Tobacco.org

Machinist turns activist over tax 

Ron Russell, a high-energy, outgoing machinist at Hav-A-Tampa cigar factory, isn't an activist, but every so often the outrage wells up. . . . Now 43, Russell is speaking out again on what he considers another outrage: the upcoming closure of the Hav-A-Tampa factory near Seffner, where he's worked for about four years.

Russell crafted a letter he plans to send to congressional supporters of an increased federal cigar tax, chastising them for "short-sightedness" in taxing a 102-year-old local factory out of existence. He got more than 90 co-workers to sign it.

Local radio talk-show hosts have seized on the issue and read Russell's letter on the air, singling out U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor for criticism.

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NEWMAN: Hav-A-Tampa closing an avoidable tragedy 

Cigar-makers supported expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program. We believe everyone should have access to quality health care.

What we opposed was Congress' decision to fund the expansion of this government program by taxing a single industry. Health care should be a shared responsibility.

We pleaded with the leaders of Congress not to tax us out of business. We explained how a 700 percent tax increase would cost jobs and force some cigar companies to close their doors.

Sadly, our pleas fell on deaf ears and what we feared has become reality.

When will Congress understand that it cannot dramatically raise taxes on businesses without costing jobs?

How ironic it is that many former Hav-A-Tampa employees could soon need assistance from the very government program whose expansion cost them their jobs and health insurance in the first place.

-- Eric M. Newman is president of the J.C. Newman Cigar Co., which was founded by his grandfather in 1895, and president of the Cigar Manufacturers Association of Tampa

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DZWONKOWSKI: Smokers will soon do a slow burn in Michigan  

Michigan smokers may feel themselves working at it a little harder next year when only "slow burn" cigarettes can be sold in the state. But the bill signed into law last week by Gov. Jennifer Granholm should cut down on fires due to smokers falling asleep, which is the cause of up to 800 deaths in the United States each year. Slow-burn cigarettes are designed to go out if no one is puffing on them.

The states have taken the lead on requiring them since federal legislation bogged down again in 2000. A national requirement for safer cigarettes has actually been kicking around in Congress since the 1930s; the late U.S. Sen. Phil Hart of Michigan almost got it enacted in 1974 before the tobacco lobby beat it back again. The major cigarette makers have had slow-burn products widely available for a few years, ever since New York in 2004 became the first state to require them.

Michigan is actually one of the last states to move on this. ...

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ROMM: States raise tobacco tax, not necessarily revenue 

For lawmakers scrounging to balance state budgets in a recession, tobacco taxes were one of the most popular options on the table this year. Seven states -- Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Mississippi, Rhode Island and Vermont -- tapped smokers' wallets to help plug their budget gaps, up from two states in 2008. More than 20 additional states debated whether to follow suit, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But there are growing signs that tobacco, which generated about $19 billion for states in revenue from sales and excise taxes last fiscal year, might not deliver the new money state lawmakers are hoping for.

In a double-whammy for smokers, the federal government on April 1 also imposed a 62-cent increase in its cigarette tax, raising it to $1.01 a pack, and the Food and Drug Administration is assuming sweeping authority over the tobacco industry. Together, the two federal moves are likely to depress cigarette sales -- already in decline -- that every state counts on for extra cash. According to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group, the federal increase in cigarette prices could hold down sales and dent states' tobacco tax receipts by $1.6 billion next fiscal year. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed FDA regulations could slash states' tobacco excise revenue by an additional $20 million in 2010 -- and up to $300 million by 2014. . . .

That's why state health departments tend to celebrate tobacco taxes as hard-fought victories. In New York, where the state cigarette tax is $2.75 a pack, health officials say a combination of higher taxes and smoking bans have lowered health-care costs statewide. . . .

. But while states have long-term financial and health reasons to discourage smoking, they remain hooked in the short term on these "sin taxes" -- excises on vices such as smoking, drinking and gambling that are politically easier to increase than sales or income taxes. . . .

