Tobacco.org

In Memory of Patrick Swayze, Songwriter Encourages People to Throw Away Cigarettes - and She'll Give You Her New CD - Free! 

Karen Sokolof Javitch is hoping that her new CD: STAR TRACKS - THE TRIBUTE ALBUM will encourage people to throw away their cigarettes! "It's worth a try," says Javitch, who decided to dedicate her CD to Patrick Swayze, who recently died of pancreatic cancer. "He was a 3-pack-a-day smoker, and never quit, even when he got sick." Her mother also died at age 56 (like Patrick) and she is sure cigarette smoking contributed to her death. "The one thing we have control over in getting cancer is cigarette smoking!" "THROW THOSE CIGGIES AWAY AND I'LL SEND YOU A FREE CD TODAY!" And of course that includes President Obama, who she surmises has not kicked his habit.

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Desta decides to quit smoking  

For Club 80s drummer Deddy “Desta” Mahendra, it was from his late father that he chose to learn.

“When my father was diagnosed with a cardiac problem, I immediately quit smoking,” Desta said as quoted by news portal inilah.com.

“His doctor reminded me that his illness was entirely due to his smoking habit. The doctor called me and asked if I also smoked.”

Desta then recalled a conversation he had after taking his father to a cardiologist.

“Well, look at your father, that’s where smoking will get you,” he said to me.

His father’s demise last month cemented in him the decision

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Sweet twists in Gotti trial 

A deep rift among the panel was revealed last week, after one juror penned an anonymous letter complaining about a "hostile environment" created by Juror No. 7's potty mouth and pro-defense posture.

Tensions escalated further on Monday, with Juror 11 accusing Juror 7 of taunting her as a "hater" during a smoking break -- prompting a plea from the judge for more "kind and considerate" behavior.

Yesterday, Juror 11, a city procurement-contract analyst, took a pass on the morning smoke break. Both she and Juror 7 were there for a later smoke break but kept their distance.

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Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart seen kissing outside 'New Moon' screening. Friends with benefits?  

Days after his Vanity Fair interview was released, Us Weekly reports that the two "Twilight" stars spent the night together at Hollywood's famed Chateau Marmont. . . .

Afterward, they were taken driven to a private screening of "New Moon."

And then there was a smoke break. With a full-on lip lock!

"Rob wanted a cigarette so he went outside with Kristen for about 15 minutes," the source tells Us. "They were hugging, as Rob was smoking his cigarette and then he leaned down and kissed her on the lips. He had his arm around her almost the whole time."

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• Tobacco czar maps new agency's path 

Today Dr. Lawrence Deyton, who at 57 still goes by his childhood nickname of "Bopper," is the nation's first anti-smoking czar. He directs a new agency in the federal Food and Drug Administration -- the Center for Tobacco Products -- that is writing rules to govern the previously unregulated tobacco industry.

In last week's interview, Deyton twice stressed that he is not an anti-tobacco zealot.

"I am not an expert in tobacco," he said. "But I am an expert in public health, and I am an expert in government health programs."

And what Deyton promises is "methodical, science-based tobacco regulation."

But Deyton already has been greeted with worry from growers in tobacco-producing states like Kentucky, and three lawsuits from the industry challenging the agency's authority to restrict advertising and marketing.

The center was created under a sweeping anti-smoking law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on June 22.

Its three key goals are to reduce youth smoking rates, which in recent years have leveled off at about 20 percent; to reduce the overall toll of tobacco-related disease, which annually kills more than 400,000 Americans; and to provide the public with information about the ingredients of tobacco products and their health effects.

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Britney gives in to smoke cravings in Miami 

Britney Spears was said to have given in to her nicotine cravings, for the singer was spotted smoking in Miami.

The pop princess was seen puffing on her hotel balcony during a break from her 'Circus' tour.

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Kate Hudson: ‘Smoking Made me Smell’  

KATE Hudson says she quit smoking because it made her smell.

The Bride Wars star admits she hated her hair, car and clothes stinking of cigarettes.

“It was starting to drive me crazy!” Hudson said. “I didn’t like the way the car smelt, or my hair and clothes.

“It takes you away from the family and the things you’re doing. You don’t realize it at the time. Then when you’re done, you go, ‘Wow, I do so much more in a day – including eat.’” . . .

“Quitting meant eating more,” she said. “Then, there were rumours in the press saying I was pregnant.

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Sadie Nardini: Mr. President: I Challenge You To Quit! 

So before all you smokers brush off the "healthy" chick, let's be clear that I'm talking to the sometime smoker in my own mirror, too.

