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I'm writing in response to the editorial, "Secondhand smoke: New study, same message."
The Florida Academy of Family Physicians represents 4,000 family physicians, residents in training and medical students.
Family physicians are the first line of defense in helping their patients quit smoking.
We've known for years that smoking is harmful, not only to the smokers' health, but it also negatively affects the health of the public. Family members, coworkers, friends or anyone else who comes in contact with the tobacco smoke can be adversely affected.
Florida implemented a statewide smoking ban on indoor workplaces seven years ago.
It is an important step to protect the public's health, but it's not enough. We also need to do more to help smokers quit.
According to the Florida Adult Tobacco Survey, almost half of Florida smokers report they've tried to quit smoking in the past year, and nearly 60 percent say they plan to quit within the next six months. However, without smoking cessation counseling and treatment, only 5 percent will succeed at overcoming their addiction. . . .
Smokers should know that there is help available and that they don't have to quit on their own. The implications of not helping smokers quit not only affects smokers, but nonsmokers, too.
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For those who find traditional church a little stifling, Sunday morning services at Cork's Cigar Bar at 425 Old Main St. in downtown Bradenton could be just the place to get a good shot of Christianity.
It's called the Church of the Faithful Few, and when the preaching is over, attendees can hang around and enjoy a cold one and a smoke, no questions asked.
"We do things a little different here," said Jim "Cork" Miller, co-owner of Cork's. "We're not judgmental."
Church of the Faithful Few was started by the Rev. John Rogers, the father of an acquaintance of Miller's.
Rogers got the idea for Church of the Faithful Few after a near-fatal motorcycle accident in New Hampshire. At the time, Rogers was with the International Evangelists for Heaven's Saints, a motorcycle ministry started by former Hell's Angel Charles "Barry" Mayson.
Judge Stan Griffis stays busy presiding over cases that involve family issues, probate and other non-felony civil matters, but he says it’s the foreclosures that keep him tied up these days.
“Foreclosures are a staggering portion of my docket,” Griffis told Williston Rotary members last week. . . .
he will hear suits filed by eight individuals against the tobacco industry.
Originally a class action suit that was tried in Miami, Griffis said the case was overturned by the State Supreme Court, which also declassified the lawsuit, putting it back into the hands of the individual plaintiffs.
Now those individuals have refiled the suits and they will be heard here.
What that means for Levy residents, Griffis said, is the high probability of being selected to be on the juries that hear the cases.
Each case is expected to last three weeks, the judge said, and senior judges will more than likely pick up his regular docket while he is occupied with the lengthy lawsuits.
While Levy County has eight such suits, Alachua has 70, he said.
Santa Fe College opted not to follow UF's lead by banning smoking on campus.
SFC's College Senate voted 17-9 against a campus-wide ban during its general meeting Tuesday.
Santa Fe College President Jackson Sasser said he would not enforce the ban unless the Career Services, College Senate and Student Senate are in all in favor the ban. The College Senate is composed of SFC faculty members, unlike the Student Senate, which voted to oppose the ban last week.
However, all three groups agreed that smoking is a problem at Santa Fe and that regulations must be tightened so people don't abuse the privilege.
The faculty senate of Santa Fe College wants a little more time to decide whether it will support a campus-wide smoking ban.
In Tuesday's faculty senate meeting, the 29-member group voted to create a committee to take a closer look at the issue.
A majority of the faculty representatives in the meeting said they would likely oppose a ban.
In recent weeks the SFC student senate passed a resolution in opposition to making the campus tobacco-free.
Addressing the faculty senate, student senator Eric Florestan said many students polled recently would rather see campus-wide smoking huts moved to accommodate smokers rather than ban the practice all together.
Tonight, the scenario will play out differently.
The atrium may be empty. Or people may go there to enjoy the fresh air. But the tobacco ban that begins today at Shands HealthCare and the University of Florida Health Science Center leaves one thing for certain.
There will be no smoking.
Melanie Ross, director of news and communication at UF's Health Science Center, said the ban is a part of Tobacco Free Together, a campaign designed to promote healthy habits.
The University of Florida is trying to help curb the nation's most preventable cause of death and disease.
Patients, students, employees and visitors won't be able to smoke at any UF Health Science and Shands Healthcare facilities anymore.
The first phase of UF's campus-wide tobacco ban will go into effect Sunday at UF's Health Science Center and all Shands at UF facilities.
Ben Hill Griffin Stadium went smoke-free in September, and the rest of the campus will follow suit on July 1.
In preparation for the Nov. 1 phase of the ban, UF and Shands have been putting up posters detailing the new policy and removing ashtrays in affected buildings.
They've also been letting employees and patients know about ways to quit smoking, like free counseling sessions and free or discounted medications.
People don't seem to be rushing to the free sessions, however.
Students who have taken the IHUM course “World History of Science” in the last two years probably know history Prof. Robert Proctor for his crusade against the tobacco industry. Bespectacled and typically relaxed, he was often found in front of hundreds of freshmen presenting incriminating evidence against the business.
The professor has also appeared as a witness in 15 lawsuits against tobacco companies since 1998 and most recently agreed to appear in court on behalf of the plaintiffs in Stella Koballa, et al., etc. v. Philip Morris U.S.A., Inc., et al., etc., a civil lawsuit filed in 2007 against Philip Morris U.S.A., Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and several other large tobacco firms.
But in this latest bout with Big Tobacco, Proctor is facing stiff opposition.
