Free Republic

With the increase in cigarette tax and the cost of cigarettes officially being much more expensive, it's the perfect time to focus on ways to stop smoking. For many, particularly African Americans who smoke menthol cigarettes, that may be a difficult task. According to researchers, menthol cigarettes are harder to quit, particularly among African American and Latino smokers. That is the finding of a study which examined the effects of menthol on quit rates among a diverse group of nearly 1,700 smokers attending a Tobacco Dependence Clinic at the UMDNJ-School of Public Health. “We previously found that menthol cigarette smokers...

The House adopted a bill today that would ban smoking in restaurants and workplaces across the state. The bill would not ban smoking in most bars. It cleared the House 72 to 45 and now moves to the Senate, reports Benjamin Niolet. Supporters fended off an amendment that would have made enforcement nearly impossible. Under the current bill, business owners would get two warnings before a fine would be issued. The bill was amended today to allow smoking in private, nonprofit clubs such as country clubs or VFW halls. On Wednesday, the bill, which was proposed as a near total...

In an effort to further their successful campaign against smoking, there is some heated controversy over a new commercial being shown in New York. The target is no longer individual health, but instead focuses on the loss of a parent due to smoking. Article and Video:

The feds are taxing tobacco yet again. They say this is about getting people to quit, but we all know better. If smokers quit smoking where would the money for all those liberal social experiments come from? Tell DC to puff off, and put out your stinky cigarette, cigar, or pipe. E-cigs, the future of nicotine addicts :) All the nicotine and none of the cancer causing tars and chemicals. Pick your flavor: apple, coffee, Red Bull, etc. "Smoke" anywhere! No ashtrays, no lighters, no stink! I ordered mine two days ago, and I can't WAIT to get it. I'll...

I'd like to start a thread for folks wanting to stop smoking due to the new tax increases that started today. I'm protesting and know I'll require support from others out there who are ready to drop the habit as well.

A federal tax hike on tobacco takes effect Wednesday, and it's no April Fool's joke. The federal excise tax on cigarettes will increase by 62 cents per pack, from 39 cents to $1.01 per pack. Additional increases will also affect roll-your-own cigarettes, cigars, and chewing and pipe tobacco, with revenues buttressing The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Defenders of the tobacco tax increase say they're protecting children from tobacco products. However, this logic does not seem to apply to pipe and cigar smoking. The main demographic of those smoking cigars, for example, is not children. The National Cancer Institute...

Smokers Don't Like The Hike HUNTINGTON W.Va. -- The federal tax on tobacco will increase from 39-cents to $1.01 in April. That increase has some smokers angry while others say it may be a reason to cut back or quit for good. Smokers in West Virginia are bracing for a huge increase in price next month. According to national report, New Yorkers pay the highest state tax at $2.75 per pack. South Carolina residents pay only 7-cents. State taxes on cigarettes in West Virginia are 25-cents per pack. Some smokers say the increase in taxes, whether state or federal will...

Enlarge ImageBoxed in. Nicotine (center) nestled into brain receptor "box." Credit: Dennis Dougherty If nicotine liked muscle receptors as much as it likes brain receptors, a single cigarette would kill. Scientists have finally figured out why the molecule is so picky--a finding that may shed light on the addictiveness of smoking. For nicotine--or any molecule--to interact with its receptor, the two must bind. Having opposite charges on the molecule and the receptor's binding site, referred to as the "box," helps. But the nicotine receptors in the brain and muscles are nearly identical--nicotine has a positive charge, and both receptors'...

CHARLESTON W.Va.-- Blackhawk Saloon owner Kerry Ellison takes his fight against the Kanawha County smoking ban to the courtroom. "I'm not the smoking police," said Ellison who received citations in August and October from the health department for allowing his patrons to light up. It's something he hasn't been trying to hide. A large "Smokers Welcome" sign hangs on the side of his establishment. The business owner represented himself during trial Wednesday and argued it is not his responsibility to make others comply with the regulations. "I think as a whole if everyone would ignore it it would go away....

