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

The federal government plans to introduce legislation Tuesday that, if passed, would make good on a campaign promise to ban flavoured tobacco products that are considered appealing to children.

The bill, “An Act to Amend the Tobacco Act,” also is expected to mandate that mini-cigars, called cigarillos, must be sold in packages of at least 20, and that all tobacco advertising and promotion in print and electronic media that may be viewed and read by young people is prohibited.

More details will be revealed when the bill is introduced in the House of Commons by Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, but according to the Conservative party platform that was released during the fall 2008 election, the proposed measures will “help to prevent the exploitation of children by the tobacco industry.”

Manufacturers of cigarillos, however, say they do not target children and that not enough research has been done by the government to justify the legislation.

“This is just purely about attacking the industry,” said Luc Martial, a former employee of Health Canada’s Tobacco Control section who now does government relations for Casa Cubana, a Montreal-based importer and distributor of Prime Time flavoured cigarillos. “The government is obviously going to do what they want to do, but it doesn’t mean they are right. What they are doing is wrong.”

Groups including Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada and the Canadian Medical Association have been pushing the federal government for new laws that would crack down on the sale and marketing of cigarillos. They argue the products, with flavours such as strawberry, vanilla, pina colada, chocolate mint, grape and cherry, are clearly aimed at youth and are appealing because they come in a variety of flavours, are affordable, and are sold in brightly-coloured packages that can look like markers, lip gloss, and music players. The groups also say the cigarillos, when sold individually or in small “kiddie packs,” have no health warnings on them.

It is not yet known what flavours the government is aiming to ban but setting a minimum package size for cigarillos is aimed at ending the current practice of selling them individually. A single cigarillo can be purchased for less than $2 but a package of 20 will make the products more expensive and therefore less appealing to youth, according to Health Canada.

Cigarillos have been a fast-growing market in the last few years, but the vast majority are being smoked by people of legal age, Martial said.

The most recent statistics from the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey, indicate that among youth aged 15 to 19, 33 per cent reported trying a cigarillo and 10 per cent said they had smoked one in the previous month.

But Martial said there is no solid evidence on how frequently youth are smoking cigarillos, how minors are getting access to them, whether they are smoking legal or contraband products, or what impact banning certain flavours would have on reducing the youth smoking rate.

“It’s baseless legislation. It’s purely anti-business. It has absolutely nothing to do with health,” said Martial. “And in my opinion, having done this for 18 years, you’re going to cause much more of a problem than you’re going to actually solve. You will see the contraband skyrocket and these guys are already in every schoolyard in the country,” he said.

More youth smoke regular cigarettes, which are not sold in brightly coloured packages, than cigarillos, Martial added. He also said that the same flavours used in cigarillos are used in a wide variety of alcohol products, yet the alcohol industry is not facing a similar crackdown.

Source: Vancouversun

Japan Tobacco International (JTI), the world’s third largest Tobacco Company, introduced a new design for its premium brand Camel. It will be available for four weeks from 1st April in the Independent and Wholesale channels.

Camel is a brand of cigarettes that was introduced by American company R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in the summer of 1913. Most current Camel cigarettes contain a blend of Turkish and Virginia tobacco.

Camel is one of the top 5 cigarette brands in the world and one of the leading players in the ‘American Blend’ tobacco market.

This cig brand became popular among adult smokers in urban areas as well as in regions with high adult student populations.

With almost one in three UK adult smokers choose to smoke premium brands, the premium sector remains a vital profit stream for retailers, so it is important to stock Camel to ensure the highest possible returns.

Japanese are far more willing to switch new brands for any number of reasons: Cool packaging, freebies, product modifications, limited editions, etc.

This attitude makes Japan a great testing ground for many products, but also a deceiving one.

Jeremy Blackburn, JTI’s Head of Communications, said: “The limited edition Camel packs has a fresh design in keeping with the brand’s long standing reputation for innovation.”

He added that the majority of adult smokers smoke Camel cigs, that’s why they should be well stocked at all times.

