(HealthDay News) -- Women exposed to secondhand smoke at home or in the workplace had a 67 percent increased risk of peripheral artery disease (PAD) compared to women who weren't exposed, a new study says.

"This is the first study to show the adverse effects of secondhand smoke on peripheral artery disease in women," lead author Yao He, a professor of epidemiology at the Chinese PLA General Hospital in Beijing, said in an American Heart Association news release.

Dr. Butterwick explains if a woman's skin would look healthier if she didn't smoke.

I think most of us find it ironic that drugstores sell cigarettes and even more ironic that you usually go to the back of the store for medication, and the cigarettes are available as you walk in the door!

Walgreens - one of the giants in the drugstore industry, is suing in order to be allowed to sell cigarettes. They are suiing the City of San Francisco. The City is working on making it illegal for pharmacies to sell cigarettes. The law goes into being on October 1.

TUESDAY, Sept. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Fewer U.S. college students (1 in 5) are smoking than ever before, but college and university leaders need to take a stand against aggressive tobacco industry marketing tactics to ensure student smoking rates don't increase, a new American Lung Association report finds.

THURSDAY, Sept. 4 (HealthDay News) -- Lung and bronchial cancers accounted for almost half of the approximately 2.4 million tobacco-related cancers diagnosed in the United States between 1999 and 2004, says a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday.

The study, which marks the first time the CDC has reported on all tobacco-related cancers for more than 90 percent of the U.S. population, was based on an analysis of data from the CDC's National Program of Cancer Registries and the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and Results Program.

I can always tell when a parent of a child I'm treating is a smoker. The examination room is just filled with smoke - not too different from the experience you'd have if you walked into a bar or restaurant that still allows smoking. My style is to ignore it until the very end of the visit - sneaky, I know! I just forge ahead trying to not inhale too much air. I have to admit, there have been times I've had to find excuses to leave the room to get a few smoke-free breathes of air!!

TUESDAY, Aug. 26 (HealthDay News) -- California's state tobacco program resulted in a 50-to-1 return on investment over 15 years, say researchers from the University of California, San Francisco.

In a study published in the Aug. 25 issue of PLoS Medicine, researchers evaluated the health care savings that occurred as a result of the tobacco control program between 1989, when the program began, and 2004, when the study ended.

They found that the program saved $86 billion -- in 2004 dollars -- while only costing the state $1.8 billion to fund the program.

THURSDAY, Aug. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Mass media has the power to both encourage tobacco use, especially among young people, and to discourage it, according to a landmark study released Thursday by the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

"This is the first report to conclude that tobacco advertising and promotion increases tobacco use," said Melanie Wakefield, senior scientific editor of the report, The Role of the Media in Promoting and Reducing Tobacco Use.

TUESDAY, Aug. 5 (HealthDay News) -- New insight into how the brain processes the rewarding and addictive properties of nicotine sheds light on why some people seem to become addicted once they have their first cigarette, say Canadian researchers.

Legislation that would subject the tobacco industry to regulation by U.S. health authorities was passed Wednesday by the House in a 326-102 vote.

Under the bill, the Food and Drug Administration would have the power to regulate tobacco products. The FDA couldn't ban tobacco or nicotine, but it could order the reduction or elimination of cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco smoke, the Associated Press reported.