Free Republic

RICHMOND The nation’s largest cigarette maker today secured a key victory when a Senate panel voted to classify as manufacturers Virginia retailers with machines that let customers roll their own cigarettes. Backed by several powerful lobbying allies, Philip Morris USA persuaded the Senate Finance Committee to approve a bill supporters claim will require shops with roll-your-own machines to pay some federal and state tobacco taxes they’re now avoiding. Imposing such standards will create a level playing field, industry officials have said. Opponents argue the measure, SB 74 [1] from Powhatan County Republican Sen. John Watkins, actually is an attempt by...

Quitting smoking is never easy. However, when you're poor and uneducated, kicking the habit for good is doubly hard, according to a new study by a tobacco dependence researcher at The City College of New York (CCNY). Christine Sheffer, associate medical professor at CCNY's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, tracked smokers from different socioeconomic backgrounds after they had completed a statewide smoking cessation program in Arkansas.

ANNAPOLIS — Maryland health advocates are lauding Gov. Martin O'Malley’s proposal to increase the state’s cigar tax, but critics say such an increase would create another financial burden for consumers and business owners. Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat, proposed a state budget Wednesday that would raise the 15-percent excise tax on cigars, smokeless tobacco and other noncigarette tobacco items — a group collectively known as other tobacco products (OTP) — to 70 percent. The OTP tax has gone unchanged since 1999 while the cigarette tax has gone from 36 cents to $2 a pack during that period. Health advocates argue raising...

MARIN COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) -- A Marin County smoking ban is on hold while lawmakers consider weeding out marijuana from the measure. The ordinance as written would outlaw smoking in unincorporated county apartments and included marijuana and other herbs as well as tobacco. It was abruptly sent back to committee Wednesday when Supervisor Kate Sears said only tobacco should be banned...

Health care provider announces that tobacco users will not get jobs. Smokers need not apply. That’s the message Geisinger Health System is sending to future job applicants. Starting Feb. 1, Geisinger will no longer hire applicants who use tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars and chewing or smokeless tobacco, the health system announced on Wednesday. “Geisinger is joining dozens of hospitals and medical organizations across the country that are encouraging healthier living, decreasing absenteeism and reducing health care costs by adopting strict policies that make smoking a reason to turn away job applicants,” Richard Merkle, chief human resources officer, said in...

It sounds like one of those diseases that should have been wiped out long ago, but malaria, unfortunately, is alive and well, especially in Africa and other tropical, third world locations. Battling malaria is complicated for numerous reasons, among them the difficulty of creating drugs to battle the disease. Now, however, Hebrew University researchers have come up with a novel method of producing the medicine that can treat malaria – using common, everyday tobacco plants. Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which is transmitted via mosquitoes. Symptoms of malaria include fever, headache, and vomiting, and usually appear between...

Netherlands backpedaling on anti-smoking campaignThe Associated Press December 15 AMSTERDAM - It's getting surprisingly easy to light up in the Netherlands these days - cigarettes, that is. **SNIP** "There's no other country that's taking these backward steps," said Lies Van Gennip, director of the national tobacco control center, slated to be closed in 2013. "I'm ashamed of what's happening here." At a press briefing on Wednesday, several Dutch politicians and experts blasted the government for backtracking on tobacco control policies. Opposition lawmaker Renske Leijten of the Socialist Party said Health Minister Edith Schippers was making the wrong decision to cut...

WASHINGTON — Baseball's new labor deal will limit the use of smokeless tobacco by players, but not ban it during games, as some public health groups had sought. A baseball union summary obtained by The Associated Press says that players have agreed not to carry tobacco cans in their back pockets or use tobacco during pregame or postgame interviews and at team functions.

RALEIGH – Emergency room visits by North Carolinians experiencing heart attacks have declined by 21 percent since the January 2010 start of the state’s Smoke-Free Restaurants and Bars Law. State Health Director Dr. Jeffrey Engel reported the results to the Justus-Warren Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Task Force this morning. “We pushed for passage of this law because we knew it would save lives,” said Governor Bev Perdue, who signed the law into effect. “Our goal was to protect workers and patrons from breathing secondhand smoke and we are seeing positive results.” The N.C. Division of Public Health report cites...

A U.S. judge sided with tobacco companies on Monday, granting a temporary injunction blocking rules requiring new warning labels that use graphic images like a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a hole in his throat.

