If I were a smoker, I’d be feeling pretty guilty every time a chunk of ice in the Antartica melts and breaks off. Puffing on a cigarette is not that much different from driving a car–both emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

So how about smoking a battery-operated zero-emission electronic cigarette instead? The cigarette works like a mini-shisha. There are five flavors to choose from, but unlike a shisha which does not provide nicotine (as far as I’m aware), the Green Smoke Electronic Cigarette does give smokers the nicotine that they are used to.

I’m thinking they probably shouldn’t make it look exactly like a normal cigarette, though. You could be puffing away on this e-cigarette, doing your part for the environment, and yet because it looks so similar to a normal cigarette, passersby still give you the evil eye.

Fermentation is the process by which wine is made. Wine is generally 9- to 16-percent alcohol and made from grapes. Brewing is the process by which beer is made. Beer is generally 3- to 9-percent alcohol and made from grain.

Since sake is brewed and made from rice but has 12- to 16-percent alcohol, is it a beer or a wine? The United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had the problem of answering this question, and they decided to create “Category 6 — wine from other agricultural products” to help define sake.

Although we commonly associate sake with Japan, its roots lie in China, and it dates back to 4800 BC. Rice was not cultivated in Japan until 4,600 years later.

The confusion about sake for most of us is about how to serve it. Should it be hot, warm or cold? The answer to this is simple — drink it the way you like it.

It is not uncommon to serve chilled sake during the hot months and hot sake during the cold months. Just like any other beverage, sake’s traits are covered with heat or cold.

To experience the true aromas and flavors of the beverage, drink it at room temperature. The reason for serving hot sake in the first place was to cover up undesirable traits of poorly made offerings. If you see sake labeled as Namazake, it is non-pasteurized and meant to be served chilled.

Just like fine wine, the more you know about the terms used on a label, the better choices you can make. Sake can be sweet or dry, clear or cloudy, traditionally aged or shipped green, and it is broken down into different quality categories. All this information is available to those that know how to read the label.

Some of the more common sake terms let us know about the preparation of the rice prior to creating the libation.

The word “honjozo” tells us that the rice has been polished down more than 30 percent. “Ginjo” is polished down between 40 to 50 percent. “Daijinjo” is polished 50 to 65 percent.

A fourth classification is “junmai.” Until 2004, junmai designated 40 percent polishing, but its meaning has been changed by a Japanese mandate. The term now refers to any sake that has been polished to any degree and has no added alcohol or other additives.

Adding a small amount of alcohol to sake is not intended to increase the strength of the libation but rather to enhance the flavor. A bottle marked ginjo would imply that alcohol has been added to the brew. A bottle marked “junmai ginjo” would tell us that alcohol has not been added.

Sake is best if it is consumed young when it is fresh and flavorful. Older sake’ will exhibit tired and flat qualities. Once a bottle is opened, it is best to consume it within a few hours. Sake starts to oxidize the second the bottle is opened.

If you are not going to consume the full bottle, it will last in the refrigerator for a few days. To make sure that the sake will maintain its best structure, be sure to seal the bottle with a vacuum pump as quickly as possible.

There are some very nice sake offerings that can be found on the shelves of better wine shops that come in 330-milliliter bottles. They are the perfect size for two to four servings.

The Kanbara Junmai Ginjo Bride of the Fox is a nice example of a sake that has a nice acidity and floral traits. The rice kernels have been polished down 40 percent to take off the outer layers of rice that contain fats, proteins and amino acids. You will notice that sake of this level does not have the harsh undesirable traits that cheap, low-level sake has.

For a sake that is richer with less citrus and floral in its character, try the Mantensei Junmai Ginjo Star Filled Sky Sake. Just like there are different grape varietals used in creating wine, there are different rice varietals used in creating sake. The Star Filled Sky uses yamada nishiki and tamasakae rice in its blend.

One of the best sake that I have ever had the pleasure of tasting is the Fukucho Junmai Ginjo Moon on the Water Sake. It is lighter than most sake and exhibits a variety of floral traits that is rarely found in any sake.

We have just touched on the complexities that are sake. There is much more that needs to be explained and experienced to get the true joy from this great category of libation. Look for better sake and begin to experience the differences from the mass-produced common offerings to the much better artisan-produced offerings.

