Doctors point to three reasons why gutka, a blend of tobacco and spices, brings on cancer much faster than cigarettes or paan, a 400-year-old tobacco product hand-rolled in betel leaves. Both tobacco and areca nut play a role, say Babu Mathew, a dental surgeon who headed the Trivandrum Oral Cancer Screening project, and Pankaj Chaturvedi, who works at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, Asia’s largest cancer treatment center.
Ream more »
Mississippi lawmakers, past and present, should be ashamed of the way they have violated what was supposed to be an “inviolate” trust fund. Gov. Haley Barbour and, to a lesser extent, his predecessor Ronnie Musgrove can share some of the shame, too. We are referring to the tobacco suit settlement money won for the state in the late 1990s by then-Attorney General Mike Moore and a cadre of private attorneys led by the now imprisoned Dick Scruggs.
Ream more »
The People Against Tobacco Foundation announced today that it has concluded negotiations with four tobacco manufacturers to settle healthcare and smuggling claims of the foundation’s international membership. Read more
Tobacco has even been cause for wars. In the early 1900′s the American Tobacco Association or ATC had a monopoly over tobacco prices. In areas near Hopkinsville, many farmers weren’t making profit from the low fixed price offered from the ATC. When the Dark Tobacco District Planters’ Protective Association failed to protect farmers, vigilantes took up the burden. Men called the “night riders” sewed salt in tobacco fields, whipped farmers, and dynamited tobacco warehouses in Elkton, Kentucky. Finally, tobacco prices went up and farmers could make a profit. Read more
Cigarette maker, British American Tobacco (BAT), will on Monday afternoon know its fate as the control board meets to determine what action to take on the firm over a crop insurance policy that the State agency says is illegal. Read more
Colin Yarmie pulls the little spout from its water-filled growing tray and gestures toward the thousands of other tobacco plants crammed into two steamy greenhouses on his family farm. By the end of May, Mr. Yarmie says, all will be planted in nearby fields, filling 90 acres (36.4 hectares) with Canada’s most controversial cash crop. Read more
I have never taken even one puff of a cigarette, which is how I’ve always known that smoking is cool. However, my faith in that assumption is weakened every time I walk by an office building. All those people shivering outside in their little smoking leper colony replaces the James Dean-era image of motorcycle freedom with one of Henry Ford-era dirty workers taking their elevenses with bourbon from the factory store. Read more
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) earlier this week published a Notice of Proposed Rule to implement the provisions of the PACT Act, which prohibits the mailing of cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco, according to a report by the National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO). Read more
Tobacco in some form has been around for eons. Read more
A local farmer, who was scrambling to make up a portion of his income lost when Phillip Morris International announced late last year that it would no longer buy from Lenoir County farmers, has found other sources and is now hard at work transplanting this year’s crop. Read more