Questions about the state's new smoking ban can now be answered online at www.smokefree.nc.gov.

The state recently launched the new site to help business owners and the public better understand the law that will ban smoking in 24,000 restaurants and bars starting Jan. 2, 2010.

"Our goal is to make sure North Carolina's families and businesses have the information they need about the hazards of second-hand smoke and how to implement the new law," Gov. Beverly Perdue said in a prepared statement.

Some bar owners, in particular, have expressed confusion over the law.

The site offers data on the health hazards of smoking, resources for smokers who want to quit and tools for business operators adapting to the new law. They can print a 'No Smoking' sign. A packet of information is scheduled to be mailed out soon to the affected businesses.

Information is also available at 1-800-662-7030.

Gov. Beverly Perdue signed another batch of bills Friday afternoon leaving five remaining unsigned bills on her desk.

The six remaining are:

HB 104: Clarifies which documents produced by lawmakers are exempt from the public records law. Would make requests by lawmakers sent to state agencies exempt from the public records law.

HB 945: The Studies Act of 2009 catalogues a host of items and issues to be studied while the legislature is out of session.

HB 1166: Insurance Law Changes. Makes several changes including a new requirement that to get a license, insurance agents must submit fingerprints for a criminal background check.

SB 947: Provides more opportunity for a homeowner to halt foreclosure if he or she can demonstrate they can pay what is owed.

HB 836: Makes technical corrections to the state budget.

HB 1329: Consolidates various state stautes regulating criminal record expunctions. 

Among the 40-plus Perdue signed Friday are:

SB 167: Prohibits tobacco products and cell phones in prisons. Makes it a crime to provide tobacco or cell phones to inmates.

HB 667: Allows wineries to sell wine during business hours.

SB 138: Bans the recreational use of salvia divinorum, an hallucinogenic herb. Still allows the mint-like plant to be used in landscaping.

SB 786: Authorizes capital projects on University of North Carolina system campuses. The projects have a funding stream to repay debt for the projects. List includes $21.8 million for a parking deck at N.C. State University, a $10 million renovation of the Carolina Inn at UNC-Chapel Hill, $35 million for a Partnership, Outreach and Research for Accelerated Learning Building at UNC-Charlotte.

SB 464: Requires statistics on race to be kept to help identify and prevent racial profiling by law enforcement. Also requires that a law enforcement officer ensure a child is in safe hands if the child's parent gets arrested. The last provision would have prevented a case last year in which three children were stranded on Interstate 85 in the middle of the night for eight hours when a sheriff's deputy arrested the children's mother, an illegal immigrant.

Correction: Perdue had six bills to sign, not five as we previously reported. Dome regrets the oversight. 

HAIL TO THE CUPCAKES: President Barack Obama held a town hall at a Raleigh high school to build support and rally swing votes on health care reform among the state's Congressional delegation. While in Raleigh, the leader of the free world gave a huge plug to a Raleigh cupcake shop and forgot the name of the House speaker.

THE DEAL'S A LOCK: Last week's budget meltdown left House and Senate Democrats bitterly divided. And that's how they stayed until Wednesday when the budget negotiators unveiled a plan that looked remarkably like the one that died the week before. By week's end they had a handshake agreement to raise sales taxes and income taxes on higher wage earners. A handful of Democrats, enough to scuttle the deal, were grumbling about the "sin" taxes and the word was Gov. Beverly Perdue still wasn't thrilled with the tax plan. What could go wrong?

BEAM HIM UP: Rep. Earl Jones, a Democrat from Ceti Alpha 5, er, Greensboro, was in the news this week. First he breathlessly announced in a news conference that his bill to legalize video poker has supporters. Then his bill to create a high-tech center called the "Star Fleet Academy" on N.C. A&T State University's campus was the subject of a parody video that included a picture of Perdue after a Borg assimilation. Jones is running on impulse power and his shields are at 25 percent. Scotty, you've got to give him more power!

IN OTHER NEWS: Former house member Michael Decker got his prison sentence reduced. U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre won't run for Senate. U.S. Sen. Richard Burr won't vote for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

One potential hitch in a state budget deal is the group of 12 Democratic House members who gathered after session Thursday in a windowless room in the bowels of the Legislative Building to discuss their concerns over raising beer, wine and cigarette taxes.

"What we're doing now is cutting the jugular vein" of the tobacco industry, said Rep. Nelson Cole, a Reidsville Democrat who helped organize the meeting. "They're already dying."

Democrats have a 68 to 52 majority in the House. Two members of their party voted against the House's original version of the budget, so they can't afford many more defections. Most, if not all, of the dozen potential dissidents have tobacco, beer or wine interests in their districts.

"It's jobs to us," said Cole, whose district includes a Miller brewery, noting the closing of tobacco giant Philip Morris' Cabarrus County plant this week.

