Keeping children who are entering the teenage years from seeing R-rated movies may help prevent them from smoking, a new study suggests. ...

The hard-hitting ad is part of a £1m government campaign to highlight the risks of passive smoking Disturbing images of a baby inhaling smoke are to be used in a hard-hitting TV advertising campaign aimed at stubbing out passive smoking. The harrowing images of young children appearing to breathe smoke are part of a £1m government campaign that will hit TV screens on Monday. ...

Meghan Pasricha has launched an all-out, international attack on tobacco. She started an anti-tobacco group at Sanford School. And although she's not old enough to vote, the 17-year-old has lobbied for the state's anti-smoking law and for more federal regulation of tobacco. She started an anti-smoking group in India and plans to do the same in Mexico. ...

The good news is retailers in Montgomery County are getting better about refusing to sell cigarettes, chewing tobacco and other nicotine products to minors. State surveys done before education efforts started in 1996 yielded a 50.2 percent sales rate, said Judy Ochs, the state Health Department's division director for Prevention and Control. ...

Two important triggers of asthma attacks are rarely removed from homes of children with asthma, according to a new study by researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center. ...

Smoking while pregnant appears to put the future fertility of any female children at risk. Researchers believe this could be because tobacco smoke has a damaging effect on the developing fallopian tubes. ...

It's a relatively good time to be young, according to a government report released yesterday that found the nation's children doing better by many measures of health and well-being. ...

In the concluding chapter of a recent report, published as a supplement in the journal Pediatrics, Dr. Brent and his co-author, Dr. Michael Weitzman, a pediatrician at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, reviewed what are unquestionably the leading risks to infants, children and adolescents. ...

Despite laws to protect young people from tobacco marketing, powerful pro-smoking signals are reaching teens--and perhaps female teens in particular--through the loophole of Hollywood movies, in which glamorous stars are smoking more. (WOMENSENEWS)--Laws prohibit paid tobacco-product placement in movies and tobacco advertising to children. Nonetheless, Hollywood actors are lighting up so frequently on screen that researchers say it is inducing teens--and quite possibly body-conscious female teens in particular--to follow their example. ...

The Department of Education (DepEd) has ordered the strict implementation of youth smoking prevention programs in all public and private school campuses nationwide. At the same time, Education Secretary de Jesus ordered no smoking and no sale of cigarettes in all buildings and regional offices of DepEd throughout the country. ...