National Health Service (NHS) chief at Liverpool’s Primary Care Trust (PCT) said that its plan to prohibit the promotion of smoking in films, including cartoons, could mean problems for the spinach-loving sailor if he ever makes a return to the screen.

Other cartoon favorites, including Bugs Bunny and Herman the smoking baby from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” could also end up adult-rated if they turn up in any new films.

Councilor (Cllr) Paula Keaveney, Liberal Democrat executive member for ethical governance, said that she had supported the smoking ban but there was no reasonable argument that children and young people are likely to be allured by smoking in films.
“It strikes me this is just interfering with artistic product and censorship and it doesn’t affect me that it will have the desired effect. I haven’t taken to the hills and become a revolutionary since I saw the film about Che Guevara.”
The smoking ban would not relate to films which portray historical figures who actually smoked or those which provide a clear and unambiguous description of the dangers of smoking, other tobacco use, or second-hand smoke.
Mark Wallace, of lobby groups the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “PCT’s are meant to focus on curing people, not on arbitrating against thought crimes.”
He explained that people have enough trouble getting doctors’ appointments and the treatment they need without taxpayers’ money being wasted on the NHS regulating the cinema. This would be an absurd restriction on harmless films.
A PCT spokesman said: “The PCT’s posture would be exactly the same whether it is a cartoon character or not. And so, if a new film is created featuring a character who smokes the PCT would want this film classified as an 18. All films featuring smoking, we would request be classified in this way unless it was depicting the harmful effect on people’s health.”
In general, programs targeted at children should not include smoking.
And research showed that teenagers are more likely to have positive views on smoking and be predisposed to smoke if their favorite actors smoke in films. However, in the case of old material such as Tom & Jerry it is neither desirable nor necessary to edit out references to smoking as such incidences are rare and unlikely to make children want to smoke.
In general censoring a cartoon because it has smoking is really stupid. The more extreme the anti-smoking measures become, the more illicit smoking will be made to appear, so children who want to rebel will be more attracted to it.

The room is dark. Large fabric prints hang on the walls. It smells, not quite like incense. It is pleasant. Reggae plays loudly.

“I figure I have to play Bob Marley at least once while you are here,” Cloud 9’s manager says.

A group of people is behind a portable screen in one corner – they visit often. Across from them, another group is splayed out over giant pillows on the floor. One man goes it solo, and a couple behind my friends and me appear in their own little love bubble.

My friend comes to this realization: Cloud 9 kind of looks like the basement in “That ’70s Show,” but with more mood lighting.

I was hesitant to enter Cloud 9, the hookah lounge and tobacco shop on Wells Street in Fort Wayne, under the same ownership as The Bean Café and Teahouse next door. “Would everyone think I’m a pothead by default?” I wondered.

Some do enter and ask about marijuana, manager Patty Richards says, but the stuff in the hookah is just tobacco. Flavored tobacco, but tobacco nonetheless.

The extent of my hookah knowledge comes from the caterpillar that smokes one in “Alice in Wonderland,” so Richards and a few hookah Web sites explain how it works: The flavored tobacco, called shisha, is placed in a small ceramic container at the top of the hookah and covered with a metal screen or piece of foil. Cube-like pieces of coal sit atop the screen and indirectly heat the tobacco. A hookah is essentially an overgrown glass pipe. Smokers suck on hoses attached to the hookah’s base. The sucking pulls heat and flavor from the tobacco and mixes it with water bubbling from the pressure in the hookah’s base, producing the smoke-and-vapor mixture that is pulled through the hose by the smoker.

While business at Cloud 9 ranges from nearly empty to having to wait for a seat – especially on Fridays, when live bands play in the lounge, Richards says – others haven’t fared so well.

The Twenty Past Four & More, located on Broadway, had a hookah lounge for about two months, but it closed two weeks ago because it didn’t get much business, says Kevin O’Dor, the tobacco store’s assistant manager.

Richards says she thinks the two closest hookah lounges to Cloud 9 are in Indianapolis and West Lafayette, so the Fort Wayne lounge really has something of a niche market.

Cloud 9 patrons range in age from 18 to 60-something, Richards says, and often when older patrons come in, they comment to Richards, “These aren’t what they used to be.” The implication? That when they were younger and smoking a hookah in the ’70s, it might not have been tobacco in that ceramic container.

Younger patrons often visit for the social aspect of it. The four Fort Wayne men lounging on the overgrown pillows come pretty often. Two, Trevor Walker and Sam Sims, both 18, say they frequent Cloud 9 twice a week.

“I think it’s a very relaxed, mellow atmosphere,” Walker says. “There’s music and always someone to talk to.”

Plus, he likes the taste of it. Walker and his three friends are smoking a coconut and pineapple mixture. For one, Kenny Zuber, 19, it is his first time smoking a hookah.

