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The best gift any smoker can give his spouse, children or grandchildren, nephews or nieces, friends or coworkers, is to quit smoking, says Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

Santa Claus will deliver toys this year without his pipe because of growing concerns about his health, the health of Mrs. Claus and children everywhere, and the growing number of court orders and even laws prohibiting smoking in homes with children.

A new study shows that persons who move into apartments previously inhabited by smokers are exposed to tobacco toxins even if the dwellings had been vacant for months and cleaned and repaired - more evidence of the dangers of thirdhand tobacco smoke.

The Deficit Reduction Commission totally ignored the major controllable cause of health care expenditures and completely spared the cause, even while proposing sacrifices for innocent bystanders like doctors, hospitals, medical students, patients.

The WHO reports that 165,000 children die annually from secondhand tobacco smoke. While most occur in poor countries, many people refuse to recognize that parental smoking kills thousands of children yearly in the U.S., largely unprotected by law.

Recently the Anna Jaques Hospital in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts followed the lead of the Massachusetts Hospital Association in refusing to hire smokers, a move also copied by Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, Missouri - ASH

The Department of Health and Human Services has proposed new graphic health warnings as the centerpiece of its new war on smoking, but even HHS seems to concede that such warnings are likely to have no measurable impact, says ASH

Professor John Banzhaf asked the first question at this morning's announcement by HHS's Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about her agency's "Tobacco Control Action Plan, Here are more questions which might help to put her announcement into perspective.

Today's announcement that HHS will fight the almost $200 billion/yr tobacco epidemic primarily only by requiring bigger and more graphic warnings on cigarette packs and ads is too little, too late, and wrongheaded, says ASH

New antismoking initiatives - aimed at America's number one preventable cause of death, disability, and unnecessary medical expenses - will be unveiled this morning by HHS Sec. Sebelius and FDA Comm. Hamburg at GWU