The White House released details on President Obama's latest medical exam, showing that he is tobacco free and "fit at fifty." This was his second exam as president, and was performed by Navy campaign and physician to the president, Dr. Jeff Kuhlman and a couple of other specialists. The purpose of the exam is to give the public a candid medical assessment of the president's ability to perform duties of office. Kuhlman reports that the president is tobacco-free, physically fit, eats a healthy diet, stays at a healthy weighty and occasionally drinks alcohol in moderation. Obama openly entered office as...

Ohio Supreme Court Oral Arguments In Smoking Ban Challenge streaming live

Senators urge baseball to ban tobaccoPosted: Oct 18, 2011 11:58 AM by AP WASHINGTON (AP) - Four U.S. senators and health officials from the cities hosting the World Series are urging the baseball players union to agree to a ban on chewing tobacco at games and on camera. The senators, including No. 2 Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois, and health officials from St. Louis and Arlington, Texas, made the pleas in separate letters, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. The World Series between the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals begins in St. Louis Wednesday night. "When players use smokeless...

EXCLUSIVE: You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States. -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City. -- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama. -- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges,...

Albany -- New York state collected $10 billion in tobacco taxes over the last six years -- but spent just 4 percent of that on efforts to stop smoking, the American Cancer Society charged in a report released yesterday.

RICHMOND A federal judge Friday sentenced a former special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to more than three years in prison on charges related to the theft of cigarettes, firearms and money. The former agent, Clifford Dean Posey of Chesapeake, was given a 37-month sentence by U.S. District Court Senior Judge Robert E. Payne and ordered to pay restitution. That term is at the lower end of the sentencing guidelines for his conviction, which were calculated as 36 to 47 months. The defense requested a sentence below that range in a court filing last...

The intent is to shock smokers into quittingThe intent of the anti-smoking ads is to shock smokers into quitting. One ad shows fatty deposits oozing out of a 32-year-old dead smoker's aorta. "Every cigarette is doing you damage” proclaims the announcer at the end of the ad. They are definitely memorable, but are these ads simply turning smokers off? Vanessa Vargas of Pembroke Pines has never smoked, but her husband does. “They’re disgusting and hideous. He won’t change because of them. He just changes the channel. He thinks they’re gross,” she said of the ads. Researchers at the University of...

Democrats on New Mexico’s legislative tobacco committee came out with a plan this past Wednesday to burden the New Mexico taxpayer and put constituents out of work. The Democrats want to raise taxes on cigars and smokeless tobacco from the current 25 percent of wholesale cost to 57 percent. However, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez is thankfully bringing sanity to this circus as she made it clear that she will oppose this tax increase proposal. The “promise” of new revenue - $7 million - would lead to an array of adverse economic and health consequences for New Mexico. Lifestyle taxes, such...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - In the most significant change to U.S. cigarette packs in 25 years, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday released nine new warning labels that depict in graphic detail the negative health effects of tobacco use. Among the images to appear on cigarette packs are rotting and diseased teeth and gums and a man with a tracheotomy smoking. Also included among the labels are: the corpse of a smoker, diseased lungs, and a mother holding her baby with smoke swirling around them. They include phrases like "Smoking can kill you" and "Cigarettes cause cancer" and feature...

Throughout the course of this year’s Louisiana budget debate, a storm has been brewing over how to resolve the state’s $1.2 billion overspending problem. At various points an internet sales tax, 194% tax hike on cigarettes, and restoring spending cuts were all floated as partial resolutions. Fortunately, Gov. Jindal’s pledge to “oppose and veto any and all efforts to raise taxes” has helped keep legislators focused on their primary task – reining in spending - with the exception of HB 591: a $12 million cigarette tax increase that Gov. Jindal promptly vetoed today. To override the governor’s veto, which hasn’t...

RICHMOND, Va.—That's not smoke coming out of Cliff Phillips' mouth. But that hasn't stopped others from cringing, making remarks, waving their hands in their faces and coughing at the sight of the vapor from his electronic cigarette. "They're just conditioned if they see you inhale and exhale something, it's got to be smoke and it's going to stink. ... They're not even smelling anything," said Phillips, a 61-year-old retiree and former cigarette smoker from Cuba, Ill. Electronic cigarettes don't burn and don't give off smoke.

The state Supreme Court breathed new life Thursday into lawsuits by seriously ill ex-smokers, ruling that a former cigarette addict can seek damages from tobacco companies for her cancer despite having failed to sue for earlier smoking-related illnesses... The California Supreme Court removed one obstacle to tobacco suits by ruling in 2007 that the two-year deadline started running when former smokers learned that they were ill, and not merely that they were addicted...

