Tobacco.org

10 of the Hottest Nicotine-Fueled Performances in Film History  

The anti-smoking watchdog group Smoke Free Movies threw a mini-fit about Avatar, in particular Sigourney Weaver's character and her cylindrical vice, prompting director James Cameron to start another intergalactic war. Actually, he just issued a measured statement to the New York Times in which he agreed that "young role-model characters should not smoke in movies," but pushed back, asking "If it's okay for people to lie, cheat, steal and kill in PG 13 movies, why impose an inconsistent morality when it comes to smoking?" A fair point indeed, but consider this: it doesn't have to be a moral issue because smoking just looks so goddamn cool. Especially on screen. . . .

So lest we forget how good our favorite film stars look with a ciggie dangling from their lips--across genres and generations--we've collected a small gallery celebrating ten of film's hottest smokers, presented without comment. Because a cigarette says a thousand words.

Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)

Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless (1960)

Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

John Travolta in Grease (1978)

River Phoenix in Stand By Me (1986)

image Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988)

Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction (1994)

Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects (1995)

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992)

Johnny Depp in Chocolat (2000)

Jump to full article »

THOMPSON: Is Avatar Bad for Your Health?  

The recent fuss over "Avatar," the James Cameron film in which the latest in cinematic technology meets the oldest argument in the movies: whether vice on screen encourages vice in real life. . . .

I know, I know, the antitobacco activists have science behind their kvetching. . . .

But still, did they see this movie? (SPOILER ALERT.) Sigourney Weaver plays a caddy futuristic biologist with all the worst lines in the movie, delivered with remarkable woodenness. It's one thing to complain about a film where a modern-day mobster smokes between his super-cool brushes with the law. That's sort of enviable. But trust me folks: Sigourney Weaver's cringe-inducing turn won't inspire anybody, and a little discretion won't kill you.

Jump to full article »

• EDELSTEIN: Up in Smoke: Give Movies With Tobacco an Automatic ‘R’  

A.O. Scott's meditation on tobacco in movies is a savvy piece of hipsterism: admit that smoking is bad but argue that anti-vice cultural crusaders are worse . . .

Over the years, I've gotten a lot of e-mails from anti-smoking groups demanding either a ban on cigarettes in movies or an automatic "R" rating when a character uses tobacco. My first response is indignation at the "nanny state." I remember how, more than two decades ago, I was forbidden from mentioning smoking in a profile I did in the late Mirabella on Jan Hooks, who chain-smoked through our two interviews. I loved her -- but I also could see by how she smoked that she was very, very high-strung. It was an important detail, except that editor Grace Mirabella's husband, Dr. William Cahan, was an anti-tobacco crusader, and no mention of cigarettes was allowed in the magazine, ever. I fought and fought and finally, finally Mirabella yielded -- but only if I wrote something like, "Her yellow-stained fingers trembling, she nervously inserted another death stick between her brown, misshapen teeth." I was furious. I still am.

On the other hand, editors at a well-known music publication that same year told me that no anti-smoking references would ever appear in their magazine: Tobacco companies paid big bucks for ads on the back cover . . . These days, I don't believe that the anti-smoking crusaders are so out of line, at least in their demand that movies with cigarettes get an automatic "R" rating. . . .

Scott is dead right in arguing that vice in movies can be very entertaining. But for our kids' sake, let's treat the addiction to deadly chemicals as a vice and not as a normal, healthy part of everyday life. . . .

let's also keep tobacco companies and the greedheads who take their money from bombarding kids with the message that smoking is what cool people do.

Jump to full article »

Majority of flavoured tobacco sold in Alberta, many are teens: Canadian Cancer Society  

As National Non-Smoking Week approaches on Jan. 17th, the Canadian Cancer Society is focusing its campaign efforts to get the message out that too many Alberta teens are using flavoured tobacco.

The Society says 40 per cent of flavoured tobacco sold in Canada is bought in Alberta, and about one quarter of all spit or chew tobacco users are between the ages of 15 and 19-years-old.

"Youth can relate to peach or grape more readily than tobacco, and this has caused 15-19-year- olds to make up 25 per cent of tobacco chew users and remain very high in attracting first- time tobacco users," said Karlee Stevens, Alberta community services coordinator for the Canadian Cancer Society.

Jump to full article »

When Smokers Call Quit Lines, Positive Approach May Be Best  

Stressing the benefits of not smoking may work better than emphasizing the negative effects of cigarettes in persuading smokers to kick the habit, a new study has found.