The state Senate voted Wednesday to outlaw smoking in vehicles when children 12 or under are present. The legislation went to the House on a vote of 26-12, over the objections of lawmakers who complained it was overreaching. "At what point do free people say ... thou shalt not tell me any more what to do?" said Sen. William Sharer, a Farmington Republican. The proposal would expand the New Mexico law that already bans smoking in most offices, restaurants, bars, buses, taxis and other indoor public places. Supporters said children are particularly vulnerable to the health effects of secondhand cigarette...

North Korea's ex-smoker Kim lights up on state TV By Jack Kim SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, widely believed to have suffered a stroke in August, was shown lighting up on state TV on Wednesday during a tour of a cigarette factory even though he said he gave up smoking years ago. There was no indication whether he took a few puffs on a cigarette as a one-off event to show his care in inspecting a key national industry or if he had returned to smoking. Kim, 67, was shown in a series of still pictures with...

America needs you to smoke, but may pay you to quit. Mississippi needs you to smoke, but towns are putting more and more limits on where lighting up is allowed. In all history, there may be no single topic on which governments have been less single-minded than tobacco, which, by the way, remains a legal crop for which farmers will receive $18 million in subsidies this year. Consider this calculation by U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., or someone on his staff: The renewal and expansion earlier this month of a federal-state program that pays for health care for children in...

Fla. smoker widow gets $8 million damages FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Philip Morris was ordered by a jury to pay $8 million in damages to the widow of a smoker who died of lung cancer in a case that could set a standard for some 8,000 similar Florida lawsuits. The award amounts to $3 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages against Richmond, Va.-based Philip Morris USA, a unit of Altria Group. Hess's attorneys sought up to $130 million. Philip Morris attorney Kenneth Reilly said an appeal was certain. The Hess case was the first to...

It's only a matter of time before someone "snaps" after being pulled over under Ontario's new law forbidding smoking in a vehicle carrying a minor, a police officer said Monday in response to a quirk in the legislation that was made evident during a weekend incident. "People got mad enough when they couldn't smoke in bars anymore or bingo parlours," said Sgt. Bryant Wood, a police officer in the eastern Ontario town of Port Hope. "Now you're telling them they can't smoke in cars. At some point somebody's going to snap along the way here." Nova Scotia is the only...

Anti-smoking wardens at a hospital have been branded a waste of money. Two were hired to patrol the grounds at the NHS unit, politely asking smokers to stub out their cigarettes. But the wardens, earning up to £15,000 a year, have no powers to make anyone stop smoking or force anyone off the premises at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon, Wilts. TaxPayers' Alliance campaign manager Susie Squire said: "This is a ludicrous misallocation of precious public money. Smoking's already banned and these staff have no executive power. It's hard to see how they are useful." But the hospital said:...

Smoking may be politically incorrect and bad for a politician's image, but consider the alternative! NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thank you!

Being a Democrat can mean several things - possessing the ability to emote as a means of creating policy, having the facility to substitute feelings for wisdom, or the innate instinct to never think what happens next. It's a cushy intellectual life, to be sure.Take the President's signing of the so-called S-CHIP bill into law last week - a measure which expands (fancy that) the State Children's Health Insurance Program by roughly $35 billion over the next five years.President Obama may not have asked anyone to read his lips, but you'll recall he did promise no new taxes of...

Enlarge ImageHuman nature. Children born via IVF may hold clues to what makes us who we are. Credit: Jupiter Images It's perhaps the most controversial question in biology: Are we shaped by our genes or by our environment? The debate extends even to the womb, where the chemistry of the fetal environment may play as much of a role in our development as the genes we inherit from our parents. Now, scientists believe they have found a clever way to disentangle the effects of genes and environment in the womb. The solution is to look at babies conceived in...

Paying for the S-CHIP will be up to smokers. Yes, a pack of cigarettes will be federally taxed $1.00. Small cigars $12.50 per 1,000 this year and $50 per 1,000 in 2015. Large cigars will be taxed .50 (8x the current tax). Roll your own is $24.00 more per 1 pound of tobacco. ROLL YOUR OWN!! The tubes for roll your own cigarettes will also be taxed substantially.