RJ Reynolds has been making lemonade. After years of lawsuits and regulations, they’ve been finding new ways to circumvent the new smoking laws. Camel Orbs, Camel Sticks and Camel Strips are all smokeless tobacco products.

The orb is a dissovable lozenge. The Stick is like a toothpick. Ironically, the Strip is like a breath-saver strip. The orbs come in mellow and mint flavors making them like a candy. They’re made from finely ground tobacco, melt in the mouth and deliver .6 to 3.1 mg of nicotine.

Some say that with these new candies, Camel is looking for new ways to target kids. The cartoon smoking camel, Joe Camel, was blamed some years ago for luring kids into the world of smokes. He no longer hangs out on billboards.

Regardless, it should sell well to smokers who often get stuck on a plane, in an office meeting, or in a doctor’s waiting room.

Alabama Beer Bill
Last week, Alabama Governor Bob Riley signed a bill into law, raising the permissible alcohol limit from 6 to 13.9% by volume. This could open a whole new aisle at the grocery store. Bud drinkers that usually looked to Mickey’s for the added kick can now buy good beer.

Pale ales, double bocks, some stouts and barley wines will now be available for purchase where they were once banned. Microbrews should see more revenue in the state, too. However, the governor may have forgotten that triple bocks can reach over 17%. It’s the Total Cereal of beer.
Source: Digitalcity

Many in this country are in an uproar over the recent arrest and prosecution, though delayed, of Dr. Charles C. Lynch, a California doctor who provided patients with safe access to medical marijuana. They have every reason to be; in fact it is a pity that more media professionals are not alongside them in this outrage, rather than tarnishing a man’s reputation by calling him a “drug trafficker and money launderer”.

Then again, politicians should also not be overturning the medical community’s discoveries about the medicinal benefits of marijuana simply to further their own agendas. Perhaps we should allow doctors and health professional’s reign over medicine, rather than leave it to political analysts, advisors and speech-writers.

However, this is not the first time that something like this has occurred. We need look no further than our own backyard to see examples of those who use medical marijuana to alleviate their pain being preyed upon by the state. Consider, for example, last year in Seattle, when the police seized the records of nearly 600 medical marijuana patients. The raid of the headquarters of a patient support group, where these records were located, occurred because a bicycle police officer claimed to have “smelled marijuana” coming from the building. There were no marijuana plants growing there, however the police seized 12 ounces of medical marijuana, along with patient files. Attorney Douglas Hiatt was quoted by the Seattle Times as reminding us of something the authorities really ought to know; “Those records are protected under federal privacy laws. If you’re a medical marijuana patient, you don’t want the police to know who you are or where you live, and this is why – because you don’t get treated very well.” Yet the state seemed to have no qualms in taking these protected private records. In their defense, marijuana was made illegal because it is a very dangerous drug, wasn’t it?

In order to understand why marijuana is illegal, one must go a little further back than last year. Back to a time before medical marijuana patients were being harassed, before doctors trying to help their patients were being arrested, before states voted to legalize marijuana in certain instances, before congress outlawed it at all, back to the 1930s. During this decade marijuana was still legal and unregulated, that was until a man by the name of William Randolph Hearst went before congress to testify about the “evils” of marijuana, stating that it made people insane and caused them to become cannibals. As most laypeople did not know what marijuana did and did not do, congress decided to air on the side of caution and make the plant illegal due to these ridiculous, yet effectively terrifying, claims.

Just who was William Randolph Hearst and why did he start this campaign of fear against cannabis? The answer is simple, and unfortunately not at all uncommon in politics, he was a man enlisting politicians to help him further his corporate agenda of greed. Hearst had a large financial stake in the timber industry. At the time, many paper manufacturers were thinking of switching from the use of timber for their products to something that was cheaper, easier to grow and better for the environment; hemp. Now, had this happened, Hearst and others in the timber industry stood to lose millions of dollars. So, in 1937, he used his influence and money, as well as the country’s ignorance about the properties of marijuana, in order to stop this from happening. It’s as simple as that, marijuana is illegal because one industry did not want to adhere to our free-market society, and preferred instead to perform an act of corporate sabotage.

