Tobacco News

Cigarette packs are unlikely to carry graphic warning labels in the near future as a result of certain actions of the Supreme Court and the Food and Drug Administration. This is a setback, though perhaps temporarily, for the campaign of the federal government to reduce the damage to health caused by this very dangerous product. A positive feature is that the Supreme Court left intact most of the forces of the FDA’s regulation of the industry. Read more

A Maryland Biotechnology Company is pushing for state expands eligibility to a pool of money from tobacco companies that funds health programs and anti-smoking programs. Read more

The product range is available as a safer alternative of cigarettes. Read more

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.
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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.
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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