Tobacco.org

EDITORIAL: Toasts & Roasts: Thank you to everyone in the community who sought to help others after the tornado 

A toast to Lufkin Industries for going tobacco-free for its U.S. facilities, beginning New Year's Day. We realize that, for many employees, the change is unwelcome, but we believe it is the best policy for both those people and their co-workers. Similar changes have worked well at Lufkin's two hospitals, and Lufkin Industries gave its workers plenty of time to prepare for the tobacco ban. And now is a great time to quit, cold-turkey, because it will be hard to step off the property (as many patients and workers at the local hospitals do) to light up when it's 20 degrees outside.

Jump to full article »

Cigarette costs driver £600 

Smoking enforcement officers in Swansea are urging drivers of work based vehicles to avoid lighting up and smoking in their vehicles.

The advice follows a court case which resulted in a local taxi driver paying out over £600 after being found guilty of three offences relating smoking in a smoke free place.

Smoking enforcement officers confirmed that the driver previously received a written warning and a fixed penalty for two offences in 2007 and 2008.

The latest offences occured between May and August 2009 and resulted in a fine of £525 and included further costs of £85 and a £15 victim surcharge.

Jump to full article »

Residents ready for anti-tobacco law 

Despite admitting ignorance about the details of the week-old federal Anti-Tobacco Law, the general public seems to be ready to follow the rules.

On January 7, the UAE government passed the Anti-Tobacco Law that made consumption of tobacco and its products tougher for residents. The law has also stipulated penalties, which include longer jail terms and heftier fines, for violators.

Several public places in the UAE, including shopping malls, universities and government departments, are already following the curbs even before the law came into effect.

Jump to full article »

• State high court denies tobacco company appeals 

The state Supreme Court on Wednesday denied tobacco companies' appeals of a San Francisco jury's award of $2.85 million in damages to the family of a woman who died of lung cancer after smoking cigarettes for 26 years. . . .

A state appeals court granted the companies a new trial in 2004, citing a law that immunized them from damages for harm caused by their products between 1988 and 1998. A second jury awarded Whiteley's family $2.85 million in 2007.

The companies appealed, arguing that they weren't responsible for statements by industry groups like the Tobacco Institute in the 1970s and 1980s that scientific research was still inconclusive about the health risks of smoking.

A state appeals court upheld the verdict in October, saying Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds were among a small group of companies that funded and bankrolled the industry groups and influenced their research. The companies never contradicted the trade groups' "false or misleading statements" and engaged in their own "campaign of deception" during the same period to keep smokers addicted, the court said.

The state's high court unanimously denied review of the companies' appeal Wednesday.

Jump to full article »

New research confirms: E-cigarette the most efficient way to beat smoking 

some good news for the smokers, a new research made by professor R.Malcolm from the Royal London hospital (U.K) discover some amazing facts about the most efficient way to quit smoking traditional cigarettes.

Jump to full article »

ABERNATHY: Congratulations anti-smoking crusaders, you've beat me 

Dear Gov. Bev Perdue, state legislators, health educators and propagandists: I give.

You have taken the joy out of smoking for me, a casual, closeted cigarette smoker. That was your aim all along. . . .

The new-fangled tobacco sticks will stop burning if you do anything other than puff on them. If you enjoy anything other than smoking -- conversation, sipping a drink or just breathing -- you have to re-light.

I'm not a heavy smoker, but thanks to FSCs, if I have more than five cigarettes in an evening, I wake up the next day feeling like my lungs are on fire. And the things taste like burning hair and rat feces covered in motor oil.

I never really wanted to start smoking, but like many around my age, I started in college under deadline and exam stress. An editor at my college paper told me it was his mission to make me a smoker. I've smoked off and on ever since.

I know it's unhealthy, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a relaxing habit. If you have never known the immense pleasure of lighting up over a beer, I pity you.

But I also envy you.

Jump to full article »

Cigarette Ban Causes Illinois Casino Revenues to Plunge 

Casino tax revenues in Illinois are going up in smoke, apparently because of the state's ban on smoking cigarettes in public places, according to a report by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

A statewide smoking ban took effect January 1, 2008, and state and local tax revenues from Illinois casinos declined $212 million that year. St. Louis Fed researchers Thomas Garrett and Michael Pakko focused on determining why this is so. They concluded gamblers like to smoke, and because they may not smoke in Illinois casinos, the state's casinos are losing business.

Jump to full article »

• Tobacco law threatens farms 

One of those problems is that his family's line of work is now illegal in the UAE.

Legislation approved last week bans growing tobacco in the Emirates. Violators could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to Dh1 million (US$272,250).

Hatta and neighbouring communities near the Oman border, about 120km south-east of Dubai, have been a centre of tobacco production in the region for centuries.

Today, the tobacco farmed in this area supplies most of the country's dokha, the pure tobacco used in traditional slender pipes, known as midwakh.

