An East Naples restaurant has filed what may become a landmark tobacco case in Florida — a suit that contends the state's Clean Indoor Air Act violates the U.S. Constitution. The Castaways Backwater Café Inc. filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Fort Myers this week against the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco. The suit alleges that the unequal application of Florida's Clean Indoor Air Act makes it unconstitutional. ...

The feds' change of heart in tobacco case cries out for a thorough airing, because something smells. The U.S. Justice Department stunned everybody, including the tobacco companies it had accused of racketeering, by drastically reducing the amount of damages it was expected to seek from the tobacco industry from $130 billion to just $10 billion. ...

A stateimposed ban on smoking in some public places is set to become effective next month. And if two state lawmakers who fought over the creation of the new law are any indication, disagreements about the desirability of the new smoking restriction law seem certain to continue beyond that date. ...

Forty cents will buy a single cigarette from Brockton's Mutual gas station at 306 Center St., no questions asked. Never mind that individual cigarette sales are illegal in Massachusetts. On Saturday afternoon, the store clerk didn't hesitate when asked to sell one Newport to a middle-aged reporter. Earlier in the week, a group of teenage girls said they had no trouble buying single cigarettes at the station. ...

While smoking is already taboo in bars and restaurants in Ohio County, the Brooke County Board of Health on Monday adopted its own regulation to govern tobacco use in restaurants in that area. The unanimously adopted Brooke County Clean Indoor Air Regulation requires restaurants to have at least 75 percent of their occupancy be non-smoking, but it provides for an exemption for free-standing bars as well as free-standing video lottery rooms. ...

For more than 40 years, smokers have argued, with some plausibility, that they have just as much right to smoke in public buildings and workplaces as others have not to smoke. But medical research has steadily undermined their argument, and on Tuesday, the U.S. surgeon general demolished it. ...

Reynolds Tobacco (or RJR), the company that brought us Joe Camel, is up to its old tricks, targeting our children again. Twenty years ago RJR created Joe Camel, who blew smoke rings over Times Square and was so heavily promoted that more children recognized this cartoon character than Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse. Only after years of complaints from public health advocates and parents, and the threat of legal action by the Federal Trade Commission, did RJR shut down its Joe Camel campaign. ...

Hours after the U.S. surgeon general issued a stern warning about the dangers of secondhand smoke, Santa Rosa's City Council voted Tuesday to ban smoking on all city-owned land and at outdoor eating and drinking areas. "This is not about taking rights away from anybody," Councilman Lee Pierce said. "It's about people with health issues being able to have a normal life." ...

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The murder rate surged in St. Louis and Kansas City last year, reflecting a broader trend of increasing violent crime throughout the Midwest, according to FBI figures released Monday. Missouri’s two biggest cities reported murder rate increases that far outpaced the national average, which rose 4.8 percent in 2005. Murders in Kansas City jumped 42 percent that year while murders in St. Louis jumped 16 percent. ...

Minors who tried to buy single cigarettes from stores in San Bernardino County, California, succeeded 7.9% of the time, according to a recent report in Preventive Medicine. And the minors would probably have had even more success if California had not been one of the few states where selling singles -- or ``loosies'' -- is illegal, believe the team of researchers, led by Dr. Hope Landrine, of Public Health Foundation, a private, nonprofit company based in City of Industry, California. ...