Despite the disturbing images being added to cigarette packs and the Surgeon General's warnings against smoking while pregnant, some women are lighting up while pregnant anyway.

The effect of tobacco smoke on pregnant women and their developing babies is well-documented, but what if a baby were born into a community where no public smoking was allowed at all? The first study conducted in the U.S. to compare a city with a smoking ban to a city without one found that fewer pregnant women were smoking and fewer babies were being born early. Avoid cigarette smoke while pregnant. Robert Lee Page, II, a pharmacist in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of Colorado's Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, led the study to inve...

Could a shot finally help put the cigarettes down? A Boston biopharmaceutical company is exploring a new and unique method in the world of anti-smoking - a nicotine vaccine.

It might be possible to block pleasure receptors for both smoking and drinking with one pharmaceutical swoop. Heavy drinkers report drinking less alcohol after taking the anti-smoking drug— Chantix . Researchers took a drug already out on the market for smoking cessation and tried it on smokers who also drink heavily. The reduction in drinking was quite promising. Talk to your doctor if you think you have a drinking problem Jennifer Mitchell PhD, assistant professor of neurology at the University of California at San Francisco, led a study to understand the smoking cessation d...

As the search continues for environmental factors that may contribute to the increasing autism cases, researchers are looking in every nook and cranny for possible associations.

Ex-smokers who notice the warning labels on cigarette packs are less likely to start smoking again.  How much of a difference do these really warning labels make for ex-smokers? A four-country survey asks ex-smokers about cigarette warning labels over the course of 5 years to determine if they make any impact on whether or not they return to the smoking life. Warning labels may not be 100 percent effective, but they do appear to make a difference. Encourage people to notice warning labels on cigarette packs. Researchers from the VicHealth Centre for Tobacco Control, The Can...

A new look at data from anti-smoking ads may influence how campaigns are targeted in the future. There's no doubt that smoking is bad, but what is the best way to get the message across?

A lipid-lowering drug for high cholesterol is given to animals in a pre-clinical trial to see if it will block their central nervous system receptors from absorbing nicotine. Don’t try this at home!

Tweens , or children aged 10-12, are among the most impressionable age groups, and currently they are decidedly ambivalent towards cigarettes and alcohol. What can be done to change their minds?

Children exposed to as little as half an alcoholic drink a day in utero - even if they didn't have fetal alcohol syndrome - appeared to suffer in their achievement test scores.