U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona today released a new comprehensive report on smoking and health, revealing for the first time that smoking causes diseases in nearly every organ of the body. Published 40 years after the surgeon general’s first report on smoking — which concluded that smoking was a definite cause of three serious diseases — this newest report finds that cigarette smoking is conclusively linked to diseases such as leukemia, cataracts, pneumonia and cancers of the cervix, kidney, pancreas and stomach. ...

Cigarette smoking significantly harms almost every major organ of the body and has been directly linked to a new series of diseases including leukemia, cataracts, pneumonia and cancers of the kidney, cervix, pancreas and stomach. Yet 45 million Americans still smoke, and the rate at which they are quitting has slowed significantly in recent years. ...

One person dies from a tobacco-related disease every 6 1/2 seconds, the head of the U.N. health agency warned Friday ahead of its annual World No Tobacco Day. "This is occurring mostly in developing countries, adding significantly to their burden of disease and poverty," said Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organization. "The world cannot accept such easily preventable human and economic losses." ...

Smoking rates are down in the United States, but not enough to reach the federal goal of 12 percent of adults by 2010, the government reported on Thursday. In 2002, 22.5 percent of U.S. adults described themselves as smokers, down slightly from 2001, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. This rate of decline will not be enough to get the national smoking rate down to 12 percent, the goal set by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department for 2010, the CDC said. ...

Researchers follow the path of compulsion and find that the act of smoking is just as compelling as the drug. DURHAM -- Tethered to a pulse monitor, Robert Marrow sat in a tiny office and waited for the lab technician's cue. He leaned forward and placed his mouth on the filter of a lit cigarette encased in a network of glass tubes and wire. ...

NEW DELHI: The campaign against tobacco has shifted to a new turf: As powerful global interests get affected, the World Bank has now been rapped for trying to set a global health agenda that would give tobacco a reprieve from the concerted action plan of the World Health Organisation. ...

T hree years after its last attempt to spur legislation that would have empowered the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the marketing of cigarettes, Philip Morris is shopping around the contours of a bill that would, once again, let the agency limit the tobacco industry's reach. The company's latest endeavor comes just one year after winning a Supreme Court ruling that the F.D.A. does not have the authority to regulate cigarettes as a drug or a medical device. Yet the company is still hoping lawmakers will enable the agency to limit tobacco marketing, curb youth smoking and require more warning labels on cigarette packs. ...

Massachusetts smokers, already bracing for a 75-cents-a-pack tax increase on cigarettes that is making its way through the Legislature, may be in for another price shock this summer. Starting July 1, the state intends to prohibit cigarette manufacturers from offering retail discounts that in recent months have averaged about 60 cents a pack. Officials say the combination of the tax increase and the discount prohibition could make Massachusetts cigarettes the most expensive in the country, boosting their current price by 30 to 35 percent. ...

PARIS -- Everyone's favorite caricature of the Frenchman -- baguette under arm, beret on head, Gauloise clamped to lower lip and glass of vin rouge in hand -- may be about to change forever. In a step no previous government has dared to take, the Socialist-led coalition of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin looks almost certain to place alcohol and tobacco in the same category as marijuana and heroin -- as dangerous drugs. ...

What should be the priorities of those planning global public-health policies? In August, 1999, Davidson Gwatkin and colleagues published work in The Lancet that aimed to "give a more accurate picture of changes in attributable mortality among the world's poor than do the global averages in current use". Their argument was that infectious diseases caused almost 60% of death and disability in the world's poorest 20% of population. This pattern was reversed in the richest 20%, where 85% of death and disability resulted from non-communicable diseases. Gwatkin et al concluded that if the world focused on reducing the burden of non-communicable disease, the gap between rich and poor would widen. What was needed, they implied, was a redoubling of effort to tackle communicable disease. ...