February 29, 2004

Conclusions-- A strong positive association was found between cigarette smoking and SAH, especially for aneurysmal SAH and women, which is virtually eliminated within a few years of smoking cessation. Large opportunities exist for preventing SAH through smoking avoidance and cessation programs.

"This is tobacco biology that has been taken out of Big Tobacco and put into health research," says Dr. William Sandborn, a nicotine researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

What began more than a decade ago as a smattering of small studies has become a major research effort involving the federal government, the tobacco industry, a half-dozen pharmaceutical companies and dozens of private researchers. Some experts predict that the first nicotine-based medicine may reach the market in a few years.

Nicotine's potential therapeutic value has been recognized for years, but the drug's connection to smoking has dissuaded many scientists from exploring the field, says Edward Levin, a behavioral pharmacologist and nicotine researcher at Duke University in Durham, N.C. Development of the nicotine patch, which the FDA approved for smoking cessation use in 1991, provided a way to test the effects of nicotine apart from smoking. "We could see there was a therapeutic use for nicotine," Levin says.

House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, RPlant City, is an ardent foe of higher taxes. But how does that mesh with the fact that a $100 million tax bill was recently approved by the House subcommittee on Trades, Professions and Regulated Businesses?

The bill (HB 405) would impose a 50cent-a-pack cigarette tax on a group of tobacco manufacturers that was not part of the state's original settlement with the industry in 1997. The state reached the multibillion settlement with the cigarette companies after filing a lawsuit alleging smoking was contributing to higher public-health costs in programs such as Medicaid.

The state's settlement was with the big-four tobacco companies . . .

The Senate sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, said she believes the bill can win support in her chamber because of the fairness argument as well as the fact that as the major tobacco companies' market share falls, it results in smaller annual settlement payments to the state.

Discount cigarette-makers showed their appreciation to state Rep. Julia Howard last year for helping block legislation that could cost them millions in payments to state escrow accounts.

Executives from several small tobacco companies pumped more than $17,000 into Howard's campaign coffers at a fund-raiser at the Piedmont Club in Winston-Salem in September. They also gave $22,000 to the campaign of Republican Co-Speaker Richard Morgan, who kept the House from acting on the bill they opposed.

But in what promises to be a hotly contested Republican primary, a fellow House member who plans to challenge Howard for her seat this year says that he will focus on her attempts to block the bill that would force the small cigarette-makers to pay up.

"What it's done is hurt the old-time tobacco companies that got us to where we are," said Rep. Frank Mitchell, R-Iredell, who says that he intends to run against Howard, R-Davie.

"She ought to have to explain to those RJR employees in Davie County why she did that to them.

In America's courtrooms, you lose even when you win, John Stossel told those attending The State Chamber's lawsuit reform symposium and luncheon on Thursday. . . .

The tobacco deal is probably the foulest, rankest scandal of all, said Stossel. Tobacco companies are as successful as ever, passing on their legal costs to their customers. The truth is, because smokers die sooner, and because they pay 50 cents a pack in taxes already, they are saving the state money every time they buy a pack, he said. The whole suit was a lie.

However, if such legislation finds its way into the Volunteer State, which is also home to nearly 15,000 tobacco farms, the numerous anti-smoking organizations that push for smoke-free ordinances likely would face a strong opposition against two powerful lobbying groups, the Tennessee Farm Bureau and the Tennessee Restaurant Association, organizations that helped defeat the recent bill in a state Senate committee.

But first, Cotten said, "a lot of us old-timers are going to have to die off." . . .

The defeat of the bill last week ensured that the only way Tennessee can become smoke-free in all workplaces would be for the legislature to approve it.

Janis Huddleston (behind sign) and Daniel Pickering hold up signs protesting smoking at Fiesta Mexicana Restaurant Thursday. About 50 protesters from Southwest Open High School, Youth 4 Change and Get R!eal filled the smoking section of the restaurant, ordered lunch and had a silent protest by holding up signs for about 20 seconds. "We showed up to encourage the restaurant to go smoke free," said Rebecca Weil, one of the organizers. "One restaurant in town refused to seat us. They lost out on about $500 worth of business."