HONG KONG: Cigarette consumption in Hong Kong is up almost 14 percent since a smoking ban was introduced in the city two years ago, a news report said on Saturday. Government figures quoted by the South China Morning Post show that 3.79 billion cigarettes were bought in 2008, compared to 3.33 billion the previous year. Anti-smoking campaigners quoted by the newspaper said they wanted taxes on cigarettes in the city of 6.9 million raised significantly in the government's annual budget in order to reverse the trend. A pack of cigarettes in Hong Kong costs an average of 30 Hong Kong...

Take someone with too much time on their hands and a ridiculously moralistic and self-righteous worldview, combine that with activist government and what do you get? A city that bans smoking in your own home, that's what. One California town has taken misguided activist government to a new place - private residences...

BELMONT, Calif. — During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home. Ms. Frederickson lives in an apartment in Belmont, Calif., a quiet Silicon Valley city that is now home to perhaps the nation’s strictest antismoking law, effectively outlawing lighting up in all apartment buildings. “I’m absolutely outraged,” said Ms....

JAKARTA: The Indonesian Ulamas Council (MUI) has issued an edict forbidding children, pregnant women and MUI members from smoking. The edict, which was issued in a meeting here last Sunday, also bans smoking in public places. Antara News Agency quoted the council’s Edict Commission chairman Amin Suma in West Sumatera Monday as saying that MUI decided in the meeting that smoking for Muslims was between haram (forbidden) and makruh (objectionable). He said that MUI would later formulate the form of sanctions against council members who smoked. Suma said that the MUI meeting agreed on two rulings, namely one which banned...

Michigan's 41 prisons go totally tobacco-free one week from today. Indoors and out.

Just heard on the evening news that some lawmaker from Kansas City wants to have an amendment to the state constitution forbidding smoking in "public places".

That there will be any more humans left to populate the earth in the years to come ought to be sufficient enough evidence that God not only exists, but that He is tinkering to make it so. The idea of a species being able to survive the hellish construct of its intrusive and destructive existence, like the one homosapiens have built for themselves, is as farcical and ludicrous as the thinking that denies the imminent dangers of man-made global warming.At least that's what one would have to believe after a rudimentary perusal of today's mainstream doomdsay media.Everything is going...

He may show a brave face in public and on the set of his new television drama “The Beast,” but Patrick Swayze has admitted his day-to-day battle with pancreatic cancer is scary. “There’s a lot of fear here,” Patrick told Barbara Walters during a new sit-down interview with the actor and his wife, Lisa Niemi, airing Wednesday on ABC. “There’s a lot of stuff goin’ on. Yeah, I’m scared. Yeah, I’m angry. Yeah, I’m [like], ‘Why me?’ Yeah, I’m all this stuff.” The star of such Hollywood blockbusters as “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” confirmed he is suffering from pancreatic cancer...

Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air of second-hand smoke, but experts now have identified another smoking-related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke. That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if...

The other day, Matt Welch noted that President-elect Obama admitted to Tom Brokaw that he still sneaks a cigarette now and then. Addiction expert (and reason contributor) Stanton Peele notes that Obama exemplifies an increasingly common type of smoker that anti-tobacco activists and public health officials like to pretend does not exist: Barack Obama quit his early drug use when he got serious about life. Now, Barack is tackling the biggest taboo of all—cutting out his cigarette addiction but not quitting smoking altogether! Last Sunday Tom Brokaw grilled Obama on Meet the Press about his furtive smoking. Obama answered that...

The MSM - ever infatuated with Obama and a propagater of his cult of personality - seems to be obsessed with his abs, his workout regiment, and displaying pictures of him in the surf in newspapers in magazines and on the net. Yet, this same MSM doesn't seem to be too concerned with Obama's closet smoking habit. Good health can be done away with by smoking in no time. In 1 and 1/2 or 2 years, an on-going smoking habit can indeed wreck good health. Smoking increases the odds big time of cancer setting in. Just as the MSM said...

Need another reason to add "Quit Smoking" to your New Year's resolutions list? How about the fact that even if you choose to smoke outside of your home or only smoke in your home when your children are not there – thinking that you're keeping them away from second-hand smoke – you're still exposing them to toxins? In the January issue of Pediatrics, researchers at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) and colleagues across the country describe how tobacco smoke contamination lingers even after a cigarette is extinguished – a phenomenon they define as "third-hand" smoke. Their study is the first...