The Center for Disease Control has prophesied that by 2020 every state in the union will have indoor smoking bans. There are three bans in the prediction: restaurants, bars and workplace. Of course you canÂ’t smoke in federal buildings but these do not fall under state jurisdiction. Texas just happens be one of seven states that still believes in individual freedom and we have no indoor state smoking ban. Unfortunately, cities do have the right to pass smoking bans. In 2000, there were no state bans on indoor smoking. By 2010, fifty states have all three bans. By 2020, it...

After decades of increasing tobacco taxes at the federal, state, and local levels, some states are beginning to buck this fiscally burdensome and irresponsible trend. On March 17, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill that would cut the state’s cigarette tax by a dime, to $1.68 per pack. Two other states with high tobacco taxes—New Jersey and Rhode Island—are also considering proposals to reduce taxes on tobacco products to make their state’s tax rates more competitive. This reversal in policy would be fiscally responsible and especially beneficial to low-income people. Many economists have noted that many states’...

The American Lung Assoc. gives Santee a failing grade for tobacco control, the Mayor responds. I am writing in response to the American Lung Association's (ALA) March 4 letter (see the letter in the media box) regarding Santee's overall grade of "F" in their annual State of Tobacco Control Report Card. They may see it as a grade of "F" from their perspective, as our being graded a failure; I see this grade of "F" from our perspective as being the highest grade for "FREEDOM" we could earn. In Santee we believe in life liberty and the pursuit of happiness....

CONCORD, N.H. – Bucking a national trend of raising cigarette taxes, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Rhode Island have considered reducing theirs, hoping to draw smokers from other states and increase revenue. Supporters argue reducing the tax by a dime would make New Hampshire more competitive with Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts, while opponents say that even if the state experienced higher sales as a result it still would lose millions of dollars in revenue. It's very unusual for states to lower the tax, University of Illinois at Chicago economics professor Frank Chaloupka says. The increase in sales isn't enough to...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A former FBI agent is being held by Iranian authorities, the Financial Times reported on Friday, but U.S. officials said they were still unable to verify the whereabouts of the missing American. Florida resident and ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson went missing while on a visit to the Gulf island of Kish in Iran early in March. His family has not heard from him since and U.S. officials told Reuters they do not have any valid leads. Diplomats fear the case of Levinson could mark a new twist in apparent tit-for-tat detentions involving the United States, Britain and...

The cigarettes Audrey Silk used to smoke — Parliament Lights — are made at a factory in Richmond, Va. The cigarettes she smokes these days are made and grown in Brooklyn, at her house. Ms. Silk’s backyard is home to raspberry and rose bushes, geraniums, impatiens and 100 tobacco plants in gardening buckets near her wooden deck. Inside her house, around the corner from Flatbush Avenue, in Marine Park, she has to be careful stepping into her basement — one wrong move could ruin her cigarettes. Dozens of tobacco leaves hang there, drying on wires she has strung across the...

Two Democratic senators are asking baseball commissioner Bud Selig to ban all tobacco use in the sport, specifically citing smokeless products. Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey are suggesting that Selig push for a ban as part of the negotiations in the players' collective bargaining agreement later this year. Major League Baseball banned tobacco use in its minor leagues in 1993, but still allows it in the big leagues. The senators say Major League Baseball "is undoubtedly complicit" in the increase its use with school-aged boys.

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York lawmakers on Tuesday advanced a bill that would make the state the first to ban electronic cigarettes, devices touted on the Internet in ads promising all the pleasures of smoking without the deadly health threat. Health officials say e-cigarettes are just another addictive habit, one that can hook kids early and legally on smoking. But advocates who have used the devices to quit or cut down smoking tobacco call the battery-operated smokes a miracle. "E-cigarettes are for some people a tool for enabling them to continue their nicotine addictions when they are someplace where they...

Richmond International Raceway president Doug Fritz announced today that Richmond International Raceway’s grandstands will be smoke-free beginning this season. Fans who smoke may continue to do so, but in approved areas only. The new policy is in response to fan feedback. “Beginning this season, smoking will not be permitted in and in front of the grandstands or in portals leading to seating areas,” said Fritz. “Additionally, restrooms, buildings and areas that were already smoke-free at Richmond International Raceway will continue to be smoke-free,” said Fritz. “We are implementing this policy based on comments received from fans. Those who wish to...