The Bean and Leaf Cafe, adjoining Eagle Diner on Main Street, opened Jan. 1 — the same day Statesboro’s smoking ban went into effect.

The cafe hasn’t been packed with smokers, however, and floor manager Joel Williams said it may be because people don’t realize the establishment is smoker-friendly.

“I know for a fact that late night, we’re the only place for smokers,” Williams said. The Eagle Diner and Bean and Leaf Cafe are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The cafe retails tobacco and hookahs (tobacco water pipes), and patrons can order food from the Eagle Diner, which is under new management.

“Customers love it,” he said. “When they come in the door (of the Eagle Diner), we offer smoking or non-smoking.”

Many customers think that the entire county is a non-smoking area, he added.

For the Campbell County School District, Monday will be a red letter day. Literally.

March 1 is the day that visitors to the school district buildings will have to obey a sign posted in school parking lots, proclaiming USE OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS PROHIBITED ON SCHOOL PROPERTY in big red letters.

"I'm excited," said school district Trustee David Fall.

Fall, who is also a pediatrician, proposed last year that the district look into a policy like the one that was ultimately approved in September.

But one day after class let out at East Jefferson High in Metairie, he was in the schoolyard waiting for a ride and Principal James Kytle caught him smoking. Now, along with studying English, mathematics and science, Baehr is taking a class unique among New Orleans area schools, one that teaches the dangers of smoking and how to quit.

Tired of repeatedly suspending the same students for smoking, Kytle joined with the Jefferson Parish public school system's drug-free schools program and the Greater New Orleans Cancer Association to create the 10-session course. First-offenders are now referred to the class instead of being suspended.

"They were getting caught over and over again, and the punishment didn't seem to faze them," Kytle said. . . .

Led by Tammy Louk of the cancer association, the students talk about how much money the habit costs, the diseases it causes and marketing tactics of tobacco companies. They blow through straws to test the strength of their lungs, blow into a carbon monoxide monitor to measure the poisonous gas in their blood and examine a model of a diseased mouth. They also get tips on quitting.

Louk said it's the only class of its type in local schools, but she's trying to train teachers elsewhere in hopes the idea will spread.

The Hawks took to the mat without two seniors suspended from an incident which happened Friday night and ended up fourth, dropping its two final matches by lopsided scores.

Brett Rogers (38-4 at 145 pounds) and Landon VanCleve (6-12 at 215) were held out of the day's competition after getting caught smoking cigars Friday night in the parking lot at the team motel.

"It was hard on everybody," said Oregon coach Mark Gale. "I know I didn't sleep at all last night. The kids, they made a mistake, but they're really good kids. There's not anybody in the world that doesn't make mistakes, as long as we learn from our mistakes. . .


"Most coaches here would have done the same thing, but at the same time, he could have easily looked the other way. You can't do that. You can't look the other way. You have to tell the kids what's right, and that's what Coach Gale did."

Two stores and two service stations in Naperville have been cited under a city ordinance for allegedly failing to check identifications and then selling cigarettes to minors, police said.

Police earlier this month conducted "compliance checks at numerous businesses that currently hold tobacco licenses" issued by the city, Naperville police Sgt. Joel Truemper said in a written statement.

Although they are two grade levels apart and do not know each other, Vicente Nazario and Daniel Montelongo found a common passion -- their interest in the effects of smoking.

Both students presented their findings to several judges Saturday at the 2004 El Paso Times Sun Country Regional Science Fair.

Nazario, 12, chose to investigate whether smoking filters lessen the amount of tobacco in people's lungs as an attempt to deter his uncle from the habit. Montelongo, 15, took a more in-depth approach, studying how smoke from five major cigarette brands affected plants.

His study found that plants exposed to Marlboro and Camel cigarette smoke died quicker than plants exposed to any of the other brands' smoke.

