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Smoking was banned in New York's restaurants, bars and clubs in 2003, but that didn't stop a host of celebrity smokers from sparking up inside the Met Gala. Stars including Bella Hadid, Dakota Johnson and Frances Bean Cobain threw caution to the wind as they rebelliously lit up indoors while taking a break from the circus of the evening's fashionable festivities.

Back in December we looked at one of the final “midnight regulations” handed down from the Obama administration which sought to ban smoking tobacco products in government housing units. That was a complicated case to be sure, but Susan Shapiro brings up an even stranger story at the Washington Post this week. Shapiro is a former smoker herself (who is to be congratulated for having kicked the habit fifteen years ago) and lives in a privately owned co-op which is considering banning smokers and even giving the boot to people who already own a unit there if they smoke. The...

ALBANY — Thanks to the new state budget, electronic cigarette users can puff away without the tax man taking a drag. Despite an alarming surge in e-cigarette use by high school students, state lawmakers — at the urging of the GOP-controlled Senate — rejected Gov. Cuomo’s plan to tax the liquid used in the devices and tighten restrictions on their use, advocates charged Monday. Cuomo’s proposals were mysteriously left out of the budget approved by the Senate and Assembly over the weekend. “The Senate Republicans picked big tobacco over public health,” said Bill Sherman, vice president for government relations at...

I started smoking in 1971; bought 3 packs of Camels one day (unfiltered) for a total of 99 cents plus tax. But now, 46 years later, I no longer use tobacco. You see, seven years ago I switched to Electronic Cigarettes. Just pour in a little nicotine liquid mixed with vegetable oil—your choice of potency—and you’re all set to “vape” away. No lung-threatening, tarry chemicals. No smelly, annoying smoke to attract nasty looks. In fact, the “discharge” from these pricey little, battery-driven machines can be blown around your doctor’s consulting room and neither he nor his staff will be any...

Growing up can be confusing, especially if you're a kid in Oregon. You can't drive a car until 16. You can't leave home until 18. And if a new bill passes the state legislature, you can't pick up a pack of cigarettes until 21. But Oregon offers one state perk long before any of those other milestones. With or without parental permission, the state subsidizes gender reassignment surgery starting at age 15. To reiterate, kids can change their sex with help from the taxpayer, but soon many adults won't be able to buy smokes. The pending legislation perfectly demonstrates the...

So What Happened to Wiretapping "Smoking Gun"? Didn't Nunes say that the NSA would be releasing info on Friday?

For the past several decades, governments have been cracking down on tobacco consumption, including by banning smoking in many places such as bars or restaurants. But we've learned a lot about the effects of these kinds of policies over the last few years and now it's time to reconsider them. Here's why: 1. Property Rights Most fundamentally, the debate about smoking bans should center on private property rights. Whether you should be allowed to smoke in a bar should be determined by the owner of that bar, not by busybody bureaucrats who think they know how to live everyone’s lives...

A recent decision of the Hawaii Labor Relations Board (HLRB) has some people wondering if the United Public Workers (UPW), one of the government employee unions, has figured out how to ignore the law. Earlier this year, our lawmakers passed Act 25. It bans smoking on the premises of our state-owned hospitals. The law, which is trying to protect not only workers but also visitors and patients, says specifically that it is not subject to collective bargaining, and that hospital administrators are required to “prominently display signs stating that ‘tobacco and electronic smoking device use is prohibited’” at all entrances...

April Simpson has been living in the Queensbridge Houses, a public housing development in Queens, New York, her whole life. “From day one. I was born here,” she says, proudly. When she walks among the iconic six-story, red-brick buildings, passersby say hi to her and kiss her on the cheek. Everyone seems to know her. Simpson, a charismatic 54-year-old with buzzed short hair and a broad smile, is the Queensbridge tenants’ association president. She’s also a smoker. But come 2017, under a new federal rule, she won’t be allowed to light up one of her Newport cigarettes inside the housing...

