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Electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without tobacco or combustion, are the most important harm-reducing alternative to smoking ever developed -- one that could prevent millions of premature deaths in the United States alone. Yet bureaucrats and politicians seem determined to negate that historic opportunity through regulations and taxes that threaten to cripple the industry. When a court-set deadline for "premarket" approval of vaping products came and went on Sept. 9, the Food and Drug Administration had received millions of applications but had not approved any. As a result, the agency says, every vaping device and nicotine liquid sold in the...

BEIJING -- It looks like a regular cigarette. It even gives off curlicues of white smoke like a regular cigarette. But it's electronic. The smokeless smoke is being marketed as a healthier alternative to smoking and a potential way to kick the habit. The battery-powered device produces a nicotine-infused mist that's absorbed directly into the lungs. Because no burning is involved, makers say there's no hazardous cocktail of cancer-causing chemicals and gases and no secondhand smoke. But health authorities are skeptical. The World Health Organization has said there's no evidence to back up contentions that e-cigarettes are a safe substitute...

Excerpt - LITTLE ROCK - Gov. Mike Huckabee, who successfully pushed for a statewide workplace smoking ban earlier this year, predicted Wednesday that cigarettes eventually won't be sold because of their health risks. "I think the day will come when we probably won't" sell cigarettes, Huckabee said on his monthly call-in radio show. "If cigarettes were introduced to the marketplace today, they wouldn't be sold. They'd never make it because what we didn't know when they were first created, sold and marketed is just how deadly harmful they were." Huckabee was responding to a caller's question of why cigarettes are...

First they came for the workplace, then for people's homes and cars, and then the great outdoors.Now the anti-tobacco jihadists, having helped ban smoking in most public and many private places, have turned their attention to the most private space of all — the womb.  That very personal place where humans incubate could be the next battlefield between smokers and those who have never uttered the words: “It's none of my beeswax.” This latest brainstorm comes from Arkansas, where Rep. Bob Mathis successfully shepherded legislation making it unlawful to smoke in cars in which small children are passengers. Apparently...

Everyone knows the traditional reasons why Maine is a great place to take a vacation - it has ocean, mountains, lakes and lobsters.Now the state is promoting one more inducement for people to visit: No smoking is allowed in Maine's public buildings.The state is putting up five signs at various points this week along the Maine Turnpike and Interstate 95 that advertise the fact."Breathe easy, you're in Maine," said the blue signs with white lettering. "All indoor public places are smoke-free."Dr. Dora Anne Mills, who heads the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said Maine may be "the...

A German businessman has founded an airline dedicated to smokers.Smintair, or Smokers' International Airways, aims to cater for smokers who feel excluded in an age when all major airlines have banned the habit.A Dusseldorf-Tokyo service is due to begin in October and is expected to serve mainly Japanese businessmen.Smintair's founder, Alexander Schoppmann, a 30-a-day man, said: "There are no laws banning smoking on board. The airlines have made these rules themselves because no-smoking planes are cheaper. It means you don't have to change the air filter system so regularly."

As a physician who has devoted 21 years to advocacy in tobacco control, conducting research and publishing a number of studies on the hazards of secondhand smoke, it is not surprising that I favor a wide range of anti-smoking measures. But anti-smoking tactics adopted by some municipalities, companies and organizations do not serve smokers or the public. The methods are mean-spirited, unsupported by science and attempt to stamp out smoking by punishing and marginalizing smokers. They go too far. The City Council in Calabasas, Calif., recently enacted an ordinance - supported by several anti-smoking groups - that bans smoking in...

While I have been arguing for some time that making fallacious scientific claims ("health" claims) is wrong, there has been, so far, no response from anti-smoking groups or advocates, other than ad hominem attacks on me, a defense of the organizations in question, and a questioning of why it is such a big deal anyway. In this post, I will address the issue of why this is a big deal. I have already discussed why I think this is a big deal in terms of its implications for the effectiveness of the tobacco control movement. I believe it will...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- A month before most indoor smoking is to be banned in New Jersey, a coalition of restaurants, bars and bowling alleys on Wednesday asked a federal judge to block the prohibition from taking effect. The opponents of the ban, scheduled to begin April 15, already have filed a lawsuit against the state, alleging it will unfairly harm their businesses. The federal court filing Wednesday seeks to halt the ban until that lawsuit can be heard.U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler in Trenton did not immediately set a hearing date on Wednesday's request by the New Jersey Hospitality...