New York City’s anti-smoking crusaders are out to snuff out two more sources of lung pollution: candy-flavored tobacco and smoking outside of hospitals.

The city that began the you-can’t-smoke-here movement doesn’t want to be left behind by the likes of Maine and New Jersey, which already have banned exotically flavored cigarettes and cigars.

“We need to send a message that New York City is a healthy city, and we’re going to do everything we can to keep it that way,” said Councilman Joel Rivera (D-Bronx) before presiding over a public hearing yesterday on two bills. One bill would ban flavored tobacco and the other would ban smoking outside hospitals.

Both measures were enthusiastically supported by the city Health Department and a number of anti-smoking advocates.

Predictably, the bills drew opposition from tobacco industry representatives. No vote was taken by the committee, although Rivera and other sponsors said the bills have strong support.

The prime sponsor of the ban on smoking outside hospitals is City Councilwoman Inez Dickens (D-Manhattan), who said the idea was proposed to officials at Harlem Hospital. Her bill would ban smoking on the grounds of a hospital, sidewalks adjacent to a hospital and within 15 feet of any hospital entrance.

Rivera is the prime sponsor of the bill to ban flavored tobacco products, which he said are particularly attractive to teens. It would outlaw the sale of exotically flavored tobacco cigarettes and cigars, with the exception of menthol, mint or clove flavors.

Tobacco makers have used a wide array of flavors for cigarettes and cigars, including with such names as Kauai Kolada, Caribbean Chill, Mintrigue, Mocha Taboo, Twista Lime, Peach Freezer and even rum-dipped Al Capone Slims.

Health Department counsel Anne Pearson said the agency supports both bills, although she expressed concern that the ban on flavored tobacco exempts tobacco intended to be used in hookahs (water-filtrated pipes) that have become a trend with young people in neighborhoods such as the East Village and the lower East Side.

A representative of Altria’s tobacco companies, which includes Philip Morris, said regulation of tobacco products should be left to the federal government. And Audrey Silk of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment (CLASH) said adults are being punished in the name of restricting tobacco sales to minors.

Source: Nydailynews

Shelly Kiser of the American Lung Association in Ohio was all set to give a presentation on Camel Orbs — a dissolvable tobacco product slightly bigger than an Altoid mint — to the Ohio School Nurses Association. All she needed was a prop.

So Kiser, director of advocacy for her organization and no great fan of Camel Orbs, headed into a Columbus gas station earlier this year and asked for a container of Orbs.

They gave it to her for free.

For smokers long confined to standing outside in crummy weather to get their nicotine fix, Camel Orbs is an alternative that keeps users out of the elements.

For Sen. Sherrod Brown and public health advocates, it’s yet another diabolical strategy to get kids hooked on smoking.

Brown, D-Ohio, this week successfully added a measure calling for a quick Federal Drug Administration study of Orbs and other dissolvable tobacco products to a larger bill that would, for the first time, put tobacco products under FDA regulatory authority. The bill, with the amendment, passed the committee last week and now awaits full U.S. Senate approval. It passed the House in April.

Brown compares Orbs to candy, and said the fact that the products can be passed off as breath mints is another way to lure kids into becoming tobacco addicts at a young age.

“It is criminal to me that they market to children the way they do,” he said.

But David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, said the product, like all tobacco products, is legal only for adults over the age of 18. The product is currently not available in the Dayton area.

R.J. Reynolds introduced Orbs in Columbus, Indianapolis and Portland, Ore., earlier this year, and the company said early feedback has been positive. Orbs, he said, “meet the societal expectation of no second-hand smoke, no spitting, and in the case of dissolvables, no litter.”

He said they’re hardly candy. They are made of finely milled tobacco, and designed for adults.

“The bottom line is these are tobacco products,” he said. “They are clearly marked as tobacco products, they are marketed as tobacco products and they carry the same warnings as tobacco products.”

He said similar products — Ariva and Stonewall — have been on the market since earlier this decade with little protest.

Still, he said he welcomes Brown’s amendment and any study of their product.

