Smoking Banned Around Hospitals in New York

The New York City Council unanimously approved a bill on Wednesday to prohibit smoking within 15 feet of the entrance or exit to any hospital. Lawmakers said the measure was a logical and necessary extension of an existing ban on smoking in hospitals, in place since 1988, and the ban on workplace smoking, one of the Bloomberg administration’s key initiatives, which took effect in 2003.

Smoking Banned Around Hospitals in New York

“When visiting a hospital, the last thing patients should have to worry about avoiding second hand smoke,” the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said before the vote. “Patients should not have to walk through plumes of smoke on their way to seeing their doctor.”

The legislation, introduced by Councilwoman Inez E. Dickens, a Manhattan Democrat, applies to general hospitals, diagnostic and treatment centers and residential health care facilities. The measure not only bans smoking within 15 feet of hospital entrances or exits, but also smoking within 15 feet of the entrance to or exit from a hospital’s outdoor grounds.

A coalition of antitobacco groups — including the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids — supported the legislation.

The city’s 1988 Smoke-Free Air Act already bans smoking in hospitals, clinics, psychiatric facilities, residential health care facilities, physical therapy facilities, convalescent homes and homes for the aged.

In a Monday hearing on the measure, staff members for the City Council reported that several states — Arkansas, Colorado and Hawaii — and municipalities — Buffalo; Duluth, Minn.; and Sioux City, Iowa — had passed similar measures restricting smoking around hospital entrances.

Pentagon Considering Smoking Ban for Military

The U.S. military’s long, storied love affair with tobacco may be doomed.

The Pentagon, which actively promoted smoking during the two world wars and still subsidizes tobacco at PXs and commissaries, is considering a ban.

Pentagon Considering Smoking Ban for Military

That’s one recommendation from a panel led by a former dean of the School of Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill that was asked by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs how to reduce tobacco use in the military.

If Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accepts the group’s suggestions, it would be a historic about-face for the likes of Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg, where tens of thousands of young men and women learned to smoke amid a culture that regarded cigarettes as much a part of being a soldier or Marine as carrying a rifle.

“It’s all I see on the bases,” said Staff Sgt. Maritza Hunt, a squad leader at Fort Bragg.

Hunt, although not a smoker, was skeptical of how successful efforts to curb tobacco use would be.

“You have colonels and generals and all kinds of people who smoke,” she said.

The military could end tobacco use within 20 years by gradually refusing entry to users, said Stuart Bondurant, dean emeritus of the School of Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“If the services take the full 20 years, practically everyone now in the military would be retired,” he said.

The panel that Bondurant led issued a report in June that found that 22 percent of VA patients and 33 percent of active-duty troops use tobacco, compared with 20 percent of the U.S. population. Use is even higher among deployed troops.

Anti Smoking Drugs Linked to Increase in Mental Side Effects

Two prescription drugs that are used to quit smoking have been linked to an increase in mental side effects. The mood changes are prevalent and the FDA has instructed manufacturers of both Chantix (Varenicline) and Zyban (Bupropion) to place boxed warning labels on the packaging inserts and prescription drug information. Some of the changes in mood or mental side effects experienced include:

Depression
Anger or Hostility
Behavioral Changes
Suicidal Thoughts or thoughts of dying

The mental or mood disorders were determined through the use of the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System or AERS. Both consumers and health care professionals can use AERS to submit reports of adverse reactions to medications to the FDA. The tool helps identify reactions that were not identified during clinical trials or studies, but might have been identified after a medication has been approved for general use. Consumers can fill out forms for the AERS program with their health care provider, or they can submit their own reports through MedWatch.

After receiving multiple reports submitted by consumers and health care providers, the FDA has determined that the warning must be placed on both Chantix and Zyban. Zyban, or Bupropion, is also marketed as the anti-depressant drug, Wellbutrin. Patients using Wellbutrin have also experienced similar mood changes and found their mental disorders increased. Wellbutrin will also receive the boxed warning label. Generic versions of the drug will also receive the box warnings.

The new warnings will be in ‘boxed’ form. This means that the paper inserts that accompany the medication will have a black box with the warning information listed. Those using Chantix or Zyban should report any changes in mood or their mental well-being to their health care provider immediately.

In addition to the box warning, manufacturers of smoking cessation products will need to conduct clinical trials to determine how frequently the mental disorders, or neuropsychiatric symptoms occur. They will also need to determine whether the symptoms are more prone to occurring in patients with a previous history of mental disorders. Pfizer Inc manufacturers Chantix and GlaxoSmithKilne manufacturers Zyban.

Obama, the first president to smoke cigarettes

Yes, President Obama says, he occasionally sneaks a cigarette.

Obama Smoking Cigarette

This is, perhaps, one of the worst-kept secret around the White House. Weeks, the president of the advisers have declined to say whether he whipped his smoking. And one day after signing the landmark tobacco legislation, Mr. Obama conceded as many have surmised.

“If I fell from the train sometimes Yes,” said Mr. Obama on Tuesday, White House news conference. “Am I a smoker a day, a constant smoker? No.”

Between denouncing the crackdown on protests in Iran and explaining his health care plan in Congress, Mr. Obama was asked whether he still smoked. Expression on his face – a dismissive of, some of the bother – foretold his answer.

“I do not do it in front of my children,” he said. “I do not do it in front of my family. I would say that I am 95 percent cured, but there are times where I mess up.”

Mr. Obama, of course, is hardly the first president to smoke cigarettes. But, this is a new era, when tobacco was banned, the improvement of health care is at the top of the president’s agenda and tough anti-tobacco legislation is passed his table.

“First of all, the new law was put into place is not for me,” said Mr. Obama, speaking tersely to a reporter who asked the question, Margaret Talev of McClatchy Newspapers. “It’s about the next generation of kids is published.”

Mr. Obama’s answer May did little to add to public debate about smoking, but he illustrates his testiness on the subject. His wife, Michelle, told him to stop when he started his campaign, saying: “He can not be President of smoking.”

But now, it seems, he is – at least occasionally.

I make this question one every month or so, “said Mr. Obama.” You know, I do not know what to say to you, except the fact that you know, like people who go to AA, you know, once you’ve gone down this time, then you know that is something I constantly struggle with. “

Mr. Obama is not seen smoking in public for years. In 2005, on his first day in Washington as a freshman senator, he has removed a number of the window as the SUV and lit up cigarettes as they rode on Capitol Hill in a meeting at the White House. And now that he lives in the White House, the testing is far greater.

So where is he smoking? Wooded grove White House around the swimming pool and tennis courts is one place, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who are not authorized to speak about it.