Free Republic

US House Speaker Mike Johnson expecting approval of funding for Ukraine... There's new political polling in Germany that puts the Alternative for Germany at 26 percent of the popular vote... Poland's Conservative President swore in a conservative-nationalist government today even though the liberal-secularists won... A former adviser to the jailed ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan says he was the victim of an acid attack... British politics the latest opinion poll from "Redfield and Wilson" showing the Labor Party at 45 percent, the Conservative Party at 25 percent and the Reform Party at 10 percent... "No choice but to kill...

Two men were caught on camera pummeling an NYPD cop in the head and face at a Bronx subway station Monday after the officer and his partner asked the suspects to put out their cigarettes. Kaream McClary, 23, and Izayiah Jessamy, 20, were charged with assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, and trespassing over the shocking attack at the Freeman Street subway station around 2:30 p.m., police said. The altercation erupted after two officers requested McClary, Jessamy and a third man stop smoking inside the station — but the trio refused, cops said. When the officers tried removing the...

SMOKING will be banished in Britain for youngsters, King Charles confirmed today. At the state opening of Parliament, the monarch confirmed Rishi Sunak will mount an historic crackdown on cigarettes by raising the legal age every year until there are no smokers left. The PM has previously said: "We must tackle the single biggest entirely preventable cause of ill health disability and death. "And that is smoking, and our country. Smoking causes, one in four cancer deaths." The new plans mean a 14-year-old today will never legally be sold a cigarette. The tough new anti-smoking measures would see the smoking...

Scientists have uncovered one way tobacco smoking causes cancer and makes it harder to treat by undermining the body's anti-cancer safeguards. Their study links tobacco smoking to harmful changes in DNA called 'stop-gain mutations' that tell the body to stop making certain proteins before they are fully formed. They found these stop-gain mutations were especially prevalent in genes known as 'tumor-suppressors,' which make proteins that would normally prevent abnormal cells from growing. "Our study showed that smoking is associated with changes to DNA that disrupt the formation of tumor suppressors," says Nina Adler. "Without them, abnormal cells are allowed to...

Researchers found that theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TBS) can improve self-control, resulting in reduced cigarette cravings and decreased smoking. The study revealed that people with nicotine dependence show different brain structures and functions, with these differences possibly affecting their inhibitory control, making it harder to resist the urge to smoke. Theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment could reduce cigarette cravings. A recent study from the University of Missouri School of Medicine indicates a potential alternative method to address cigarette cravings. The research demonstrates that by using theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TBS) – powerful and quickly changing magnetic pulses that influence brain...

On a recent weekday afternoon, the high-end flagship’s shoe department smelled less like Manolo Blahnik leather and more like a head shop, a stylist told The Post. “It’s jarring when you walk into a high-end department store where you used to smell Chanel perfume and now it’s weed,” the stylist, who requested anonymity, said. (The Post has reached out to Saks for comment). But, she admitted: “Everywhere you go in New York City smells like weed. It’s not just Saks — it’s at Bloomingdales, at the movies … there’s no high-end anymore.” Indeed, brazen New Yorkers are lighting joints on...

Today I became nostalgic for a smell. You wake up on top of the covers in your underwear, and through the gloaming of your bedroom, through the smug pint of water, through the angst and exhaustion and joy and regret that comes from five hours in a nightclub and two hours on the wrong bus home, there is some bitter relief in the smell of smoke on your hair. That smell! Like barbecued teenagers and pepper and beer, almost lovely, pleasantly vile, a kind of lovebite memory, bruised on the throat in passion. That smell. It all seems quite mad...

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is pushing for a ban to prevent smoking in cars where minors and pregnant women are passengers. Smoking in cars is not currently illegal in Germany. The plan, which is part of Lauterbach's draft proposal to legalize cannabis, aims to expand the existing Non-Smokers Protection Act. The expansion of the smoking ban, which already applies in public transport, is intended to "ensure the necessary protection from passive smoking for this particularly vulnerable group of people," according to the draft cited by RND. Smoking in cars has been proven to pose higher risks due to the...

It regularly happens that I’ll strike on the seed of an idea for a column that attempts to connect the current news cycle with an analogous event from history, only to discover that the anniversary of that past milepost falls on or near my deadline. I always take this as a sign from a beneficent universe that I am on solid journalistic footing. And so it was last week as I was reading the section of the 44-page federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump that dealt with the fateful July 2021 meeting in Bedminster, N.J., between Trump and...

Olczak believes that a move on cigarettes similar to the combustion engine would have to be on a timescale that gives consumers and the industry time to respond and change. ‘Looking at what the UK is doing in the car industry, saying that as of a certain year you are not allowed to produce petrol cars, we could have this with tobacco too,’ he told the Mail. Olczak was himself a smoker for two decades until he tried the brand’s IQOS heated tobacco device, which costs £39 for a starter kit. Products such as heated tobacco and e-vapes now account...

