Email
Password
(Forgot Password?)
China's discipline watchdog will start a joint campaign with the Chinese Association of Tobacco Control (CACT) to ban government officials from purchasing tobacco using public funds, according to a spokeswoman who spoke with Xinhua Thursday.
Zhang Jing, a publicity officer with the CACT, said that the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) proposed the campaign last week.
"They (CCDI) phoned us last week. They are taking very active interests in such a joint campaign," said Zhang who, however, insisted that a specific timetable was not immediately available.
Jump to full article »
It stood like a fortress in Kahnawake for the past four years and left many people on the Mohawk reserve wondering what was going on inside.
Montreal police shed some light yesterday on the mysterious warehouse that is alleged to have served as the transit point for Salvatore Cazzetta's activities both as a Hells Angel and as a legitimate businessman.
The facility was targeted as a small part of Project Machine - a major investigation into drug trafficking in downtown Montreal that began in 2007 - but the building also proved to be the focal point.
Montreal police arrested 46 people yesterday in an operation that involved more than 600 officers from the Montreal force, the Sûreté du Québec, the RCMP and Kahnawake Mohawk Peacekeepers.
According to Montreal police, contraband tobacco and such drugs as crack cocaine flowed out past the three-metre-high fence surrounding the warehouse while money flowed in.
But Ainsworth's supply of the electronic cigarettes, which dispense a cloud of nictotine-infused vapor by means of an atomizer, is now threatened.
While some manufacturers of the device say they're not intended to help people quit smoking, the Food and Drug Administration considers them an unapproved drug-delivery device and has been preventing shipments from entering the country since earlier this year.
"We don't know what their contents are, we have no idea," Karen Riley, a spokeswoman for the agency, told The Enterprise by phone from Washington, D.C., adding that they are not permitted for sale until manufacturers submit data from clinical trials proving that they are safe.
People who sell the devices disagree.
The contents are known, and they're safe, according to Brandon Allen, owner of Port Arthur-based eSmokerShop.com. . . .
"Even though it's not FDA approved, anyone with half a brain can see that it's better than tobacco," he said. . . .
"If there's not a ban, I see it taking over," he said. "Honest to God, I see it pushing Big Tobacco out of the way."
In a lawsuit filed against the FDA by Smoke Everywhere, the Florida-based electronic cigarette distributor maintains that its products are not drug delivery devices like a nicotine patch, which the FDA can regulate, but rather tobacco alternatives.
Even though it's not FDA approved, anyone with half a brain can see that it's better than tobacco.Brandon Allen, eSmokerShop.com, on the e-cigarette.
Walk into U.S. Sen. Richard Burr's office, and you'll notice the framed tobacco leaves on the wall. Sit down for a chat, and he's likely to tuck a pinch of dip under his lip before settling into his favorite chair, spit cup at his side.
Burr, a first-term Republican, isn't as well-known as some of his Senate colleagues. But Burr is raising his profile this week with a gloves-off fight in the Senate chamber to defend one of the most vilified industries in the country: tobacco.
Burr has long pledged to do everything in his power to stop legislation being debated in the Senate this week that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. He has threatened to filibuster, to offer procedural motions, to gum up the works for as long as he can.
"What we're getting ready to do in the United States Senate is the worst thing we can do," Burr said Tuesday.
Burr hails from Winston-Salem, home to R.J. Reynolds, the nation's second-largest tobacco manufacturing company and maker of Camel. Burr is the Senate's second-highest recipient of campaign contributions from the tobacco industry -- after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
The health and social cost of smoking is six times more than government revenues from cigarettes
The government's failure to impose higher taxes on tobacco products in the past four years has widened the gap between government earnings and the cost, borne by citizens, of treating diseases and of losing productivity due to premature deaths linked to smoking.
Government data showed that from 2000 to 2002, government excise tax from tobacco products averaged P18.92 billion a year. In those years, smoking's health and economic cost to the population was at P46 billion a year, according to estimates made by epidemiologist Dr. Antonio Dans of the University of the Philippines. It was more than double the amount of tobacco excise taxes collected.
More money is spent on cigarettes than on rice in low-income families that include a smoker, a former health minister said on Tuesday.
“A smoker in the family can mean that up to 17 days of the family income is spent on cigarettes,” Farid Anfasa Moeloek, who now heads the National Commission on Tobacco Control, said during a health discussion on smoking.