The approximately 50 teens who gathered at West Virginia University at Parkersburg Saturday for the regional Raze-On event weren't fond of tobacco or reluctant to make their feelings known.

Students from Calhoun, Jackson, Pleasants, Ritchie, Roane, Wirt and Wood counties attended classes at the event, where they learned about the harmful effects of tobacco and how to pass that information along to others, said Gus Nelson, regional tobacco prevention specialist for Regional Education Service Agency V. This is the first year of the event, he said.

Creating commotions is what it's all about, said Rosie Dillon, 15, a sophomore at St. Marys High School. How to make "commotions" was one of the subjects teens learned about in classes taught by their peers.

The New England Area Health Service says New South Wales Health will take legal action against retailers who have clearly broken the law by selling tobacco to underage people.

Almost 20 retailers in the New England region have been reported for selling cigarettes to teenagers under the age of 18.

The tax increase proposal, passed after what observers called "spirited debate" in the committee, will go into effect on April 1.

The new tax brings the cost of a pack of cigarettes in Cook County to $5.63, including state, local, and federal taxes of $2.53. Finance Committee members had rejected two alternative tax increases proposed by County President John Stroger (D)--a quarter-percent increase in the general sales tax and a 4 percent business lease tax. . . .

Commissioner Carl Hansen of Mount Prospect, who voted against the cigarette tax increase, told the Daily Herald, a suburban newspaper, "commissioners would actually be contributing to crime by making bootleg sales of cigarettes attractive." Three people in New York, where cigarette taxes were hiked from eight cents to $1.50 a pack, were recently killed in disputes over black-market territory, he said.

A Saegertown man accused of stealing Skoal from his neighbor was jailed on burglary and theft charges.

Dana Reynolds, 19, was in the Crawford County Correctional Facility on $5,000 bond Saturday after state police accused him of taking two cans of Skoal chewing tobacco from a neighbor's house.

"Maryland is one of the states that are out in front in this type of investigation," said Jerry Bowerman, chief of the alcohol- and tobacco-smuggling division of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). "They have more of the proactive types of investigations."

By comparison, the District doesn't investigate cigarette-smuggling cases. And neither the chief prosecutor for the Delaware Attorney General's Office nor the top criminal investigator for the West Virginia Tax Department could recall a single cigarette-smuggling case in their jurisdictions in recent years.

Law-enforcement officials say higher cigarette taxes nationwide in the past 10 years have spawned a cigarette-smuggling racket that finances crime syndicates and terrorist groups.

Shanghai Industrial Holdings Ltd. (0363.HK) said late Friday that Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption's probe may involve three employees of its unit Nanyang Brothers Tobacco . . .

Local newspapers reported earlier Friday that ICAC has arrested an executive with Shanghai Industrial on suspicion of smuggling cigarettes into mainland China.

The corruption watchdog said in a statement Thursday that it had arrested 20 people, including a senior tobacco executive . . .

Shanghai Industrial is the commercial investment arm of the Shanghai city government.

Last November, China, which will be host to a race in September, signed the World Health Organization's antitobacco advertising Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Last month, less than three months before its inaugural race, Bahrain's track and facilities were so behind the construction schedule that the promoter called on a Formula One insider to ensure that the work is done.

In the last year, the antitobacco movement has focused on Formula One as 12 of its 16 countries — and potential future sites like India and Mexico — have signed the W.H.O. convention. . . .

The sport collects an estimated $350 million in tobacco money each season. But only 5 of the 10 teams still have tobacco sponsors. Tobacco is only part of a deeper problem.

Formula One is still struggling with its transformation from a spectator sport to one built for a television audience

Portage Police officers roused residents from their sleep early Saturday as a fire caused by a discarded cigarette blazed through an apartment complex here.

Three units at Breckinridge Apartments complex near Lute Road were damaged with fire and 12 more were damaged by smoke and heat, fire officials said.

