Recovering drug addicts can look forward to climbing even further up the walls starting tomorrow, when all drug treatment centers in New York State implement a smoking ban. Bryan Lapsker, a 21-year-old PCP addict, tells amNY he’s been dreading the change: "Nicotine helps (addicts) get through the day. Now you take the nicotine away from us, it's almost impossible to get through the day. Addiction is addiction, I understand that, but nicotine is a legal......

An additional $1.25-a-pack tax on cigarettes goes into effect Tuesday, meaning that a carton of name brand smokes will cost a staggering $85. If the average cost of a box of premium brand cigarettes rises to $8.50, 50% of that cost is directly related to taxes ($2.75 to the State, $1.50 to the City). The Center for a Tobacco Free New York hopes that the latest tax increase will cause another 6% of the state's......

The NY Times visited the corner of 61st Street and Amsterdam to find out what New York adolescent girls at the alterna-Beacon School think of "role model" Miley Cyrus. Recently the 15-year-old actress was caught flaunting her bare skin online and in print. While some of the young ladies were fans (or rather, they "love-hate" her), the Vanity Fair photoshoot had them blurting out words like "whore" and "slut". There is, apparently, a fine line......

A member of the House Committee on Homeland Security will be releasing a report that alleges cigarettes sold on Indian reservations ultimately help fund Hamas and Hezbollah. The report, "Tobacco and Terror," from the staff of Republican Representative Peter King, illustrates how bootleggers could buy tons of cigarettes from Indian reservations, where cigarettes are not taxed. Here's a sample sentence from the report: “A motivated terrorist cell could generate sufficient funds to carry out another......

Considering that most smokers pick up the nasty habit during their impressionable adolescent years, it makes sense to put off exposing the tykes to the temptation until they're old enough to poison themselves. Riding that puff of thought, the State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines wrote an open letter earlier this month to film makers this week asking them to refrain from including smoking scenes in G, PG, and PG-13 rated movies. The (Health) Commish......