Tobacco.org

Calaveras Officials Feel It Is Too Easy For Minors To Buy Cigarettes 

Students at Bret Harte High School recently conducted a study in conjunction with the Calaveras County Public Health Department to find out how easy or difficult it is to purchase tobacco underage.

The students attempted to buy cigarettes at 39 businesses, and 33% (13) willingly sold to the students. When the clerks asked for an ID, the students showed their personal identification cards, clearly confirming that they are under the age of 18.

"What we know about cigarette smoking is that the younger they are when they start, the more likely they are to become addicted," says Dr. Dean Kelaita, Calaveras County Public Health Officer. "Selling to the underage is occurring at an unacceptable rate."

Three of the nine tobacco retailers in Angels Camp sold to the minors, so the students recently took the findings to the Angels Camp City Council.

Jump to full article »

Cigarette Butts Toxic to Marine Life 

Story Highlights

* Cigarette butts an environmental danger

* Are cigarette butts hazardous waste?

* About the Cigarette Butt Advisory Group

Every year billions of cigarette butts end up on our beaches and in the ocean . . .

"The most important finding in this research is that it seems to be the filter, or rather what's in the left-over filter that is most dangerous to our water," Gersberg said.

Cigarette filters are made of cellulose-acetate, which is not readily biodegradable.

An estimated 1.69 billion pounds of butts wind up as litter worldwide each year.

Cigarette Butts Are Hazardous Waste

In response to these new findings, the national Cigarette Butt Advisory Group (CBAG) has made the recommendation that cigarette butts be placed on the list of hazardous waste.

Jump to full article »

Man, 18, gets youth status for role in cigarette scam : Police Blotter  

An 18-year-old Town of Niagara man was granted youthful-offender status Wednesday for his role in a cigarette scam . . . A co-defendant, John T. Billings Jr., 24, of 92nd Street, Niagara Falls, admitted to fourth-degree grand larceny but failed to appear for sentencing . . .

He and the teenager convinced a man Sept. 14 that they could sell him a large cache of untaxed smokes from the Tuscarora Indian Reservation, but took his money and delivered no cigarettes.

Jump to full article »

Niles rejects smokeless tobacco ban 

The Niles Town Board has nixed a proposed law prohibiting the use of smokeless tobacco products in town buildings and town vehicles.

While state law regulates smoking in public places, it does not address the issue of other forms of tobacco use.

The ordinance would have imposed a maximum fine of $250 and 15 days in Cayuga County Jail for using smokeless tobacco products in town buildings, on municipal grounds or in town vehicles.

The board voted 3-2 against the proposal at its meeting Thursday night, mainly because of enforcement issues and possible infringement on individual rights. Bernard Juli and Alberta Winters voted for the law, while town Supervisor Rick Slagle, Glenn Porter and Clarence Edmonds voted against it.

Board members decided to hold a work session before the next regular town board meeting to discuss options other than creating an ordinance prohibiting such use.

Jump to full article »

• Illegal cigarette trade has plenty of puff  

RIGHT in the middle of Australia's biggest city, you can walk into a shop and buy an illegal packet of under-the-counter cigarettes for $7.

Apart from being much cheaper than the mainstream brands, which sell for about $13 a packet, they don't have any of those confronting health warnings.

The ready availability of illegal cigarettes, which are understood to be in stock near many housing commission estates around the country, runs counter to a blizzard of government policies designed to discourage smoking. These include a NSW government ban on smoking in cars carrying children that started this week. . . .

Inner-Sydney resident Les Shearman has been trying for years to expose the illegal cigarette trade because of his concern about its impact on his friends' health. He believes the ready availability of cheap cigarettes is a major factor in their excessive smoking.

The Weekend Australian accompanied Mr Shearman while he purchased an illegal packet from Broadway Tobacco, located on one of the city's busiest thoroughfares. It took only seconds for him to purchase the pack from the woman behind the counter. No questions. No fuss.

"They are incredibly easy to get," he said. . . .

"If it is so easy for the likes of you and me to find a shop selling illegal cigarettes, why is it so difficult for the Australian Federal Police to find them?" Professor Chapman said.

Jump to full article »

Supporters of smoking ban seek to stop public vote 

But Jennifer Stalley of the American Cancer Society said she spent the past week checking petition signatures and claims nearly 39 percent are invalid because they do not come from registered voters or contain other flaws.

State election supervisor Kea Warne said the secretary of state's office will consider Stalley's challenge. No one has previously used the state law that allows such a challenge to be filed with the secretary of state because prior challenges of petition signatures for ballot measures have been handled in court, Warne said.

Larry Mann, a lobbyist for video lottery businesses who also heads the coalition that gathered the signatures, said laws dealing with certifying signatures and challenging them seem to conflict. Mann said he would not be surprised if the issue winds up in court.

Jump to full article »

Smoking ban on cartoon characters too! 

If you thought it was only a certain former Indian minister who zealously wanted to put an end to smoking on screen, you’re wrong.

For a health group in the UK is trying to one up the ex-minister. Yes, it is planning to certify cartoons that have smoking scenes as 18+!