Officials said the smoker, whom they didn't identify, suffered a very minor burn to the hand and some mild discomfort from smoke inhalation. She lost two cats in the fire, other residents said.

Smoking in bed appears to the cause of a Saturday night house fire in North Central Austin.

The fire started just after 7:30 p.m. on West Crestland Drive.

Two people inside the house were sent to Brackenridge Hospital for observation. One of them was injured trying to fight the fire. Their injuries are not life threatening.

Fire destroyed the inside of a home in the 1000 block of Rose Ann Street in Opelousas on Friday.

No one was home at the time of the blaze. Pepita Nelson, who lived in the house with her three children, had gone to a doctor's appointment. . .

The cause of the blaze was ruled accidental.

"It was either a discarded or unattended smoking material," Cahanin said.

Nelson rented from Carolyn Fa-kouri of Opelousas

A Blantyre-based man Macloud Mhango emerged winner of the just ended Embassy Kings Red Pack promotion at a draw conducted Friday night at Las Vegas in Lilongwe.

Organisers of the promotion said the vehicle, a brand new Toyota worth K3 million, will be presented to him at a special function yet to be organised.

“The first prize of the competition goes to Macloud Mhango, 28, of Box 14, Soche, Blantyre,” announced master of ceremonies Frank Kandu to a cheering crowd after Tobacco Control Commission general manager Godfrey Chapola picked the lucky ticket out of more than 10,000 entries. . . .

BAT Malawi brands and research executive Tionge Newa said in an earlier interview the promotion has been successful because the company has been able to meet its goals.

“We have seen an increase in the number of Embassy Kings sales

"The promotion of food processing goes hand in hand with contract farming," horticulture secretary Anil Swaroop said at the opening of a four-day India Food Expo-2004 here. . . .

A seminar is also being organised at the meet by the Indian Industries Association (IIA), which would disseminate relevant information to prospective investors in this area.

Among the large companies to show keen interest in this event are the Indian Tobacco Company (ITC),

Formula One is so dependent on the money from cigarette makers that even a top team like Ferrari would struggle without it, says Bernie Ecclestone.

"If we lose tobacco sponsorship in Formula One there will be a rupture," the motor racing series' supremo told Sunday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

"People don't realise how bad it would be." . . .

Ecclestone said Italy's world champions Ferrari would not be as competitive if they were to lose tobacco money.

"Then they would have to give up their wind tunnel or one of their test tracks and they would be on the same level as a team like BAR. And then there could be Ferrari executives who would rather quit than start losing."

the total amount of foreign investment made in Iran's economy over a period of five months starting March 21 reached as much as $36 million . . .

The daily quoted a report by Iran's Center for Analyzing News on Privatization as saying that foreign investors had invested over $650 million in the said fields. . . . The center further said the British American Tobacco (BAT) has invested $34 million for producing cigarettes in Tehran over the same period.

Last five days of the past week turned out to be days of historical peaks for Blagoevgrad BT, whose shares have been setting records during every new session of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE).

Price of Blagoevgrad BT shares gradually reached BGN 95.50 for a share on Friday; average price rose with 3.49% to BGN 91.94. Another blue chip from the Bulgartabac Holding system – Sofia BT, reached BGN 107 for a share.

Shares of Bulgartabac Holding closed at 0.70% higher prices compared to Thursday’s session

During the past half-dozen years, tobacco production has been steadily retreating from its once-lofty position in the Person County economy.

Quota cuts resulting in production cuts and reductions in total farm income have seen to that decline. It's a decline that may not be over, as a continuing drop in exports of United States-grown, flue-cured tobacco continues.

Against that backdrop, a couple of key questions were put this week to Derek Day, Director of the Person County Cooperative Extension Service.

Could it be that production of tobacco could disappear totally from the Person County farm scene?

"I don't think so

Cigarette stings are a good way to enforce the law and, at the same time, deliver a message to tobacco retailers . . . .

All things considered, however, we believe that most of the credit for the improved numbers should go to the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Agency. It is the principal force in the state for both enforcement and education aimed at young people. . . .

