Free Republic

A cloud is hanging over the Oval Office today as Americans wonder whether or not Smoker-in-Chief Barack Obama is giving up cigarettes during today’s Great American Smokeout.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Lynn R. Smith, a newspaper publisher and force behind the Great American Smokeout, died Thursday at a nursing home where he had been in long-term care since suffering a stroke six years ago, his son Donald Smith said. Lynn Smith was 84. He was the publisher of the Monticello Times when he founded Don't Smoke Days in Monticello and in Minnesota in 1974. That led to the Great American Smokeout, the widely observed November day that has raised awareness of the health hazards of smoking. "He found a mission in his columns and on the Times editorial...

Michigan Firm Won't Allow Smoking, Even On Employee's Own Time LANSING, Mich. -- A Michigan health care company has fired four of its employees for refusing to take a test to determine whether they smoke cigarettes. The company enacted a new policy this month, allowing workers to be fired if they smoke, even if the smoking takes place after-hours, or at home. The founder of Weyco Inc. said the company doesn't want to pay the higher health care costs associated with smoking. An official of the company -- which administers health benefits -- estimated that 18 to 20 of its...

Vatican City, Vatican City, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- An article in a leading Roman Catholic journal signals that the Vatican may join the public health establishment's crusade against cigarette smoking. The latest edition of the scholarly publication Civilta Cattolica, published by the Jesuits and approved by a top aide to Pope John Paul II, says smokers cannot damage their own health and that of others "without moral responsibility." The article by Giuseppe de Rosa stops short of calling smoking a sin, but says lighting up is "not neutral either in social or indeed moral terms." De Rosa's views, and presumably...