“I’d smoked cigars before, and that left a weird taste in my mouth,” Zuber says. “This is all right.”

Richards walks by and overhears a question; Zuber had wondered how Cloud 9 got around the smoking ordinance in Fort Wayne.

If a business sells a certain amount of tobacco-related products, it is exempt from that law, Richards says.

Legally, patrons could smoke cigarettes in Cloud 9; however, the management doesn’t allow it. Cigarette smoke smells disgusting, and some people are allergic to it, but hookah vapor doesn’t have such a foul smell, and fewer people have allergies, Richards says.

Hookah smoking is a tradition in the Mideast, Richards says. Merriam-Webster Online dates the term to 1763, from the Arabic “huqqa,” which is the bottle of a water pipe. It can also be called “narghile” or the Persian “ghelune,” according to the Web site The Colors of India, an Indian history and culture site.

While by no means healthy, smoking a hookah is better for one than a cigarette, Richards says.

Not only does shisha not include all the additives of cigarette tobacco, but it also takes longer to smoke; four people can share a hookah for an upward of 40 minutes, she says.

Because of the duration, it’s more difficult to become addicted.

People mainly smoke for the social reasons, both Richards and Walker and his friends attest.

It’s not an addiction, and the vapor is remarkably smooth, as this reporter can say for certain. I had never smoked anything – not even a cigarette – so I expected to hack up a lung after taking a puff or two from the Cloud 9 hookah.

I didn’t cough at all; I simply enjoyed the delicious coconut-flavored shisha.

© Journalgazette

Ever wonder why Heinz carefully labels its ketchup bottles as “tomato ketchup”? Doesn’t that seem vaguely redundant, like mustard labeled as “mustard-seed mustard”? Well, apparently it isn’t.

For one thing, ketchup made with tomatoes was a relatively late American innovation, a cheap new local-ingredients-based twist on a traditional sauce made primarily with mushrooms, or oysters, or walnuts and anchovies.

And for another thing, a friendly A.V. Club reader from the Philippines named Nicole recently informed us that a non-tomato ketchup is big in the Philippines—specifically ketchup made with bananas. In fact, it’s so popular that a Filipino company has just released a ketchup made with apples, as well. As weird as banana and apple ketchup may sound to Americans, Nicole had this to say:

“Banana ketchup is much more popular than tomato ketchup here in the Philippines. I’ve personally never liked it, but I’m very much in the minority. The stuff is apparently really made of bananas with much red food coloring, and is used like regular ketchup, on burgers, fries and most popularly, fried chicken.

Apple ketchup is evidently the result of a brain wave by some product development person at the ketchup company. It’s a brand new product, I’ve never tried it, and neither has anyone else I know.”

Well, you can’t say that anymore, Nicole, because we went out and bought a bunch of fries from the deli across the street, and tried the hell out of both banana and apple ketchup, just for you.

© Avclub

Obama signed into law the newest anti-smoking bill. It will allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate – but not ban – the use of tobacco.

