Tobacco smuggling causes around 4,000 premature deaths a year—four times the number of deaths caused by the use of all smuggled illegal drugs put together—but the UK government is not doing enough to tackle the problem, claim experts on bmj.com today.

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.

More and more U.S. college students are smoking tobacco using waterpipes – or hookahs – and it's becoming a growing public health issue, according to a new study led by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher.

Although behavioral studies clearly indicate that exposure to drugs, alcohol and tobacco in utero is bad for a baby's developing brain, specific anatomic brain effects have been hard to tease out in humans. Often users don't limit themselves to one substance, and demographic factors like poverty can also influence brain development.

Despite public health campaigns, a surprising number of women continue to use substances such as tobacco, marijuana and alcohol during pregnancy and their usage rebounds to pre-pregnancy levels within two years of having a baby, according to a new University of Washington study.

In large-scale field trials, scientists from North Carolina State University have shown that silencing a specific gene in burley tobacco plants significantly reduces harmful carcinogens in cured tobacco leaves.

A study in a Wiley-Blackwell journal – Respirology – finds that the development of bullous lung disease occurs in marijuana smokers approximately 20 years earlier than tobacco smokers.

The American Cancer Society held its 31st annual American Smoke Out today, offering information on tobacco product's deadly risks and urging smokers to call it quits.

Tobacco may be bad for human health, but a new study reports that a genetically engineered tobacco plant may be very good for the environment. It shows promise for cleaning up soil contaminated with TNT, a widely used military explosive.

The EU executive took France to court Wednesday to try and overturn minimum French retail prices for cigarettes.