Bill Godshall of a group called SmokeFree Pennsylvania counts himself as one of the defenders of Orbs. He compares the products to Nicorette or Commit Lozenges and cites studies indicating they are safer than cigarettes.

“What this comes down to is people fighting for the same market,” he said.

But Brown cites studies indicating a single Orb has between 60 and 300 times the amount of tobacco contained in a single cigarette. And Greg Connolly, a professor of the practice of public health at Harvard University, calls Orb products “nicotine on training wheels.”

R.J. Reynolds, Connolly said, “is just trying to expand the options for nicotine delivery products for the American public.”

Smoking a cigarette for the first time, can be a deeply uncomfortable experience for a teenager, Connolly said. There’s the smoke, for one thing, as well as the coughing and the taste. By turning it into a mint-like product — in mint and cinnamon flavors — they’ve made nicotine addiction a more pleasurable experience, he said.

Connolly said Brown’s amendment would allow the FDA to begin the studies necessary to take Orbs off the market. And unless the FDA starts regulating tobacco, he warns, the tobacco industry will continue to get more sophisticated in how it delivers nicotine. If that doesn’t happen, he said, “the tobacco companies own the future.”

Kiser said despite the fact that the products are only legal for adults, school nurses have reported finding packages of Orbs in the trash.

To her, they’re dangerous because they can be consumed in front of parents and teachers without the adults knowing what’s going on.

“Unless a parent knows the exact shape of it, they wouldn’t suspect anything,” she said.
Source: Ohio-share.coxnewsweb

In the past, cigarettes were more respected than today. Today they are considered the main cause of people’s deaths. For example in1950s America cigarette smoking was the abstract of cool and glamour.
Even screen beauties such as Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich made smoking look sensual and sophisticated. By the late 1950s around half of the population of industrialized nations smoked. Then the tobacco product was cheap, legal and socially acceptable.

Cigarettes were originally sold as expensive handmade luxury goods for the urban elite. It was not until mass-production methods coupled with aggressive marketing that the industry began to see off traditional pipe-smoking and tobacco-chewing habits, particularly in the United States.
In the past the most famous American Tobacco Firm was Philip Morris. The most important message of this company was this “For man’s flavor come to Marlboro Country.”
Other brands also sought to lessen fears of smoking. For example, Camel cigarette famously ran an advert saying: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette”.
Still, for years, the tobacco industry appeared to be unconquerable. Then, in 1994, Diane Castano, whose husband died of lung cancer, sued the Tobacco Industry.
After that case Health Organizations started to protect non-smokers from being exposed to secondhand smoking. This led to the 1995 ban on smoking in most enclosed places of employment. By 2005 less than a quarter of the US population smoked cigarettes, and that is now falling.
Although the behaviors and attitudes of family and friends are the main influences on adolescent decisions to use tobacco, the media—films, television, and the Internet— also influence these decisions. And most tobacco use took place in enclosed areas, usually around nonsmokers.

Oregon’s junior senator is taking a stand against “tobacco candy” – smokeless, dissolvable tobacco. RJ Reynolds is test-marketing “Camel Orbs” in candy tobaccoPortland, as well as Indianapolis, Ind., and Columbus, Ohio. The Orbs come in two flavors: “mellow” (similar to cinnamon or caramel) and “fresh” (mint). RJ Reynolds plans to introduce “Sticks” and “Strips” later this year.
Merkley and fellow Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio carried the amendment. The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions approved the amendment Tuesday as part of the landmark legislation to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco.

According to a news release from Merkley’s office, the Indiana Poison Control Center estimates dissolvable tobacco products such as the Camel Orbs contain between 60-300 percent of the nicotine in one cigarette.

The Merkley-Brown amendment would require the new Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to immediately study the public health effects of tobacco candy and report to the FDA on its findings in less than two years. The committee will provide the FDA with all the information it needs about the public health impact of these tobacco candy products, particularly the risks to children, so it can make sure tobacco companies aren’t able to use them to hook a new generation of kids on deadly products.