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Orange County gets $6.6 million anti-tobacco grant  

Efforts by health officials to reduce smoking among local residents got a major boost Friday with the announcement of a $6.6 million dollar federal grant.

The Orange County Health Department was awarded the grant - the department's largest ever - to help stop local residents from smoking or prevent them from ever lighting up.

U.S. Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin was among those at a press conference Friday at the Orange County Health Department headquarters to announce the award. Orange County was one of three communities connected via satellite to Washington D.C. for the announcement of $372.8 million in grants. They will be awarded to 44 communities to prevent obesity and tobacco use while improving nutrition and increasing physical activity among their residents. . . .

The grant award is part of the Health and Human Services' Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative to combat chronic diseases and promote good health.

"The burden of chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, strokes and lung disease threatens to overwhelm our health care systems," said Sherin. "An estimated 81 Floridians die every day due to tobacco-related diseases. The answers in part lie in tobacco prevention programs such as those funded by this grant. Working together as a community we can save lives."

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Police write up 6 bars, 13 customers in Elkhart smoking ban sweep  

Nearly two years after a city smoking ban took effect -- and 10 months after an exemption for bars expired -- reports of violations are still coming in to the city.

So, Elkhart Police Department officials said, it was time to crack down.

Police visited 27 restaurants and bars Thursday night, checking to see if the rules of the city's clean air ordinance were being followed. They found 19 violators, issuing tickets to six businesses and 13 individuals.

"Based on the complaints we had received," said EPD spokesman Lt. Ed Windbigler, "we just figured it was time to go out and make sure everyone was in compliance."

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SGO: No Lung CA Risk Seen with Estrogen  

Action Points

* Explain to patients that this study showed no increased lung cancer risk in women taking estrogen therapy.

* The study was not designed to evaluate lung cancer risk.

* Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Unopposed estrogen therapy (ERT) did not increase lung cancer incidence or mortality risk in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI).

Women randomized to ERT and placebo had similar rates of all lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and small cell lung cancer. An identical pattern emerged from a mortality analysis, Rowan Chlebowski, MD, reported here at the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists meeting.

The results contrast with those of a previous WHI analysis showing a significant lung cancer mortality hazard among women treated with combined estrogen-progestin (HRT) therapy.

"It looks like maybe progestin is the bad component,"

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The Gunslinger  

Observers take this as a sign that the relationship between the community boards and the agency is changing.

And new SLA Chairman Dennis Rosen is the reason.

"I'm not a rubber stamp for either the community boards or business," says Mr. Rosen, a former state assistant attorney general who led a state investigation of the SLA in 2005.

Mr. Rosen, who took over in August, is overhauling the SLA from top to bottom. He has dramatically reformed the agency, once seen as a symbol of failure and corruption. He has reduced the nine-month wait for a liquor license to as little as two weeks in some cases, slashed the backlog of applications from 3,000 to 1,800, and stepped up enforcement actions by partnering with local cops to crack down on businesses that flout the law. . . .

Mr. Rosen hired a new deputy chief executive, Michael Jones, to head the New York City office, which also covers the surrounding suburbs. Mr. Jones has strong ties to the New York Police Department--he comes from a family of police officers--and he has won the support of the NYPD to help him shut down businesses that engage in illegal activities. Mr. Rosen also moved Mr. Jones' office from Albany to Harlem so that he would be closer to the city, where the majority of liquor licenses are issued, making him more accessible to community leaders.

Mr. Rosen says he wants to reassure residents that bad operators will be dealt with.

"You don't get a license forever regardless of what happens," he says.

Since late September, when Mr. Jones was hired, the SLA has either revoked or temporarily suspended the licenses of nine downstate businesses--including last week's actions at two Bronx bodegas that had been selling vodka to kids. By contrast, the agency had removed just one license over the previous 18 months, according to Mr. Jones.

A business ally

Bar and restaurant owners are keeping a wary eye on the agency's tougher enforcement approach. But overall, they see Mr. Rosen as an ally.

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FlashForward Recap: All Hail Squirrelio -- Vulture 

"Only villains smoke. We know that, right?"

Ricky Jay, the magician who got tapped to play FlashForward's biggest bad guy to date, finally gets a character name: Flosso, which is a reference that creator David Goyer is making to a magician named Flosso in New York, whom Jay idolized in real life. And the cigar-smoking, emphysemic Flosso kidnaps both Lloyd, via ambulance in the last episode, and Simon, drags them back to his lair, and proceeds to grill Lloyd about how many "electron volts" their particle accelerator experiment produced. He throws around some physics mumbo jumbo about plasma wave-field generators, Tachyonic dark matter, and Cherenkov radiation, and ultimately has one of his goons clip one of Simon's pinky fingers off with a cigar cutter because Lloyd isn't talking fast enough.

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George Clooney Checked Jeff Bridges’s Box 

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Best Smokers' Retreat  

Now comes Luke and Leroy, a two-story lounge that opened in December, to give our much-put-upon smoking drinkers the attention they don't get elsewhere. In a red-roped six-by-twelve-foot sidewalk smokers' annex outside, an electric fireplace dances with fake flames, and the mantle offers bowls of marshmallows. When the weather warms up, the bar will scrap this tableau for a new seasonal one: beach chairs around a kiddie pool filled with sand that serves as an ashtray, all under a wide umbrella for those non-beachy nights. See, smokers? Someone does care.

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