Free Republic

Pot may be legal in Colorado, but you can still be fired for using it. The state Supreme Court ruled 6-0 Monday that a medical marijuana patient who was fired after failing a drug test cannot get his job back. The case was being watched closely by employers and pot smokers in states that have legalized medical or recreational marijuana. Colorado became at least the fourth state in which courts have ruled against medical marijuana patients fired for pot use. Supreme courts in California, Montana and Washington state have made similar rulings, and federal courts in Colorado and Michigan also...

EASTON – For the last seven years, John Sharpe has been able to light and smoke cigarettes inside his Parker Terrace apartment. On June 1, that will end, as the Easton Housing Authority commissioners voted recently to institute a smoking ban inside housing units and common areas at all of the authority’s properties. Sharpe, 67, has smoked for about 30 years. “Seven years I’ve lived here and been able to smoke, now all of a sudden, boom, it’s cut like that,” he told The Enterprise on Thursday inside the community room at the Parker Terrace property. “I should be able...

In New Orleans, midnight sounded on last call – for smoking. A new law just took effect banning cigarettes, cigars and other forms of tobacco smoking from all bars. And some local residents are relieved. “This is one of the smokiest bars in town,” said Steve Zweibaum, speaking to the New York Times from one local bar. “I know a bunch of people who don’t come in here because of the smoke. Maybe they’ll come back.”

According to Dr. Gilbert Ross, Medical and Executive Director, American Council on Science and Health… Smoking is America’s most important, and preventable, public health problem: It is estimated that almost a half-million of us will succumb prematurely to smoking’s deadly effects each year, with twenty-times that number sickened. Among our 43 million smokers, over half try to quit each year, yet less than one in twenty succeed. The FDA approved products—patches, gums, and drugs—help “boost” that to about one in ten, an abysmal “success” rate of 10 percent. Yet, the official line, from the FDA and the CDC on down,...

Alaska smokers will spend over $2 million.American smokers spend at least $1 million dollars on cigarette-related expenditures over their lifetimes, according to a state-by-state analysis done by the financial consultancy company WalletHub. The most expensive state for smokers is Alaska, where the habit costs over $2 million dollars on average. For a bargain, move to South Carolina, but that still comes in at nearly $1.1 million. “I and most people really just think of the cost of cigarettes and taxes on the packs, but if you think about the healthcare costs, which can totally be avoided, healthcare insurance premiums, and...

The Pima County Board of Supervisors will vote this month on whether to refuse to hire smokers and put a major pinch on the pocketbooks of those who already work there. The two-part policy would take effect in July 2015. It prevents the county from hiring smokers and slaps a 30 percent health insurance surcharge on employees who do smoke or use other tobacco products. -snip- “It’s not an attempt to punish anybody,” said Human Resources Director Allyn Bulzomi. “It’s an attempt to encourage people to be healthy.”

Earlier this week, I wrote about the nanny-state government in the town of Westminster, MA, considering a town-wide ban on the sale of tobacco products. A meeting was planned for Wednesday night to hear public comment on the proposed ban. So, how did the meeting go? CBS news describes, “Only a handful of people were able to speak on a proposal that could make the tiny Massachusetts town of Westminster the first in the nation to ban all sales of tobacco products before boos and shouts from the crowd shut down the public hearing Wednesday night.” According to the CBS...

Experimental mice have been telling us this for years, but pot-smoking humans didn't want to believe it could happen to them: Compared with a person who never smoked marijuana, someone who uses marijuana regularly has, on average, less gray matter in his orbital frontal cortex, a region that is a key node in the brain's reward, motivation, decision-making and addictive behaviors network. More ambiguously, in regular pot smokers, that region is better connected than it is in non-users:The flow of signal traffic is speedier to other parts of that motivation and decision-making network, including across the superhighway of "white matter"...

The Defense Department wants to ban tobacco sales on bases and ships.

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...

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...

Patients are being denied minor treatments because they smoke, The Mail on Sunday has found. In one case, a healthy middle-aged man was told he could not have a ten-minute operation to cut a small benign growth off the side of his head because of his habit. Paul Merrett thought it would be no problem to get the inch-long fatty lump, called a lipoma, removed. … But when he attended King George Surgery in Stevenage, his GP said he could not have the minor operation—which doctors often do under local anesthetic in their own consulting rooms. Mr. Merrett, 46, said:...

Most current smokers in the U.S. would like to give up smoking. Perhaps as a testimony to their desire to quit, 85% of smokers say they have in fact tried to quit at least once in their lifetime, including 45% who have tried at least three times. ~snip Smokers on average are engaging in a habit they wish they didn't have, and, in fact, the average smoker has attempted to quit at least three times in their lifetime. The difficulty in quitting is attested to by the fact that more than seven in 10 smokers say they are addicted to...

Federal regulators are looking at menthol cigarettes for possible new regulations, arguing that the products raise "critical" health concerns. The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that it was beginning the process of regulating the variety of flavored cigarettes by gathering comments from the public. “Menthol cigarettes raise critical public health questions,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg in a statement. “The FDA is committed to a science-based approach that addresses the public health issues raised by menthol cigarettes, and public input will help us make more informed decisions about how best to tackle this important issue moving forward.” Among...

This is my first post on Free Republic; I hope I'm doing this correctly. I have many concerns about the changes in health care here in the U.S., but I was shocked when my daughter was told that ALL employees at her place of employment must declare themselves as smokers or non-smokers and those who did smoke would have to pay an additional amount for health insurance. I thought what about those who are obese, or live a high risk life-style; they too represent an increased risk of injury/disease. Is there anyone who does not do SOMETHING that puts them...

Some smokers trying to get coverage next year under President Obama's health care law may get a break from tobacco-use penalties that could have made their premiums unaffordable. The Obama administration -- in yet another health care overhaul delay -- has quietly notified insurers that a computer system glitch will limit penalties that the law says the companies may charge smokers. A fix will take at least a year to put in place.

Surprised by the recent waivers from the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act? Get ready for more, writes Margot Sanger-Katz at National Journal, because the employer mandate is far from the only piece of ObamaCare that’s not ready for prime time. In fact, it might be easier to select the few components that might be ready for the implementation target date than to number those that won’t: If you’ve been reading all the Obamacare stories lately, you might get the impression that the administration has just realized it will not be able to implement the massive health reform as...

With just days to go before two of Philadelphia's most prestigious hospitals refuse to hire smokers, the ban has relit a debate about the wisdom of regulating workers' behavior away from the workplace. Both the highly rated University of Pennsylvania Health System, which includes the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, named by US News and World Report as America's top children's hospital this year, will join dozens of hospitals across the country when they implement their policy on Monday, July 1. The move has generated criticism among civil liberties activists, hospital...

The hot new video at MRCTV.org is 1995 footage of Attorney General Eric Holder, when he was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In his remarks before the Woman's National Democratic Club, broadcast by CSPAN 2, Holder said people should be ashamed to own guns, just the way that cigarette smokes now "cower outside of buildings" to smoke. "What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way...

Where are today’s rebels?  Where is the counterculture? Ear-budded hipsters, with their sheep-like devotion to Apple products and the Obama administration, sit in on the April 20 “Day of Pot” in Denver, content and satisfied with their free birth control and legalized maryjane.  Meanwhile SWAT teams descend on Watertown, Massachusetts, trampling Fourth Amendment rights in search of a “person of interest”– while a Saudi National is quietly sent back to his homeland.These hipsters champion the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado while the war on Big Tobacco rages on.  Since 1997 the FDA inherited control over the $365.5 billion global...