Perhaps the greatest battle of our lifetime has been the war between the cigarette lobby and the health lobby.

The cigarette lobby has largely avoided a national tobacco ban, but in the trenches, state-by-state, sometimes town by town, restrictions have been placed, and are likely to continue to expand.While tobacco sales are profitable to the point that the U.S. tobacco industry spends over $16 million a year to lobby Congress, the outcry from health and environmental advocates, both in Congress and on a state level, have caused the industry to retrench.Pennsylvania's amended Clean Indoor Air Act banned smoking in restaurants and enclosed workplaces effective September 11, 2008.Tobacco has been known for centuries as a drug that is both addictive and hazardous to human health in its many forms: smoked directly, as secondhand smoke, and chewed. It contains nicotine, which is used as an insecticide, tars and over 4,000 chemical compounds-69 of which are known to cause cancer.Tobacco was used for spiritual ceremonies by Native Americans, and introduced to the first European settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. When tobacco was first introduced to England, King James at first condemned it, but soon, reframing it as a source of taxes, relaxed his opposition.Tobacco was the first cash crop of the southern colonies. It was soon overshadowed by cotton. The first commercial hand-rolled cigarettes were made in 1865 by Washington Duke in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1880, James Bonsack introduced a mass production cigarette rolling machine that increased production from about 250 cigarettes per hour to 12,000 cigarettes per hour.Bonsack and Washington Duke's son, James "Buck" Duke started the first tobacco company in the U.S., the American Tobacco Company. Their factory made 10 million cigarettes the first year and one billion cigarettes five years later.During the early 1900s, other brands entered the field. Returning soldiers World War I and later, World War II, had become addicted to free cigarettes, and free-spirited women of the Roaring Twenties turned to cigarettes as a token of independence.In 1966, after the Surgeon General of the U.S. reported on the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, the U.S. Congress required that every cigarette pack must be labeled "Cigarettes may be hazardous to your health." In response, tobacco companies marketed low tar cigarettes.In 1971, cigarette companies were restricted from advertising on radio or television. In 1984, Congress required cigarette companies to rotate among four warning labels. Since 1990, airlines have not allowed smoking on airplane flights in the United States. In 1996, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was given the power to regulate tobacco and to limit cigarette advertisements aimed at minors.States have raised taxes on cigarette to the point that the taxes are higher than the cost of the product. In response, U.S. tobacco companies increased their marketing outside the country.Tobacco's most addictive component, nicotine, is more addictive than heroin, cocaine or alcohol, and far more so than caffeine or marijuana. Cigarette smoke also contains organic tars and carbon monoxide.In 2004, the World Health Organization reported that about one in ten deaths globally are attributed to tobacco. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention describes tobacco use as "the single most important preventable risk to human health in developed countries and an important cause of premature death worldwide."This awareness has resulted in adult smoking rates in the U.S. falling from 42 percent to 21 percent between 1965 and 2006. But even after this decline, the health care cost of smoking is about $73 billion per year.Secondhand smoke is also a health hazard that can lead to lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, emphysema, bronchitis, and asthma.Pennsylvania's banning of smoking in restaurants is a middle-of-the-road response as compared to other states. Some of the most restrictive legislation is in California where restaurants and most bars are smoke-free, and smoking is not permitted in state-owned vehicles, in a vehicle with a minor, and most workplaces and hotel rooms.A number of localities in California have passed even stricter ordinances banning smoking. These include parks, outdoor dining areas, in common areas of an apartment building, on commercially-zoned sidewalks, within 20 feet of a bus stop, within 20 feet of a building entrance, within 20 feet of city property, within 20 feet of an operable window of a public building, city property in downtown areas, and outside of shopping malls.The city of Calabasas, California is believed to have the strictest ban in the United States. It banned smoking in all indoor and outdoor public places, except for a handful of designated outdoor smoking areas in town.Besides the health hazards associated with cigarette smoking, it is a significant source of litter, environmental damage and a cause of fires. Well over 2 billion pounds of cigarette butts are discarded worldwide annually. As an example, in 2000, it was reported that on Penn State University's 15,000 acre campus, 13 landscapers spent 10 hours a week picking up discarded cigarettes at an estimated yearly cost of $150,000.Many people are unaware that cigarette butts are not readily degradable-filters are made of cellulose acetate plastic and the tobacco contains tars that leach into the ground and waterways.Besides being unsightly litter on the streets, in the parks, and on the waterways, the butts can be eaten by birds, animals and fish and the micro-invertebrates that feed the fish. At least 150 children, aged 6 to 24 months, swallow cigarette butts each year.In 2003, there were over 130,000 cigarette-related fires resulting in approximately 3,000 critical injuries-many among firefighters-and nearly 1,000 deaths. Over $7 billion in property was lost to cigarette-caused fires, including the loss of thousands of acres of forest."To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did," noted Mark Twain. "I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.""I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business," once said investor Warren Buffett. "It cost a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's a fantastic brand loyalty."How bad are cigarettes? To quote John Mellencamp, "It's cigarettes that killed Jerry Garcia. Everyone thinks it's heroin, but it wasn't. It was cigarettes."