Tobacco News

It’s fascinating to watch the political dance around tobacco. Politicians tell us all about the evils of smoking tobacco and offer very public displays to curb people of the habit. But at the same time, they sit back and rake in the taxes drawn from people buying the legal product. In recent years, we have seen greater restrictions on where people can smoke and how vendors can display and sell tobacco products.
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The Winchester Planning Commission will hold a public hearing Tuesday on whether to insert a zoning definition in the city code that could pave the way for the first local hookah bar.

Planners discussed the issue during a recent work session after Zoning and Inspections Administrator Vincent P. Diem described the proposal and presented a draft ordinance for their consideration.
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Tshwane metro police seized thousands of boxes of illegal cigarettes on Monday when they stopped a taxi thought to be unroadworthy.

The boxes were stashed behind door and roof panels as well as in compartments underneath the vehicle.

The officers discovered the illicit nicotine stashed by accident when they loaded the taxi to be towed away.
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A newly designed, high-tech stamp will soon appear on cigarette packs sold in California to help fight counterfeiting, State Board of Equalization officials announced.
BOE chairwoman Betty T. Yee said the new tax stamps will help reduce the trafficking of counterfeit cigarettes and related excise tax evasion statewide.
The BOE is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the tax stamp program. Ream more »

Officials in Boulder believe there could be dozens of businesses that grow or sell medical marijuana illegally in the city, and they are now taking steps to locate and shutter them.

But the biggest stumbling block is that no one is sure just how widespread the problem is.

Tuesday night, the Boulder City Council will hear a progress report on efforts to enforce a set of new laws the leaders approved last May to regulate the blossoming medical marijuana industry.
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Last November, Mercy Tiffin Hospital promoted the Great American Smokeout with a press release in which some alarming statistics were listed: Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Tobacco use causes cancer, heart disease, chronic bronchitis, asthma and emphysema. Each year, an estimated 438,000 Americans die as a result of smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke.
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Quitting smoking ranks as one of the nation’s top New Year’s resolutions, among 12 self-improvement goals that are popular year after year.
In a quest to quit tobacco, some smokers are replacing cartons of cigarettes with cartridges of nicotine, used in electronic cigarettes. E-cigarettes are odorless, cigarette-sized, battery-powered tubes that release liquid nicotine as a vapor.
Cary Lee, a longtime smoker and owner of The Electronic Cigarette Store, with kiosks in the Fashion Square and Bay City malls, sells the product to people who are trying to quit smoking. Ream more »

Federal Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan has held that the New York City Health Department cannot adopt a rule which would require that gruesome photographs of smokers suffering from various forms of cancer be placed beside cash registers in more than 11,000 bodegas and convenience stores in the city. “Even merchants of morbidity are entitled to the full protection of the law, for our sake as well as theirs,” the judge ruled — although he agreed with the harm of tobacco, noting, “Within New York City, roughly 7,500 people die from smoking annually — more than from AIDS, homicide and suicide combined.”
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With our state now dead last in how much we tax tobacco products, it seems ridiculous to have to write this editorial.
It should already be clear that the tax rate is outrageously low. It should already be clear that state lawmakers need to act. It should already be clear that the benefits from increasing this tax far outweigh any perceived detriments.
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Archeologists at Jamestown have unearthed a trove of tobacco pipes personalized for a who’s who of early 17th century colonial and British elites, underscoring the importance of tobacco to North America’s first permanent English settlement.
The white clay pipes — actually, castoffs likely rejected during manufacturing — were crafted between 1608 and 1610 and bear the names of English politicians, social leaders, explorers, officers of the Virginia Company that financed the settlement and governors of the Virginia colony. Archeologists also found equipment used to make the pipes. Ream more »