The amount of environmental exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH for short, is strongly linked to a person's risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, suggests research. These chemicals, formed from the burning of coal, oil, gas, wood, or tobacco as well as the flame grilling of meat and other foods, also seem to account for most of smoking's impact on risk of the disease, the findings indicate. The researchers drew on the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2007 and 2016. NHANES evaluates a wide variety of toxicants, along with data related to health, nutrition, behaviors and...

A rise in asthma cases has been observed in children from certain racial and ethnic minority groups in states where recreational use of marijuana has been legalized. A recent study conducted by the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and The City University of New York has revealed that there has been a rise in the prevalence of asthma among teenagers in states where recreational use of cannabis has been legalized, as well as among children from certain racial and ethnic minority groups in states with recreational legalization, in comparison to states where it remains fully illegal. The findings...

Black activists are slamming New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.) for moving to ban flavored tobacco products while allowing rampant access to flavored marijuana. "You’re telling me that my 21-year-old son can buy all the cannabis he wants, but my grandmother who’s been smoking for 65 years can’t get a cigarette? It doesn’t make sense," said Corey Pegues, a retired black New York Police Department executive who is urging lawmakers to reject Hochul’s proposal. Pegues said the governor’s proposed legislation, which was tucked in her Jan. 10 State of the State plan, will disproportionately affect black voters. Critics say the...

I Truly Miss Our Tobacco Smoking Culture . The paraphernalia. The rituals. The camaraderie. The cigarettes and cigars and pipes. The rituals. The coffee and cigarettes. The pipe and brandy. The smoky jazz clubs. . It was an age. In retrospect it added texture to our lives.

Dec. 13 (UPI) -- The New Zealand Parliament has approved a measure that raises the age in which people can legally purchase tobacco products as part of an ongoing effort to permanently ban cigarette sales and turn a new generation of young people against smoking. The groundbreaking law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, is thought to be the first time any nation in the world has enacted a measure that would increase the legal age to smoke every year until the entire population phases out. In 2023, tobacco cannot be sold to anyone younger than 14 years old. But...

A married couple from Largo who admitted entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot was sentenced to jail time Friday. Marilyn Fassell, 59, a nursing assistant who gained notoriety through a selfie she took while smoking a cigarette inside the building, was sentenced to 30 days and three years probation. Her husband Thomas Fassell, 68, a retired postal worker and Air Force veteran, was sentenced to seven days and two years probation. “There are lawful means available in a democracy to challenge actions you disagree with which don’t include a violent insurrection,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly...

Who doesn’t want to ... smoke while running?No athlete in the world matters anymore other than “Uncle Chen,” a mysterious marathon enigma who smokes while running. Chen has garnered a following on Chinese social media site Weibo, with various photos of him lighting up and running making the rounds on the site. Uncle Chen finished the Xin’anjiang Marathon in Jiande, China with a time of 3 hrs 28 mins, all while chain smoking an entire damn packet of cigarettes according to local reports. This is nothing new for him either, and lighting up before running is a part of his...

Cannabis users soon may be a majority among young adults in the District of Columbia and several pot-friendly states, a trend that points to a potential future of destigmatized marijuana across much of the nation. More than two-fifths of young men and women nationwide now use cannabis at least on occasion, according to federal data, a quotient that has risen steadily in a decade of relentless legalization. Much of the trend is driven by young women, who have all but closed a decades-long gender gap in marijuana use.

On the ropes and with no message about rising crime or the struggling economy to appeal to voters, President Joe Biden has gone to pot. Literally. The president’s election-eve marijuana decriminalization order has him yet again putting politics over people’s lives and health. In a shameless attempt to buy the votes of young people and lower-income minority communities, Mr. Biden is waving his pen around again to dig himself out of the political cellar. The American Left, and some on the Right, along with the Big Tobacco companies already responsible for millions of deaths from their products, have spent heavily...

New findings by the American Cancer Society (ACS) found cumulative economic losses from cigarette smoking topped $891 billion in 2020, or 4.3% of the United States Gross Domestic Product. The economic loss significantly outpaced the cigarette industry's $92 billion revenue by nearly a ten-to-one ratio. The study was published today in the journal The Lancet Public Health. This economic modeling study is one of the first to provide a comprehensive measure of economic loss from cigarette smoking on a state-by-state level. On average, states lost $1,100.00 per capita income annually from cigarette smoking. Kentucky ($1,674.00), West Virginia ($1,605.00) and Arkansas...