Let the “health” gurus who scream about the evils of tobacco, while ignoring the problems of marijuana, be placed in the hands of doctors, nurses, paramedics, lawyers, accountants, auto mechanics, airline pilots, police officers, and government officials who wouldn’t think of touching tobacco, but who smoke a joint every night to relax − and sometimes in the morning before work. Let the immigration “rights” advocates be placed in the hands of similar people who have limited knowledge of English, but who must understand and carry out complex instructions that were written by other people who also have limited knowledge of...

U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin addresses the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, March 30, 2010. (Photo by Penny Starr/CNSNews.com) (CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Surgeon-General’s report that even a single cigarette can harm a person’s health is unscientific and potentially unethical, a cigar and pipe trade group says.According to the report released on Dec. 9 by Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, “there is no risk-free level of exposure to tobacco smoke.” In announcing the report, Benjamin said exposure to tobacco smoke – even occasional smoking or secondhand smoke – “causes immediate damage to your body that can...

A jury on Tuesday ordered U.S. cigarette maker Lorillard Inc to pay damages to a dead smoker's family for allegedly enticing the woman and other black children with free cigarettes given out decades ago. Evans vs Lorillard was the first case to claim the company targeted minorities, including young children, with samples of Newport cigarettes in the early 1960s. The Suffolk Superior Court ordered Lorillard, which also makes Kent, True, Old Gold and other cigarette brands, to pay $50 million in damages to the estate of Marie Evans and $21 million to her son, William Evans. Marie Evans died of...

Rob Klotzback, a central Florida man, has launched a new brand of cigarettes. Bama's Cigarettes, available in five states including Florida, are creating a small stir thanks to the O around the brand name. Reading the package the way most folks would, "Bama's" becomes "Obama's." Klotzback insists the O around the brand name is just a flavor ring. But he he had to be aware of the publicity such a package design would give him. And with Obama's smoking habit being well-known, the connection's almost impossible not to make. Bama's Cigarettes sell for just over $4 a pack in Florida,...

Charlie the chimp, known for his cigarette habit, has died at his home in a South African Zoo. After picking up a smoking habit because of cigarettes being thrown into his enclosure at the Mangaung Zoo in Bloemfontein, South Africa, Charlie began to bum smokes from zoo visitors by gesturing to his mouth with two fingers, mimicking the actions of smokers he'd watched. (See photos of the world's most endangered primates) Visitors continued to indulge the chimp, bringing on a hailstorm of accusations from animal rights activists when videos surfaced online not long after, prompting Bloemfontein zoo officials to try...

Nashville, Tenn. (AP) - The U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that it plans to resume shipping care packages with cigarettes and other tobacco to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. A law aimed at preventing smuggling had unintentionally banned families from sending tobacco to military members serving overseas. Spokesman Greg Frey said the postal service is planning to issue new instructions that could allow shipments to resume possibly as soon as Aug. 27. The Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act of 2009 quietly took effect June 29 and was created to prevent minors from ordering cigarettes through the mail. It allowed...

Under what circumstance would a normal law abiding citizen intentionally defy federal law? Recently a grandfather went to the post office with a care package for his grandson serving with the Marines in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. When he went to the counter with the box, the clerk looked over the form that lists the contents and saw a carton of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco as contents. The clerk then gave the man back his package and informed him that the US Postal Service, by law, could no longer mail packages containing those items. Not even to troops serving in war...

The U.S. federal government collected $20.6 billion in taxes on alcohol, tobacco, firearms and ammunition in fiscal year 2009, up 41 percent from the previous fiscal year, according to the annual report of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Part of the U.S. Treasury Department, the TTB credited most of the $6 billion rise in revenues collected to the increased taxes on the tobacco industry as a result of the Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act passed in February 2009. There was also a spike in tax collection from the sale of guns and ammunition, said the report from...

As we have noted here before, there is a serious issue dealing with conflicts of interest at the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC). This committee advises the FDA on regulations for tobacco products. However, several members of the committee are not independent, thus, regulations that are passed down affect the financial interests of those on the committee. Specifically, committee members Jack Henningfield, Neal Benowitz and Dorothy Hatsukami stand to gain with the regulations that they propose. Henningfield is a consultant for the maker of Nicorrette gum. Benowitz is employed by Pfizer, which produces Chantix, a drug that aids...