Researchers divided 28 specialists working at the New York State Smokers' Quitline into two groups. One group was trained to emphasize the benefits of quitting (gain-framed messages) to smokers, while the other group gave standard-care messaging that focused on the potential losses from smoking and the benefits of quitting.

Between March and June 2008, 813 callers received gain-framed messaging, and 1,222 callers received standard messaging. At two-week follow-up interviews, smokers who received the gain-framed messaging reported more quit attempts and a higher rate of non-smoking than those who received standard-care messaging (about 23 percent versus 13 percent).

However, at three months there was no difference between the two groups of callers, according to the study published online Jan. 7 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The findings should encourage quit lines to test new strategies

Jump to full article »

Murderess, 16, kicked grandmother to death  

ONE of Scotland's youngest female murderers, a girl of 16, kicked a grandmother to death in a petty row over a couple of cigarettes and a few pounds, a court heard yesterday.

Nicolle Earley had given a cigarette to Ann Gray, 63, on the understanding that she would receive two in return the next day.

She went to collect them, along with £5 she claimed to be due for doing the pensioner's shopping, but they argued and she pushed Mrs Gray to the floor in her home.

Earley then carried out a frenzied attack and repeatedly kicked and stamped on Mrs Gray's head and body. She fled and raised the alarm, pretending she had discovered the body.

Jump to full article »

Girl admits killing grandmother 

A teenage girl has admitted murdering a grandmother in her Fife home by stamping on her during a row over a borrowed cigarette and £5.

Nicolle Earley was aged 16 when she got into Ann Gray's home in Crosshill and killed her on 14 November 2008.

The 63-year-old died as a result of a head injury after she was knocked to the ground and repeatedly stamped on.

Lady Dorrian deferred sentence on Earley, a prisoner in Cornton Vale jail, until next month.

Jump to full article »

Locally, 80% comply with cigarette selling laws  

A 2009 Wisconsin Wins program cigarette sales compliance check found that 80 percent of Hudson area businesses properly check identifications and denied the sale of cigarettes to minors.

St. Croix County Health Educator and Tobacco Control Specialist Geralyn Karl conducted the tests throughout the year with the cooperation of Hudson Police Chief Marty Jensen, North Hudson Police Chief Mark Richert and St. Croix County Sheriff Dennis Hillstead.

In the Hudson, Houlton and North Hudson area, 35 investigations were completed (some businesses were checked twice), with seven illegal sales – all in Hudson.

Jump to full article »

Girl, 16, kicked granny to death in row over cigarette 

A 16-YEAR-OLD girl brutally stamped and kicked a granny to death in a row over a cigarette.

Vicious Nicolle Earley forced her way into the home of 63-year-old Ann Gray, a gran of 13 and a family friend.

She flew into a rage about the cigarette and £5 she claimed she was due for fetching shopping for the victim. . . .

She faces an automatic life sentence after admitting the shocking murder in the former mining village of Crosshill, near Lochgelly, Fife.

She was led to the cells at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday to calls of "scum" and "monster" from Ann's relatives. . . .

The day before the murder, she borrowed a cigarette from Earley, telling the girl she would get two in return.

The following evening, Earley went to Ann's house to collect the cigarettes.

Jump to full article »

For electronic cigarettes, increased popularity means increased scrutiny. 

MISHAWAKA -- After just six years of smoking cigarettes, 22-year-old Paul Enyeart had already developed "smokers cough," the unsightly hacking and spitting up of tar and other smoking-related residue.

The Mishawaka man wanted to quit, he said, but had trouble breaking the habit. Even more than the nicotine, he missed the associated mannerisms -- the constant hand-to-mouth motion, the subtle lip and head movements.

His new electronic cigarette is designed to replace both.

"It feels the exact same, with the motion and the sensation of nicotine," Enyeart said of the slender, penlike device.

"But," he added, "I'm not going to die." . . .

"There are only five ingredients in here," he said, holding the device up for inspection, "and they're all harmless."

Whether that is true is the subject of debate. . . .

"The product is safe," he said. "The nicotine isn't going to kill you."

Maybe not, but according to Paul Guentert, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center, nicotine contributes to hypertension and increases the risk of stroke and heart disease. It also is highly addictive.

"Nicotine is, in other parts of the world, used as a pesticide," Guentert said. "It is a neuro-toxin, and in high enough doses ... if a child ingests nicotine, it can be fatal."

The vapor produced by e-cigarettes is also unhealthy, he said.

"What I tell people in general about smoking is that your lungs were developed to take in clean, fresh air," he said, "and anything beyond that is usually not good for you."

