NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates today announce that in their efforts to combat smoking and tobacco they donate $500 Million dollars in combined funds helping people to quit smoking and have healthier lifestyles.

As of July 1, The Netherlands becomes the latest European nation to ban smoking in restaurants, cafes and all public places. The difference in Holland, though, is you can still order marijuana and hashish at cafes and coffee shops alongside your coffee, tea or juice. But as Lauren Comiteau reports for VOA from Amsterdam, the new rules for smoking it have left a lot of coffee shop owners and patrons…well, dazed and confused.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is urging governments to ban all tobacco advertising. The aim is to protect the world's youth from becoming addicted to a product WHO says could cause one billion premature deaths this century. The U.N. organization issued the call on World No Tobacco Day. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from WHO headquarters in Geneva.

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare is Offering free Nicotine Lozenges to all licensed pilots after FAA banned Chantix anti-smoking drug usage due to side effects.

People who quit smoking often give up the habit as part of larger group that includes many people they don't even know. Experts say this so-called "flocking" effect has implications for public health campaigns aimed at getting smokers to kick the habit.

A strong signal of multiple safety problems with Chantix (varenicline), a drug to help people stop smoking, has been seen in a pilot program to identify new drug risks in adverse drug events reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

A part of Nurses' Health Study shows how quickly women can get back their health after quitting smoking and decrease mortality rates associated with smoking-related illnesses.

Heavy drinkers and heavy smokers develop Alzheimer’s disease years earlier than people with Alzheimer’s who do not drink or smoke heavily, according to research that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology 60th Anniversary Annual Meeting in Chicago, April 12–19, 2008.

Teen attitudes to smoking need to be re-examined if anti-smoking health campaigns are to be effective, according to Hunter researchers.

Smokers trying to quit in the future could do it with the help of cannabis based medicines, according to research from The University of Nottingham.

India is in the midst of a catastrophic epidemic of smoking deaths, which is expected to cause about one million (10 lakh) deaths a year during the 2010s – including one in five of all male deaths and one in 20 of all female deaths at ages 30-69. On average, male bidi smokers lose about six years of life, female bidi smokers lose about eight years and male cigarette smokers lose about ten years.

More elderly adults are lighting up cigarettes and not reporting their nicotine habits to doctors and others, according to findings from one of the first studies to examine the accuracy of self-reported smoking habits by age, race and gender of adults 18 years and older by researchers at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine and other university collaborators.