Others regard these short-term budget patches as part of a larger problem. One leading critic of higher taxes, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, said a better solution to burgeoning budget gaps is to cut state spending.

"Any problem of overspending that could be passed on to cigarettes could be fixed by just spending more wisely," Norquist said. "The problem with the tax increase isn't just that it's a tax increase. . . . It is that the tax is what you did instead of reforming state government."

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BROWN : New tobacco control act  

The annual health care costs in New Jersey directly caused by smoking amount to $3.17 billion. Residents' state and federal tax burden from smoking-caused government expenditures is $664 per household. Regardless of the state of the economy, no one wants any of his or her hard-earned money going toward these costs, let alone $664. Finances aside, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will save something much more precious than money: It will save lives. The law "gives us hope," as President Obama said, adding that, "It will help protect the next generation of Americans from growing up with a deadly habit."

To learn more about cessation resources on how to quit smoking, visit lungusa.org or call 1-800-LUNG-USA, ext. 2.

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MUHLE: Tobacco use is deadly and contributes to poverty  

Tobacco is a health problem directly resulting from the impact of globalisation. As other expects put it: "[Tobacco] provides examples of the ways in which globalisation, trade liberalisation, modern communication and marketing, direct foreign investment and the growth of multi-national corporations can impact on the poor, on life expectancies and health status, and on the ability of national governments to legislate for and implement tobacco control policies." This article is an attempt to help demonstrate why tobacco is a developmental issue and also a public health issue. One could as well argue that it may be considered to be within the same bracket as AIDS. Like HIV and AIDS it will certainly pose a challenge to those who deny the reality of tobacco as an epidemic. So many lives of fellow Swazis are at risk--many unwittingly. This article is a humble attempt to let us understand why - given all that we know - so little is being done about this silent yet venomously deadly epidemic. All evidence point to the reality that tobacco smoking, like HIV, is on the increase in the country. Like HIV, it is being denied and very little seems to be done about it at all levels. Like HIV, it is not easy to confront it, let alone change. Nevertheless, we must face up to the reality of how the use of tobacco is damaging our people, especially the young--the very vestige of our future as a people and society. . . . The one greatest challenge we are facing as country in this front is the illicit trade on this deadly product as demonstrated by the recent spate of cigarette smugglings in truck loads! You and I have a duty to play our role and help the people of this country overcome this impeding epidemic regardless of who is purported to be involved in the smuggling syndrome--remember this words "without fear or favour"? The ball is in our court!

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ROY: Package warning: A good anti-tobacco tools  

Currently, under the Tobacco Control Act 2005 in Bangladesh, only written warnings on tobacco products are required to occupy 30 per cent of the main surfaces of the packets. Such warnings include "Smoking Kills" and "smoking Causes Lung Cancer". Under the FCTC (Framework Convention for Tobacco Control), pictorial warnings accompanied with written messages should account for 50 per cent (front and back) of the total packet of tobacco products.

Already, there has been tremendous progress in Bangladesh implementing legislation to mandate pictorial warnings. Seven countries including Thailand, Australia and Singapore require all tobacco containing products to convey health warning pictorial and message accounting for a minimum of 50 percent both side of the total packet.

Most of the story of tobacco control in Bangladesh is still unwritten and events continue to unfold. It remains to be seen whether the tobacco control movement will be sufficiently powerful and proactive to counter industry tactics and persuade the government to take strong measures to control tobacco. The tobacco industry is a mighty force in Bangladesh than elsewhere and it will be difficult to maintain a spotlight on tobacco in the face of so many competing causes of disease and ill health. But if the progress made over the past few years is any indication of the future, the many organizations and individuals working for tobacco control in Bangladesh have good reason to be optimistic. . . . we need to act now. This is the time to go ahead to save our future generation. And for that let us work together.

