Free Republic

<p>MONTVILLE -- For 45 years, John and Alice Longo laughed and joked with their regular customers while they wiped down the bar and took lunch orders during the afternoon at A and J's Cafe on Route 32.</p> <p>But when they were forced to remove the ashtrays from the tables and bar, suddenly the laughter quieted.</p>

The first scene in NBC's new fall sitcom "Whoopi" begins with the star, Whoopi Goldberg, puffing on a cigarette, ignoring a nearby "No Smoking" sign. "You know, secondhand smoke kills," says an irritated guest of the hotel Goldberg's character owns. "So do I," she shoots back, glaring at the guest. Scheduled to premiere Sept. 23, the show is designed to be a Norman Lear-like commentary on American society, in the same vein as the groundbreaking "All in the Family." That show was built around bigoted jokes that boomeranged on Archie Bunker, while "Whoopi," featuring a relationship in which her brother...

Cigarette packs could soon carry distrurbing pictures of cancer-ravaged organs. A new study shows smokers have become immune to current warnings on packets and calls for a radical re-think. It could lead to the use of images pictures of damaged hearts and lungs to push home the 'smoking kills' message. Experts at the Cancer Research UK Centre for Tobacco Control Research in Scotland led the European-wide investigation. Interviews were conducted with 56 focus groups in Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Spain and Sweden. Participants looked at pre-2001 "small" warnings on cigarette packs and current large "black and white" warnings. The results...

Six New York taverns - including two in Syracuse - sued the state Tuesday and asked a federal judge to stop authorities from enforcing the new law that bans smoking in all indoor work sites, including bars and restaurants. Buies Inc., the owner of Dodester's, a bar at 2426 South Ave., and Barmarsue Inc., owner of Murray's, at 2722 Burnet Ave., are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, along with the Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association, and four other bar owners. The lawsuit - which seeks to block the law statewide - was filed in U.S. District Court in Syracuse because...

Decades of lecturing around America and of speaking with parents on my radio show have led me to an incredible conclusion: More American parents would be upset with their teenage children if they smoked a cigarette than if they cheated on a test. How has this come about? This is, after all, an entirely new phenomenon. Almost no member of my generation (those who became teenagers in the 1960s), let alone a member of any previous generation, could ever have imagined that parents would be angrier with their teenage child for smoking than for cheating. There has been a profound...

<p>New Yorkers dodging heavy taxes on cigarettes by buying from Native American sellers on the Internet could be hearing soon from the taxman.</p> <p>Under a settlement in the federal appeals court, the Ojibwa Trading Post, a popular online cigarette vendor based in upstate New York, has agreed to report its sales and hand over customer names to authorities every two weeks, effective immediately.</p>

It's been in place for five years now, but many Yuba-Sutter bar owners and patrons said they have yet to become accustomed to California's ban on smoking in bars. At establishments such as Stassi's Fourth Ward Tavern in Marysville this weekend, business owners were still fuming over the ban, which took effect in January 1998. The ban - a first for the nation - was intended to protect bartenders from health risks posed by second-hand smoke. Yet Roy Newlove, the owner of Stassi's for roughly 10 years, said it does nothing more than slow business and cause headaches for his...

    It's not about smoking, it's about constitutional guarantees! 42 tyrants and a ring leader named Bloomberg It is saddening to see the people of one of our nation's 13 original states, whose founding fathers were among those who pledged their "...lives, fortunes and sacred honor..." in order to secure the blessings of liberty and establish protection of individual rights associated with property, allowing 42 tyrants and a ring leader named Bloomberg, to trample upon and disregard these fundamental protections written into our constitutions, state and federal. It is equally saddening to observe two factious groups in New...