Free Republic

Some folks just can’t take a hint. House leaders, insisting this is no time to raise taxes on anyone for any reason, made sure that the budget that will be debated next week includes none of the governor’s proposed $260 million in tax hikes, including a 50-cent a pack hike in the cigarette tax. But anti-smoking zealots have adopted a new strategy. According to interviews conducted by State House News Service, they will push for a $1.25 a pack hike not in the state budget (OK, let’s give them credit for knowing a non-starter when they see one), but in...

Smokers have already been banned from New York bars and restaurants, and soon they could be prohibited from lighting up in cars carrying minors, an idea giving added fuel to critics who say the city has become a nanny state. A City Council member of Queens who is chairman of the council's Environmental Protection Committee, James Gennaro, said he is planning to introduce the smoking bill next week. "I am just seeking every opportunity I can to denormalize smoking and to try to put it out of the reach of kids," Mr. Gennaro said. "I've lost family members to lung...

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- In a legal strategy similar to how state attorneys general successfully pursued tobacco companies, a class action lawsuit has been filed to recover "billions of dollars in ill-gotten profits" from alcohol makers that falsely denied their ads targeted underage drinkers. The suit accuses brewers Coors Brewing Co. and Heineken; distilled spirits makers Mark Anthony Brands (maker of Mike's Hard Lemonade), Bacardi USA, Bacardi Group, Brown-Forman, Diageo and Kobrand (maker of Alize cognac); and the Beer Institute of a "long-running, sophisticated and deceptive scheme ... to market alcoholic beverages to children and other underage consumers." Absent from suit...