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'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the House (of Representatives), not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. House Bill 4163 had been through both chambers with great fanfare, and there was a great yell of triumph from the Campaign for Smokefree Air.
Children with asthma were wishing for the best, of visits to restaurants with clean air in their chests. And Mama in her apron could work for a living, without the worry of cancer the secondhand smoke was giving.
When out in the Capitol lobby, there arose such a clatter, the people all wondered just what was the matter? Ohio has done it, and Illinois, too, so many states were smoke free, why is it so hard for Michigan to do? . . .
So write to your lawmakers and tell them to compromise and vote; tell them you're watching and you're taking note. It's good for me and for you, good for health and business too; Be you naughty or nice, a smokefree Michigan is the right thing to do!
-- Dr. Ronald M. Davis, M.D, of East Lansing, who wrote this verse a year ago, died last month of pancreatic cancer.
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DRIVER Oh I see, you must be one of those fugitives from the law. I pick up a lot of those. That's fine. What a man does in his own time is his own business.
DR. BRUCE BANNER Thanks.
DRIVER Of course, you're going to have to put out that cigarette.
DR. BRUCE BANNER But… we've got a long drive ahead.
DRIVER Sorry, rules are rules. There's no smoking in my car.
DR. BRUCE BANNER Please… don't make me stop smoking. You wouldn't like me when I'm not smoking…
DRIVER Why? What, are you one of those gamma mutants? When you get enraged you turn into a 14-foot tall green monster?
DR. BRUCE BANNER That, and I tend to gain weight.
THIS FILM CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF TOBACCO CONSUMPTIONAdvisory on Universal's US ads for "The Incredible Hulk." You can see a depiction of the ad, and closeup of the advisory, at this site.
Tomorrow at midnight the last smoldering cigarettes will be snuffed out in barroom ashtrays across Maryland. . . .
Nevertheless, you must remember this: For hundreds of years, the smoky tavern/pub/cocktail lounge/jazz club/blues bar have been part of our culture, and to erase the memory of it would be wrong, on numerous levels. So, too, would be failing to acknowledge its demise.
Hence, this homage to the smoke-filled bar - an ode to an odor most foul, a paean to a pain in the neck. For in losing the smoke-filled bar, we are losing a layer of society's texture - granted, an unhealthy, lung-irritating, certifiably toxic texture - but texture all the same. It's another vanishing icon, like the milkman, the typewriter, 8-track tapes and the rotary phone.
It's another tool lost for writers and movie directors . . .
When a piece of popular culture bites the dust - even as unpopular a piece as the smoky bar - it rates an obit ...
Smoky Bar, the illegitimate son of Sir Walter Raleigh whose roots stretch back to Colonial times, died today after a long illness.
The European Union is launching an anti-smoking campaign with a series of tongue-in-cheek viral ads promoting fake nicotine-based products.
Developed by French agency Ligaris, the campaign also includes a spoof website, nicomarket.com, for a corporation peddling the products - complete with a contact email address and chairman profile.
The four tongue-in-cheek virals are being seeded on entertainment and youth community websites, by specialists GoViral, in the big five European territories of the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
Each of the virals promotes a different product - a room-freshener, throat spray, toothpaste and skin cream - with the twist being that the nicotine-based products have adverse effects.
1 The number of cupfuls of tar found in a smoker's lungs when they die.
2 The tally of cigarettes smoked by John Hurt in a taxi during a seminal scene in the otherwise largely forgotten 1997 movie Love and Death on Long Island. . . .
3 The total of extra days a smoker takes off work each year, on average, through illnesses and complaints associated with the habit. . . .
19 Thousands of pounds a year currently being advertised as the salary for a 'smoke freedom officer'. The post, with Canterbury council in Kent, will include the task of advising landlords how to deal with customers who light up in pubs.
20 The seconds it takes for nicotine to hit the brain.
It may be hard to believe, but I was a restaurant critic when I worked in Paris for the European edition of the Herald Tribune in the 1950s.
I was there when Paris was burning. That is to say, every Frenchman and woman filled the cafes and dining rooms with smoke all day. . . .
For all of us, the cigarette or cigar was the best way to end a fantastic meal.
The French have a saying, "A day without tobacco is like a day without sunshine." . . .
In the good old days, I smoked cigars -- six to 10 a day.
I thought nothing of lighting up a Havana after a meal in a good restaurant. . . .
It is hard to imagine France as a smoke-free country.
Only the old movies will show people smoking. If "Casablanca" were filmed today, Humphrey Bogart's nightclub would have signs all over it saying "Sans Fumee" (No Smoking).
Imagine the hookers in Pigalle standing in doorways, biting their nails.
The National Museum of Health and Medicine recently opened "Cartoonists Take Up Smoking," an exhibition of original newspaper editorial cartoons on a single theme, presented by Alan Blum, M.D., one of the nation's foremost authorities on the history of the tobacco industry and the battle over smoking.
The exhibit retraces the 40-year battle over the use and promotion of cigarettes since the publication of the landmark Surgeon General's report on smoking and health in 1964. The exhibit also addresses complacency on the part of organized medicine, politicians, and the mass media in ending the tobacco pandemic. . . .