As time went on, many doctors and scientists debunked Hearst’s crazy myths. They also found many benefits to the medicinal use of marijuana. Not only can it alleviate the ongoing pain of cancer patients and those suffering other ailments by treating their nausea and assisting them in holding down food, it has also been proven to stop the pressure glaucoma patients feel behind their eyes, slow the spreading of Alzheimer’s disease, and cure migraines. Marijuana having such value was by no means a recent discovery; in fact, doctors had been using it to help patients long before Hearst’s 1930s anti-cannabis campaign. As far back as 1860, doctors prescribed the drug for its antiseptic and analgesic effects to treat burns and aid in pain relief.

Source: Examiner
Let us put aside for a moment the fact that federal legalization of marijuana and other drugs would benefit the environment, by way of providing a cheap alternative to timber; benefit the economy, as the state could tax marijuana sales the same way they tax alcohol and tobacco sales and stop tax payer spending being put towards the millions incarcerated for drug charges and violent crimes which occur because use and possession of marijuana (and other barred substances) is illegal; decrease crime rates, not only because those who smoke marijuana will not be locked up, but also because criminal organizations and gangs would not exist without the money provided them by way of illegal drug sales. Forget the fact that countries which have decriminalized or legalized marijuana and other narcotics have seen a marked decrease in not only their crime rates, but also the usage of the drugs and the deaths and injuries related to that usage. Forget that by decriminalizing drugs the government and FDA can regulate them and properly advise people how to use them by detailing which combinations and doses will be lethal or dangerous. Forget the fact that our deadliest and most addictive drugs (alcohol and tobacco) are legal and fairly unregulated and still more destructive drugs (such as oxycontin and oxymorphone) are legal and prescribed. Forget also the fact that in a free society, one should at the very least have freedom over one’s own body and what one chooses to put into it, especially as drugs affect perception, and you should most certainly have freedom over your own mind and thoughts.

The bottom line is that marijuana is beneficial to patients who suffer from various ailments, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, tetanus, convulsions from rabies, epilepsy, depression, anxiety and bulimia to name but a few. Who are politicians to trump trained medical professionals in deciding whether or not medication, which has been proven effective, can be prescribed? Is an MD part of police academy training now, or for that matter part of political science class requirements? Politicians and courts should leave medical decisions to the medical community. They should not be punishing a California doctor for helping his patients, nor should they be bucking privacy laws in order to harass patients here. Washington, like California, allows for the recommendation by doctors of medical marijuana. Federally, it is still, for no particular reason other than a “tough on crime” façade employed by politicians in office, illegal. But this is America, at least pretend to allow voters the courtesy of having their vote count for something. In states, such as this one, where we have voted that medical professionals are allowed to recommend marijuana use, let patients take heed of those recommendations. Let our voices count for something and let doctor’s do their jobs.

The Canadian government on Tuesday proposed a ban on fruit-flavored cigarettes and small cigars that anti-smoking groups say are being marketed like candy to lure children into smoking.

Tobacco advertising rules will also be tightened to close a loophole that allows cigarettes to be advertised in newspapers and magazines that claim to be aimed at an adults but are available to anyone and often given out for free.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said the industry’s own internal documents showed it was using sweet flavors like grape, banana and peach to entice teenagers to try tobacco for the first time so they become addicted.

“Tobacco is not candy and should never be mistaken as such,” Aglukkaq told a news conference in Ottawa.

Canada’s tobacco industry denies it markets it products to children. The country’s larger producers do not make fruit-flavored cigarettes or cigarillos, but they are imported from foreign producers.

Cigarette use among teenagers in Canada has declined from 28 percent in 1999 to 15 percent in 2007, but anti-smoking groups worry that flavored smoking products will reverse that trend.

“Parents might not know about them, but their children do,” said Rob Cunningham, of the Canadian Cancer Society.

The restrictions would not ban menthol-flavored tobacco.

The legislation unveiled on Tuesday would also ban tobacco advertising in nearly all newspapers and magazines, closing a loophole that allowed ads in publications that publishers say have an 85 percent adult readership.

Because that allows ads in entertainment newspapers available for free on the street in major cities, it was impossible to know what percentage of the readership was actually of legal smoking age, officials said.

Canada’s largest cigarette maker, Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., was studying the proposal, but a spokesman said it was already careful to screen the publications before running its ads in them, and to make sure its advertising does not target youth.

“Trust me, our ads don’t look cool,” said Eric Gagnon, a spokesman for Imperial Tobacco.