And, people are equally flabbergasted by the move like many across the world. “It’s quite funny to hear this because the cartoon Popeye single-handedly made spinach a craze in the US, and created awareness about healthy eating among youngsters. If you mention the word Popeye to any kid, I’m pretty sure a pipe will not figure even in the top five terms that they associate with the cartoon,” says software professional Nirmal Venkatranghan.

VJ Pooja, who is a self-confessed Popeye fan, says, “As a fan of Popeye, I can safely say that he doesn’t exactly smoke, in the truest sense of the word.” . . .

Agrees a volunteer from an NGO that preaches against smoking, “These are actions being taken by a few over-zealous individuals who are misguided in their efforts to restrict smoking.” He also offers a constructive alternative, “Instead, governments across the world should use these cartoons constructively to preach about the evil effects of smoking to children.” Now, here is someone talking reason. But will the folks who matter listen?

Jump to full article »

Next tobacco farming season prospects brighter 

Prospects for the next tobacco farming season are brighter with sales of tobacco seeds having already doubled from the 147 kilogrammes recorded during the last season.

With the supply of the golden leaf continuing to increase at the country's auction floors and growers getting attractive prices, demand for tobacco seeds has risen.

Figures from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board TIMB show close to 100% increase in seeds sold so far, compared to last season.

Jump to full article »

• 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.

Jump to full article »

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.

Jump to full article »

• Using The Internet To Help Young Smokers Quit 

The University of Illinois at Chicago is leading a $2.9 million National Cancer Institute project to increase demand for evidence-based, Internet-based smoking cessation treatment among young adults.

"Even though many young adults think about quitting and actually want to stop smoking, they tend not to use what we know works - evidence-based approaches to quitting," said psychology professor Robin Mermelstein, director of UIC's Institute for Health Research and Policy and principal investigator of the five-year study.

Young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 have the highest rates of smoking compared to any other age group, but they have among the lowest rates of quitting, according to Mermelstein.

A multidisciplinary team of investigators from UIC, the University of Iowa and the American Legacy Foundation will work with GDS&M Idea City advertising agency to develop interactive, Internet-based ads and evaluate what messages motivate young smokers to use the evidence-based stop smoking program www.BecomeAnEx.org. . . .

The four-part study will develop Internet-based ads, evaluate if the ads are reaching young adults and driving them to Internet-based cessation programs, determine if the approaches are effective, and find out if those who used the Internet-based program were successful in stopping smoking.

Jump to full article »

US$60m tobacco facility unveiling triggers concern 

The unveiling of a whopping US$60 million tobacco facility by Afrexim Bank at the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association congress has triggered concern from Tobacco Regulatory Board, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board and representatives of small scale farmers.

The board and small scale farmers' representatives questioned the logic of unveiling such huge amounts of money to an association which represents only 200 white farmers at the expense of over 57 000 black farmers.

Salt lakes Holdings feel their exclusion from the occasion is back door way of re-empowering a few white commercial farmers at the expense of the newly resettled farmers who are now the backbone of agriculture sector.

Jump to full article »

Movie Character Smoking and Adolescent Smoking: Who Matters More, Good Guys or Bad Guys?  

METHODS: A longitudinal, random-digit-dial telephone survey of 6522 US adolescents was performed with movie exposure assessed at 4 time points over 24 months. Adolescents were asked whether they had seen a random subsample of recently released movies, for which we identified smoking by major characters and type of portrayal (divided into negative, positive, and mixed/neutral categories). Multivariate hazard regression analysis was used to assess the independent effects of these exposures on the odds of trying smoking. . . .

CONCLUSIONS: Character smoking predicts adolescent smoking initiation regardless of character type, which demonstrates the importance of limiting exposure to all movie smoking. Negative character portrayals of smoking have stronger impact on low risk-taking adolescents, undercutting the argument that greater exposure is a marker for adolescent risk-taking behavior.

Jump to full article »

Unplanned quit attempts--Results from a U.S. sample of smokers and ex-smokers  

Discussion: The results suggest, similar to previous research, that a substantial proportion of quit attempts are unplanned and that such attempts can be a successful route to cessation. Given the frequency of such attempts, methods of making treatment available to assist unplanned quitting should be considered.

Jump to full article »

• Rising tobacco output flies in the face of WHO commitment 

India’s tobacco production rose by 25 per cent to 314 million kg in 2008-09, making it even more difficult for the country to meet its commitment to the World Health Organization (WHO) to reduce production by 50 per cent within the next decade.

“The country’s tobacco production reached 314 million kg in 2008-09, as against 252 million kg in the previous year. The rise in output has been massive,” state-owned Tobacco Board Chairman J Suresh Babu said.

The output from Andhra Pradesh, the largest producer, rose to 200 million kg in 2008-09 from 165 million kg in the previous year. Production in Karnataka surged to 114 million kg as against 87 million kg during the review period,Babu said.

The rise in production may spell bad news for the country. India, the third-largest exporter of tobacco in the world, became a signatory to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2003, whereby it is mandatory to reduce tobacco supply by 50 per cent within 10-15 years of signing the pact.

Jump to full article »