“This means that only 13 days of their income is left for food and other household necessities,” Farid said. “This increases the likelihood of children suffering learning difficulties and other problems due to malnutrition.”
“Given that 70 percent of the country’s smokers come from low-income families, Indonesia faces losing a generation of children,” Farid said, adding that the data came from research conducted in 2007 by the University of Indonesia’s Demographic Institute.
This, he said, made it important that the government finalize the law on tobacco control, which has been languishing in the House of Representatives since 2004. He said that by adopting the law, Indonesia could better protect its citizens, especially the poor and the young.
In the half-century since the surgeon general issued his culture-changing report linking smoking to lung cancer, the tobacco industry has had little trouble defeating efforts to regulate cigarettes and other products. That could change this year.
The Senate is debating legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration authority to control ingredients going into tobacco products, restrict marketing and ads aimed at young people, and ban words such as "light" or "low tar" that may mislead people about the health risks of smoking.
The legislation, said Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, is "by far the strongest bill to reduce tobacco use that this nation has ever seriously considered."
The issue of whether the Food and Drug Administration should regulate the tobacco industry has divided four lawmakers not along party lines but on the positions cigarette companies located in their states have taken on the matter.
Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb, both Democrats of Virginia, indicated this week they planned to support the legislation, which for the first time would create a federal regulatory framework for the tobacco industry.
So too has Virginia-based Altria Group Inc. (MO), owner of Philip Morris and the largest player in the U.S. cigarette market. The company has broken with its rivals and become a strong supporter of FDA regulation of the industry.
Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., on the other hand, are opposed to the legislation and are trying to drag out the Senate's extension of the bill for as long as possible. The Tar Heel state's biggest tobacco companies - R.J. Reynolds, a unit of Reynolds American Inc. (RAI), and Lorillard Inc. (LO) - are opposed to the FDA legislation.
The Senate began debating the bill Tuesday, but due to Burr and Hagan's delaying tactics, it may not conclude consideration of it until next week. The two are unlikely to be able to stop the bill but can effectively force a delay of its passage.
Hardly. The bill in question was crafted, in part, by the nation's leading cigarette company, Philip Morris, as part of a deal worked out between the tobacco giant and an anti-smoking group -- the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The health groups supporting the legislation have been seduced by the few concessions that Philip Morris dangled before them and have lost sight of the long-term damage that this bill will do to the public's health.
The legislation would do a few good things, including requiring stronger warning labels on cigarette packages and limiting cigarette advertising directed at youths. But the bill's fine print contains numerous loopholes inserted to appease Philip Morris. In the end, it ensures that federal regulation of tobacco products will remain more about politics than about science. . . .
The bill's basic problem is that it creates the appearance of regulation without allowing actual regulation. Take the issue of cigarette flavorings. Under the bill, most flavorings -- including chocolate, cherry, strawberry, banana and pineapple -- would be banned. But not menthol. Yet of all the cigarette flavorings, only menthol is actually being used by cigarette companies, and evidence suggests that it helps entice and addict young people, especially African Americans.
Perhaps most absurd is the bill's treatment of new and potentially safer products, such as electronic cigarettes. The evidence is still out on whether electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine with water vapor rather than smoke, would actually help wean people from tobacco cigarettes. But why would Congress want to ban potentially safer products and continue to allow the deadliest nicotine product (conventional cigarettes) to remain on the market?
During the previous administration, the FDA was accused of making decisions based on politics, not health. If the Senate passes the FDA tobacco legislation, it will be institutionalizing, rather than ending, the triumph of politics over science in federal policymaking. This is not the way to restore science to its rightful place.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor was an intense, no-nonsense prosecutor during five years spent at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office . . .
Sotomayor joined the office fresh out of Yale Law School in 1979, spurning big law firms because she hoped to get quick experience trying cases, the Washington Post reports. She got her wish, winning an early promotion to a felony unit after spending six months prosecuting offenses such as disorderly conduct, public urination and graffiti. Colleagues and friends described her as driven, competitive and focused on the details of her cases.
Former New York police detective Chris Montanino told the newspaper about his encounter with the Supreme Court nominee.
Montanino said he wanted to go after child-porn distributors but he couldn’t find a prosecutor who would take his case seriously. “Then he returned a call from a young woman at the local district attorney's office,” the Post writes, “an intense, chain-smoking prosecutor known for working into the night, fueled by the caffeine buzz from a string of Tab diet sodas.”