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If you want to buy or sell foie gras in a Chicago restaurant, you'll have to break the law. Not that this stops anyone. Restaurants all over Chicago sell the French delicacy -- even restaurants that never sold it before. They openly thumb their noses at the new law. City officials say cracking down on foie gras pushers won't be a high priority. But the law is on the books, ready whenever the authorities want to harass some troublesome restaurateur. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, "The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers...

(AP) DENVER With health costs rising, one state lawmaker thinks it's time to start discussing whether the state can afford to pay to treat smokers who get lung cancer, heart disease and other diseases linked to tobacco. Sen. Ron Teck, R-Grand Junction, wants to put people who continue to smoke despite the health risks on notice. Under a proposal set to be reviewed Wednesday at the state Capitol, people who started smoking before 1975 would still be eligible for Medicaid payments to treat smoking-related illnesses.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina's largest city may soon ban the state's cash crop from bars and restaurants. Charlotte-area legislators are petitioning the North Carolina state government, which restricts local municipalities from imposing their own smoking bans, to make an exception to that rule.

ROME - Smokers in Italy took their last puffs in smoky bars and trattorias Sunday, hours before the start of one of Europe's toughest laws against smoking in public places. The outdoors, private homes, and restaurants and bars with ventilated smoking rooms are the only places spared from the anti-smoking law. Enforcement begins at 12:01 a.m. Monday, when many bars and clubs still will be serving customers. In a restaurant near Viterbo, north of Rome, a dozen cigar aficionados reserved a table for a kind of farewell dinner, promising to puff away on Tuscan and Cuban cigars between courses before...

LONDON — Four hundred years after King James I denounced tobacco as "loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs," the British government is taking heed. It announced plans yesterday to ban smoking in most public places, including restaurants and any pub that serves food. Anti-smoking activists welcomed the proposal, which would apply only to England, but criticized Health Secretary John Reid for letting smokers continue lighting up in some pubs and bars. Still, it is a big step for a country that has had a long love-hate affair with tobacco. Britain's...

Oklahoma: Limits on smoking draw fire Oklahoma politicians say health board lacks authority to enact rules 04/08/2002 Associated Press OKLAHOMA CITY - Rules that would ban smoking in most public places have sparked a turf battle between the Board of Health, which adopted them, and state lawmakers who say that the rules flout state law. But members of the Board of Health and state officials who support a ban on smoking say the issue runs deeper than the law. They say the real issue is public health. "Smoking is still so ingrained in our society that we don't think...