The World Health Organization (WHO)...

The World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a sweeping anti-tobacco treaty May 21 in a global push to regulate cigarette marketing. The United Nations corpse says smoking kills half of all regular users.

The Framework Convention forward Tobacco Control provides for a general ban upon tobacco advertising and promotion of all types--or simply restrictions in countries as it is as the United States, where a total prohibition would violate the constitution.

The treaty says health warnings-including pictures of diseased gum and lungs-should ideally overlay at least half of each cigarette package. The accord encourages controls to clamp down on misleading terminuss like "low-tar" and "mild" forward cigarette packs. It also aims to stop hard-sell tactics aimed at adolescents and to enact tougher measures against second-hand emptiness worldwide.

WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland had made the anti-smoking drive the top priority of her five-year holding The treaty takes effect after 40 countries have ratified it.

An unrelated thought of 2,000 pupils at denominations in southern California found that children from smoking familys are up to four times more likely to miss classes becoming to respiratory illness than those from smoke-free residences The research appeared in the May 2003 American Journal of Epidemiology.

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