Smoking is on high on President-elect Barack Obama's list, or to be more specific quitting smoking is. Despite smoking becoming the un-hip thing to do, and no more advertisements or billboards seen on the subject, there are still 45 million smokers in the United States.

The numbers have undoubtedly halved from 1964 when U. S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released a report on smoking, which highlighted the fact that smoking was part and parcel of daily life among the population of 50 million. The report brought to the forefront the fact that a majority of men smoked while 40 % of the women were smokers and this led him to call for "appropriate remedial action". The report was the forerunner of the anti smoking campaigns that we see today.

The anti smoking campaigns are largely due to the negative effect smoking has on people's health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, women who smoke are about 30 % more likely to experience infertility than other women. Women who continue smoking while they are pregnant are twice as likely to have problems with their pregnancies in the third trimester and their babies have a 30 % higher risk of being born prematurely.

Women who smoke are also at risk to give birth to babies with lower birth weight which makes the babies more susceptible to many illness and even death. According to the federal birth data report released Jan. 7 only 13 % of pregnant women smoked during their pregnancies in 2006.

The question that many people ask is why do people like to smoke despite knowing the associated health risks? A study by German researchers at the Institute for Therapy and Health Research tried to answer that question. They tried to see the effect of brief smoking depictions in movies and showed 500 youths, ages 10 to 18 a
42-second movie trailer in which an attractive female character smoked for just three seconds.

A second group of 500 youth of a similar age group were shown a similar trailer but no one smoked in it. The researchers found that when movie characters are shown smoking on screen the youth who try to emulate these stars do so in the smoking as well and that habit stays with them.

This led the researchers to conclude that despite the smoking scene being so brief teens who had already tried smoking were more likely than non smokers to find the smoking female attractive and try to emulate her.

Many people question if adequate steps have been taken to reduce smoking since the time Terry's report was published 45 years ago and the answer is no. Smoking is still the leading preventable cause of death in the country and costs society more than $ 150 billion.

Experts feel one way to reduce smoking is by increasing tobacco excise taxes, an issue Obama will face as soon as he takes over as President. It seems likely that he will agree to a 61-cent tax increase from 39 cents to fund State Children's Health Insurance Program SCHIP, the health care program for uninsured children though many feel the tax on tobacco products should be raised to two-thirds of the price of a pack of cigarettes in line with policies world over. This they feel would not only result in increased revenue but would also result in lowered smoking rates.

An increased regulation on cigarettes would also be beneficial particularly as it is perhaps the only consumer product not regulated by the FDA. The U. S. Supreme Court in 2000 ruled that Congress needed to give the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products, and nine years later, the FDA is still waiting for that authority.