Free Republic

In November 1998, attorneys general from across the country sealed a historic deal with the tobacco industry to pay for the health care costs of smoking. Going forward, nearly every cigarette sold would provide money to the states, territories and other governments involved 2014 more than $200 billion in just the first 25 years of a legal settlement that required payments to be made in perpetuity. Then, Wall Street came knocking with an offer many state and local politicians found irresistible: Cash upfront for those governments willing to trade investors the right to some or all of their tobacco payments....

When American Ebola patient Dr. Kent Brantly arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, Aug. 2, he had reportedly already had one course of treatment with an experimental drug called ZMAPP made with genetically engineered tobacco. Although it has only been tested previously in animals, the FDA is rumored to have authorized emergency approval for the drug for Brantly and another American who contracted the virus doing medical aid work in Liberia during the ongoing West African Ebola outbreak. MAPP is produced by a small San Diego-based biotech company. The scientists use a common tobacco bacteria, genetically engineered with different components of the...

RUSH: Okay, wait for it, wait for it. You're gonna love this. Folks, you're absolutely going to love this. Well, wait. Maybe some of you won't love this. Let me speak for myself. I love this. You know that magical serum that was given to two white Americans suffering from Ebola? You know what the magic ingredient is? Nicotine. Tobacco is the magical ingredient in the serum. It's a Kentucky tobacco plant from which they derive the magical serum that has caused massive reversals of the symptoms of Ebola in the two white Americans. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay. So yesterday...

Any beachgoers that enjoy puffing away on a cigarette while they sit on the sand or frolic in the surf may have to get their nicotine fix elsewhere, as Oregon has proposed a ban on smoking that would include all 362 miles of beaches on its coastline. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department has followed up an earlier ban on smoking at most state park properties with this proposal, partly because the agency is worried that all those smokers pushed out of parks will come to the beach, reports the Associated Press. The move would also serve to cut down...

*The largest ever study of the effects of the main psychoactive component of cannabis suggests that it can cause paranoia in vulnerable individuals* To discover whether cannabis really does cause paranoia in vulnerable individuals, we carried out the largest ever study of the effects of THC (∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the drug’s principal psychoactive ingredient). We recruited 121 volunteers, all of whom had taken cannabis at least once before, and all of whom reported having experienced paranoid thoughts in the previous month (which is typical of half the population). None had been diagnosed with a mental illness. The volunteers were randomly chosen to...

A Florida jury has awarded the widow of a chain smoker who died of lung cancer punitive damages of more than $23 billion in her lawsuit against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the nation's second-biggest cigarette maker. The judgment, returned on Friday night, was the largest in Florida history in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by a single plaintiff, according to Ryan Julison, a spokesman for the woman's lawyer, Chris Chestnut. After a four-week trial and 11 hours of jury deliberations, the jury returned a verdict granting the widow $7.3 million and the couple's son $9.6 million in compensatory damages....

A Florida jury has slammed the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. with $23.6 billion in punitive damages in a lawsuit filed by the widow of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer in 1996. The case is one of thousands filed in Florida after the state Supreme Court in 2006 tossed out a $145 billion class action verdict. That ruling also said smokers and their families need only prove addiction and that smoking caused their illnesses or deaths. Last year, Florida's highest court re-approved that decision, which made it easier for sick smokers or their survivors to pursue lawsuits against...

Is “Operation Choke Point” about to get choked by Congress? Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sure hopes so. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is calling for the dismantling of what he calls a secretive initiative launched by the Obama administration in early 2013. Critics say that Operation Choke Point, so dubbed by Department of Justice officials under Attorney General Eric Holder, seeks to weed out businesses from the marketplace that the Obama administration considers objectionable. According to The Wall Street Journal, it was an outgrowth of the Financial Fraud Task Force, established by President Obama’s executive...

Egypt’s president has issued a decree raising the sales tax on cigarettes by up to 50 percent and on beer by 200 percent. […] President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, former military chief elected last month, vowed to take tough decisions to address the country’s battered economy. This weekend, el-Sissi also partially lifted subsidies on fuel, a politically sensitive issue that Egypt’s previous leaders had avoided. …

Tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) wants to challenge new EU rules on tobacco to see if it can get the stricter labeling requirements changed. The Marlboro manufacturer on Friday (27 June) said the EU’s new tobacco products directive “appears to ban truthful and non-misleading claims on the packaging of tobacco products”. “PMI intends to seek review of whether this ban respects the fundamental rights of consumers to information about the products they are choosing,” it added. The EU’s reformed directive says cigarette packages must have “Smoking Kills—Quit Now” and “Tobacco smoke contains over 70 substances known to cause cancer”...