The anti-tobacco agency gets its funding from Indiana's share of the 1998 tobacco settlement. Last year the General Assembly snatched away two-thirds of that money in its effort to balance the state budget. . . .

The General Assembly should be mindful of these facts in the future when it makes plans for spending tobacco settlement money.

A GROUP of students voluntarily went on a lobbying trip to Nashville last week and found themselves being dragged into an uncomfortable but edifying closeup look at the legislative process. . . .

The teenagers were there to support a bill sponsored by Sen. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, that would repeal a 1994 Tennessee law that took away the authority of city and county governments to regulate use of tobacco products in privately owned businesses. . . .

"I've never seen a legislative tactic used like that where, especially, children were picked out of the audience to have the spotlight put on them and to ask them questions in that manner," she said. "They had been in town for about 10 minutes." . . .

Tennessee also has failed to devote any of the funds it receives from a multimillion-dollar settlement with tobacco companies for smoking cessation, smoking prevention or other health-related programs . . .

A phalanx of special interests in Nashville and the legislators who answer to them are doing their best to keep things just as they are in the state. As their antics showed in Nashville last week, they aren't above exploiting unsuspecting high school kids to get their way.

Gov. Bob Wise has proposed selling bonds against the future tobacco settlement payments, which would garner the state approximately $600 million in up-front funds. Investors would essentially be purchasing West Virginia's future payments.

What makes this proposal particularly attractive is the potential to pay off a significant chunk of our state's pension debt, which totals more than $5 billion. Gov. Wise has suggested using the money to pay off the unfunded liabilities of the state judicial and State Police pension plans.

However, I am particularly concerned about the strain the debt of the Teachers Retirement System places on the state's budget. . . .

by paying down the state's retirement plan debt more quickly, the state could save money during the next few years by lowering its annual allocation to those funds.
- - - Contact House Speaker Kiss, D-Raleigh

Here's a prediction: One day soon, someone who works for an Alabama restaurant will develop lung cancer and sue his or her employer for exposing them for years to secondhand smoke.

Because of increasing evidence of the impact of secondhand smoke on health, they'll win. And because Alabama is known for huge lawsuit verdicts, they'll win big. . .

In the end, an outright smoking ban is the only effective protection for workers. Montgomerians should not let the City Council persuade them that anything less is progress. If council members try to sell that line, they're just blowing smoke.

Dig into the origins of the phrase "sound science" as a slogan in policy disputes, and its double meaning becomes clearer. That use of the term goes back to a campaign waged by the tobacco industry to undermine the indisputable connection between smoking and disease. Industry documents released as a result of tobacco litigation show that in 1993 Philip Morris and its public relations firm, APCO Associates, created a nonprofit front group called The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) to fight against the regulation of cigarettes. To mask its true purpose, TASSC assembled a range of anti-regulatory interests under one umbrella. The group also challenged the now widely accepted notion that secondhand smoke poses health risks.

Since then, other industry groups have invoked "sound science" to ease government restrictions. . . .

President Bush isn't claiming that cigarettes are safe. But if you switch from examining rhetoric to analyzing policy, it turns out that he's treating science in much the same way that tobacco companies did -- as a means of justifying predetermined political conclusions. In a statement this month by the Union of Concerned Scientists, more than 60 scientific luminaries -- including leading policymakers from previous administrations and 20 Nobel laureates -- charge that Bush has "systematically" undermined the role traditionally played by scientific information in presidential policymaking. [This graph only]

THE Bakelite tinkles. It is a trunk call from Lyons in Cuba, where he is on assignment at the sixth Havana Cigar Festival. Sadly, his hopes of chugging on a cohiba with Fidel Castro came to nought, but he happily settled for the next best thing in the form of his son, Fidel Jnr, at the Floridita Churchill dinner in the Hotel Nacional on Havanas Malecon.
. . .

