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The State of Michigan has taken one step closer to a statewide smoking ban, reports News 11's Shelley Brown.
The Michigan House passed no-smoking legislation back in December, but the Senate's version calls for more than just bars and restaurants to put out the cigarettes. The State Senate voted 25 to 12 to ban smoking in all bars, restaurants and workplaces.
Since the State of Ohio closed the door on smoking, Michigan businesses like Nick and Jimmy's in Temperance have been reaping the benefits.
"I'd say about 50 percent of our customers come up from Ohio just to smoke here in Michigan, which helps out our business," says Lindsay Miller, who works at Nick and Jimmy's.
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Getting the cool kids to talk to their peers about the dangers of smoking cut the number of young people who started using cigarettes in one study by nearly 25 percent, British researchers said on Friday.
The study published in the journal Lancet took a different approach than most tobacco cessation programmes aimed at youths by asking students to nominate others they viewed as influential or leaders to spread the anti-smoking message.
This peer selection proved more effective than conventional programmes and greatly reduced the number of students likely to start smoking, the researchers said.
The drug Chantix may be linked to suicidal thoughts and depression in some people, but the risk of smoking is far worse, according to some physicians.
The health risks of smoking, including lung cancer, emphysema, stroke and heart attack, outweigh the known side effects of Chantix, said Dr. Marc Siegal, a FOX News Channel contributor.
"I still think it's a first-line agent," Siegal, a board certified internist and clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, told FOXNews.com. "It's absolutely the best thing we have out there to help people stop smoking."
The U.S. Public Health Service released its quit-smoking guidelines this week.
Reduction of smoking rates among teenagers can be achieved by training more influential students in secondary schools to promote anti-smoking messages in everyday conversations with their friends and peers, according to an article released on May 9, 2008 in The Lancet.
A young person's smoking habits are strongly associated with the behaviors their friends perform and usually, this is attributed to peer pressure. However, evidence suggests that peer selection, in which young people tend to choose to associate with like-minded people who engage in similar behaviors to themselves, is also a cause. Peer influence itself is not solely destructive, and can be protective, leading to efforts to harness its positive effects through peer education.
To this end, Professor Rona Campbell, University of Bristol, UK, and Professor Laurence Moore, Cardiff University, UK, and colleagues performed A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial (ASSIST).
Jon Hodge, owner of Buffalo Wild Wings Bar & Grill in Lafayette, said because of the Lafayette City Council's last-minute amendment Monday his restaurant will probably go smoke-free.
"We have no choice. We have to go smoke-free," Hodge said. "Sixty percent of our business is food."
Lafayette City Council members amended the city's smoking ban Monday night before it passed to include an exemption for businesses that serve and employ people 21 and older during all business hours.
The amendment, business owners say, will probably force them to go smoke-free, a decision that will likely hurt their bottom line.