Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will introduce legislation to raise the federal minimum age to buy tobacco to 21 from 18, he announced Thursday. McConnell will introduce the legislation, called the McConnell bill, in May, he said. It will cover all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. McConnell’s backing marks the strongest support yet in Congress for what’s been dubbed “T21.” “For some time, I’ve been hearing from the parents who are seeing an unprecedented spike in vaping among their teenage children,” McConnell said in a statement. “In addition, we all know people who started smoking at a young age and who...

No butts about it, a trio of Democratic senators want info and answers from a range of media companies--broadcast, cable, satellite and over-the-top--about what role the entertainment industry plays in promoting youth tobacco use, suggesting ratings should include tobacco use identifiers and any TV show showing tobacco be rated TV-MA and any movie get an R rating. ... Sens. Ed Markey (Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Chris Van Hollen (Md.) sent the letters, saying that youth media consumption and the "anywhere, anytime" model of film and TV distribution as changed traditional boundaries among media." We are concerned that this new...

<p>Some 50 years ago, in 1964, 42 percent of Americans smoked cigarettes. Smoking in bars and offices was normal and cigarettes were given to soldiers as part of military rations. Half of American physicians smoked. Ads for cigarettes bombarded the American public. That year, the surgeon general released a report outlining the health risks of smoking. Two years later, only 40 percent of Americans said that they believed smoking was a major cause of cancer.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) — African-Americans and Hispanics breathe in far more deadly air pollution than they are responsible for making, a new study said.A study looked at who is exposed to fine particle pollution — responsible for about 100,000 American deaths a year — and how much different races are responsible for the pollution based on their buying, driving and living habits.Scientists calculate that Hispanics on average breathe in 63 percent more of the pollution that leads to heart and breathing deaths than they make. For African-Americans the figure is 56 percent, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings...

Missing a Father in Iran Daniel Levinson June 22, 2008 It has been 471 days since my father, Robert "Bob" Levinson, went missing in Iran -- more than the 444 days that 52 American diplomats were held hostage after they were seized in Iran in 1979. These past 15 months have brought my mother, four sisters, two brothers and me nothing but grief and sadness. We are no closer to finding answers than we were when our father disappeared March 9, 2007, on Kish Island, Iran. He was on a private business trip, and I emphasize "private" because, although he...

I used to be a smoker. It was stupid, I know, but I did it for a very long time. I'm not alone, not unique, plenty of people made that same choice I did to take up the nasty habit when we were young and convinced we were invincible. Like tens of millions of Americans, I managed to quit and haven’t looked back. I would still be smoking today if not for the miracle (and it is indeed a miracle) of the e-cigarette. I vaped like a madman...and it was my bridge to a much healthier and happier lifestyle. To...

Video from Atlanta shows store employee assaulting customer for wearing pro-Trump shirt This brand new video from Atlanta, Georgia, shows a store employee assaulting a customer for wearing a pro-Trump shirt. The assault occurs at 0:36https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65b7YuGOYMw

In 1841, Andrews hatched a plan to make his political and moral beliefs a lived reality: He would convince Great Britain to buy up all the land in Texas on the condition that they free Texas’s slaves. The idea was not as outlandish as it might sound. In 1833, Great Britain had done something similar in abolishing slavery on its plantations in the West Indies. There, slaveholders were paid a total of $20 million sterling in recompense for their lost property, though they retained the land. And Texas had already reached across the Atlantic for economic aid. The South Carolina...

New data from the U.S. government shows just 14 percent of adults overall in smoke cigarettes, but experts say there is still much more work to do to bring the number lower.

I'm tired of hearing the myth that cigarettes kill people. It reminds me of the old myth that cold temperatures cause colds. The smoking issue is not as simple as the anti-smokers portray it. It can involve more than just addiction to nicotine. If smoking kills people why do so many smokers live to be over 60? Looking at substances that sometimes kill people demonstrates how substances can kill people directly. For most of us peanuts are a delicious and nutritious snack. However, for some people with a peanut allergy peanuts can be one of the world's deadliest poisons. College...

Turkey announced this morning its intention to raise tariffs on several products imported from the United States, including cars, alcohol and tobacco. .....

Do not be surprised if legal cigarettes made from ganja (cannabis) hit the streets soon. Major producers like Carreras are probing that and other cannabis possibilities, as increasing competition from illegally imported cigarettes continues to burn deeper into the profits of the legal trade. It is no secret that British American Tobacco (BAT), the parent company of Carrerras, has, like other major US tobacco dealers including Phillip Morris, been looking at the cannabis market and the possibility of producing mild cigarettes restricted by the legal content of the main cannabinoids — cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), although only THC is...

A study into the use of tobacco has yielded some interesting findings including dating the practice to around 4,000 years ago -- about 1,500 years older than previously thought. The study, "Evidence of Tobacco from a Late Archaic Smoking Tube Recovered from the Flint River site in southeastern North America", has been undertaken by various researchers and was led by Dr. Stephen B. Carmody , Troy University (Ala.) assistant professor of anthropology. "For the past eight or nine years, I have been exploring pipe use, pipe-smoked plants, and the use of tobacco here in the eastern woodlands of North America,"...

LUMBERTON — A quarter century after tobacco was the money crop in Robeson County, bringing in hundreds of millions a year to farmers and those who provide support services, the amount of tobacco grown here is a fraction of what it was then. But the number of Robeson County residents who smoke remains strong, the highest percentage in the state, causing a financial drain in a poor county and hurting its collective health. North Carolina produced and sold more than $647 million worth of tobacco in 2016, putting it among the country’s leaders in flue-cured tobacco production, but Robeson’s once-booming...

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

Two new studies report an increased risk of psychosis among smokers of not only marijuana, but tobacco, too. The tobacco study has now been published in the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, and the marijuana study — which was conducted by the same team — has now been published in The British Journal of Psychiatry. Research has found links between psychosis and both tobacco and marijuana smoking — particularly in regard to schizophrenia-related psychosis. However, the precise reasons why people who experience psychosis are more likely to smoke are not clear. Some scientists think that smoking might act as a kind...

The Trump administration has drafted plans to strip key authorities from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, senior administration officials said on Friday, an acknowledgment that the agency has all but abandoned its legacy of fighting liquor and tobacco smugglers. The A.T.F. traces its roots to Eliot Ness and the Prohibition-era federal agents made famous in the movie “The Untouchables.” But the modern A.T.F. has focused its stagnant budget on violent crime and bombings, while tobacco smuggling — a little-known crime that costs the government billions in lost taxes each year — goes largely unenforced.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Raising Kentucky’s cigarette tax by $1 a pack has strong support from voters across the state, according to a poll released Thursday and funded by anti-smoking interests. In all, 69 percent of those surveyed in December said they favor higher per-pack taxes in an effort to reduce smoking and spend the extra revenue on state budget needs. A majority of residents in all parts of Kentucky back a tax increase, which advocates estimate will generate more than $266 million per year. The support ranges from 61 percent of residents in western Kentucky to 77 percent in...

In an embarrassing mixup, the U.N. labor agency says it has shelved a decision on ending its ties with Big Tobacco, correcting its own statement earlier Thursday indicating it would cut ties to an industry faulted for major health risks. International Labor Organization spokesman Hans von Rohland cited a mistake in which the “tripartite” U.N. agency — bringing together business, labor groups and governments — had previously said it would stop taking funds from the tobacco industry and end their public-private partnerships. “We sent you the wrong version of the decision taken by the ILO Governing Body on ILO cooperation...

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...