling smokers not to apply. Applicants will be tested for a nicotine byproduct and sign an agreement to remain tobacco-free during their employment with the New Smyrna Beach public hospital. The prohibition doesn't apply to volunteers, medical staff or Bert Fish's roughly 700 employees who were hired before the implementation date... "Not all slopes are slippery but this one really is," said Lewis Maltby, president on the National Workrights Institute, a nonprofit offshoot of the American Civil Liberties Union based in...

Scientists are reporting a significant milestone for cancer research after charting 21 major mutations behind the vast majority of tumours. The disruptive changes to the genetic code, reported in Nature, accounted for 97% of the 30 most common cancers. Finding out what causes the mutations could lead to new treatments. Some causes, such as smoking are known, but more than half are still a mystery. Cancer Research UK said it was a fascinating and important study. A tumour starts when one of the building blocks of bodies, a cell, goes wrong. Over the course of a lifetime cells pick up...

Most current smokers in the U.S. would like to give up smoking. Perhaps as a testimony to their desire to quit, 85% of smokers say they have in fact tried to quit at least once in their lifetime, including 45% who have tried at least three times. ~snip Smokers on average are engaging in a habit they wish they didn't have, and, in fact, the average smoker has attempted to quit at least three times in their lifetime. The difficulty in quitting is attested to by the fact that more than seven in 10 smokers say they are addicted to...

President Obama is apparently still privately fighting his own battle -- against smoking. Obama was spotted slyly putting a piece of Nicorette gum into his mouth Monday -- providing Americans with a rare glimpse into his on-again-off-again relationship with Nicotine.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some smokers trying to get coverage next year under President Barack Obama’s health care law may get a break from tobacco-use penalties that could have made their premiums unaffordable. The Obama administration — in yet another health care overhaul delay — has quietly notified insurers that a computer system glitch will limit penalties that the law says the companies may charge smokers. A fix will take at least a year to put in place.