The ringleader of a bootleg alcohol gang which produced more than a million litres of illegal vodka costing the taxman £10 million in lost revenue was jailed for 12 years today. Harvey Conroy ran a 'determined and professional' outfit which produced fake vodka and tobacco without paying excise duty or VAT, defrauding the state of millions of pounds. Richard Christie QC, for the prosecution, said Conroy orchestrated the fraud in a bid to make massive profits, with the factories working 24 hours-a-day

This new YouTube video features President Obama chewing his nicotine gum in public - first at the G8 summit, later at the G20 summit in Toronto and finally in front of children in the Oval Office. I feel Obama's pain. I have studied up on addiction and done plenty of work for charities that seek to combat alcohol, tobacco and other drugs (ATODs). One of my first jobs, for example, was with a government program called L.A. Link that was focused on reducing illegal nicotine use among adolescents in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. I remember interviewing a heroin addict...

The ruling temporarily puts on hold the new law that prohibits shipping cigarettes through the U.S. Postal Service. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court refuses to consider a tobacco racketeering appeals. ~~~ Federal District Judge Richard Arcara temporarily ordered a new law that disallows cigarettes to be shipped via the mail to be placed on hold, the Associated Press reports. A Seneca Indian Nation tobacco business owner asked for the restraining order to stop the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act (PACT Act) to take effect yesterday. A July 7 hearing has been scheduled to hear the case. “We are very disappointed in...

A coalition of prominent public health organizations is rallying behind a new report that shows just how valuable cigarette smokers are to cash-strapped states’ economies. Citing a “mountain of evidence” to compel North Carolina legislators to increase ‘sin taxes’ on smokers so they can “save lives,” hidden in the smokescreen is the ultimate goal of harvesting hundreds of millions in revenue by exploiting cigarette smokers’ addictions as opposed to trying to help them quit. One might assume the North Carolina Alliance for Health (NCAH), an organization whose membership roster includes the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the American...

WASHINGTON — The smoking lamp is going out all across the Navy’s submarine fleet, where the mission to “run silent, run deep” now will be carried out by sailors ordered to run undersea operations without cigarettes, cigars or pipes. This is the latest front in the long war against tobacco declared by the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Their programs to help military personnel kick the smoking habit are intended to protect the health of the current force — and to save the government hundreds of millions of dollars a year in health care costs for those who...

A photograph of Winston Churchill giving his victory salute has been airbrushed to remove his signature cigar. In the well-known original image, Churchill makes a "V" shaped symbol with his fingers – while gripping a cigar in the corner of his mouth. But in a reproduction of the picture, hanging over the main entrance to a London museum celebrating the wartime leader, he has been made into a non-smoker through the use of image-altering techniques. It is unclear who is responsible for doctoring the photograph, with the museum – The Winston Churchill's Britain at War Experience – claiming not to...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The Seneca Nation of Indians welcomed President Barack Obama to Buffalo with protesters in the street and a full page ad in the local newspaper saying he broke his promise to honor treaties when he signed a law that will devastate the Indian tobacco trade and put thousands of people out of work in Western New York. The ad was in the form of an open letter. “Dear Mr. President, Last fall you invited Native American leaders to Washington, D.C. and promised to listen to our concerns and respect our treaty rights. You pledged meaningful consultation and...

Smoking is officially illegal just about everywhere in San Francisco. New anti-smoking rules went into effect over the weekend and people who violate the new rules could feel the negative impact on more than just their health. If someone calls police and they come during a violation of the ban, the smoker be fined up to $100. The new rule makes it illegal to light up at sidewalk cafes, restaurant patios, movie and ATM lines and the common areas of housing complexes. It will also be a much easier breathing experience, farmers markets, lines for movies theaters, concerts and sporting...

Statistically speaking, there are more nonsmokers that have cancer than there are smokers who have cancer. So, smokers can be just as absurd as anti-smokers and say that it is safer to smoke. Of course, this is not a real argument, and neither are statistics when it comes to associating smoking to cancer. The fallacy in the argument is one of simple "cause and effect," because you are a smoker is why you have cancer. This is the same as the rhetorical phrase commonly toted by anti-smokers usually used in such a context as "all the years of smoking" finally...

tance, no accuracy, no evidence that is correct in the claims of Mr Clapham," she said. "It's a bizarre claim by somebody using the Victor Chang name, because he is a director of a fundraising foundation associated with Victor Chang. "And the timing is very, very bad because Indonesia is losing millions of people a year from smoking. "The government has been very slow to act and they're finally about to consider some legislation that could decrease the loss of life. And then this article comes out in a prominent Indonesian newspaper." A spokeswoman for the Victor Chang Institute says...