(Ald. Robert G. Donovan & Russ Hinz, American Cancer Society) With a Common Council committee's consideration of a new smoking ban in Milwaukee -- introduced by Ald. Joe Davis -- set for Thursday, March 2, we asked two people passionate about the issue to share their points of view. If the council's Public Safety Committee approves the ban this week, it goes to the entire Common Council for a vote on March 21. As currently written, the ban would be phased-in for local bars and restaurants, and bars that get at least 75 percent of business from alcohol sales would...

A WOMAN in a wheelchair must go outside into the cold weather for a cigarette even though she is 93 - because smoking is banned in her nursing home. Gladys Gornall, known as Chris, of the Norwood Lodge Nursing Home in Nore Road, Portishead, took up smoking 10 years ago after her husband died. Daughter Joan Mock, 68, says it is the only thing she has left that keeps her happy. And she says she fears her mother is more likely to die from exposure to cold winter weather than from smoking. Mrs Mock said: "She's 93, she's in...

RICHMOND, Va. - The Virginia Senate voted Monday to ban smoking in restaurants and virtually all other public places, an extraordinary sign of cultural change in a state that is home to the worldwide headquarters of Philip Morris and whose agricultural economy has been rooted in tobacco farming for almost 400 years. The bill is unlikely to survive review in the House of Delegates. Yet its passage on the floor of the Senate -- where smoking has never been formally banned and lawmakers lit up openly even until the late 1990s -- signaled mounting popular support for smoking restrictions....

Price-conscious smokers who thought they landed fantastic bargains on the Internet have been hit by the city with bills totaling nearly $1.4 million, officials said yesterday. A crackdown on tax-free cigarette sales on the Web hauled in $695,479 from 2,156 puffers out of the $1,354,880 demanded in the first round of bills sent out to 3,780 New York City residents through May. A second round in August took in another $169,990 out of $507,000 due. Now, officials say, they're ready to get really serious and impose a $100-a-carton penalty - plus the $1.50-a-pack tax. "We want voluntary compliance," said...

A new report from California's EPA ("Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant.") which sensationally alleges that secondhand smoke is a "cause" of breast cancer and a "toxic contaminent " of outdoor air, has been scathingly criticized by top researchers in all the relevant fields. The American Cancer Society stated unequivocally, in a written comment,  that it did not agree with Cal-EPA's conclusion that secondhand smoke was a cause of breast cancer, and that published evidence did not support the requisite criteria for causation.Other written charges leveled by top scientists agreed on the following points:  ·¶...

BEIJING, China (AP) -- China, home to more than 300 million smokers, has ratified an international treaty prohibiting tobacco advertising and will ban tobacco vending machines, the government said Monday. The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was ratified Sunday by the National People's Congress, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Parliament leaders "supported the treaty by announcing that China will ban tobacco vending machines of any kind" in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, Xinhua said. The treaty requires China to ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship on radio, television, print media and the Internet within five...

<p>With the closing of Pinstripes Sports Cafe on Dec. 24, some other bar owners in the city are concerned that they will be next.</p> <p>Pinstripes closed as a direct result of the state public places smoking ban, according to Frank Bokoff, who said he was a spokesman for F and J Management, the group that owned and operated the bar and grill.</p>

Traffic chaos as German hearse ejects corpse BERLIN (Reuters) - A hearse has overturned on a German motorway, shattering the coffin and ejecting the corpse onto the tarmac along with a bag of coffin nails that brought traffic to a standstill. "The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and yanked the steering wheel round when he woke up," said Jens O'Brien, spokesman for the regional government in Duesseldorf, western Germany said on Wednesday. "There were nails strewn over 50 metres and the corpse fell out onto the ground." The A40 motorway was closed for an hour and there was...