Tobacco News

The Foodtown and Woolworths supermarket chains will remove the words “light” and “mild” from cigarette adverts on their online shopping websites, after the Herald told them of an official warning against using the “potentially misleading” terms.

The Commerce Commission in 2008 issued a public warning to New Zealand’s three main tobacco companies over “light” and “mild” on tobacco packaging, saying the terms may mislead consumers and therefore risked breaching the Fair Trading Act.

The commission said consumers may believe they were exposing themselves to less harm by smoking those cigarettes, but there was “no such thing as a safe, or safer, cigarette”.
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Smokeless tobacco’s adverse effects are not just limited to the mouth, it can also damage the normal function of a key family of enzymes found in almost every organ in the body, according to a new research. Read more

Electronic cigarettes have been on the market in the United States since 2006, but it has only been recently that the green aspects of the products have been brought to the attention of the masses. People have long associated traditional cigarettes with litter and unpleasant waste, but e cigarettes are quickly distancing themselves from that.

“Electronic cigarettes create much less waste than traditional cigarettes do,” says William Ellis of E Cigarette Junction. “Whether you’re measuring the amount of packaging that is wasted or how each pack of cigarettes is almost being replaced by a single refill cartridge, the numbers are staggering. Trillions of cigarette butts are thrown away every year, but if we can replace every 20 cigarettes with 1 cartridge, can you imagine the environmental benefit?”
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You probably can’t even pronounce it, but you’ve likely encountered this international item in one form or another. It’s slender, social and picking up steam – literally. It’s the narghile, more commonly referred to as hookah, and this national trend is hot in Chicago. According to the Chicago Hookah Review website, an outlet that promises to be the most extensive list of hookah establishments in Chicago – 30 businesses thrive in the city alone. The intercontinental import is especially popular in college towns, noted Dr. Jon Ebbert, associate director of the Medicine Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
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The tobacco giant’s private cops are going to new lengths to stop contraband smokes. On a clear February morning, a team of inspectors marches into the Subrina Mini Mart in the working-class Queens (N.Y.) neighborhood of Woodhaven. The shelves are stacked with instant noodles, Lysol, canned beans, and, of course, cigarettes. The clerk looks nervous.The inspectors, employees of a private-investigation firm hired by tobacco giant Altria (MO), are searching for counterfeit packs of Marlboros and any that have slipped past New York tax authorities.Three times over the past year this store allegedly sold fake smokes to an undercover agent employed by the Richmond (Va.)-based manufacturer. Altria sued the Mini Mart, one of 35 such suits it has filed in the past 10 months in New York and New Jersey. A federal judge in Brooklyn issued an order allowing the company to inspect the Woodhaven store and a number of others in the area. Read more

Let your family and friends know that you are trying to quit smoking as it can help you achieve success, revealed a recent study. We talk to a few smokers, healthcare experts and chemists to know if it’s true and the latest products available off-the-shelf that stave off smoking. In your department there would be at least two smokers, minimum of seven on your floor and in your office … far too many to even count. And what about your neighbourhood? And if at home there is someone who smokes, your life is surely up in smoke! Read more

Barbara Izzarelli was in her early teens in the 1970s when she began smoking Salem cigarettes. She was soon hooked by the nicotine. She smoked heavily every day — all day – for more than 20 years.In 1996, at age 36, she developed larynx cancer. The following year she underwent a total laryngectomy. That was followed by radiation and chemotherapy treatments. The Norwich woman can no longer breathe through her mouth or nose; she uses a tube in her throat. Her diet consists of soft foods like pudding and mashed potatoes.Last week, she became a footnote in legal history. A federal jury in Bridgeport awarded her $8 million this week in what is believed to be the first successful product liability lawsuit in Connecticut by an individual plaintiff against a tobacco company. Read more

Swedish Match North America, maker of moist snuff, cigars and chewing tobacco, is taking a different approach to marketing its Swedish-style snus tobacco product when compared to two other U.S. tobacco companies offering the product, according to a report by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.Swedish Match marketers began a sampling effort in Vail, Colo., and now are handing out silvery sample packs of General Snus on Wall Street — a sign that the product will be positioned as a high-end item, the report stated.”We are emphasizing the Swedish cachet,” Richard Flaherty, president of Swedish Match North America, told the paper when asked about the sampling push.In addition, Swedish Match’s General brand is more expensive than either the Marlboro brand by Altria Group’s Philip Morris unit, or Reynolds American’s Camel brand. Read more

Coffee & cigarettes: It may not be the Breakfast Of Champions but for all too many it’s the breakfast of convenience. So common is this nutritionist’s nightmare its a wonder the two haven’t been packaged together and sold as a set. Well wonder no more: the “killer combo” has been offered in Japan for some time now.The set pictured at this article’s lead features a can of Georgia Black coffee (quite tasty, as Japanese canned coffees go) along with two packs of Marlboro Ice Mint menthol cigarettes for 640 yen, or about $6.85… you gotta love the “AM/PM” logo. Read more

President-apparent Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III of the Liberal Party said yesterday he would no longer debate about his smoking habit with groups seeking to make him an anti-smoking poster boy.And he isn’t quitting either – at least not at this time.Aquino bared that he could finish a pack a day, and the most that he did was three packs due to tension during the snap elections in 1985.Aquino pointed out that he ran and won with the people knowing that he was a smoker. His brand is Marlboro Lights menthol. Read more