And I don't think I accept my friends' offers to join them outside because movies and the media make it so inviting. I, like the president, am not easily swayed by advertising executives marketing to my target group. I also have a sneaking suspicion that if Barack Obama wants to smoke, it's not because he wants to be just like Joe Camel.

So, Mr. President, and readers, I invite you to do what I promise to do this month--own our proclivity for bumming smokes (and smoking) and stop this nonsense together. In so doing, I will teach you, readers, how to get all the benefits of a cigarette--without ever smoking another one again.

Because really, we're after the ritual, the alone time, the sense of calm and space and camaraderie and relationship we get with this often-deadly lover. None of us want to be codependent, but, dysfunctional or not, we are. They might be hurting us, but cigarettes are always there for us when we need them, and we keep going back for more.

Though cigarettes are quite the stimulant, smokers most often cite the sense of calm, and centering as their primary reason to reach for one. . . .

Mr. President, if anyone in this country needs a freakin' ciggy, it's you. I get it. But let's get all of us that moment of Zen--and the buzz, too--without all the carcinogenic accoutrements. . . .

THE BUTT-KICKING BREATH:

Use this technique any time you would normally choose to smoke, or any time stress or anxiety gets the better of you.

This breath has been shown to slow your brain waves down, switching your central nervous system from the fight-or flight of anxiety to the still waters of the parasympathetic, and release endorphins that give you that same glad-to be alive buzz without, oh, say, the carbon monoxide. . . .

It's just this bad habit of yours has been fooling you into thinking you're handling your stress. In fact, the smokes are managing you.

Yoga and mindful breathing is all about taking control, real control, of your life. I know you can get the relief and peace you're looking for in another, more life-affirming way. And I'm all for trading up.

In fact, Mr. President, and readers...I'm starting today.

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Kate Hudson: ‘Quitting Smoking Caused Pregnancy Rumors’  

KATE Hudson says quitting smoking caused her numerous problems in the media -- because everyone thought she was pregnant!

The Bride Wars actress -- who's currently dating New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez and already has a son, Ryder, with ex-husband Chris Robinson -- says giving up the cigarettes fueled rumors she was expecting her second child.

"Quitting meant eating more," Hudson said. "Then, there were rumours in the press saying I was pregnant.

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Scruggs Prosecutor Writes Tell-All Book 

The recently retired lead prosecutor in the case against Mississippi trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs has written an insider’s account of the sensational judicial bribery scandal that sent the billionaire tobacco litigator, his son and several associates to prison.

Veteran former prosecutor Tom Dawson teamed up with conservative Mississippi legal blogger Alan Lange to examine the Scruggs case and the conviction of another Mississippi trial lawyer named Paul Minor.

“Kings of Tort: The True Story of Dickie Scruggs, Paul Minor and Two Decades of Political and Legal Manipulation in Mississippi” will be published in December. . . .

In the 1990s, Scruggs teamed up with Missisippi’s Democratic state Attorney General, Michael Moore, to sue major tobacco companies. One of Scrugg’s adversaries in the tobacco wars was his former fraternity brother at Ole Miss, Haley Barbour, then chairman of the Republican National Committee and an ally of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a vigorous advocate of tort reform.

Barbour was elected governor of Mississippi in 2003, a position he still holds today. The state legislature passed a Barbour-sponsored law limiting the ability to file tort claims in the state.

Scruggs reportedly earned $1 billion in fees from the tobacco litigation, and his role was memorialized in a movie, The Insider. . . .

Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oxford continue to investigate Scrugg's former associate, P.L. Blake, a Mississippi Delta farmer who reportedly was paid $50 million for helping Scruggs in the tobacco litigation in the 1990s.

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David Hockney: portrait of the old master 

Talking to Hockney, you are struck by a kind of heroic optimism in that endeavour, one that goes defiantly against the grain of his innate scepticism. As friends and interviewers over the years will attest, he can get bogged down in particular irritations – the long-standing one is the smoking ban, against which he is a stubborn and passionate objector – but even while he is in the curmudgeonly depths of these obsessions, a smile dances around his mouth and eyes. It's that, as much as anything, that always makes his career feel like the best kind of lark. . . .

That thought, of course, sets him off in one of his intermittent rants against anti-smokers, punctuated by drags on his cigarette. "The cause of death is birth, and on your way there you might want to enjoy things…"

Can he recall his first drag?

"I was probably eight or nine. But I've smoked pretty regularly for 55 years. I don't see a reason to stop now. It's all gone dull, I think, Britain. We are being taken over by medico-fascists who want us all to live in germ-free clinics…"

Some of this anger seems to have a psychological root. He was, he says, watching a documentary the other evening in which four anti-smokers "were lined up to tell us they were saving lives, and I said to my sister: 'Don't they remind you of someone?' She said: 'Kenneth' straightaway – my father."

