Each year, 36,600 adults in California die from smoking. These aren't just numbers, rather they represent someone's father, mother, brother, sister or friend. These families will never be the same after experiencing a preventable loss.
If you're still skeptical, here's a primer to help you tease out the facts from the propaganda on the issues of this unnecessarily complicated bill proposing a $1 per pack tax on cigarettes in California.
We were encouraged, if not surprised, that the mayor has stepped across the country to California to let Big Tobacco know we will fight them everywhere. It is literally a matter of life and death.
Please forgive me if you find my fascination with this Facebook post a bit trivial. I'm getting old and jaded, and being hopeful about a better Middle East is slowly fading.
From a public (and private) health point of view, as well as economically, Proposition 29 should be a slam dunk.
Addicts under the addictive spell of smoking always have a reason or an excuse to smoke, whether these make sense or not. The real question is whether they truly believe their lives will be better if they free themselves from the familiar thrall that smoking reliably provides them.
From a moral standpoint, there is no question that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney should retract opposition to the Obama Administration's 61-cent federal excise tax increase on cigarettes.
On June 5, Californians will have the opportunity to pass Proposition 29, the California Cancer Research Act. By adding $1 tax per pack of cigarettes and equivalent tax on other tobacco products, Prop 29 will save an estimated 104,500 lives from premature smoking-caused deaths.
People tend to think of infant crying and colic as a parenting nuisance. In fact, sleep deprivation and the sound of crying babies are used to prepare the Navy elite SEALS to endure torture!
Wouldn't it be helpful to have a simple, objective assessment of anti-tobacco messages, one that predicts how large numbers of people will respond? Well, psychological scientists are working on just that, and indeed may have identified a neurological predictor of mass behavior change.
I appeal to those who know, and to those who are still open to the possibility, that right and wrong actually exist.
Why not force gays and lesbians to watch heterosexual pornography before they get hitched in the handful of states where they can legally marry? Maybe by watching men and women having sex, gays and lesbians will realize the error of their sinful ways!
Silently creeping deviance, She swam to the shore, cigarette ablaze With the light of the moonlit glow That glazed her eyes red revenge, Sopping seas...
Efforts to prohibit teen smoking throughout the region escalates the conflict between governments who seek to legislate behavior and businesses and some politicians who view tobacco as a question of economics.
Last time the Obamas didn't do so well. They gave Cameron's predecessor, Gordon Brown, a set of movie DVDs that didn't play on the devices sold in the UK.
WARNING: Congress Expected to Cut Funding to Address America's Number-one Preventable Cause of Death
Spending money now to prevent chronic disease and curb the growing obesity rates in America is the right thing to do. Prevention programs are imperative to controlling the exploding growth in health care costs.