NOBODY LIKES NOBODY: The popularity recession has settled in for most N.C. politicians. Gov. Beverly Perdue, with basement-dwelling approval ratings less than six months into her first term, travelled the state to rally support from unimpressed teachers and Democrats. The raspberries are bipartisan: both U.S. Senators Kay Hagan and Richard Burr's numbers are down. President Barack Obama is slipping, and his policies are less popular than the man.

SPARE A FEW THOUSAND DIMES? One state resident isn't worried about layoffs. Jeff Wilson of Kings Mountain took home $29 million, after taxes, when his father gave him a Powerball ticket that hit the jackpot. (Gotta figure Wilson is apologizing for having ignored any past fatherly advice). We get this question a lot, so before you ask, the lottery can't fix the state's budget problems because it raises only a small fraction of the state's education spending and state law mandates lottery profits go to four specific programs.

PLASTICS, PESTERING AND POTTY TIPPING: The legislature has been on an outlawing binge. It has banned plastic bags on the coast, bullying in schools and vandalizing portable toilets.

IN OTHER NEWS: The state got most of its deposit money back for a private jet officials decided not to buy after all. A new film production tax credit would lose money for the state at first. And Obama does still occasionally smoke, but that's not why he signed into law sweeping new regulatory authority over cigarettes.

President Barack Obama says he is "95 percent cured" of his habit of smoking cigarettes.

During a presidential press conference at The White House this afternoon, Obama was asked about his smoking habits in light of legislation he signed this week to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products.

Obama initially tried to steer the question back to the law, saying it is about stopping "the next generation of kids" from beginning smoking. But then he agreed to talk about his own battle with smoking.

"I constantly struggle with it," Obama said.

Obama said he does not smoke every day, and that he does not smoke in front of his children or other family members.

"I am 95 percent cured, but there are times when I mess up," he said.

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration now has authority to regulate tobacco products, under a new law signed this afternoon by President Barack Obama during a Rose Garden ceremony.

With children on stage and sprinkled among audience members, and with the new playground for the presidential daughters in the distance, Obama said the new law will curtail the “constant, insidious” advertising that tobacco companies target to kids, reports Barb Barrett.

He pointed out that nearly 90 percent of smokers start before the age of 18.

“I know; I was one of those teenagers,” Obama said. “I know how hard it is to break the habit once you’ve started.”

Among those at the White House this afternoon was U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Democrat from Wilson, where auctioneers used to rattle off leaf prices after harvest each fall. He represents one of the heaviest tobacco farming districts in the nation.

“This has been a very difficult issue for me,” Butterfield said later. “But when I take a step back and look at it objectively, there’s no question we need to reduce smoking….We need to be realistic about the issue.”

Read more after the jump.

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The Washington Post sent a reporter to an eastern N.C. tobacco field over the weekend for its story about Sen. Kay Hagan, the only Democrat in the Senate to oppose FDA regulation of tobacco.

"To call Hagan merely a defender of the "golden leaf" industry would be an understatement," the Post wrote. "She is among tobacco's fiercest backers."

The reporter spent time with farmer Pender Sharp, who raises 500 acres of leaf and was among the farmers who lobbied in Washington before last week’s vote.

Hagan, though, was on a personal trip and unavailable to comment for the story. 

N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler wants Republicans to use the recent tobacco regulation votes to unseat Democrats.

Troxler, a Republican, told his state party's convention that Democrats, who control both the state legislature and Congress, were to blame for recent votes in Raleigh in favor of raising cigarette taxes and banning smoking in restaurants and bars, as well as a congressional vote to let the Food and Drug Administration regulate the golden leaf, Rob Christensen reports.

"These things don't happen," Troxler told the crowd, "if you elect consevative people to office."

Even as he praised Congress' passage of legislation allowing federal regulation of tobacco, President Obama apparently is still trying to kick the habit.

Asked about it during Friday's daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs didn't get into specifics, but suggested Obama hasn't made a clean break.

Here's a compilation of the Q&As, scattered throughout the briefing:

Q: I'm wondering if smoking continues to be a struggle for the president.

GIBBS: I think the president would likely tell you, as I think many, anybody would that has, that has smoked or been addicted to smoking that it is a — it is a lifelong struggle.

Q: Is it a daily struggle for him?

GIBBS: Well, I — since days are comprised within your lifetime, I would — I think that's covered.

Q: Do you know, does President Obama still sometimes smoke?

GIBBS: I, I, again, I would simply tell you, I think it's a, struggling with a nicotine addiction is something that happens every day.

Q: One more on smoking. During the campaign, the then-Senator Obama chewed Nicorette with some regularity. Is he still doing that?

GIBBS: I saw him chewing gum earlier today. I don't know whether, I didn't ask him...