Free Republic

<p>FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- A contentious Kentucky bill that would enact a statewide ban on smoking in shared public spaces and places of employment is dead, the sponsor says.</p>

A handful of Democratic Senators are up in arms about the Golden Globe awards. No, they’re not upset that Breaking Bad beat out House of Cards for best Television Drama Series. Instead, they’re fuming about a few actors using electronic cigarettes during the award show broadcast. They’ve fired off a strongly worded letter to NBC Universal and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for “glamorizing” the use of e-cigarettes. And now they’re going even further in advocating for a ban on these products in the U.S. Capitol. Banning consumption of electronic cigarettes in public has become a troubling trend of paternalistic...

As state and local units of government continue to increase cigarette excise taxes to raise revenue, smugglers apparently continue to profit from their illicit trafficking. We estimate that for 2012, 27.6 percent of all cigarettes consumed in Michigan were smuggled into the state. Nationwide, our research — and other academic papers — suggest that cigarette smuggling is not abating dramatically. There is both empirical and recent anecdotal evidence to suggest the problem is increasing in some areas and right alongside big excise tax hikes. We just published our fourth set of smuggling estimates for 47 of the 48 contiguous states,...

Lawmakers in Utah and Colorado are promoting legislation to raise the legal age for tobacco use to 21, a higher standard than imposed by any other state, saying they want to discourage young people from picking up a lifelong smoking habit. Supporters say keeping tobacco out of the hands of young adults will save thousands of lives, even as critics complain that Americans who are old enough to vote and serve in the military should not be deemed too young to decide on their own if they should smoke. In a dramatic display of the risks of smoking, lawmakers in...

IT IS GREAT CVS is ending cigarette sales by October, and I know exactly what other dangerous products should go behind the counter when the wall of cancer sticks comes down: Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade, Red Bull, and all other sugary beverages. I say this because I take CVS’s new public health pronouncements seriously. In announcing the tobacco ban, CVS chief medical officer Troyen Brennan said the drugstore industry is positioning itself to offer more clinical services for chronic diseases. He wrote Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association that it is a “paradox” to sell cigarettes as pharmacies...

When customers step up to make a purchase at a CVS store next fall, they won’t see rows of cigarette boxes and other tobacco products behind the counter. CVS Caremark announced Wednesday its decision to stop selling tobacco products by October 2014 in its more than 7,600 stores, making it the first large drugstore chain in the country to do so.

CVS Caremark is kicking the habit of selling tobacco products at its more than 7,600 drugstores nationwide as it focuses more on providing health care. The nation's second-largest drugstore chain said Wednesday that it will phase out cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco by Oct. 1, a move that will cost about $2 billion in annual revenue but won't affect its 2014 earnings forecast. CVS Caremark leaders say removing tobacco will help them grow the company's business of working with doctors, hospitals and other care providers to improve customers' health.

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Eric Lawson, who portrayed the rugged Marlboro man in cigarette ads during the late 1970s, has died. He was 72.</p> <p>Lawson died Jan. 10 at his home in San Luis Obispo of respiratory failure due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, his wife, Susan Lawson said Sunday.</p>

President Obama in an interview released Sunday said that using marijuana was not that different from smoking cigarettes nor any more dangerous than drinking alcohol. “As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama said as part of an extensive profile published by the New Yorker on Sunday. “I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

Just as a more permissive attitude to cannabis gains momentum in the United States, so does a more restrictive attitude to tobacco. It is as if there were a law of the conservation of prohibition: if one substance is permitted after having been prohibited, another will be prohibited after having been permitted. While Colorado permits the use of marijuana by those over 21 for any purpose, New York City prepares to prevent sales of tobacco to anyone under the age of 21. An article in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine comes out strongly in favor...

This will be one of those posts where my inner libertarian comes closer to the surface. When I see our governments, both local, state, and federal, begin to interject itself into an issue where it should be limited, I can't help but wonder why they are traveling this route. Case in point would be e-cigarettes. I venture into this arena with little or not technical or scientific expertise. I know nothing about e-cigarettes except what I have learned from my own research and from watching some of the people I am around during my daily work. At least two men...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Gov. Mary Fallin has issued an executive order that bans the use of electronic cigarettes and vapor devices on state property, saying the potential long-term health effects of the products are unknown. snip Fallin is an anti-smoking advocate and says that electronic cigarettes and similar products emit vapor that contains chemicals and can impact bystanders

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6ea_1387991405

he New York City Council approved legislation Thursday to ban the use of electronic cigarettes from indoor public spaces where smoking is already prohibited. Because many of the e-cigarettes are designed to look like cigarettes and be used just like them, they can lead to confusion or confrontation,” Quinn said

The New York City Council voted Thursday to ban the use of e-cigarettes in public places where smoking is prohibited, including offices, restaurants, hospitals, parks and beaches. “Because many of the E-cigarettes are designed to look like cigarettes and be used just like them, they can lead to confusion or confrontation,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn told CBS New York.

I'm sitting at my desk, looking at a photograph of a gangrenous foot. It is a bloated thing in hues of phlegmatic gray rot, sanguine inflammation, melancholic black bile, and choleric open sores​—​exhibiting all the humors of a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Above the photograph, in bold white capitals on a dull, matte background are the words “smoking causes peripheral vascular disease.” The photograph is helpfully labeled “gangrene.” Below the photograph, in a bland sans-serif typeface with letters an eighth of an inch high, is “Marlboro Red.” This is a pack of Australian cigarettes, conforming to...

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Nov. 22 (UPI) -- A California ordinance that prohibits smoking in residences with shared walls may be the strictest anti-smoking law in the United States, city officials say. The ban, passed by the city of San Rafael, applies to both owners and renters, ABC News reported Thursday. It covers any multi-family residence with three or more units, including condominiums, co-ops and apartments. The ban took effect Nov. 14.

Berkeley, Calif., City Councilman Jesse Arreguin has recommended that the city ban smoking in single-family homes. Councilwoman Susan Wengraf, who supports an ordinance to ban smoking in multiunit dwellings, is appalled. "The whole point is to protect people who live in multiunit buildings from secondhand smoke," Wengraf said. Locals have told her they find the notion of a ban in single-family homes scary. "I hope he wakes up and pulls it," she said. Actually, I think Wengraf should want Arreguin's recommendation to stick around. After all, his proposal makes the multiunit ordinance seem reasonable. Arreguin aide Anthony Sanchez tells me...

Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News Jan. 29, 2013 at 4:35 AM ET About 13 percent of double-lung transplants in the U.S. came from donors who were heavy smokers, a new study finds. Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe. What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already...

WALNUT CREEK -- Citing his oath to uphold the Constitution, Councilman Justin Wedel says Walnut Creek voters, not elected leaders, should decide where people can smoke and whether shoppers can choose paper or plastic. Wedel aims to get two initiatives on the June ballot -- one that would repeal a portion of the city's recently adopted secondhand-smoke ordinance and another to prevent a ban on plastic shopping bags in Walnut Creek. "This is not a smoking or plastic bag issue; this is a government-intrusion-into-our-daily-lives issue," said Wedel, elected to his first term in 2012. "I swore an oath to protect...