Hockney's dad was, among other things, a great anti-smoker, though all his five children smoked like chimneys.

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John Luik  

John Luik has challenged the validity of smokefree policies since the late 1960s and has worked as a lobbyist, consultant, analyst, and advocate of "junk" and "corrupt science" for the tobacco industry worldwide since 1987. Luik - a philosophy and international studies theorist - challenges the science of secondhand smoke and the government's role in protecting public health through the passage of smokefree laws by publicly skewing ideas of personal freedom, ethics, and liberty in the tobacco industry's favor.

In 1987, Philip Morris's law-firms - Covington and Burling, and Shook, Hardy and Bacon - created a campaign dubbed "Project Whitecoat," which sought to single out independent scientists and analysts who would "go beyond the establishment of a controversy concerning an alleged ETS health risk but to disperse the suspicion of risk." Luik was an active player in Project Whitecoat. . . .

After Luik and Gori's book attacking the U.S. EPA's report was published, tobacco holdings in the Fraser Institute increased from 1.3 percent ($31,740 to $76,180) of the institute's total annual budget from 1996 to 1998, to 5 percent ($229,300) in 1999.2

Although a self-proclaimed staunch ethics analyst, Luik has been fired from numerous universities and teaching positions for repeatedly misrepresenting his own credentials since 1977.

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John Luik - SourceWatch 

John Luik is a Canadian philosopher with a history of vocally opposing government agency efforts to warn people about the health dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke. Luik was involved in a tobacco industry-coordinated attack on United States Environmental Protection Agency’s 1992 Risk Assessment on secondhand tobacco smoke.[1]

In 1993, the Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers (CECCM) hired Luik to write a paper attacking the EPA’s influential 1992 risk assessment, The Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking - Lung Cancer and Other Disorders. [2] (CECCM is a coordinating body for European tobacco manufacturers similar to the Tobacco Institute, and like the Institute, helped European cigarette manufacturers fight public health efforts to reduce smoking. tobacco.) [3][4].

Luik gave several tobacco companies editorial capacity over the content of the paper. . . .

Luik taught philosophy at Nazarene College in Winnipeg, Canada from 1977 to 1985, after which time he was fired for misrepresenting credentials on his resume. In 1985 he was accepted at Brock University where he taught applied professional ethics. In 1990 Brock discharged Luik citing "misrepresentation of his credentials" and saying he was unable to fulfill his duties there "since he has apparently engaged in a series of misrepresentations of his professional and/or academic qualifications to three separate employers, and had done so again, on several occasions, to Brock University." Luik has worked at several conservative Canadian think tanks including the Niagara Institute and the Fraser Institute.

In 1994 Luik was invited to a meeting at Rothmans Tobacco to discuss a proposal he had submitted to serve as managing editor for the book about plain packaging for cigarettes. [14] In 1995 Luik was commissioned to produce and edit the book.

The book, entitled Plain Packaging and the Marketing of Cigarettes, was published in 1998 by Admap Publications in Oxfordshire, England. It concluded that public health assumptions about the beneficial effects of plain packaging were defective, that plain packaging would cause problems with smuggling and threaten the values of a democratic society. It wasn't until June 21, 2001 that a report emerged (in the Montreal Gazette) that Luik was paid US $155,000 to edit the book. [Montreal Gazette, June 21, 2001] The total cost of the book project to the participating tobacco companies was US $240,000.

Luik also served the industry as an associate of the tobacco industry-funded group, Associates for Research in the Science of Enjoyment (ARISE), that was publicly active between 1991 and 1999.

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Attorney O'Quinn killed in car wreck  

Prominent Houston attorney John O'Quinn was one of two men who died this morning when their speeding SUV slammed into a tree on Allen Parkway after the driver apparently lost control, police said.

"I'm stunned. The community lost one of its biggest assets," said Rick Laminack, who worked with O'Quinn from 1987 until 2006. "He was a great lawyer who shared a lot of his wealth with people who needed help."

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Profile: John O'Quinn  

This story originally ran Jan. 11, 1998

. . .

Texas' lawsuit against the major tobacco companies, in which O'Quinn is serving as lead attorney, went on hold for several months, then added another major player, South Carolina tobacco specialist Ron Motley, with whom O'Quinn would have to share the stage. . . .

The great cases and big victories will return, one expects, assuming he does not lose his license. The tobacco case reportedly is on the verge of settling, leaving the plaintiff lawyers with $1 billion or more to split up. But the weight of the accusations and the headlines they've generated has been great.

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