Free Republic

Sex and the ciggie If your teens watch "Sex and the City," the sex isn't the only thing you have to worry about. Virtually every teen girl interviewed as part of a new Health Department report on smoking said the show influenced their deadly habit. "Whenever I think of how to smoke, it's the way Sarah Jessica Parker exhales, and I'm like obsessed," one 10th-grader said. "I love her, and the way she exhales is very memorable. She kind of ... elongates her neck and exhales into the air." About 11% of teenagers smoke, according to the Health Department. The...

DANVERS — The brown SUV rolled to a stop in a Holten Street parking lot as two 17-year-old high school students in the back seat emptied their pockets of everything except their cell phones and a $20 bill. They wouldn't need much more to buy a pack of cigarettes in Danvers. The girl, wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, stepped into the pouring rain, approached a sales clerk at the Mobil gas station and returned moments later with a pack of Marlboro Reds. The two teens work undercover for the North Shore Tobacco Control Program, the...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina will raise spending on teenage smoking prevention by 75 percent starting next year, officials said Thursday, an increase that earned praise from health groups but is still well below federal recommendations. The Health and Wellness Trust Fund Commission intends to spend another $4.2 million this year on the state's Youth Tobacco Prevention Initiative, increasing its total annual pledge to $10.9 million. The commission's decision to expand its current three-year, $18.6 million effort, was made earlier this week. The panel already has issued grants to 30 organizations, created an anti-smoking radio ad campaign and beefed up...