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ADLER: Philip Morris Gets Its Tobacco Bill 

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act is revealed as yet another Beltway deal for Big Government and Big Business. Those who proclaim it a victory for public health and the public good are blowing smoke.

While supporters trumpet the legislation as a major advance for public health, any benefits will be quite modest. The Congressional Budget Office projects the bill will reduce adult smoking by 2 percent and youth smoking by 11 percent over the next ten years. These reductions will come at the cost of a new regulatory bureaucracy and a more intimate relationship between the federal government and Big Tobacco.

Some provisions could actually hamper the bill’s ostensible purpose of protecting smokers and others from tobacco. The bill grants the FDA the authority to limit nicotine in cigarettes, but not eliminate it altogether. . . .

The bill also creates burdensome regulatory requirements for new tobacco products that have the potential to reduce the risk of smoking. . . .

In their zeal to limit tobacco advertising and promotional activities, the bill’s sponsors also trampled the First Amendment. . . .

Limiting tobacco advertising and stalling the development of new tobacco products won’t help public health, but it will certainly benefit the nation’s largest cigarette manufacturer. Government regulation is the most tried-and-true way for incumbent firms to squelch smaller competitors, which helps explain why Philip Morris supports the bill and smaller tobacco companies oppose it. Harder to fathom is why public-health advocates who should know better celebrate the law as a major advance.

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NELSON: This once was a free country  

‘When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country,” G. Gordon Liddy lamented in his book by the same title. I found the book unexceptional except for his longing for a country long gone. He takes the reader through a stroll of America in its more untrammeled days and contrasts it with the constantly harried, henpecked regime we find ourselves in now.

Liddy has a few years on me, but I, too, remember freer days. Political correctness hadn’t yet completely stifled free speech, and kids with hunting rifles in their cars at school parking lots or little girls with aspirin in their purses weren’t whisked off by zero-tolerance twits. . . .

The Forum Editorial Board, which apparently never met a nanny it didn’t love, has held forth again on the evils of tobacco. Pay no attention to the subversive notion of letting people enjoy their vices in peace and privacy; nay, the new Puritans will hound smokers until the last leaf of tobacco is extinguished. The recently enacted Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will now, under the Food and Drug Administration, further choke tobacco users and pile on more useless regulations.

You might think alcohol would be a fitter subject for nannyism, since it’s more addictive and orders of magnitude more damaging to its users and to society than tobacco could ever be. . . .

I voted against North Dakota’s Measure 3 setting aside tobacco money to help stop smoking. Not only are there better uses for all that cash, it’s blood money anyway. Extorted from the producers and users of a perfectly legal substance, it’s money we have no right to whatsoever.

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• ALLAN: Hardline smoking ban just isn't fit for purpose  

Psychiatric units in England are experiencing considerable difficulties implementing the smoking ban that came into force last July. A report published last month by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) says 85% of respondents to a survey it conducted said the ban had not been implemented "wholly effectively". Widespread practical problems reported included a rise in "secret smoking" - with associated safety concerns - and occasions where staff feel obliged to "turn a blind eye", especially when a patient is very unwell, thus placing them both in a position of breaking the law.

Two years ago, I wrote a piece expressing my concerns about the forthcoming ban. It seemed to me that the issue was a great deal more complex, both practically and morally, than a simple equation of "smoking is bad, therefore we must ban smoking". . . .

Policy-makers responded with a mixture of "guidance" and bullheadedness. "The 'smoking den' culture that has afflicted mental health wards for decades is over," said national director for mental health Louis Appleby, in a letter to this paper more than a year before the ban was even due to be brought in.

Some trusts have introduced the ban effectively, and their experience is informative. One trust quoted in the MHF report had introduced the ban in conjunction with "healthy lifestyle initiatives". It said that "every ward has stretch and movement to start the day, a gym, and staff trained to diploma level in physical healthcare".

If stopping smoking is to be seen as a positive choice, rather than the loss of yet another freedom, such initiatives would seem to be crucial, as would a healthy, nutrition-rich diet. I have never been on a ward that offered either.

