China maps out tobacco control plan

Following China's Health Ministry announcement of a smoking ban in most public places, which will come into effect on May 1, prominent tobacco control expert and reputed health activist Yang Gonghuan has mapped out a detailed plan for the next five years that aims to "fully ban smoking in public locations" yesterday.

She noted that to achieve the aim as a workable national plan, it is essential to legislate at a national level as well as to operate the guarantee mechanism and run the tobacco control programs at a local level, including building up a supervising and evaluating system over the control efficiency.

Wash. bill would OK sites for cigar, pipe smoking

More than five years after Washington voters banned smoking in most public places, state lawmakers on Thursday took up a bill that would make an exception for a limited number of tobacco retailers.

The Senate Labor, Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee heard public testimony on a measure that would permit up to 100 cigar lounges and 500 retail tobacco shops to apply for state license endorsements to allow cigar and pipe smoking on their premises.

Cigarette smoking still would be banned.

Applicants would have to pay a $15,000 fee to obtain a cigar lounge endorsement and $5,000 to obtain a tobacco store endorsement.

Senators call for baseball chewing tobacco ban

Two U.S. senators have urged the heads of Major League Baseball and the players union to ban the use of smokeless tobacco products on the field and in the dugout and the locker room.

A similar ban on chewing tobacco has been in place in baseball's minor leagues for decades. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, both Democrats, said it was time for the major leagues to follow suit.

"We now know conclusively that smokeless tobacco endangers the health of baseball players who use it, but it also affects millions of young people who watch baseball," Durbin and Lautenberg wrote in a letter to baseball commissioner Bud Selig, which was made available to news organizations on Tuesday.

In the letter, they cited a survey that found use of smokeless tobacco products by high school boys has increased by 36 percent since 2003.