Rod Blagojevich signed legislation Monday making Illinois the latest state to ban smoking in public places - including bars, restaurants and work places. Chicago and dozens of other communities already restrict smoking, but the new law trumps local ordinances that are weaker or that exempt businesses with air filtration systems, state health officials said. Smokers will still be allowed to light up in their homes, cars, at retail tobacco shops, in certain motel rooms and outdoors....

While the FDA can regulate nicotine-replacement therapies now, it lacks regulatory oversight over cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, and it can't prevent tobacco sales to youths. Already, near rolling hills where generations of North Carolina farmers have grown traditional tobacco plants, a small biotech firm has planted tobacco specially engineered to eliminate most nicotine. WASHINGTON -- Public health advocates are within striking distance of a goal that has eluded them for generations:...

That law goes back a few hundred years, I'm sure, and was a necessary edict right up until cowboys, chewing tobacco and spittoons went the way of horse-drawn carriages and hoop skirts. The law doesn't hurt anyone by just sitting there in dusty old law books or on metal signs nailed high above the pedestrian traffic. The law is on the books; the sign upholds the law. And I've gotten used to having lunch late in the day if we go to a restaurant on a Sunday, because blue laws still on the...

As New Hampshire's congressional delegation helps piece together a new federal farm bill in Washington, they should consider how marijuana, long an agricultural outcast, would better serve the folks back home as a legal, regulated crop -- like tobacco. What is needed is a new policy capable of controlling not just a fraction of the marijuana crop, but one that effectively deals with the 92 percent now reaching marijuana buyers. While marijuana is generally consumed in the state in which it...

Attorneys noted that the fewest bankruptcies in 12 years were recorded in Wisconsin last year after a record number of consumers hurried to court to beat implementation of a tougher bankruptcy law during late 2005. The new law also requires people considering bankruptcy to undergo means tests to find out if they actually could pay back at least part of their financial obligations over time. The new bankruptcy law requires more documentation to establish whether someone is in need of the...