My local mental health unit, which was purpose-built only a few years ago, does not have a gym at all. Nor, crucially, do wards have direct access to a safe outside space. . . .

If every ward could be provided with such facilities, most people would embrace the ban as a huge step forward. But that is not the reality most staff and patients face. . . .

The fact is that psychiatric wards contain people who are ill - some too ill to leave the ward and certainly too ill to appreciate the benefits of not smoking. In the interests of common humanity, staff are turning a blind eye and breaking the law. They shouldn't have to.

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Tom Lyons: Partnering for profit with cigarette firms 

it struck me as funny when then-Speaker of the House Marco Rubio said, back when the tax bill was coming up for a vote, that though he was a staunchly anti-tax guy, he leaned toward voting for this one.

"I'm not against it if it's designed to get people to stop smoking," he explained.

Heck, that leaves me worried about the rich. Those who can't feel the pain of a little dollar-a-pack tax increase won't get the benefits of this tax-enforced social engineering. And why should the wealthy be left behind as state lawmakers save thousands of not-so-affluent Floridians from an early death?

Actually, the experts agree that most smokers who haven't already quit despite previous tax increases and decades of health warnings are mostly the solidly addicted who will not stop now, either. . . .

Florida, despite its stated anti-smoking efforts, is just becoming a bigger stakeholder in the tobacco industry. More than ever, state government will now share the industry's profit-hungry motive to keep cigarette sales legal and profitable.

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GAMOS: Opponents to smoke ban are only delaying a smoke-free South Dakota  

AT ISSUE: Some 25,000 people have signed petitions to bring the statewide ban on smoking in bars and restaurants to a vote of the people. One should fight to the death protecting the right of referring legislation to the public, even to oppose the smoking ban. However, opposing the ban only delays having South Dakota smoke free. Opponents to the smoking ban say the issue is a “matter of choice” issue and a freedom thing. But, in reality it is a pure and simple health issue. . . .

AT THE SAME TIME, this freedom thing the group against the ban is arguing has a tender spot in a lot of people’s psyche. There’s no question about that. They are saying it should be the business person’s right to chose whether or not there should be smoking in his or her establishment.

But how does one measure that against a person’s health? According to the Watertown Tobacco Free Coalition, here are a few of the numerous health effects from just second hand smoke on children: asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia, ear infections, lower respiratory tract infections cancers and leukemia, sudden infant death syndrome and adverse impact on learning and behavioral development.

THEN, WHEN IT comes to first hand smoke (smoking a cigarette), do you realize what some of the well known ingredients of cigarette smoke include?

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• GUS: Romancing The Smoke 

GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or even thinking of quitting, please -- join us! . . .

most of us grew up in a world where smoking was much more common than it is today. In my earliest childhood memories (I'm a Kennedy Administration baby, a child of the Mad Men era) it seemed that everyone smoked (in reality, it was around 45% back in the day) - just something grown-ups did.

But when some people did it - movie stars, artists, writers, and musicians, those creative rebels with or without a cause - smoking took on a certain aura of glamour. Smoking was cool. We saw images of smoking everywhere, and internalized it all like the good consumers of popular culture we are.

Even now, in a country where only about 20% of the adult population still smokes, smokers are disproportionately represented on TV and films. A lot of actors and musicians smoke; virtually every model does. I can't even tell you how many journalists, artists and writers smoke as if their next deadline, commission, or typed word depended upon it. I know I sure used to! . . .

Musicians like Fred "Sonic" Smith (died at 45) and Joe Strummer (died at 50), whose smoking aggravated underlying heart conditions. Lots of wonderful voices silenced: Mary Wells, Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys, the incomparable Sarah Vaughn, Duke Ellington and Eddie Kendrick (the sweetest voice in The Temptations lineup).

