Tobacco.org

State rules marijuana smoke is a carcinogen, may require dispensaries to post warnings  

Joints and baggies sold at California's medical marijuana dispensaries will soon carry a new warning label. Next to tags like "Purple Haze" and "White Widow" will be the advisory: Contents may cause cancer when smoked.

On Friday, California added marijuana smoke to its official list of known carcinogens, joining the ranks of arsenic, asbestos and DDT. Pot brownies, lollipops and other non-inhalables are not affected by the new ruling.

Scientists found the pungent smoke shares many of the same harmful properties as tobacco smoke, warranting its inclusion on the Proposition 65 warning list. The law requires the state to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity, and businesses and government agencies must post warnings when they use such chemicals or sell products containing them.

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New Proposals For Safer Roads 

A pair of proposed Cattaraugus County laws are considered by some as a way of reducing dangers in the county, while others have questioned whether they are evidence of government regulating a bit too much. . . .

Cattaraugus County Public Health Director Barb Hastings also hopes recommendations from the county health board will breath new life into another proposal that would ban smoking in vehicles when children are present.

The law, proposed by Legislator William Sprague, D-Yorkshire, states the legislature finds it "essential to ensure the welfare of our children by acknowledging the fact that second-hand smoke is detrimental to people's health, specifically children who may be unable to avoid second-hand smoke inhalation."

"The best way to avoid the harmful affects of second-hand smoke, without restricting the individual rights and freedoms granted under the Constitution of the United States of America, is to ban smoking in automobiles, a place where second-hand smoke inhalation can be avoided, and where ventilation is insufficient."

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Misperceptions of "light" cigarettes abound: National survey data 

Conclusion

Most "lights" smokers have one or more misperceptions about the product they use, and were no more likely to intend to quit or to have made a quit attempt. In response to such misperceptions, governments could act further to eliminate all misleading tobacco marketing. Ideally, they could not only adopt FCTC requirements, but go further by requiring plain packaging for all tobacco products.

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Strategy to stop smoking 

Stopping smoking is not an easy task but you can increase your chances of stopping smoking successfully with a little forward planning and support. Here are some essential tips to help you become a 'non-smoker'.

Pick a target date

It helps to have a target date in mind for when you're planning to stop. Choose a date — for example a month from now — and stick to it.

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• Snuff Lures Tobacco Fiends With Whiff of Exotic History  

Like trendy boozers pouring absinthe over antique spoons or rockabilly fans digging up vintage clothes and restoring classic cars, nasal snuff users are drawn in by an anachronistic habit with a colorful past. Decorative snuff boxes and fancy snuff bottles add to the international allure of an exotic vice with a fascinating history.

With smoking banned in many bars and nightclubs — hangouts that once were synonymous with a haze of tobacco smoke — snuff, electronic cigarettes and other smokeless methods of ingesting nicotine are growing in popularity. While these methods of consumption cut out the tar and carbon monoxide associated with smoking, they do not eliminate the addictive properties of nicotine, the stimulant found in tobacco.

Though users rave about how benign snuff is, the substance’s safety as an alternative to cigarettes is largely untested. While users aren’t inhaling tar or producing second-hand smoke, definitive research on the safety of nasal snuff is lacking, mostly because dry snuff is such a microscopic segment of the tobacco market. Most studies in the United States and Europe have tended to focus on oral snuff, which is a known cause of mouth, head and neck cancers. . . .

Professor A. Phillips Griffiths, a regular snuff user since the 1940s who writes on his Snuffs and Snufftaking website, says the habit is catching on with a new generation.

“I’ve been told by the people I know who make and sell the stuff that it’s becoming quite popular with young people,” says Griffiths, who became curious about snuff as a teenager after finding it referenced in a work by Charles Dickens. He cites the latest smoking bans in his native Britain as the likely cause of the most recent uptick.

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Tobacco road 

But when Germany was defeated, US cigarettes flooded the shattered country. It has been claimed by serious scholars that some troublesome anti-smoking campaigners, still stuck in their old Nazi ways, were assassinated.

Perhaps, but what is beyond doubt is that as part of the Marshall Plan for German reconstruction, the US shipped 93,000 tons of free tobacco to Germany in 1948/49 to help them kick back into the habit.

At the start of the 20th century, with smoking established as a badge of manliness, the industry turned its attention to the planet's next biggest potential market - women. . . .

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Electronic Cigarettes On Store Shelves 

Distributors of the brand Smoke 51 say that vapor is a major asset. Because 25 states have put smoking bans in place, Wehrkamp says an odorless cigarette could be an alternative.

"It's no smell, and it's so they can smoke it bars, casinos, in their business," Wehrkamp said.

With a cartridge of nicotine, Wehrkamp says users aren't getting most of the ingredients real cigarettes carry.

"You're not getting all the other additives and everything like you are in cigarettes. Just smoking straight nicotine," Wehrkamp said.

The leven of nicotine is adjustable, with 12 being the highest level and zero the lowest.