Harrisburg— Three months following the effective date of Pennsylvania's Clean Indoor Air Act banning smoking in most public places, the author of the law, State Senator Stewart J. Greenleaf (R-Montgomery / Bucks) announced that he is introducing legislation in the new session which begins in January that would expand the state's smoking ban. Greenleaf, who first introduced smokefree legislation in 1993, said, "We have fought long and hard, and have won a major victory for the health of Pennsylvanians. The current Clean Indoor Air Act removes secondhand smoke from about 95% of workplaces and public areas in this Commonwealth. The...

Union that represents Pa. university faculty wants indoor/outdoor ban rescinded. HARRISBURG — Grabbing a quick smoke between classes has become impossible for Lock Haven University political science professor Robert Storch. An indoor and outdoor smoking ban imposed at Pennsylvania’s state university system in September means Storch must walk off campus whenever he craves nicotine — a 20-minute roundtrip excursion that he cannot cram into a 15-minute break between classes. “I find it ridiculous,” Storch told a Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board hearing examiner Tuesday. “You feel like a leper anyway. It’s really very demeaning.” Storch was among a handful of professors...

Smoking ban to survive this General Assembly intact Though attempts to shoot holes in a smoking ban approved by Ohio voters in 2006 are almost sure to continue, legislative leaders have snuffed out a proposed exemption being pushed during the final days of the lame duck session. Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester, proposed attaching an amendment to HB 327, a city health board bill, that would have exempted cigar bars from the smoking ban. But both Senate President Bill M. Harris and House Speaker Jon Husted said Tuesday that they do not support exemptions to the smoking ban so soon...

DECEMBER 17--What makes a good photograph? A compelling subject, proper lighting, and exquisite composition would certainly be components. But what makes a good mug shot? A compelling subject, of course. And a cow costume never hurts. On the following pages you'll find the 2008 Mug Shots of the Year, 20 booking photos selected from among the tens of thousands reviewed this year by TSG's staff (all three of us). While most of the images speak for themselves, on some pages you'll find links to stories providing additional details about the arrestees. As seen below, the list, arranged in descending order,...

I feel sort of cheated - like discovering that your spouse has been sneaking out the back door with a pack of Pall Malls. It doesn't fit the character type either. McCain, yes. The guy was a two-pack-a-day smoker for 25 years and looks like a man desperately in need of a fix. But Obama? Mr. Coolunderfire? I guess part of it is the way we characterize smokers and smoking in this day and age. What was once accepted, if not encouraged - the Flintstones did a commercial for Winstons in the old black-and-white days of television - is now...

approved some of the toughest anti-tobacco rules in the nation Thursday, extinguishing cigar bars and hookah bars and ending the sales of tobacco in pharmacies and on college campuses. The Boston Public Health Commission, however, decided to give the bars 10 years before they would have to close, doubling the original proposed grace period for the establishments. Even then, the bars could seek an extension for another 10 years.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama failed to give a straight answer when asked on a U.S. talkshow on Sunday whether he had managed to quit smoking.

"There are times where I've fallen off the wagon," the president-elect said when asked in a broadcast interview whether he has kicked the habit.

Women Smokers Lose 14.5 Years Off Life Span During Lung Cancer Awareness Month in November, female smokers should take advantage of available resources, pick a quit day, and start taking steps toward kicking the habit, urges The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Even though smoking takes an average of 14.5 years off women's lives, almost one in five American women age 18 and older smokes. "The damaging effects of smoking on women are extensive, well-documented, and can be observed from the cradle to the premature grave," Dr. Sharon Phelan said in an organization news release. She helped develop...

Politically correct NHS bosses in Birmingham are battling to ban a smoking room for terminally ill patients – forcing them to be turfed out into the cold to enjoy their final cigarettes. The Sheldon Unit, a palliative care home for patients dying from lung cancer and other diseases, in Northfield, is one of only two health centres in the region that has escaped rigid Smoke Free legislation on ‘sympathetic grounds’. But when board members of South Birmingham Primary Care Trust, in charge of the unit, heard of plans to upgrade the smoking room with a new ventilation system, the whole...

