Issue #777

“When it comes to idiots, America’s got more than its fair share.
If idiots were energy, it would be a source that would never run out.”
– Lewis Black

MA: Westminster.?”By Any Rational Means.” The Westminster, Mass., Board of Health is proposing to ban the sale of all tobacco products and electronic nicotine delivering devices including electronic cigarettes, reported the National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO).

NY: A Smoker’s Guide To NYC.?Thought you’d like to hear how even with Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-smoking regime smokers are catered for quite adequately.

NY: NYC Proposes to Include E-Cigarettes in Flavor Ban.?Interestingly, the proposed measure applies to any “electronic device that delivers vapor for inhalation.” So the law would apply, not just to vapor products containing nicotine, but to any product that allows the user to inhale vapor, even if those products do not have nicotine.

USA: Brad Rodu.?Federal Survey Data on Tobacco: It’s Not About The Children. I have documented for several years a nonstop decline in smoking rates among American teens. Rates of smoking and use of other tobacco products among teens are so low that they no longer provide a valid basis for the draconian anti-tobacco policy prescriptions favored by the FDA and CDC.

USA: Tobacco Industry.?Why Big Tobacco keeps demolishing the FDA in federal court. Since 2009, the cigarette industry has won three major challenges to make their products more accessible to kids.

Australia: Violence over jail ban.?The Queensland Law Society is calling for a review into the ban on smoking in prisons in response to reports that it sparked an increase in assaults on prison guards. President Ian Brown says the ban was ill-considered, and has had dire consequences.

Hong Kong: Casinos.?Smoking ban from this month seen further denting revenues. Up to 300 dealers at the flagship casino of MGM China Holdings Ltd, a unit of U.S.-based MGM Resorts International, took collective sick leave at noon on Friday.

Russia: International Conference on Smokers’ Rights.?The event attended by delegates from 21 countries: Australia, Belarus, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Latvia, Moldova, Nicaragua, Peru, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Finland, Croatia, Switzerland and Estonia, – the territory of which in the aggregate are more than 250 million smokers.

UK: David Hockney.?Tobacco killjoys are less healthy than the smokers they ban. Spiteful restrictions mean any place meant for pleasure is now off-limits. So the mean-spirited are at it again. I’ll repeat: the mean spirited and the utterly humourless are at it again…

UK: Man has fine increased…?for dropping cigarette outside burger van. A man fined seventy five pounds for throwing a cigarette on the floor outside his burger van in Stafford town centre must now pay more than four hundred and fifty pounds.

Zimbabwe: 4 tobacco farmers commit suicide…?because they could not pay their debts to a Chinese contracting company, Tian Ze Tobacco. The company unilaterally imposed prices – forcing farmers to accept what they were offered. This put them in a vulnerable position and most failed to pay. The money owed accrued annually and quickly reached unmanageable levels, following which the company would attach property.