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PHOTOS: Gallery: Antique Windmills Go About Their Daily Snuff Grind  

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — Most windmills today are used to generate electricity or pump water. But along the shores of a man-made lake in Rotterdam, two giants of antiquated machinery remain conscripted to their original purpose: pulverizing the fruits of the land for human consumption.

These two windmills, De Ster and De Lelie, both exemplars of 18th-century Dutch workmanship, are used to grind tobacco leaves into powdered nasal snuff.

Because of continued public health campaigns against smoking in Europe and the United States, the demand for alternative forms of smokeless tobacco like snuff is on the rise. And so, the giants are kept spinning.

Above: Jaap Bes is the head miller at the De Ster snuff and spice mill in Rotterdam. Bes stands on the “stage,” a platform midway up the windmill’s structure, and pulls the mill break to stop the mills’ wings from turning.

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EDITORIAL: Smoking: It's getting tougher to puff  

A pack of cigarettes now is hitting over $4.50, the FDA will nag smokers more and smokers will be standing outside in the heat and cold to light up. Some smokers just might conclude that it's just not worth it. Hopefully, they will.

About a quarter of Mississippians smoke. The health care effects are not only costly personally, but to all Mississippians who pay for the care of smoking-related diseases. The goal of tobacco tax increases not only is revenue but to encourage people to quit and prevent youths from starting.

The cost of smoking is just too high, in dollars and in health.

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Reader debate: Should FDA regulate tobacco? 

O'DOHERTY: Tough on smoking. And common sense  

As smokers know, we're a dying breed. But before we have the happy release of shuffling off this mortal coil and finally getting a bit of peace and quiet, we have to put up with the shrill, hectoring whinging tones of the self-appointed moral police who argue that enjoying one of those cool, refreshing, nourishing white tubes of happiness makes you some sort of monster.

And, typically, things have gone completely snooker-loopy in America, where the war on smoking is pursued as zealously as the war on drugs/terror/whatever they're annoyed about today.

Just take the case of Howard Weyers, boss of a company in Michigan, who really doesn't like smokers. . . .

So now it's official -- smokers are the equivalent of plague carriers.

But what they miss is the fact that smokers are simply doing their civic duty.

At a time when old age pensioners are on the rise and the social security budget is running dry, at least we won't be around to be a drain on the national coffers.

So, actually, smoking should be encouraged and seen as the socially responsible thing to do.

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Smoking trivia through the ages  

Nicotine is named after France's Ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot de Villemain, who, in 1560, sent tobacco to the French Court as a cure for a prince's migraines.

The first medical text in English to include tobacco, in 1577, recommended it as a cure for toothache, worms, bad breath, lockjaw, cancer, and to stop fingernails from falling out.

The term 'smoking' was not coined until the late 1700s. Before that, the common term was 'drinking smoke'. One astounded ambassador in the Netherlands in 1627 described witnessing "a fog-drinking bout".

In 1902, foolish Coney Island zookeeper J Blount fed a lit cigarette to Topsy the elephant. Topsy picked him up and dashed him to the ground, killing him. . . .

In the 1930s, there were 1,550 licenced tobacco growers in the Irish Free State, planting 750 acres. In 1934, the Fianna Fáil government said this would be raised to 10,000 acres. It wasn't.

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Does It Work: Smokeless cigarettes 

"Smokers that would like to get away from all the typical carcinogens that are in tobacco products, but still derive the nicotine," noted Rebecca Conley, who represents Smoke 51, a brand of smokeless cigarette.

The WMBF News Network brought Smoke 51 to two Ohio hotspots - Sushi Rock Downtown and Southside - to see if the brand of electronic cigarettes works.

While smokers say they enjoyed the hand-to-mouth action of smoking an actual cigarette, they complained they didn't get a high from the first puff as they would with a real cigarette.

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Hand-rolled cigarette smoking patterns compared with factory-made cigarette smoking in New Zealand men  

Roll-your-own (RYO) cigarettes have increased in popularity, yet their comparative potential toxicity is uncertain. This study compares smoking of RYO and factory-made (FM) cigarettes on smoking pattern and immediate potential toxicity. . . .

Conclusions: In these smokers, RYO smoking was associated with increased smoke exposure per cigarette, and similar CO breath levels, and even with filters is apparently no less and possibly more dangerous than FM smoking. Specific package warnings should warn of RYO smoking's true risk.

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County dipping into jail funding, but officials say it won't delay Whitewater  

llion set aside for the proposed Whitewater jail to keep other capital projects going, but a county supervisor and the chief finance officer say it won't delay the detention center.

The county is opting to use $126 million to buy an office building in Riverside for the district attorney and other departments.

The money was set aside in 2007, the county's part of a multi-state tobacco lawsuit settlement. It has been touted as the funding source for the first phase of the 7,200-bed jail proposed for land along Interstate 10.

County executives say it was more prudent to use an account that is collecting little interest than to borrow the funding and pay it back at a high cost to taxpayers.

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