It is still okay to discriminate against one group of Americans. This discrimination is not only legal, it is encouraged. You see members of this oppressed minority huddled outside in rain and snow, forbidden to seek refuge. No one feels sorry for them. And yet we may have just elected one of these pariahs as president. Smoking is a disgusting habit that can kill you and those around you. Barack Obama claims to have quit, but the evidence is ambiguous. And the media's lack of interest in this question supports the charge that Obama is enjoying a honeymoon with the...

There is nothing more reviled by the freedom-killing, do-gooder, health police than smokers. They are the modern-day equivalent of lepers: unfit to be around "normal" people and banished to inhospitable locations. The nanny-staters even force business owners to ban smoking, a direct infringement on free markets and freedom, under the guise of protecting employees who have to work there and could not possibly find another job if they don't like the smoke. The point is that lefties are violently intolerant of smokers. But, as with all liberalism, the elites can do what they please, because they are more important and...

With smoking bans popping up everywhere, smokers need to resort to extreme measures to enjoy the pleasures of the almighty weed. There is a Dutch Company who has stepped in to help out. If you can't smoke 'em . . . drink 'em. But the nanny-stater libs don't like this either. More . . .

Smokers banned from becoming foster parentsKatharine Barney, Evening Standard 29.10.08   Stubbed out: Redbridge Council has banned smokers from fostering children   SMOKERS will be banned from fostering children under radical measures to be introduced in London.Redbridge council is thought to be the first in the country to implement the rules, despite a shortage of 2,000 foster carers across the capital.The move is aimed at limiting children's exposure to the effects of passive and second-hand smoke from cigarettes, cigars and pipe tobacco.The new smoking policy, to be voted on next week, will apply to all foster carers except family...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Atlantic City's less-than-two-week-old ban on smoking in casinos will soon end under a change-of-heart measure narrowly approved Monday by the City Council and quickly signed by the mayor. Casinos said the ban cut into their business, while their workers were deeply divided whether its health benefits outweighed the potential economic harm. Some at Monday's meeting shouted "Save Our Jobs!" while others chanted "Save Our Lives!"

IPCPR Spreads Truth to Head Off Wisconsin Smoking Ban Wisconsin's local and state legislators need to wake up to the truth about smoking bans before it is too late, according to Chris McCalla, legislative director of the International Premium Cigar and Pipe Dealers Association. According to McCalla, smoking bans are bad for business, defile the constitutional rights of business owners and are based on erroneous assumptions regarding secondhand smoke. Madison, WI (PRWEB) October 19, 2008 -- Wisconsin's local and state legislators need to wake up to the truth about smoking bans before it is too late, according to Chris McCalla,...

Today’s leftists – and some on the right – have decided that health is now a moral issue. It has become a value, a religion, as important and ethically relevant as any other value Americans hold sacred. This morality is manifesting itself through a combination of marginally coherent (and agenda-driven) feel-good science and the propensity of today’s liberal to emote as a process of creating policy. Clearly more critical than the ongoing war against Islamo-fascism is America’s real battle, the next true menace. While the word “victory” was vanquished by America’s leftists from any discussion relating to the war in...

The MSM continues to harp about McCain being 72 years of age. His mother is over 90, so there are excellent genetics there. And what about Obama's continued chain-smoking ways? I have heard that smoking is very bad for one's heart, especaiily chain-smoking. People have smoked for only a few years and have had heart attacks...

Smokers will be stopped in the street and asked to take a carbon monoxide test in London's most hard-hitting anti-smoking campaign. 'Smoking police' will target people at betting shops, bus stops and shopping centres to shock them into giving up cigarettes. They will be asked to breathe into a monitor to show how much carbon monoxide is in their bodies, and could then be signed up to local stop-smoking services and given access to counsellors. Pro-smoking group Forest described the campaign as a humiliating infringement of civil liberties. Ealing Primary Care Trust, which is funding the £75,000 scheme, said it...