The policy will be viewed as punitive and cruel and noncompliance will be widespread. It is incredibly foolish and unkind. The U.S. Department of Homewrecking and Utopian Development (HUD) said it plans to forbid smoking in public housing units to protect millions of low-income tenants from the ridiculously over-hyped effects of secondhand tobacco smoke. The ban will affect more than 940,000 units of housing subsidized by federal taxpayers. “Every child deserves to grow up in a safe, healthy home free from harmful second-hand cigarette smoke,” head HUD honcho Julián Castro said in a statement.

For the first time since 1999, California has raised the taxes on cigarettes—and thanks to an interesting provision in the state laws, the state’s taxes on cigars are also going up. Just before midnight local time, the Associated Press called the decision on Proposition 56, a ballot measure that asked California voters whether to raise the tax on cigarettes from 87 cents to $2.87 per pack. California voters overwhelmingly said yes. Taxes on cigars will also be going up substantially. California adjusts taxes on other tobacco products, including cigars, every year. The state’s Board of Equalization determines the rate by...

LONDON — British American Tobacco has offered to buy out Reynolds American Inc. for $47 billion in an attempt to gain a strong presence in the U.S., a lucrative market where sales of electronic cigarettes are booming as traditional smoking fades. The takeover would create the world's largest publicly traded tobacco company and combine BAT's presence in developing countries, where anti-smoking campaigns are not as strong as in the U.S. and Europe, with Reynolds' almost exclusive focus on the U.S. BAT already owns 42 percent of Reynolds and sells Dunhill, Rothmans and Lucky Strike cigarettes. Reynolds controls about a third...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/10/14/obama-cuba-regulations-expands-trade-travel-rum-cigars/92042662/

Each time over the past decade or so that New York state increased its tobacco tax — now at $4.35 per pack of cigarettes — calls to the state’s Quitline spiked. And as high as the state tobacco tax went, in New York City, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg hiked the tax even more. “I was so angry with him, I could hardly afford it,” says Elizabeth Lane, a Harlem resident who paid $12 a pack. “I had to beg, borrow and steal to get money to buy cigarettes.” At first, Lane cut down to four packs a week from seven. But...

There had also been an eye-opening moment on the streets of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, when [Johnson and I had] been walking behind a cigarette-wielding Ohioan. As the smoker’s exhaust wafted in our faces, I remarked offhand that—with the advent of e-cigarettes—I thought there was a good libertarian case for banning regular cigarettes. “I do too,” replied the health-obsessed triathlete, recounting his support for anti-smoking efforts in New Mexico.

A 36-year-old Scottish tourist wearing traditional Muslim garb had her blouse set on fire in a bizarre incident outside a pricey Fifth Ave. boutique, police sources said Monday. The victim noticed the sleeve of her blouse was charred and smoldering in the Saturday night attack, just hours before the ceremony marking the 15-year anniversary of 9/11. She was not badly hurt.

Obese people will be routinely refused operations across the NHS, health service bosses have warned, after one authority said it would limit procedures on an unprecedented scale. Hospital leaders in North Yorkshire said that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above – as well as smokers – will be barred from most surgery for up to a year amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations.

Electronic cigarettes, which do not require a flame but heat tobacco leaves to create a vapor that is inhaled, are so popular in Japan these days that demand cannot keep up with supply. The e-cigarette boom was triggered by iQOS, a product released by Philip Morris Japan K.K. Rather than burning tobacco leaves, the iQOS heats cigarettes in a small cylindrical device — all designed exclusively for each other — so that nicotine and vapors are inhaled together. Sales of iQOS began in Tokyo in September last year, before expanding nationwide in April. Even though the kit is priced as...

By now, there’s little doubt in anyone’s mind that smoking is dangerous both to smokers and those around them, though that doesn’t stop 40 million American adults from lighting up almost every day. Banning cigarettes outright might encourage people to kick the habit, but a blanket prohibition on smoking seems unlikely to happen any time soon. Rather than focusing on banning cigarettes themselves, states (along with cities and the federal government) have passed various tobacco laws making it more difficult for people to smoke. They’ve raised taxes on tobacco, banned smoking in many public and private spaces, and required warning...