NORMAN, Okla. — The University of Oklahoma Board of Regents has voted to restrict smoking to two designated areas on the Norman campus. The board on Tuesday approved a policy that designates parking lots near Dale Hall and Lloyd Noble Center as smoking areas and bans cigarette smoking at the Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and the Lloyd Noble Center. President David Boren told board members university officials feel morally obligated to set an example, particularly since hundreds of other colleges and universities across the country have adopted similar policies. The smoking policy ... Jump to full article >>

PLANS for a smoke-free Millennium Place could be examined in the future if it is successful during the Olympics. The site outside the Transport Museum is set to be a hub of activity during this summer’s Games with a huge TV screen attracting visitors to the city centre. But it will also become a smoke-free zone under a new council campaign to lower smoking rates in the city. Health spokesman Coun Joe Clifford – who also chairs Coventry’s Smoke free Alliance – said the scheme could be looked at being made permanent after the Olympics. “If it is successful, it might ... Jump to full article >>

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “China Foods, Beverages & Tobacco Production Equipment Market Report” report to their offering. This report presents a clear picture on the overall development of the foods, beverages & tobacco production equipment market in China and the trend in recent years based on detailed data analysis. This report includes an analysis of the circuit printing market size and market share in China, a study on major hot areas in this market, an introduction to key data and a comparison of the top 10 enterprises in terms of sales r ... Jump to full article >>

MURFREESBORO — The calendar has turned from 2011 to 2012, and spring semester is under way at MTSU. A new day has dawned on campus. A tobacco-free day. “MT tobacco free” decals began going up Jan 4, and a majority of the installation was to be completed by the end of the week. On academic, housing and administrative buildings, decals were installed over the existing “no smoking within 20 feet” door signs. MTSU News and Media Affairs reported that 300 decals were ordered and installed at a total cost to date of $3,853. MTSU’s tobacco-free policy was announced by ... Jump to full article >>

Jim Hatfield has smoked since he was 10 years old and doesn’t have quitting on his list of New Year’s resolutions. But he knows he will stop smoking one of these days. “Yeah, I will,” Hatfield, 65, of Clayton, N.M., said as he finished a Liggett Select cigarette in the Westgate Mall parking lot Thursday afternoon. “When they put me in the ground, I’ll definitely have to quit.” About 30 percent of cancer deaths in the U.S. are caused by smoking, Texas Oncology physician Phillip Periman said, and the risks of smoking are by no means limited to lung cancer. Hatfield’s wife and fel ... Jump to full article >>

If women didn’t already have enough reasons to quit smoking before pregnancy, here’s a big one: Smoking during pregnancy may set their child up for blood vessel damage, a new study shows. Dutch scientists enrolled more than 250 children. When the children were 4 weeks old, their body dimensions and lung function were measured. At the same time, their parents completed questionnaires about such factors as smoking during pregnancy. When the children were 5, the researchers used ultrasound to measure the thickness and flexibility of their carotid arteries, large blood vessels in the n ... Jump to full article >>

The cigarette industry is not dying. It continues to reap unimaginable profits. It’s still winning lawsuits. And cigarettes still kill millions every year. So says Stanford’s Robert Proctor, author of the new bombshell study, Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition, a book the tobacco industry tried to stop with subpoenas and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Proctor, the first historian to testify in court against the tobacco industry (in 1998), warns that the worst of the health catastrophe is still ahead of us: Thanks to th ... Jump to full article >>

Then Schwaber, a 29-year-old emergency medical technician from Lexington who smoked as much as three packs a day, tried electronic cigarettes. The battery-operated vaporizers, often shaped like a cigarette, use flavored liquids to deliver a dose of nicotine with each draw. She hasn’t smoked for more than two years. Instead Schwaber puffs on “vape’’ that tastes like biscotti or peach. She no longer needs the asthma inhaler she once used regularly. She has no taste for tobacco. And she figures she has cut her daily nicotine intake to about one-fifth of what it was, with plans to wean her ... Jump to full article >>

GUNTUR: The Centre is considering to bring the crops that are being managed by independent boards such as tobacco , tea and rubber under insurance cover. It is learnt that the commerce ministry has asked for detailed reports from the chiefs of the boards with observations of the stakeholders of the crops. After a meeting in Delhi, senior officials of the commerce ministry asked the Tobacco Board to initiate discussions with the growers to implement the scheme. With Parliament in session , Tobacco Board chairman G Kamalavardhan Rao deputed its executive director K Subbarao for the high-level me ... Jump to full article >>

BOISE – In just under a month, the Idaho Legislature begins its 2012 session, and already proposed issues are sparking discussion.   One of those is whether the state should raise its tobacco tax.  A coalition of Idaho health groups wants a pack of cigarettes taxed an extra $1.25. Will this year be different? This is one of the issues that had the democrats calling for a longer session, even stalling as the session drew to a close.  They wanted hearings on the proposed increase, but a bill never made it to the floor. “We were hoping we would gain success with the tobacco tax in ... Jump to full article >>

SALES of cigarettes have slumped yet again, with experts pointing to a rise in smuggling and smokers puffing less. Figures from Revenue showed that excise was paid on just more than 4.1 billion cigarettes in Ireland last year, down by more than 10pc from a year earlier. Sales quantities have been on a continuous downward trend for the past five years and are now down by a quarter from 2006. However, rises in duty on cigarettes have ensured that the revenue earned for the Exchequer is still on a par with five years ago at €1.1bn. The one area that has seen an increase in demand in recent year ... Jump to full article >>