Smokers are taking "Tips from Former Smokers" seriously: Weekly calls to toll-free telephone quitlines are still running at about double the call volume recorded before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began running advertisements featuring the real stories of former smokers who are suffering the debilitating health effects of their tobacco use.

Confronted by activists – including youth who traveled to New York City to attend Philip Morris International’s annual shareholders meeting this week – Philip Morris CEO Louis Camilleri again played down the deadly consequences of his company’s products and claimed the company acts responsibly when the evidence shows otherwise.

At last year’s shareholders meeting, Camilleri minimized how addictive cigarettes truly are, stating that “it is not that hard to quit” (he backtracked under a torrent of criticism).

Health advocates and scientists in China have won a major victory by forcing the withdrawal of research by the China National Tobacco Company from consideration for a prestigious national science prize.

The Ministry of Science and Technology announced the withdrawal, which came after the nomination sparked outrage among Chinese and international scientific and public health leaders.

California’s newspapers aren’t fooled by tobacco industry lies about Proposition 29 – and they’re urging voters to beat back the scare tactics and support the measure to increase cigarette taxes, fund tobacco prevention programs and boost cancer research to save lives.

Major public health groups have joined forces in asking Family Dollar Stores to reverse the company’s recent decision to begin selling cigarettes and other tobacco products for the first time in its history.

The North Carolina-based discount chain has 7,100 stores nationwide. Its core customers are lower-income Americans, a group that already smokes at a higher rate than the population as a whole – and suffers more from smoking-caused diseases as a result.

Kids say the darndest things — and some of the smartest, too.

When Linda Kelsch’s third grade students at Linton Elementary School in Linton, North Dakota, were asked to express their opinions about a community issue, they chose to write about a proposal before the City Council to require smoke-free public places and work places.

The years-long effort to make Indianapolis smoke-free has finally succeeded. After a long campaign by health advocates, civic leaders and public officials – and multiple votes by the City-County Council – Mayor Greg Ballard has signed a new ordinance that will make all restaurants and bars and most other workplaces smoke-free.

China's health and scientific community is rallying to block the China National Tobacco Corporation from receiving a prestigious national science prize for a research project on cigarettes that are supposedly less harmful.

Pay packages for chief executives at the top three U.S. tobacco companies last year exceeded the amount of money being spent on tobacco prevention programs in all but three states.

A civil magistrate in Pakistan has found the head of marketing for Philip Morris Pakistan Ltd. guilty of violating Pakistan’s law that tightly restricts cigarette advertising, criticizing the executive’s excuse that he didn’t believe placing ads in magazines was the same as putting them in the "press."

The tobacco executive admitted that the company had run the ads, which included full-page, color advertising for Marlboro cigarettes in many of Pakistan’s leading magazines throughout November and December. But he claimed he didn’t realize these ads were subject to restrictions that limit their size and require pictorial warnings – because he believed the word "press" did not include magazines.