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NEW ORLEANS -- With the world becoming ever less welcoming for tobacco smoke of all kinds, the owners of specialty shops that sell premium cigars have converged on New Orleans with the same concerns as mass-market cigarette manufacturers - higher taxes and anti-smoking laws.
The cigars at the annual trade show of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association are not the packaged stogies found in an isolated corner of a convenience store. These are hand-rolled smokes - sometimes with Cuban seed tobacco grown in a non-embargoed country - that can go from a couple of bucks to $30 each.
"It's tough," said Chris McCalla, legislative director for Columbus, Ga.-based IPCRA, which represents about 1,500 tobacco stores. "People view us in the same category of cigarettes. With a cigar, it's different. It's a pleasurable experience. It's socialization of sorts." . . .
As for the convention itself, which is hosting about 4,000 people through Wednesday, smoking will be allowed in the exhibit hall between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. But members of the public aren't invited to the meeting - and no one under 18 will be let in, McCalla said.
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Efforts to further restrict smoking in public venues appear dead for the 2009 regular legislative session.
The death knell came as the Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee voted overwhelmingly against state Senate-passed legislation even after being “watered-down.”
Senate Bill 186 would have banned smoking in all Louisiana bars, casinos and other gambling establishments. That was the version the Senate passed May 28 on a 22-10 vote.
During House committee testimony Tuesday, SB186 sponsor state Rep. Rob Marionneaux proposed a compromise that would have banned smoking only at bars that sell food.
Marionneaux said he had seen the handwriting on the wall as gambling interests helped shoot down a similar House bill when it came up on the floor last week.
Citing the potential for harming businesses, the House today overwhelmingly rejected a move to broaden the state's indoor smoking ban to include bars and gambling establishments.
The 29-71 vote on House Bill 844 by Rep. Gary Smith followed more than an hour of debate and several attempts to change the bill, most of which were turned away.
Supporters of the measure said it was a public health measure designed to protect patrons and workers in bars and casinos from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, and would create a level playing field between restaurants, bars and casinos.
Smoking has been banned in restaurants since 2007.
The Senate overwhelmingly agreed to legislation this morning that would expand Louisiana's smoking ban to include bars and casinos.
The 22-10 vote on Senate Bill 186 by Sen. Rob Marionneaux Jr., D-Livonia, came after lawmakers rejected two attempts to weaken the legislation and sets up a showdown on the House floor, where a similar bill awaits a vote.
Marionneaux said the bill is designed to "put everyone on an equal footing."
A push to expand Louisiana's indoor smoking ban gained momentum Wednesday, when a Senate committee agreed to legislation that would ban the practice in bars and casinos.
The unanimous decision by the Senate Health and Welfare Committee came a day after a House health care committee approved similar legislation. The move sets up a showdown on the floors of the House and Senate between the public health advocates who are pushing the measures, and lobbyists for casinos and bars, who oppose the change.
"It's been a chess match to participate in, but the folks we're not playing chess with are the folks who are exposed to secondhand smoke," said Sen. Rob Marionneaux Jr., D-Livonia, who sponsored Senate Bill 186.
Legislation that would ban smoking in bars and casinos narrowly passed through a House committee Tuesday.
Members of the House Health and Welfare Committee rejected amendments to exclude cigar and hookah bars from the ban before voting 8-7 to move House Bill 844 to the House floor.
State Rep. Gary Smith, D-Norco, and sponsor of HB844, said similar bills have been discussed and it always boils down to the choice for businesses to allow smoking instead of public health.
"The studies are significant and the studies are indisputable that secondhand smoke is a health concern," he said.
A proposal for a $1-per-pack cigarette tax increase was snuffed out by the House Ways & Means Committee in an 11-7 vote Tuesday, signaling probable doom for any proposals to generate major new sources of tax revenue during the current lawmaking session.
House Bill 75 by Rep. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, was projected to raise nearly $200 million annually in state revenue while reducing consumption of the cancer-causing products. It encountered opposition in Gov. Bobby Jindal's stance against new taxes and from panel members for various reasons.
"Raising the cigarette tax a dollar could place an economic hardship on people at this time," said Rep. Ricky Templet, R-Gretna, who noted lean recessionary times in Louisiana households as a reason for voting against the bill.