While the suit awaits trial in the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, lawyers for R.J. Reynolds are attempting to obtain a manuscript of the professor's still-unpublished book on the tobacco industry and already had a subpoena for the work approved in late August. The defense wanted to use this manuscript for the cross-examination of Proctor when he takes the stand for the plaintiffs.
For Proctor, R.J. Reynolds' attempt to obtain his unpublished book, entitled Golden Holocaust: A History of Global Tobacco, is an attack on his private work and credibility before he can even take the witness stand.
“The tobacco industry is trying to win its cases by intimidating witnesses and harassing me,” . . .
While the subpoena has been approved, Proctor and the plaintiffs have yet to submit to the court's order. Instead, more than a week after the subpoena was issued, the plaintiffs filed a motion in the hopes the court would reconsider the decision. . . .
In the 27-page motion, the plaintiffs argued that the court's decision to obtain Proctor's work violated his rights to independently publish the book, to keep individual privacy and to gather information under the First Amendment. As such, the motion also asked that the work be placed under a protective order, preventing access to the manuscript for use as evidence in a court of law.
A fire that killed a 46-year-old woman in her Jupiter home was most likely caused by a discarded cigarette, police said this afternoon.
Authorities concluded that the Tuesday night fire was set accidentally in the master bedroom of Susan Reger's home at 5752 Sugarwood Court in the Woodland Estates development.
Reger's son escaped the home but she was pronounced dead after being pulled from the blaze by firefighters.
Santa Rosa County Sheriff Wendell Hall is the latest public official to realize that taxpayers can't be expected to foot the bill for people who ruin their health by smoking.
Smokers, get used to it.
With health care costs soaring, governments are looking for ways to cut the cost of taxpayer-funded health care benefits. They look first for the low-hanging fruit, and smoking is it. . . .
But the destructive impact of smoking is all too clear. The message going out from employers who provide health insurance to their employees is that it no longer makes sense to ask everyone to help fund the costs of treating people who are poisoning themselves, no matter that they are doing so legally.
In this case Hall is being a good steward of tax dollars -- and doing a big favor to those who decide that having a job is worth quitting smoking.
Grant v. Philip Morris USA Tobacco Co. et al FL Southern Cohn Personal Injury- Product Liability Diversity-Personal Injury
Plaintiff: Carl Jr. Grant Defendant: Philip Morris USA Tobacco Co., Philip Morris USA Tobacco Co., Philip Morris USA Tobacco Co., R.J. Reynolds Tabacco Company, R.J. Reynolds Tabacco Company and others...
Roberts v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. et al FL Middle Corrigan Personal Injury- Product Liability Diversity-Personal Injury
Plaintiff: Willie Dan Roberts Defendant: R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and others...
Russell v. Philip Morris USA, Inc. FL Middle Hodges Personal Injury- Product Liability Diversity-Product Liability
Plaintiff: James Russell Defendant: Philip Morris USA, Inc., Philip Morris USA, Inc.
In a case with potentially major implications for scholars and publishers, a Stanford University professor who often serves as an expert witness against tobacco companies is fighting an effort by lawyers for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to obtain the manuscript of his unpublished and unfinished book on that industry.
A Florida state court judge has already authorized the tobacco company's lawyers to issue a subpoena requiring Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford professor of the history of science, to make his book manuscript available to them so they can comb it for possible material to use in cross-examining him in a civil lawsuit pending there.
But the lawyers for the plaintiffs suing the tobacco company last week filed a motion asking the court to reconsider that decision and protect Mr. Proctor from being forced to grant access to the unpublished manuscript. Their motion calls Mr. Proctor their "single most important witness" in their case against the tobacco company, and argues that forcing him to share the manuscript would violate his privacy, his free-speech rights, his academic freedom, and his rights as an author.
Mr. Proctor, for his own part, refused to produce the manuscript at a recent deposition in the case and has retained a San Francisco law firm to fight the subpoena—as well as any other efforts to obtain his book—in California state courts.
In an interview Monday, he said of the book: "It's my private thoughts. They are not organized yet. They are not in finished form." . . .
The Florida court where the case is pending, the state's Seventh Judicial Circuit Court in Volusia County, possibly could entertain arguments for and against the subpoena at a hearing scheduled for Thursday. . . .
Robert M. O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia and a veteran scholar of issues related to academic freedom, said Monday that the legal fight over the manuscript "has profound implications" for academe. . . .
Mr. Proctor said Monday that lawyers for the tobacco company have sought for more than a year to obtain the manuscript to his planned book, tentatively titled "Golden Holocaust: A History of Global Tobacco." . . .
In a deposition filed in connection with the Florida case, he describes himself as one of only two professors of history in the nation who regularly testify against the tobacco industry, and alleged that "the tobacco industry has spent years trying to harass, intimidate, and use multiple legal means to prevent me from testifying in litigation." He said that his book "will contain previously unpublished information regarding tobacco-industry practices,"
Golden Holocaust: A History of Global TobaccoTentative title of Robert N. Proctor's work-in-progress. RJR is battling in a Florida court for a sneak preview.
A Florida state court judge has already authorized the tobacco company's lawyers to issue a subpoena requiring Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford professor of the history
Polk authorities are looking for a man they say stole Newport cigarettes from Circle K stores in the Lakeland area on at least three occasions while wearing the same outfit: white shirt, black shorts and white sneakers.
The most recent incident happened Oct. 5, when a man asked for a carton Newports at the Circle K at 3730 Airport Road, and then took off without paying, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office.