Gagnon said the government should be doing more to crack down on the illegal cigarette market, because smugglers are will not abide by any of the proposed restrictions and are already luring youth smokers with cheap prices.

Canadian tobacco firms are also under increased legal pressure from the country’s provinces, with Quebec this month introducing legislation to authorize a lawsuit seeking damages for the health-care costs of smoking.

Prince Edward Island is the only province not to have introduced or approved such legislation, which is modeled on suits filed by U.S. states against the American tobacco industry in the 1990s.

Canada’s first case, filed by British Columbia nearly a decade ago, is scheduled to go to trial in September 2011, having survived constitutional challenges.

At memorial services, people sometimes offer up items which the deceased liked, or wanted to have, during their life. In the late former President Roh Moo-hyun’s case, it was a cigarette.

Some mourners gingerly lit up a cigarette and offered it to the late President at memorial altars in his hometown in southeastern Bongha Village and other locations across the nation.

Their offerings of lit cigarettes instead of laying flowers or burning incense were prompted by the news that Roh asked for a smoke from a security guard before killing himself.

At the top of a cliff in a mountain behind his home, Roh asked the guard if he had a cigarette. The guard said no and asked if he wanted him to get one.

The former President said he didn’t have to. Mourners are apparently feeling sorry for him because he couldn’t smoke at the last moment of his life.

Roh used to be a heavy smoker, going through more than two packs of cigarettes a day. He quit smoking in October 2001, but about a year later, began to smoke again as his approval rate for the presidential candidacy was only around 10 percent.

After taking office, he sometimes asked presidential staff for cigarettes when having troubles in political and government affairs. He promised to quit smoking several times following his wife’s reproach, but could not quit completely.

Early morning on April 30 before heading to Seoul to be questioned over his bribery allegation, Roh smoked two cigarettes. Just before being questioned at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, he had another cigarette, his aides said.

“He liked `This’ cigarettes, a relatively cheap brand. He used to smoke them to the end, almost to the filter, saying stopping in the middle was wasteful,” an aide said.

Copyright © 2009 Koreatimes

Never past was like present or future. In the past smoking used to be associated with glamour and success, this is one example which show the differences between ages. In the past Tobacco Companies paid millions of dollars to 1930s and 40s Hollywood Stars such as Clarke Gable and John Wayne for to approve particular cigarette brands.

Cigarette companies, even, could promote their cigarettes on the bars, and also could use scantily clothes for promotional girls for to distribute free packs of cigarettes to customers.
But today smoking has a different fate. Because smoking is seen now as anti-social, even though cigarettes continue to be dismissed to the dirty sidewalks outside clubs, pubs and even in smokers’ homes.
Cigarette smoking continues to kill people, for example about 106,000 people in the UK die each year because of smoking. Many of deaths are due to cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease. BTW: the main cause of these diseases is smoking.
According to a lot of studies, smoking is very harmful for people’s health, but is more harmful and addicted if people start smoking when they are kids. The antismoking researchers said: “The younger you are when you start smoking, the more likely you are to smoke for longer and to suffer an early death.”
Many of smokers said that they feel like social exiles, and this was the case even before the smoking ban came into effect. Yet smoking hasn’t been socially acceptable for a long time in the UK.
On October this year horrible pictures describing smoking-related illnesses (the most disgusting being an image of a man with cancer growing outside his throat) will decorate every cigarette pack.
Campaigners should be optimistic about the effect the images will have. For example Canada launched similar photo warnings in 2001 and 31% of ex-smokers said it helped them to quit.
Further, in a tender to save generation from cigarettes, awareness pictures will be presented also in schools. Hopefully they will be enough to stop a teenager from taking their first drag.
Teenagers may start smoking for a lot of reasons. But they continue to smoke cigarettes because they become addicted, or this process becomes as a ritual, this is the same reason why adults smoke.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Tuesday began marking up a bill (S 982) that would allow FDA to regulate tobacco products, CongressDaily reports. The bill would allow FDA to place larger, color warning labels about the health risks of smoking on cigarette packs, as well as to regulate the marketing of tobacco products and advertising to children.

The agency could not ban tobacco products or eliminate nicotine from cigarettes, but it could regulate their production and ban flavored cigarettes other than menthol. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said, “Over the years, this bill has been reviewed; it has been vetted; it has been debated, over and over and over again. The time has come to act.” The House in April passed its version of the bill, 298-112 (Hunt, CongressDaily, 5/20).