Jump to full article »

LETTER: Involuntary smoking takes its toll  

While I applaud the efforts of Pennsylvania legislators to protect workers and consumers from the exposure of secondhand smoke, I am concerned about the millions of children and adults who live in apartment complexes or condominiums who are exposed to secondhand smoke 24/7 due to the exemption of private residences in the smoking-ban legislation. . . .

As a public-health practitioner and pediatrician, it is my responsibility to serve as an advocate for children and adults who suffer from preventable deaths, hospitalizations and infections as a result of involuntary smoking. I urge state legislators to reconsider the decision to exclude private residences in the smoking ban and amend legislation to include private residences with shared walls, ceilings and ventilation.

Jump to full article »

Call for effective steps to curb tobacco consumption 

Speakers at a workshop Tuesday underscored the need for effective measures to control the use of smoking and non-smoking tobacco in order to save a large amount of people's funds and protect users from health hazards, reports UNB.

They said that imposition of higher taxes and duties on tobacco products could be a popular decision as 81 per cent people consider it an effective measure in reducing tobacco use without affecting government's revenue collection.

The workshop titled "Effective Utilisation of GATS Date for Tobacco Control Advocacy in Bangladesh" organised by Progga in cooperation with Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Jump to full article »

• WHO: Tobacco A Global Pediatric Concern 

The Bulletin of the World Health Organization says tobacco is marketed to children and the tobacco industry recognizes that new smokers must be recruited to replace those who quit or die of tobacco-related diseases.

"The dangers of tobacco consumption and second-hand smoke have been widely recognized, children are also harmed in less apparent ways; through hunger and malnutrition when scarce resources are diverted to tobacco purchases rather than food, exploitation of children as workers in tobacco farming and by death and injury resulting from fires caused by cigarettes," the report said.

"Almost half of the children who had never smoked were exposed to second-hand smoke both at home and outside the home."

Jump to full article »

Tobacco Act violations: 3 hotels issued challans 

Chandigarh

The state nodal officer, National Tobacco Control Programme, along with the inspector of LHA Chandigarh, inspected the hotels and restaurants in Sector 26 for any violation of the Control of Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) on Wednesday. The team inspected 15 premises and issued three challans for improper signage in the inspected premises. Nearly 80 persons were challan ed for smoking at public places by the enforcement agencies in the month of December last year, while a total of 642 challans were issued between April and December 31 last year for violations of various provisions of COTPA.

Jump to full article »

Cold nips drive for anti-smoking referendum in Lewisville  

An anti-smoking effort in Lewisville appears to be extinguished - for now.

Citizens for a Smoke Free Lewisville launched a campaign last month to put a no-smoking referendum on the May 8 ballot. They had 45 days to collect 2,247 signatures.

With five days to go, the group has collected only about a third - 750 to 800 - of the required signatures, said TJ Gilmore, one of the organizers of the grassroots effort.

"I have to admit we're getting frozen out," he said of the petition drive that ends Monday. "It was bad timing on everybody's part."

He blamed the failure of the initiative on the cold weather and low turnout at the Holiday at the Hall festival, where the group kicked off the initiative Dec. 5.

Jump to full article »

• Cigarette tax wars continue 

"Seeing that we can't get around that encumbrance, (legislators) introduced legislation that we will now ask for certification under penalty of law to those wholesalers that sell without collecting taxes. That's in simple (terms) what the bill does. This is a new approach and we hope this will be an effective approach to solve this problem."

Tribal leaders reject the role of state tax collector, maintaining that sovereignty and treaty rights exempt the nations from any obligation to collect state taxes. A state law clearly says non-tribal customers are obligated to pay taxes on reservation purchases whether the goods are purchased "through the Internet, by catalog, from television shopping channels or on an Indian reservation."

But the tobacco war persists, characterized by lawsuits and a "forbearance policy" in which the state claims entitlement to collect taxes from cigarettes sold to non-Indians on Indian land, but declines to do so. Legislators claim the "lost taxes" range from tens of millions to billions of dollars each year. . . .

But New York lawmakers, in collaboration with tobacco company Philip Morris, are determined to bring the Indian tobacco trade to its knees. In the week before Christmas, members of New York's congressional delegation were trying to "hotline" the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act - to push it through the Senate by consensus instead of a vote. The act would prohibit the U.S. Postal Service from delivering cigarettes. A few years ago, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer forced UPS, FedEx and other independent delivery services to "volunteer" to give up delivering cigarettes.

The PACT Act would devastate Indian tobacco sales that depend on mail order deliveries.

Jump to full article »

Sigourney Weaver's 'SNL' will air at 2 a.m.... just kidding just kidding just kidding  

Sigourney Weaver and Bill Hader attempt to make light of the NBC late-night situation in the promos for this week's Saturday Night Live. I'm surprised the Avatar star (and serious actress from Ghostbusters) is not smoking a cig and wearing a Stanford University crop top here. Well, not really. Maybe there's a skit for that?

Jump to full article »