Children who live with smokers miss more school due to illness than those who live in households with non-smokers, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.

Researchers analyzed data from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey that tracked, among other things, how many days of school children aged 6 to11 missed and the reason for their absence.

In the United States about 3,450 young people between the ages of 12 and 17 will smoke their first cigarette today and around 850 of them will become daily smokers. That’s according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The battle to stop underage smoking is being fought on many fronts, including making sure businesses don’t sell tobacco to people under age 18.

Big name tobacco brands are ramping up their presence in the dissolvable tobacco game, and consumers in test markets, as well as regulators, are trying to figure out what make of the new products.

In early 2011, in Colorado and North Carolina, R.J. Reynolds began test-marketing Camel-branded wares — tobacco compressed into toothpicks, mints and strips that dissolve in your mouth. Unlike cigarettes, they produce no smoke, and unlike smokeless tobacco, you don’t have to spit when you use them.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/08/19/how-safe-is-tobacco-that-melts-in-your-mouth/#ixzz1VTsi0L97

Smoking is an important risk factor in brain shrinkage and a decline in brain function in later years, a new study suggests. The study found smoking, along with high blood pressure, diabetes and excess weight, all contributed to potentially dangerous changes in the brain that could lead to a decline in mental functioning as soon as 10 years later. The study appears in the journal Neurology.

Hollywood movies are far less likely to feature characters lighting up than just five years ago, suggests an analysis published last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Smoking in movies rated G, PG and PG-13 plummeted 71.6 percent between 2005 and 2010, from 2,093 incidents in 2005 to 595 last year. In films rated G or PG, incidents of tobacco use declined 93.6 percent, from 472 to 30.

The industry touts lozenges and other smokeless products as safer alternatives to smoking. But public health officials and others raise health concerns and worry that they will entice a new generation to get hooked on tobacco.

An anti-tobacco advocacy group is working to increase the number of smoke-free apartment buildings and condos in Chicago.

Smoke gets in your ears — if you’re a teen exposed to secondhand smoke — and is associated with hearing loss, a large study suggested.

Exposed adolescents were 1.83 times more likely to experience low-frequency hearing loss than those who had no exposure, according to Dr. Anil K. Lalwani and colleagues from New York University in New York City.

It’s starting to look like substance abuse day here at the Capitol.

Or at least a day for the Cuomo Administration to rip on any number of mind altering drugs and substances.

First Lt. Gov. Bob Duffy brought us up to date on efforts to collect Native American tobacco taxes. And then in shorter order Cuomo’s press office announced the signing of two bills: One to ban the sale of so-called bath salts that actually act like amphetamine; and another banning the sale of hookahs and other smoking paraphernalia to minors.

Three film companies have drastically reduced smoking in their movies aimed at children and teens, thanks in part to their policies to reduce on-screen tobacco use, a new study says.