Tobacco.org

• PERILLIE: Legislator takes aim at electronic cigarettes 

As home to one of the nation’s first public smoking bans, and one of the first localities in the country to raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes to 19, Suffolk County has been at the vanguard of national efforts to break America’s addiction to smoking. But now a new, high-tech smoking threat has emerged in the form of “electronic cigarettes. “

Marketed towards young smokers, untested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and lacking any governmental oversight whatsoever, the skyrocketing popularity of “e-cigarettes” has spurred Suffolk County Legislative Majority Leader Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) to introduce legislation that would prohibit the sale of these devices to anyone under the age of 19. Cooper’s bill would also place the same public usage restrictions on e-cigarettes that are already in effect for traditional forms of smoking.

If approved by the Legislature, Suffolk County would become the first municipality in the nation, and one of only a small handful of governments worldwide, to place restrictions on these untested devices. . . .

“These devices combine the appeal of an iPod with that of candy cigarettes. But they also have the potential to create a life-long addiction to nicotine,” says Cooper. “They’re just too dangerous to be left unrestricted. I certainly wouldn’t want my kids to be able to get their hands on them.”

But kids are getting their hands on them. Besides being sold at numerous sites on the Internet, there are currently at least four known locations on Long Island where anyone can legally purchase e-cigarettes. And that literally means anyone. Since these devices are so new to the American market and they don’t contain tobacco, e-cigarettes are not governed by Suffolk’s Tobacco 19 law or any other state or federal regulation.

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These devices [e-cigs] combine the appeal of an iPod with that of candy cigarettes. But they also have the potential to create a life-long addiction to nicotine. They’re just too dangerous to be left unrestricted.
Suffolk County (NY) Legislative Majority Leader Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) whose bile would prohibit the sale of e-cigs to anyone under the age of 19. and place the same public usage restrictions on e-cigs that are already in effect for traditional forms of smoking. If enacted it would be the nation's first such legislation.

• PHOTOS: Anti-smoking body painting 

A performer poses during a photo call for a body painting event, which is part of a government-sponsored anti-smoking campaign, in Seoul June 14, 2009.

A performer breaks off cigarettes as he poses for photographs during a photo call for a body painting event, part of a government-sponsored anti-smoking campaign in Seoul, June 14, 2009.

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Senators Who Get Money From Big Tobacco Oppose FDA Regulation 

Big Tobacco is closely tied to the small group of lawmakers who opposed recent legislation allowing greater FDA regulation of tobacco products and advertising methods. And last week McClatchy Newspapers cited OpenSecrets data to document these extensive connections. Here are our own observations:

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), has received more money ($359,100) since 1989 than any lawmaker but one from tobacco companies, many of which are based in his Tar Heel State Burr spearheaded the effort to defeat the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act according to the McClatchy story. Despite Burr's opposition, however, the bill eventually passed the Senate 79-17 after receiving the House's support earlier this year. Capital Eye previewed that vote at the end of March.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is the all-time leader in reaping the tobacco industry's contributions. . . .

While the industry used to rank as one of the most generous campaign contributors, tobacco companies have decreased their donations to candidates since a string of devastating lawsuits in the '90s. In 1996, only 25 other industries donated more money to federal candidates than tobacco, which poured a total of $10.6 million into their coffers. Yet the $4.2 million tobacco companies spent in the 2008 cycle actually represented an increase from the past two election cycles. Big Tobacco companies have also scaled back their lobbying operations. In 1998, tobacco companies spent $67.2 million lobbying Capitol Hill and the White House. Ten years later, the amount was $28 million. In the 1st Quarter of 2009, the industry shelled out $7 million to elite lobbying firms such as Womble Carlyle and Alston & Bird, among others.

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• VIDEO: North Carolina Tobacco Farmers Find Friend in Sen. Hagan  

To hear Sharp rant is to understand why Kay Hagan, North Carolina's new senator, joined Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and 15 other senators to become the only Democrat to vote against the tobacco bill. And if any tobacco farmer has Hagan's ear, it is Sharp.

Last year, when Hagan was a little-known candidate running in an uphill battle to unseat Republican Elizabeth Dole, she campaigned at Sharp's farm. The fiscally conservative tobacco farmers along the I-95 corridor here make up a constituency that often helps swing statewide elections, and they backed Hagan strongly.

Hagan, 55, is no stranger to tobacco. A former lawyer and bank executive, she spent summers as a child stringing the leaves on her grandparents' farm. In the state legislature, she represented Greensboro, the headquarters of Lorillard Tobacco, which employs about 2,500 workers there.

To call Hagan merely a defender of the "golden leaf" industry would be an understatement. She is among tobacco's fiercest backers. In 2005, as co-chairman of the state Senate's appropriations committee, she helped shave back an increase in the cigarette tax from the 45 cents a pack proposed by the governor to 30 cents. During last year's campaign, Hagan received $19,200 from the tobacco industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Hagan's staff declined repeatedly to make her available for an interview for this article . . .

"In a district like mine, the public health concerns have just gotten stronger and stronger and are very, very well articulated," said Rep. David E. Price (D), who represents the high-tech Research Triangle area and voted for the bill. "I find that even in very conservative suburbs where Republican positions have a lot of resonance, people don't have any patience with misleading tobacco advertising. These suburban parents, no matter what their political persuasion, have no use for that sort of thing."

The state's politics are no longer dominated by tobacco interests.

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• Suit Expected Against New Tobacco Regulations  

The marketing and advertising restrictions in the tobacco law that Congress passed last week are likely to be challenged in court on free-speech grounds. But supporters of the legislation say they drafted the law carefully to comply with the First Amendment.

The law's ban on outdoor advertising within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds would effectively outlaw legal advertising in many cities, critics of the prohibition said. And restricting stores and many forms of print advertising to black-and-white text, as the law specifies, would interfere with legitimate communication to adults, tobacco companies and advertising groups said in letters to Congress and interviews over the last week.

The controversy, legal experts say, involves tension between the right of tobacco companies to communicate with adult smokers and the public interest in preventing young people from smoking.

Opponents of the new strictures, including the Association of National Advertisers and the American Civil Liberties Union, predict that federal courts will throw out the new marketing restrictions. They say, for example, a 2001 Supreme Court decision struck down a Massachusetts rule that had imposed a similar ban on advertising within 1,000 feet of schools. . . .

Altria Group, which owns Phillip Morris, the nation’s largest cigarette company, and was the only major tobacco company to endorse the legislation, said in a statement last week that it believed some of the marketing restrictions were illegal

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