Free Republic

(CNN)"The legislature finds that the cigarette is considered the deadliest artifact in human history." So begins the text of a new bill introduced in Hawaii's State House, calling for a phased ban on cigarette sales in the state by 2024. Hawaii has some of the most restrictive cigarette laws in the nation. In 2016, it became the first state to raise the age to buy cigarettes to 21. Now, its new bill calls for raising the cigarette-buying age to 30 by next year, up to 40, 50 and 60 in each subsequent year, and up to 100 by 2024. That...

Missing American Feared a Victim of 'Dirty War' April 13, 2007 The Financial Times Guy Dinmore in Washington and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Just why Robert Levinson, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and now private investigator, should venture into Iran to meet a American fugitive wanted for murder in the US remains a mystery that the highest Bush administration authorities are trying to unravel. As the Financial Times revealed this week, Mr Levinson disappeared on March 8 after a six-hour meeting on the Iranian island of Kish with Dawud Salahuddin, an American who converted to Islam and was...

According to a press release sent out by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, nine individuals have been charged "with a dozen felony counts for allegedly offering money and cigarettes to homeless people on Skid Row in exchange for false and forged signatures on ballot petitions and voter registration forms." "The defendants are accused of engaging in the solicitation of hundreds of false and/or forged signatures on state ballot petitions and voter registration forms by allegedly offering homeless people $1 and/or cigarettes for their participation, prosecutors said. The alleged offenses occurred during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles," the release...

Complete Headline: 'Cigarettes, beer and junk food ... the essentials': Thousands of Wilmington residents overcrowd supermarket open amid hurricane chaos and COPS have to help with crowd control As the Hurricane Florence clean-up efforts were under way residents turned out to hunt for snacks Cops were called and the lines were said to take up to four hours to get served Shoppers were looking for 'cigarettes, beer and junk food' Thousands remain without power across the state as the storm continues Stores elsewhere in the city are expected to be able to reopen Sunday The residents of Hurricane Florence-stricken Wilmington,...

...In 2009, when Mueller ran the FBI, the bureau asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007.

On his visit to Albania, the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow invoked the unity of the Christian Churches to disarm religious radicalism. On the same day, his closest collaborator, Hilarion, pulled the breaks on ecumenical leaps. Between Catholics and Orthodox there is a common faith, but too many "contradictions and misunderstandings", such as the work of Card. Stepinac and that of the Greek-Catholics (uniates).Moscow (AsiaNews) - The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev), went on an official visit to Albania from April 28 to 30, where he was welcomed by the Archbishop of Tirana Anastas (Janullatos), leader of...

Unreal! Snowflakes need to be warned that a movie set in the Sixties has scenes with characters smoking cigarettes?

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday took the first step in creating a new rule to reduce the level of nicotine allowed in cigarettes to nonaddictive levels. In an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, FDA asked the public to submit comments over the next 90 days on the impact of a product standard for the maximum nicotine level in cigarettes. “Tobacco use causes a tremendous toll of death and disease every year and these effects are ultimately the result of addiction to the nicotine contained in combustible cigarettes, leading to repeated exposure to toxicants from such cigarettes,” the...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – A U.S. senator revealed Tuesday that he believes a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran nearly two years ago is being held in a secret prison there. Sen. Bill Nelson shed new light on the disappearance of Robert Levinson during a confirmation hearing for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington. Levinson, of Coral Springs, Fla., was last seen on Iran's Kish island in March 2007 where he had gone to seek information for a client of his security firm.

SNIP Tobacco giant Philip Morris International is joining in on the “New Year, New Me” idea by announcing it wants to give up smoking in the New Year. The maker of such brands Marlboro, L&M and Parliament took out full-page ads in several UK newspapers that said its 2018 ambition is to build a smoke-free future and eventually stop selling cigarettes, USA Today reported. “Philip Morris is known for cigarettes. Every year, many smokers give them up. Now it’s our turn,” according to the blue and white ad, which was published in Business Insider. SNIP

For 2015, the most recent reporting year, the state lost $1.63 billion because of untaxed sales, according to figures released by analysts for the Tax Foundation. City officials say they are aware of the huge extent of the illegal sales, but defend high cigarette taxes as saving lives. Money, money, money ...

Pope Francis has outlawed the sale of cigarettes at the Vatican in a bid to lead by example on healthy living. […] “The reason is very simple: the Holy See cannot contribute to an activity that clearly damages the health of people,” it said, adding that smoking claims more than seven million lives every year, according to the World Health Organization. […] Francis, who has only one lung, does not smoke. He has let the locals keep their other guilty pleasure: tax-free alcohol. The cigarettes and booze are sold in a luxury duty-free shop, opened in 2003 in what was...

Mayor de Blasio signed a sweeping series of anti-smoking bills Monday as part of a comprehensive effort to help reduce the number of smokers in the city by nearly 200,000 over the next few years. Nearly a million of people in the city still smoke, despite steady declines in smoking rates between 2002 and 2015, according to the health department. Speaking on Monday, de Blasio said he'd seen first-hand the impact smoking had on a family.

Tobacco stocks are plummeting on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a new regulatory plan to protect consumers that includes cutting nicotine levels in cigarettes to non-addictive levels.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday that cigarette prices in the city would go up $2.50 to $13 which, de Blasio bragged, would be "the highest price in the country." . . . Council Member Fernando Cabrera, who introduced the bill to create the licensing requirement for e-cigarette retailers, described the proposal as "a major step to limit the use of e-cigarettes, which are dangerous nicotine delivery systems that can lead to nicotine and potentially drug addiction."

The secret account is at the center of a federal racketeering lawsuit brought on by a collective of tobacco farmers who say they were cheated out of $24 million.

For the first time since 1999, California has raised the taxes on cigarettes—and thanks to an interesting provision in the state laws, the state’s taxes on cigars are also going up. Just before midnight local time, the Associated Press called the decision on Proposition 56, a ballot measure that asked California voters whether to raise the tax on cigarettes from 87 cents to $2.87 per pack. California voters overwhelmingly said yes. Taxes on cigars will also be going up substantially. California adjusts taxes on other tobacco products, including cigars, every year. The state’s Board of Equalization determines the rate by...

FREE SMOKES (LOS ANGELES) WE WILL MEET YOU AT YOUR LOCAL POLLING PLACE. STRONGER TOGETHER do NOT contact me with unsolicited services or offers

LONDON — British American Tobacco has offered to buy out Reynolds American Inc. for $47 billion in an attempt to gain a strong presence in the U.S., a lucrative market where sales of electronic cigarettes are booming as traditional smoking fades. The takeover would create the world's largest publicly traded tobacco company and combine BAT's presence in developing countries, where anti-smoking campaigns are not as strong as in the U.S. and Europe, with Reynolds' almost exclusive focus on the U.S. BAT already owns 42 percent of Reynolds and sells Dunhill, Rothmans and Lucky Strike cigarettes. Reynolds controls about a third...

A state senator wants the Legislature to prohibit the city of Ann Arbor or any other local government from upping the legal age to purchase tobacco from 18 to 21. Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, has introduced Senate Bill 1066 to pre-empt local governments from imposing age limits on legal tobacco sales different from the age prescribed by state law (which is 18). “This local law will do absolutely nothing to stop people from smoking; they will simply drive just outside the city and purchase what they want,” said Jones, R-Grand Ledge, in a press release. “However, it will really...