Rep. Mike Danahay, D-Sulphur, said he voted against the bill because it could potentially reduce retail sales in his southwest Louisiana district, which hosts many visitors from Texas driving in for the casinos and general travel.
The state cigarette tax in Texas is $1.41 per pack, compared with Louisiana's current rate of 36 cents.
Stress following Hurricane Katrina may still be causing heart attacks years after the storm slammed Louisiana, according to a new study.
Doctors at Tulane University Hospital and Clinic found there was a threefold increase in the rate of heart attacks treated at the hospital since the August 2005 storm. . . .
Irimpen, a cardiologist, said he suggested the study because he was being called in much more often to treat heart attacks at Tulane. He said a contributing factor may be the bad habits that increase under stress, such as smoking, substance abuse and failing to take prescribed medicines.
"We've seen patients who had quit smoking and started again, patients who were exercising and say they haven't exercised since Katrina," Lavie said.
Now that higher courts have, for the most part, upheld a 2004 New Orleans jury verdict that the nation's biggest tobacco companies should pay to help thousands of Louisianians kick the smoking habit, the time has come for the companies pay up, a Civil District Court judge decreed Monday.
Refusing pleas from tobacco companies for a new trial in the case, Judge Richard Ganucheau ordered the companies to put $263.5 million in the court registry for a statewide, 10-year stop-smoking program that the jury ordered after deciding that the firms had put out distorted information about tobacco's effects on health. . . .
Ganucheau's Monday ruling, the latest in a class-action case that has dragged out for 12 years, was greeted by the plaintiffs' lead lawyer, Russ Herman, as a long-overdue step that will finally get justice for eligible smokers who haven't been able to quit. Some people who needed the help have died while the case has been hung up so long in appeals, he said.
But New Orleans lawyer Phil Wittmann, attorney for one of the defendants, Philip Morris USA, said the companies will ask Ganucheau to hold off requiring them to put up any money until they can ask higher courts to review the matter.
Louisiana's 40-acre tobacco trade seems a speck on the agricultural map.
Even at its height in 1922, farmers planted just 1,100 acres of Louisiana's only breed of tobacco, known as perique. Its home in Grand Point, a remote outpost in St. James Parish, is too small to merit its own ZIP code.
Yet perique has achieved fame as far afield as Europe and Asia among connoisseurs who prize the plant's pungent, fruity taste.
"I kind of equate that product with a cognac," said Mike Little, vice president of operations for Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co., which has become perique's biggest customer. "It's a little sweeter and heavier in the way it smokes."
For all its charms, perique has struggled to survive as tobacco farmers nationwide have slowed production of the plant now synonymous with cancer and corporate corruption. But perique has staged a surprising comeback since 2005, with the state's seven tobacco farms nearly doubling the crop's footprint and tripling production to more than 58,000 pounds last year.
Santa Fe started using the leaf in a special blend of its Natural American Spirit cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco pouches. . . .
Located in two barns along historic River Road in Convent, L.A. Poche has been the parish's main perique processor since the 1930s.
Attorneys for Louisiana smokers and the nation's biggest tobacco companies will square off in a hearing today on a case that made headlines in 2004 when a Civil District Court jury ruled that the firms should pay $519 million to help Louisianians kick the smoking habit for conspiring to mislead the public about tobacco's effects.
Retired Civil District Judge Richard Ganucheau, who presided over the trial that led to the jury's verdict, scheduled the hearing to help him decide where the two sides in the case stand in light of a state appeals court's move last fall to slash the jury award to $279 million.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeal ruling, which the state and U.S. Supreme Courts have let stand, also limited participation in the smoking cessation programs the jury ordered to people whose claims for such assistance accrued before Sept. 1, 1988, the effective date of the Louisiana products liability act.
Attorneys for Louisiana smokers and the nation's biggest tobacco companies will square off in a June 30 hearing on a case that made headlines in 2004 when a Civil District Court jury ruled that for conspiring to mislead the public about tobacco's effects, the firms should pay $519 million to help Louisianians kick the smoking habit.
Retired Civil District Judge Richard Ganucheau, who presided over the trial that led to the jury's verdict, scheduled the hearing to help him decide where the two sides in the case stand in light of a state appeals court's move last fall to slash the jury award by more than half, to $279 million.
Smokers aren't the only ones who feel the costs of smoking.
"Tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure cost the state of Louisiana $3 billion per year in health care costs and lost productivity," says Carrie Broussard of the Louisiana Campaign for Tobacco-Free Living.
TFL estimated in 2005 that of the $1.47 billion in health care costs directly caused by smoking in Louisiana, $663 million was covered by the taxpayer-funded state Medicaid program. Louisiana residents' total state and federal tax burden used to address problems caused by smoking averaged out to $626 per household. And those numbers aren't including health-care costs caused by secondhand smoke, cigar and pipe smoking or chewing tobacco.
You probably don't even want to think about the non-health-related costs: not just lost productivity, but property losses in fires caused by smoking (over $500 million -- not to mention more than 1000 deaths -- across the country each year) and cleaning and maintenance costs made necessary by tobacco smoke and cigarette litter (around $4 billion nationwide just for commercial establishments). . . .
Occasional smokers are often college students -- a 2007 report by the American College Health Association found that while only 10 percent of students smoke regularly, 30 perent smoke intermittently. And with tobacco companies facing increasing criticism for aiming advertisements at children, they've started targeting the 18-to-24-year-old demographic -- partly by advertising aggressively in environments where college-age intermittent smokers are most likely to indulge, such as bars and nightclubs.
"Intermittent smokers usually believe that they can stop smoking at any time and often think that they will quit after college," says David, but they're usually wrong. . . .
Today, in her work as development director with the Acadiana Arts Council, Moss makes it a priority to work to promote smoke-free venues where Acadiana residents can go to hear musical performances without worrying about secondhand smoke exposure.
Interested in joining the fight? Consider getting involved with the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network (acscan.org) or the Louisiana Campaign for Tobacco-Free Living (tobaccofreeliving.org)
Murrell has established that a genuine issue of material fact exists concerning whether the defendants were subjectively deliberately indifferent to his plight. Whitley v. Hunt, 158 F.3d 882 (5th Cir. 1998), abrogated on other grounds, Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731 (2001); Rochon v. City of Angola, 122 F.3d 319, 320 (5th Cir. 1997). Murrell’s summary judgment evidence shows that the defendants knew that Murrell was allergic to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and that ETS caused him to have migraines and high blood pressure. Murrell specifically asked the defendants to enforce the no smoking policy. His evidence, particularly the sworn statements of two other inmates, indicates that prison officials essentially looked the other way when inmates smoked in their cells or in other no smoking areas. He also asked prison officials to house him with inmates who did not smoke and gave the officials the inmates’ names. The prison responded that it was not feasible to move him. Accordingly, the district court erred when it granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. . . . .
the summary judgment evidence shows that a material issue of genuine fact exists regarding whether the defendants were deliberately indifferent.
The district court’s dismissal of Murrell’s suit is VACATED, and the case is REMANDED for further proceedings.
On the 7th day of January, 2008, the following action was taken by the Supreme Court of Louisiana in the cases listed below: . . .
WRIT APPLICATIONS DENIED: . . .
2007-C -0654 GLORIA SCOTT AND DEANIA M. JACKSON, ON BEHALF OF THEMSELVES AND ALL OTHER PERSONS SIMILARLY SITUATED v. THE AMERICAN TOBACCO COMPANY, INC.; AMERICAN BRANDS, INC.; R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO COMPANY; RJR NABISCO, INC.; BROWN & WILLIAMSON TOBACCO CORPORATION; BATUS, INC.; BATUS HOLDINGS, INC.; PHILIP MORRIS, INC.; PHILIP MORRIS COMPANIES, INC.; ET AL. (Parish of Orleans) TRAYLOR, J., recused.
2007-C -0662 GLORIA SCOTT AND DEANIA M. JACKSON, ON BEHALF OF THEMSELVES AND ALL OTHER PERSONS SIMILARLY SITUATED v. THE AMERICAN TOBACCO COMPANY, INC.; AMERICAN BRANDS, INC.; R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO COMPANY; RJR NABISCO, INC.; BROWN & WILLIAMSON TOBACCO CORPORATION; BATUS, INC.; BATUS HOLDINGS, INC.; PHILIP MORRIS, INC.; PHILIP MORRIS COMPANIES, INC.; ET AL. (Parish of Orleans) TRAYLOR, J., recused.