Free Republic

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Raising Kentucky’s cigarette tax by $1 a pack has strong support from voters across the state, according to a poll released Thursday and funded by anti-smoking interests. In all, 69 percent of those surveyed in December said they favor higher per-pack taxes in an effort to reduce smoking and spend the extra revenue on state budget needs. A majority of residents in all parts of Kentucky back a tax increase, which advocates estimate will generate more than $266 million per year. The support ranges from 61 percent of residents in western Kentucky to 77 percent in...

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...

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...

The tobacco industry is sharply raising spending on advertisements and other marketing for electronic cigarettes to try to make smoking glamorous again and hook a new generation of Americans on nicotine. If adults choose to “vape” — inhale nicotine-laced vapor from battery-powered e-cigarettes — then they should be free to do so. ~snip Public health authorities are especially worried about such ads’ effect on teens. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that from 2011 to 2012, the percentage of high school students who have tried e-cigarettes more than doubled to 10 percent. “It is frankly appalling,” said...

Citing the Heath and Human Services website, a report posted Wednesday at the Freedom Outpost says that under Obamacare, government agents can engage in "home health visits" for those in certain “high-risk” categories. Those categories include: • Families where mom is not yet 21; • Families where someone is a tobacco user; • Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities, and • Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.

We're making great progress, but there's still much work to be done. So if you've contacted your elected official, thank you, but please continue to make your voice heard. And if you haven't, we greatly need your help to protect the future of premium handmade cigars. It's easy to sit back and imagine that this problem will fix itself, or that enough others will act and your single support is unnecessary. But the truth is, this battle is far from over. The threats are real and the potential outcome is frightening. Cigars, premium cigars, the which you regularly enjoy are...

Even brief exposure to tobacco smoke — from, say, an occasional puff or secondhand smoke — can damage DNA in ways that lead to cancer, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s first new report on tobacco in four years. “Tobacco smoke damages almost every organ in your body,” surgeon general Regina Benjamin said in the report released Thursday. In someone with underlying heart disease, Benjamin said, “One cigarette can cause a heart attack.” One in five deaths nationwide is attributed to cigarettes, according to the report — about the same percentage of adults and older teens who smoke. The 700-page...

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Fourteen people have been charged with illegally purchasing 77 million contraband cigarettes from undercover agents in Virginia and smuggling the cigarettes to New York. Two are also accused of paying an agent posing as a hit man to kill a husband and wife whom they believed had stolen from them. The indictments handed up Thursday in federal court in Alexandria are the culmination of a yearlong investigation. Authorities say the smuggling ring paid $8 million plus guns and drugs to the undercover agents for the cigarettes. Cigarette smuggling has increased in recent years as high taxes...

Poll: Two-thirds of Wyoming voters support statewide smoking ban CHEYENNE, Wyo. - A statewide poll shows that two-thirds of Wyoming voters support a ban on smoking in public places, including restaurants and bars. The poll, commissioned by the American Cancer Society in Wyoming and other health organizations, also found that 74 percent of registered voters believe the right of customers and employees to breathe clean air outweighs smokers' right to light up indoors. "It shows that the people of Wyoming would absolutely support a smoke-free Wyoming," said Loretta Wolf, spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society in Wyoming. The American Cancer...

WASHINGTON — Chief movie lobbyist Jack Valenti defended smoking in Hollywood films, but senators insisted the industry must do more to stop the practice. "I don't believe that whatever the director does ought to incite the intervention of the government in any form," Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing yesterday. "I've got to tell you I believe it is his right to tell the story as he chooses to tell it." Some lawmakers were dissatisfied by his answers. A study last year found that teens who watch movies with smoking in...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Attorneys general from 24 states are asking the film industry to reduce the amount of smoking in films to prevent teens from taking up the habit. In a letter Tuesday, the attorneys cited a June study from Dartmouth Medical School that said children who watch movies in which actors smoke heavily are three times more likely to smoke themselves than those exposed to less smoking on-screen. The letter to Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti did not offer any specific steps. "We're not saying any law has been broken," said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman...

Rocky Mountain News In Pueblo, ix-nay on the ashtray But smoking ban in eateries, taverns has some doing slow burn By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News January 2, 2003 On the first day of Pueblo's smoking ban in bars and restaurants, tavern co-owner Williams Brooks told a customer his lit cigarette was against the law. "He took his cigarette and threw it on the new carpet I just paid $3,800 to install," Brooks said. "I said, 'Please pick up your cigarette.' " Then? "He continued to smoke it," said Brooks, co-owner of the Oxford Bar and Grill in downtown Pueblo....

Cannabis poses a greater threat to health than tobacco, lung experts have warned. The warning comes on the day that Home Secretary David Blunkett is due to make a Commons statement about the future of government drug policy. Many young people are simply not aware that smoking cannabis may put them at increased risk of respiratory cancers and infections . Dame Helena Shovelton: The Home Affairs Select Committee has recommended that cannabis is downgraded from a class B drug to class C. This would mean that possession would lead to a caution, rather than arrest. The British Lung Foundation is...