Stop Smoking Way

Public health advocates seeking to eliminate smoking in Boston faced off against cigar bar owners and smokers’ advocates in the first of two public comment sessions today about new tobacco restrictions proposed by the city’s Public Health Commission.

The commission wants to ban smoking on outdoor patios of restaurants and other businesses, close down cigar bars, and prohibit the sale of tobacco products on college campuses and by all drug stores in the city.

University of Georgia researchers used ultrasound to measure how the arteries of young, healthy adults respond to changes in blood flow.

“Most people know that if they have a cigarette or two over the weekend that it’s not good for their arteries,” said study co-author Kevin McCully, a professor of kinesiology in the UGA College of Education, “but what they may not be aware of—and what our study shows—is that the decrease in function persists into the next week, if not longer.”

A man has been convicted of the murder of a former British heavyweight boxing champion who was shot in a bar three weeks after the smoking ban was introduced in England.

James Oyebola is believed to have been the only person to be killed as a result of the ban.

The 46-year-old former British heavyweight champion – who had fought Lennox Lewis in the 1986 Commonwealth Games – made his living as a doorman.

But he was off duty in the early hours of 23 July and was drinking in the Chateau 6 bar in Fulham, south-west London.

ATLANTIC CITY – Plans to make Atlantic City the first major casino market in the country completely smoke-free may be delayed amid warnings by Donald Trump and other gaming executives that it could devastate business.

City Council, at its meeting Wednesday, is expected to debate and possibly vote on whether to hold off having the smoking ban take effect Oct. 15. Mayor Scott Evans said he would be open to delaying the ban, but will leave the decision to council.

A complete ban on smoking in Bulgaria’s public spaces might be introduced from June 1 2010 if Parliament approves amendments to the Health Act. The Health Ministry requested the amendments at a seminar it organised on the topic on September 29.

Currently, Bulgaria has some restrictions on smoking in public areas, introduced in 2007, but only as far as having separate sections in restaurants, bars and coffee shops reserved for smokers and non-smokers. The idea back in 2007 was to have strong ventilation systems to limit the effects of tobacco smoke on non-smokers.

One person dies every day in Reading from smoking.

The town has 35,700 smokers and in Reading, 24.3 per cent of the adult population smoke, which is in line with the national average, and only 1,637 people have quit for more than two weeks in 2007/8.

The stark truth is being hammered home to smokers in the town who are putting their lives at risk by sparking up according to figures released by the Local Health Profiles, collated by a national body called the Association of Public Health Observatories. The Local Health profile for 2008 reveals on average in Reading, one person a day dies from smoking. And in the South Central NHS region, which includes Berkshire, 15 people a day die from smoking.

Matt Daemon, a famous Hollywood actor was hypnotized, Jim Carrie was pricked all over the needles, and Gwyneth Paltrow practiced yoga. But now they are not at knifepoint of tobacco death. How and why do smoking celebs give up smoking?

For children: A Hollywood handsome celeb Ben Affleck, a star of such movies as “Armageddon”, and “Pearl-Harbor” gave up smoking for the sake of his daughter Violett whom his wife Jennifer Garner gave a birth in the year 2005.

OLYMPIA — Fewer adults are smoking in Washington, but state health officials say the numbers among low income adults are not encouraging.

A recent survey found Washington’s adult smoking rate has dropped about 25 percent since 2000. About 16.5 percent of Washington adults smoked in 2007. That’s below the national average of nearly 20 percent.

Most of the people who smoke in Washington are either low income or less educated. The smoking rate for people with a low income is 32 percent. The rate for people with a high school diploma or less is 27 percent.

Kris Jackson, a sophomore anthropology major at West Chester University, understands the reasoning behind the new smoking ban at his school. It’s the scope that he thinks too drastic.

“Asking people to smoke in designated areas is not that much to ask,” said Jackson, 19, as he puffed on a cigarette yesterday. “Asking people to stop is a lot to ask.”

A sweeping ban on smoking instituted last week at West Chester and all other state-owned universities has produced more confusion than clarity so far.

The ban goes further than the new Pennsylvania Clean Indoor Air Act, which prohibits smoking inside most public buildings and workplaces.

Smoking during pregnancy appears to affect children’s birthweight, and possibly their risk of becoming overweight, but it may not directly harm other aspects of physical and cognitive development, a large study suggests.

The findings, from a study of nearly 53,000 U.S. children born in the 1960s, found that those whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were at higher risk of low birthweight — a link that studies have long noted.

There was also evidence, albeit weaker, that these children were more likely than children of non-smoking women to be overweight by age seven.