The public will have more time to weigh in on a federal proposal to regulate electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that the public comment period slated to end July 9 is being extended an additional 30 days to Aug. 8 after getting lots of input on how to regulate e-cigarettes. Those are battery-powered devices that heat a liquid nicotine solution, creating vapor that users inhale. The FDA also proposed extending its authority to regulate cigars, hookahs, nicotine gels and pipe tobacco.

The Republic of Ireland has become the first country in Europe to try to pass a law banning the sale of branded cigarette and tobacco packets. The proposed legislation would force tobacco firms to use plain packaging, removing all logos and trademark colors from cigarette packets. Irish Minister for Health James Reilly said the ban would help to save lives. …

Tobacco industry once had high hopes for marijuana business USA -- Richard Nixon was in the White House, his "war on drugs" was in full swing, yet Big Tobacco was secretly exploring the possibility of becoming Big Pot. Newly discovered documents from tobacco company archives at UC San Francisco show that major companies in the cigarette industry investigated joining the marijuana business in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The companies were driven then by the same shift in public attitudes that is now pushing legalization around the country. One company even asked a federal counter-narcotics official to secretly secure...

Tobacco sales on Navy ships and in stores on Navy and Marine Corps bases would be a thing of the past under a plan being considered by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, but some congressional members are pushing back. The Navy Department, which includes the Marine Corps, would be the first military department to prohibit tobacco sales. […] Congress is considering a measure that would prevent Mabus from instituting a sales ban, with the prohibition’s opponents arguing it overreaches on a habit that is unhealthy but still legal. …

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Cigarette smuggling costs states an estimated $5.5 billion annually. Much of that traffic takes place on the East Coast along Interstate 95, as cigarettes from lower-tax states are being smuggled to states with higher taxes in the Northeast. A new website, sponsored by RAI Services Co., a subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., calls the I-95 corridor "The New Tobacco Road."The website draws attention to the problem to encourage states to pass stiffer penalties for smuggling and devote more resources to enforcement.The website, www.thenewtobaccoroad.com, shows how I-95 has become a key transit route for cigarette smuggling from southern...

The disastrous smoking habits of the Irish have been highlighted in two new studies—we are far more prone than other Europeans to continue smoking after suffering a stroke and one in 10 of us cut back on food to fund our craving. […] Just what lengths smokers will go to to feed their habit is borne out in a separate study by Pfizer Ireland, which found: 10% cut back on buying food35% said they cut down on eating out24% pulled out of social engagements22% also said that they cut back on holidays to avoid cutting their smoking budget.More than half...

London - A group of 53 leading scientists has warned the World Health Organisation not to classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products, arguing that doing so would jeopardise a major opportunity to slash disease and deaths caused by smoking. The UN agency, which is currently assessing its position on the matter, has previously indicated it would favour applying similar restrictions to all nicotine-containing products. In an open letter to WHO Director General Margaret Chan, the scientists from Europe, North America, Asia and Australia argued that low-risk products like e-cigarettes were "part of the solution" in the fight against smoking, not part...

If the government wants to make progress in lowering obesity rates, it needs to start regulating fatty foods much the way it does tobacco. That's the recommendation from a pair of international health organizations pushing policies it says would answer the obesity epidemic. Specifically, the groups recommend that the government control the way the food and beverage industry advertises, to ensure companies aren't implying unhealthy food is good for children and adults. Additionally, they advise governments to require statements on food packaging about how high or low the content of salt, saturated fat, and sugar is in relation to dietary...

Every person covered by Medicare would shell out an additional $3 a month if the government agreed to pay to screen certain current and former smokers for lung cancer, a new study estimates. It would cost Medicare $2 billion a year to follow recent advice to offer these lung scans—and fuel angst about rising health costs that are borne by everyone, not just smokers, the study found. […] Lung cancer is the world’s top cancer killer, mainly because it’s usually found too late for treatment to do much good. Most deaths involve Medicare-age people, and most are due to smoking....

For reasons passing understanding, the FDA announced recently that it was moving forward with invoking its authority to regulate cigars, along with other forms of tobacco. It’s a part of the Tobacco Control Act, signed into law in 2009, which gave the agency the option of casting its net down on cigars at the time of its choosing. In other words – it was only a matter of time before bureaucrats decided to be bureaucrats. It’s not set into stone, yet. Between now and July 9 the FDA will accept comments on its proposals, at which point it will the...