Jump to full article »

Customs Dept Seizes Kretek Cigarettes Worth RM137,320 

The Selangor Customs Department seized 'kretek' cigarettes worth RM137,320, during a two-day operation, beginning Monday.

In the first raid on Monday, customs enforcement officers seized a lorry and found 'kretek' cigarettes worth RM114,416, concealed in ice boxes.

The driver was detained to facilitate investigations, department director Datuk Roslan Yusof told reporters at Wisma Kastam in North Port here on Wednesday.

Jump to full article »

OfficialWire: A Significant Decrease In Cigarette Smoking In U.s. Due To Electronic Cigarette 

While trends in cigarette smoking and sales have declined in the U.S. for the past decade, sales of non-cigarette tobacco products have been on the rise. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health sought to compare trends in sales of all tobacco products in the U.S. and found that 30% of the recent decline in cigarette sales may be offset by the robust sale of small cigars, snuff and roll-your-own products. Thus, the apparent magnitude of overall decline in tobacco use in the U.S. may be illusory.

The major factor in the apparent switch to non-cigarette products by smokers appears to be price─with the federal tax on other forms of tobacco 1/10th that of cigarettes -- and the heavy attention given to campaigning against cigarette use but not against other forms of tobacco products in recent years. Price increases have proven to be the single most effective form of curbing tobacco use in the U.S. population. According to the National Cancer Institute, in the U.S. smoking-related illnesses account for an estimated 438,000 deaths each year. An estimated 25.9 million men (23.9 percent) and 20.7 million women (18.1 percent) in the U.S. are smokers, according to the American Heart Association.

Jump to full article »

BRODY: Smoke Screens: The Front Row 

Single-issue viewers, who reduce the experience of watching a movie to the sole object of their obsession, do exactly the opposite of what critics do, or should do. But several notable critics have taken seriously the complaints of such anti-smoking activists as Stanton A. Glantz--who recently told the New York Times , about the depiction in "Avatar" of Sigourney Weaver's character smoking, "This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply." The ways in which such hysteria poses risks to our cinematic health became quickly apparent. . . .

But for David Edelstein of New York magazine, Scott's parenthesized and hedged endorsement of James Cameron's sci-fi puffs is merely "a savvy piece of hipsterism." The title of his piece gives it away: "Up in Smoke: Give Movies With Tobacco an Automatic 'R'." He repeats that call in the post, and ends with the exhortation that, "for our kids' sake, let's treat the addiction to deadly chemicals as a vice and not as a normal, healthy part of everyday life." . . .

constraint is inherent to art: beside the limits of convention and technique, the limits of one's own abilities oppress all artists, and are the divine censors who mock the artist and against whom all artists are in constant struggle. That's how, in the self-reference of modernity, artists come to represent the universal inner struggle of individuals. The basic subject of the constrained filmmakers of Iran and China and elsewhere is the demand, the need of the individual to be asserted, as such, against the coercion of authority; but discussions such as the ones that anti-smoking activists provoke are good reminders that, even here, these demands and needs are often under pressure.

Jump to full article »

YANG: Smoke-filled rooms cost millions of lives 

In ordinary Chinese restaurants, there's a tacit agreement between all the diners. To save face for themselves and others and sustain harmony, non-smokers abide the stench and keep silent, putting themselves at risk.

The attitude is costing people's lives. China has the highest number of smokers in the world, 350 million. About 1.2 million Chinese die each year from lung cancer, cardiovascular and other smoking-related diseases, according to China's Ministry of Health.

Fu Hua, a professor at the Institute of Public Health of Fudan University in Shanghai, said the number could be even higher. Fu and his team showed that at least 20 percent of mortality in China is related to smoking, which translates to over 2 million deaths in 2008. . . .

It is reported that 1.7 trillion cigarettes were produced in 2005, and the STMA generated profit of 240 billion yuan ($35.14 million). This accounted for 7.6 percent of central government revenue - but how much, I wonder, did those extra deaths cost?

Jump to full article »

Hospital banning all smoking 

LIJ Health System has turned its properties - indoors and out - into a giant smoke-free zone.

Smokers and their friends and families looking for care at the hospital complex would be advised to leave their cigarettes at home from now on, as the health system has made a resolution to kick smoking on their properties.

North Shore-LIJ, which operates 14 hospitals in the New York City region, announced on Thursday, December 31, that it was initiating a system-wide smoking ban that would take effect on January 1.

Jump to full article »