Earlier in the week, Lyons caught up with Her Majestys Ambassador in Cuba at a reception held in his official residence in Havana. To the dulcet tunes of the Boisdale Blue Rhythm Orchestra, diplomats, restaurateurs and tobacco executives mingled in the evening heat of the ambassadors garden.

"Havana is like no other place on earth," said Des Gunewardena, chief executive of the London-based Conran group which own Edinburghs Zinc Bar. "I play tennis at eight, have breakfast at nine, have my first Havana cigar at ten and my first Havana club at 11."

Despite pushes for nearly three decades by the military's top brass to weaken the historic link between troops and tobacco, it remains a persistent part of armed forces culture. Cigar and pipe smoking, in particular, have increased dramatically.

Military officials have tried to strike a balance between 1.4-million service members' right to buy legal products and keeping them in the best possible physical shape.

While military smoking rates generally mirror the decline among civilian adults, they remain higher. Some lawmakers and military officials are alarmed and aim, at least on paper, to prevent a repeat of what happened during World War II, when "an entire generation" became "hooked . . . into nicotine addiction," . . .

The Defense Department survey noted a "sharp increase" or "strong resurgence" in cigar and pipe smoking, rising from 18.7 percent in 1995 to 32.6 percent in 1998. "This trend should be addressed and monitored. . . ," the survey said.

Nineteen percent of military men 24 years old and younger used smokeless products such as chewing tobacco and snuff in the month before being surveyed - far higher than the government's goal of 4 percent. . . .

And just this month, officials at U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa contacted reporters to express gratitude about a large donation of cigars to service members.

For more than 25 years, Tim Barnwell has been keeping a close eye on the people and topography of Southern Appalachia, a region of family farms and tobacco fields, rolling hills giving way to steep mountain passes and communities that have, in their relative isolation, developed a distinctive way of life. Equipped with a 4-by-5 camera, Barnwell, who was himself raised in the area, combed the back roads of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee to find its tobacco farmers, quilt makers, ballad singers and molasses brewers not only to photograph but also to gather testimonies on a way of life that has been slow to change over the years. . . .

More than a volume of photographs, ''The Face of Appalachia'' is a notable work of anthropology.

Geraldine Mae Ramsey, 76 years old, born 9/23/27, passed away peacefully in her sleep of complications of lung cancer on 1/12/04 at 11:30 p.m. . . .

We were all heartbroken in losing our mom-sister-grandmother-great grandmother to lung cancer. It's amazing all the people that are effected by the one decision of smoking cigarettes. Be compassionate to your family. Don't let them see you die such an agonizing death. Quit smoking.

"Mafia" has all the makings of a digitized version of "Scarface." You follow the rise of chain-smoking cab driver Tommy Angelo through the violent ranks of organized crime in the fictional city of Lost Heaven. . . .

"Mafia" is rated M for gamers 17 years and older. It rates two stars out of four.

Not just any old ciggies either. He puffed on Gauloises, and to us, again because we didnt know any better, smoking always seemed painful, especially for him, given the faces he pulled. "He enjoyed every single one," said my sister yesterday.

Russell, who died of lung cancer on Thursday at the age of 79, was a theatrical smoker, a theatrical everything, and every summer during the 1970s and 1980s he turned our house into a theatre. . . .

Russell had a long career - 60 years - and a long Fringe career. He starred in the very first one in 1947, established overnight by a radical troupe who decided the main event was too conservative: there werent enough of them in it. And he starred in the most recent, in last years hot ticket 12 Angry Men.

"We Shall Overcome" seems to have first been sung by striking tobacco workers in Charleston, S.C., in 1945. In the 1960s, the song became the all-but-official anthem of the civil rights movement.

Its first separate publication gives credit of authorship to, among others, Silphia Horton of the Highlander Folk School, who learned the song from the tobacco workers

Outgoing Premier Jim Bacon says his plea to Tasmanians not to smoke has reached some people. . . .


"I've had lots of interesting letters from people about their experiences with smoking," he said.

"I've been enormously touched about the number of people who've given up because of what I've said.