Free Republic

<p>MONTVILLE -- For 45 years, John and Alice Longo laughed and joked with their regular customers while they wiped down the bar and took lunch orders during the afternoon at A and J's Cafe on Route 32.</p> <p>But when they were forced to remove the ashtrays from the tables and bar, suddenly the laughter quieted.</p>

<p>Riverside County will no longer hire prospective sheriff’s deputies who smoke, saying insurance costs have grown too steep to risk hiring smokers.</p> <p>Though it’s unclear when the ban will go into effect, the decision could eventually include all of the county’s future hires, experts say.</p>

AUGUSTA - A petition drive to snuff out the state's ban on smoking in bars has stalled and will fail to meet a Feb. 2 deadline for putting the issue on the November ballot, an organizer said.Instead, the Maine Freedom Committee will submit the signatures to the Legislature in 2005 in hopes lawmakers will amend the law or send it to voters, said Stavros Mendros of the Maine Freedom Committee. Mendros, a former Republican lawmaker from Lewiston, said the campaign didn't have funding to meet this year's deadline for petitions. "The money wasn't there," Mendros said. "It's hard to do...

Monday, December 29, 2003 It's nearly the last gasp for smoking bar patrons     University of Southern Maine student Ben Theriault, of Buxton, takes time out from class to enjoy a cigarette in 2002. Starting next month, smoking will be banned in bars in Maine. Smoking is already banned in restaurants and in most public buildings.  To some bar patrons, the haze padding the ceiling and hanging over pool tables is as much a part of a bar as a bank of beer taps. Those who have become accustomed to the sight, as well as those who are used to...

Smokers will face a new choice of bars in the new year ahead. While some bars will be entirely smoke-free, including many in the greater Augusta area, others have spent thousands of dollars to build covered annexes for their smoking clientele in preparation for Maine's ban on smoking in bars next year.Maine legislators (AND THE RINO'S INCLUDED) passed the ban on smoking in bars and taverns in June, joining New York, California and Delaware in extending smoke-free environments to one of the last bastions of public indoor smoking. The ban takes effect Jan. 1, and experience in other states...

The first scene in NBC's new fall sitcom "Whoopi" begins with the star, Whoopi Goldberg, puffing on a cigarette, ignoring a nearby "No Smoking" sign. "You know, secondhand smoke kills," says an irritated guest of the hotel Goldberg's character owns. "So do I," she shoots back, glaring at the guest. Scheduled to premiere Sept. 23, the show is designed to be a Norman Lear-like commentary on American society, in the same vein as the groundbreaking "All in the Family." That show was built around bigoted jokes that boomeranged on Archie Bunker, while "Whoopi," featuring a relationship in which her brother...

Cigarette packs could soon carry distrurbing pictures of cancer-ravaged organs. A new study shows smokers have become immune to current warnings on packets and calls for a radical re-think. It could lead to the use of images pictures of damaged hearts and lungs to push home the 'smoking kills' message. Experts at the Cancer Research UK Centre for Tobacco Control Research in Scotland led the European-wide investigation. Interviews were conducted with 56 focus groups in Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Spain and Sweden. Participants looked at pre-2001 "small" warnings on cigarette packs and current large "black and white" warnings. The results...

Decades of lecturing around America and of speaking with parents on my radio show have led me to an incredible conclusion: More American parents would be upset with their teenage children if they smoked a cigarette than if they cheated on a test. How has this come about? This is, after all, an entirely new phenomenon. Almost no member of my generation (those who became teenagers in the 1960s), let alone a member of any previous generation, could ever have imagined that parents would be angrier with their teenage child for smoking than for cheating. There has been a profound...