Creatives like choreographer Bob Fosse, who smoked 4 packs a day until he dropped dead of a heart attack, and band leader Spike Jones, whose famous 5-pack-a-day habit led to the Emphysema that killed him at 53. Writers like T.S. Eliot, Ian Fleming and Lillian Hellman. Chain-smoking Twilight Zone writer and host Rod Sterling and Director John Houston. Journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Chet Huntley, Peter Jennings and Harry Reasoner. A gazillion actors and actresses and icons of the stage and screen.

Even non-smokers weren't spared: Dana Reeve (a cabaret performer) and Andy Kaufman (a comedian) both died of lung cancer most likely caused by second-hand smoke from the clubs they played, a reminder that smokers don't only hurt themselves.

As Gussack dangoch pointed out, it's dangerous to "romance the smoke" - to remember it as something wonderful, transcendent, a panacea for all the things that stress you out, or the only friend who never lets you down.

Fact is, it DOES let you down, a lot, in a whole lot of ways. . . .

things in the rear-view mirror are not as wonderful as they seem, and sometimes, they bite you in the ass.

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• QUICK: Smoke Rings in the Oval Office  

When questioned at a press conference, Barack Obama admitted that he smokes cigarettes despite spirited efforts to quit.

The latter is awful news for several reasons.

First, the President apparently promised his wife he would quit smoking if she let him run for President. While far more momentous spousal vows have probably been broken by at least a billon or so married men, it would be nice if the President would honor his non-smoking pledge to his wife.

Second, it is estimated that every day 1,100 American kids take up smoking. If ever there were a President who is a role model for youth, it is Barack Obama. . . .

Barack's dirty little habit compromises the anti-smoking campaigns that seek to keep teens from trying tobacco. Do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do simply doesn't work with youth.

Next, smoking steals lifespan. . . .

Obama in the role of "Smoker One" has got to stop. Maybe the "stimulus package" passed by Congress could fund a "shovel-ready" cessation program and move our beloved President into the ranks of the ex-smokers. His family needs it. Our nation's children need it. The world needs it.

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CRONIN: Is the EU in the sway of Big Tobacco?  

Maybe there's still hope for journalism when the News of the World manages to squeeze in a story or two unrelated to Michael Jackson. "European zealots", the paper told us on Sunday, are demanding a ban on smoking outside pubs and offices. The ever-reliable Godfrey Bloom, newly re-elected MEP for Ukip, was rolled out to fulminate against this latest affront to his nation's sovereignty. "It's beyond the nanny state," he said. "It's the bully state. Do they want to close down the English pub?" . . .

the sad fact is that EU officials have not been sufficiently tough in standing up to the tobacco industry representatives that have been strenuously lobbying against an EU-wide smoking ban. The lobbyists have resorted to a sophisticated and sometimes duplicitous campaign in trying to advance their threadbare case that smoking isn't really that harmful. Top-level officials have been quite literally bought by the tobacco industry. Pavel Telicka, the former EU commissioner for health, now works for British American Tobacco, setting up appointments for the firm with his old colleagues in officialdom. Others have been charmed into submission; one former commissioner told me he was convinced that Philip Morris represented the progressive side of the industry. It never dawned on him that the firm had sunk gargantuan sums into making him believe just that by, for example, setting up a medical institute bearing its name.

No national administration would allow paedophiles a say in setting child welfare policies. So why should the views of Big Tobacco on issues of health be taken seriously? And no, I don't think this analogy is too extreme. According to the World Health Organisation, half of the children on this planet have to breathe air polluted by smoke.

This week's move towards creating a "smoke-free environment" across the EU by 2012 is superficially positive, but in reality quite a timid move. The commission's ban will not be legally binding but will rely on the goodwill of national governments to put it into effect. . . .

At the cost of five million lives each year, smoking is the top cause of preventable death in the world. The industry that seeks to profit from this misery is beneath contempt – it's about time our policy-makers started treating it that way.

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