The committee by voice vote approved an amendment proposed by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) that would give FDA priority to review products that contain nicotine, such as candies. Committee ranking member Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) proposed two amendments, one that would have given regulatory authority over tobacco to CDC and another that would have ordered FDA to study which flavors to ban, instead of a current provision that bans specific flavors. Both amendments were defeated. Enzi said, “I think the FDA is the wrong regulator. It approves cures, not poisons.”

The only Democrat who opposed the bill was Sen. Kay Hagan (N.C.), who said the measure would harm the tobacco industry in her home state (Armstrong, CQ HealthBeat, 5/19). The panel’s other member from North Carolina, Sen. Richard Burr (R), said he would filibuster the bill. He said, “I put my fellow senators on notice: This is something that will be a much longer time on the floor than it will be in this hearing” (CongressDaily, 5/20). The committee plans to continue marking up the bill Wednesday and possibly Thursday.

Source: Kaisernetwork

Americans are becoming increasingly health conscious. They’re also more aware than ever of the vital need to do everything they can to be more green — that is, earth friendly.

Cigarettes and tobacco kill people. Green Smoke does not contain one carcinogen. They’re certainly safer than tobacco cigarettes
I have been Green Smoking e-cigarette for only one month and I already feel the difference in my breathing.
One group, especially, has a big stake in this shift of behavior: smokers. The American Cancer Society reports that 46 million American adults smoke cigarettes. That’s nearly one in four people. Moreover, a whopping 440,000 Americans die each year from tobacco use. Even the most confirmed tobacco smokers know that it isn’t healthy, but what alternative do they have?

Green Smoke. This electronic cigarette is the best to hit the market during the past year, and it helps smokers leave behind nearly everything that is unhealthy, distasteful and even downright nasty about their habit. While the Green Smoke electronic cigarette offers the same nicotine buzz as tobacco cigarettes, they don’t have carcinogens, tar, carbon monoxide or the dozens of other toxins that are unhealthy for smokers.

So, how is this possible? Green Smoke has made it easy. The Green Smoke electronic cigarette consists of two simple parts: a cartridge and a battery unit. The cartridge looks just like the filter on a tobacco cigarette, while the battery is a dead ringer for the white tobacco end of a regular cigarette. Just screw together these two and puff. This activates the heating element, and smokers inhale water steam with nicotine and flavor. Each cartridge is the comparable to a pack of tobacco cigarettes.

They offer an assortment of flavors, from the traditional tobacco and menthol to coffee, vanilla and chocolate. Green Smoke cartridge nicotine levels range from 16 mg, comparable to an unfiltered tobacco cigarette, to 8mg comparable to a ‘Marlboro Red‘, to 6mg ‘Lite’, 4mg ‘Ultralight’, and even 0mg cartridges which maintain the flavor but contains no nicotine at all.

So what’s so green about it? Green Smokers don’t harm the environment. The Green Smoke electronic cigarette produces smoke-like vapor- as opposed to cigarette smoke which contains a number of chemicals which impact the atmosphere. In addition, each cartridge is comparable to 20 cigarettes. That’s 19 fewer cigarette butts per pack. Combine that with a rechargeable battery – you get less waste.

That missing cigarette smoke also means that hair, clothing and even breath is no longer a problem for Green Smokers. And dirty ashtrays or cans along with unsightly butts are things of the past for people who have made the switch from tobacco cigarettes to Green Smoke e-cigarettes.

Sounds just like the right product for a world more health conscious and earth friendly. However, the Food and Drug Administration apparently doesn’t agree. It seems poised to ban this safer alternative to tobacco cigarettes by blocking imports e-cigarette. The FDA claims that e-cigarettes need drug studies even though the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 ruled that the agency cannot regulate tobacco cigarettes.

Green Smokers widely claim that benefits far outweigh any risks.
“Cigarettes and tobacco kill people. Green Smoke does not contain one carcinogen. They’re certainly safer than tobacco cigarettes,” says a Green Smoker from Michigan. “I have been Green Smoking e-cigarette for only one month and I already feel the difference in my breathing.”

Green Smoke remains readily available to the increasing demand by tobacco smokers for a reasonable alternative — especially as state after state enacts bans on smoking in public places.

Source: Prweb