Can You Cartoon? We asked visitors to the exhibition to draw their own cartoons about smoking to hang in the gallery.
Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) is relearning the elementary school lesson that sometimes things said in jest can still hurt people's feelings.
That is apparently the case with Michael Ferens , a now-former Schwartz political supporter who was not amused when she proposed a ban on alcohol as a satire on a very real smoking ban in bars and restaurants the D.C. Council is considering. ("I'm also now looking at some other legal choices to ban -- like driving, or sex -- for they, too, can be dangerous to your health and the health of others," Schwartz said in her wink-wink proposal.)..
In a recent letter to Schwartz, Ferens wrote about the effects of secondhand smoke he experienced when he was a bartender and the pain of losing his father last year to lung cancer. His father had smoked for five decades...
Ferens cited his work on Schwartz's campaigns and added, "as a result, I receive this mockery and laughing at me because I suffered second hand smoke, and my father died.
"Thanks a lot Carol.
D.C. Council member Carol Schwartz touts a smoking-ban compromise in one breath and a claim that people are dying in another.
The latter is unassailable, as the at-large Republican tars the smoking-ban proponents of the D.C. Council with their own argument. There is death all around us in the nation's capital -- death by tobacco, death by alcohol, death by promiscuous sex, death by an infinite number of unwise practices...
I think we all would be a lot healthier if we limited our beverage intake to lead-free water, orange juice, cranberry juice and pomegranate juice. So I am challenging the 13-member D.C. Council today to craft legislation that taxes those establishments that fail to meet a 25 percent, gross-receipts minimum of life-affirming juices.
Give Mrs. Schwartz credit. You want to ban smoking in the city because of health concerns? Then, by all means, we need to do better than that. We can be better than that.
Seventy-two years after Prohibition was repealed, one D.C. Council member suggested yesterday that alcohol once again be off-limits in the bars and restaurants of the District.
Council member Carol Schwartz, at-large Republican, introduced her bill in response to a proposed ban on smoking in those same establishments. Her proposal imitates the arguments for a smoking ban, citing health concerns, worker safety and the nuisance of drinkers...
"Let's be honest, people are dying," Mrs. Schwartz said, mocking arguments from other council members on the smoking ban. "Pure and simple, drinking kills."
Fellow council members Kathy Patterson, Ward 3 Democrat, and Jim Graham, Ward 1 Democrat, rolled their eyes and shook their heads.
R.J. Reynolds, maker of cigarettes such as Camel and Winston, announced it will take legal action against Otis Bauer. Bauer's physician recently informed him that he is suffering from lung cancer, which is causing R.J. Reynolds, according to company spokesperson Milos Labrou, "irreparable damage to the company's image."
"We feel very betrayed," said Labrou. "It's publicity like this which has cost our company billions of dollars in sales losses, legal tangles and printing fees for health disclaimers on the product itself. Ink does not grow on trees, you know."
When asked why the company had singled out Mr. Bauer when thousands of smoking related cancer diagnoses are reported every year in the US, Labrou responded, "We have to make an example out of someone.
This is the kind of story where you really have to watch for typos. The difference between $28 billion and $28 million is just one letter, a single keystroke. But otherwise, it's a big deal. One might say the judge reduced the $28 billion award by $27.972 billion. Most people would round off $27.972 billion to $28 billion. You can't do that here because it would make it look like the judge cut the $28 billion by $28 billion, which would make the award nothing. But we checked--and $28 million is not nothing. But next to $28 billion, it just looks like nothing. In fact it's one-tenth of 1% of $28 billion. . .
From another perspective, $28 billion is more than the market capitalization of British American Tobacco, Loews or R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, the other big tobacco companies. Philip Morris itself has a net worth of $85.5 billion. $28 billion dollars would be about a third of that net. But $28 million--that's just three one-hundredths of 1%. Which is nothing, unless you start with billions, as here.
I'm looking at something called "New Smokable Nicotine Sticks." What's this about? Siegel: That's basically a, it's sort of a nicotine filled cylinder that when you put it in your mouth and light it, it gives you a nicotine charge similar to cigarettes, essentially. Lin: Where did you find this article? Siegel: Oh, well, we wrote it. We reported on it. We got a lot of, actually, a lot of doctors were calling us asking where they could get them for their patients. Lin: Yes, it says available in regular and menthol, legal for minors and available wherever cigarettes are sold.
Siegel: It's essentially like a nicotine patch but it does a better job of simulating the smoking experience.
Hiring O.J. Simpson's detectives to find "the real killers" of smokers. "Marlboro Miles" can no longer be used to purchase Pokemon products. For poor people who can't afford to eat *and* smoke, free cigarette included in Kraft Macaroni & Cheese boxes. New ad campaign for 2000: "You don't have to smoke just because all the really cool kids do."
Hiring O.J. Simpson's detectives to find "the real killers" of smokers. For poor people who can't afford to eat *and* smoke, free cigarette included in Kraft Macaroni & Cheese boxes. New ad campaign for 2000: "You don't have to smoke just because all the really cool kids do."<i>The Top 15 Other Ways Philip Morris is "Working to Make a Difference"</i>