To the sorrow of my brother-in-law Joe, a non-addicted and infrequent puffer of cherry-flavored seegars, the bill also forbids adding candy or fruit flavors to tobacco products. Joe indulges only during hunting season, summer horseshoe pitching, that kind of thing. To him, cigars are like corn on the cob, a seasonal treat, not a daily necessity. He wants to keep his cherry seegars.
Me, I’m a conservative, a believer in limited government and (until last year’s financial meltdown), deregulation.
But I also smoked for 55 years. So I see a need for people to quit.
Tobacco can be addictive.
Too many of us claim that tobacco is always addictive, ignoring the realities of people like Joe and me. He puffs, stops for weeks or months, then re-puffs. I can’t do that. On June 12, I was in danger of falling off the anti-tobacco wagon when Joe and I adjourned from yoga class (Yes, yoga class; whaddaya wanna do about it, huh, huh?) to a nearby bar to watch the Stanley Cup finale. I caught myself inhaling the second-hand smoke far too deeply, absently reaching for ephemeral cigarettes in my shirt pocket or checking my pants pocket for a now-nonexistent lighter.
With alcohol, it is different – for me. I can have a beer, or a shot of Old Grand-Dad, or a glass or two of Frangelico hazelnut liqueur or Joe’s favorite, B&B, of an evening, then not drink another alcoholic brew for a month or more.
Other people can’t do that.
Alcohol and tobacco … poisons, or pastimes. It depends.
Here’s the lesson: We should not try to ban the use of tobacco outright. Our experiences with Prohibition in the 1930s, and with marijuana since the 1960s, teach the folly of trying to ban something not universally harmful in a free society.
But we are moving in the right direction with respect to tobacco. We tax its use heavily. We discourage its use through penalties. The effects of tobacco on our health care insurance rates can’t be ignored. I am ready to support increased health-care premiums for tobacco users, even those who are covered by group policies.
Tobacco use causes that much financial harm. Yes, it does.
The tobacco industry had me for 55 years, puffing as much as three packs a day. Sure, it was my choice. But it wasn’t a totally free choice, not when I started smoking at age 8 (Yeah. Age 8), or when I was puffing a pack a day as a 12-year-old newspaper carrier, that job having given me the money to buy the cheap Lucky Strikes and Camels.
It was menthol, though, that kept me sucking on the poisonous vapors for most of those years. Unflavored tobacco had begun to burn my throat and start my windpipe and lungs into cough-inducing shudders. The “cooling” (actually, pain-killing) effects of menthol let me keep deluding myself into thinking that tobacco use wasn’t too harmful, despite mounting evidence.
Why does a believer in limited government, in individual freedom, condone this Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act?
Back when the Vietnam War was raging, I subscribed to the “drink-at-18″ movement, on the reasonable-sounding premise that if a kid was old enough to fight and die for our country, that kid was old enough to drink.
The premise ignores a stark fact: When drinking at age 18 was legal, the death rate among victims of 18-21-year-olds soared.
The kid might be old enough to drink, in theory. But in practice, backed up by the irrefutable statistics of what was happening on our highways, giving 18-year-olds the “right” to drink also gave them the “right” to drive drunk – because 18-year-olds who are drunk will drive. Why? Because they’re 18 years old and drunk and stupid, that’s why, and I’ve been there, done that, too.
Eventually, I came to the realization that living in communities requires compromises – all sorts of compromises. My right to swing my arm ends somewhere near your nose. Your right to play loud music ends somewhere near my wake-from-sleep decibel level.
Political theory is nice.
Reality is that some things kill.
Use of alcohol kills, and among not-fully-grown teenagers, it kills at an unacceptably high rate, both for the teens and for the rest of us in their paths.
Use of tobacco kills, and hooks us as addicts, at unacceptably high rates.
So, sorry, Joe. Much as I love you, much as I agree you haven’t done anything to deserve losing the pleasure of puffing your cherry cheroots, I support the action.
Let tobacco taste like tobacco.
That honesty ought to allow our bodies’ “stop-killing-me” signals to be more clearly heard by our brains.

© Leader-vindicator

Cabernet sauvignon wines from California’s Sonoma Valley sometimes get lost in the marketing by their more famous brethren across the mountain in Napa Valley.

Yet Sonoma Valley produces some classic cabernets whose qualities exhibit the very best this grape has to offer – intense aromas, silky palates and dark fruit. One of the experts in my wine-tasting group noted that cedar aromas and/or flavors often distinguish a Sonoma cabernet.

The Sonoma Valley has several subregions, with perhaps the most notable being Alexander Valley.

My panel sampled Sonoma wines from three different vintages – all on the shelves now.

» 2006 Ferrari-Carano Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, $29.99. We discovered scents of vanilla beans, cocoa, tea leaves, coffee and red and black currants. Like a black mint tea, this wine was intense in the mouth, but still silky. A pretty eucalyptus character pervaded this wine from beginning to end. It was our favorite.

» 2005 Sebastiani Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, $32.99. The nose reminded us of firewood, roasted tomatoes, dried tomatoes and black cherries. On the tongue, the wine was opulent, rich with fruit. The Sebastiani was not nearly as tannic because of the strong fruit. This wine was the best balanced on the group. It ranked second in our tasting.

» 2005 Paradise Ridge Elevation Rockpile Vineyard Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, $37.99. We discovered aromas of black currants, black fruit, clove and chocolate cream. The palate mirrored the aroma, along with tannins and cocoa dust. This was a wine made from the grapes of a single vineyard. It ranked third in our tasting.

» 2004 Simi Landslide Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, $40. Aromas included under-ripe or green fruit, pine, firewood and eucalyptus. Green wood tastes appeared on the palate, with nice cedar undertones. My experts said this wine was true to the Sonoma tradition, down to the cedar notes on the finish.

» 2005 Kenwood Jack London Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, $39.99. The bouquet included baked red cherries, strong notes of pomegranate, vanilla and under-ripe tobacco leaves. Flavor characteristics included cedar, black tea, tobacco leaves and pomegranate, along with firm tannins. This was another classic cabernet sauvignon with all the attributes you should expect in such a wine.
» 2005 Wine Smith California Cabernet Sauvignon, $25. We found scents of black cherries, semisweet chocolate, soy sauce and green herbal notes. The palate was mellow in all its facets, with a dusty cedar character. This wine was easy to drink, but there was less there than with the others. While the winery is in Sonoma, grapes came from multiple areas in the state.
Advertisement
Surfing the wine shelves:

» 2006 d’Arenberg “The Custodian’ Grenache, $19. Aromas of strawberries and other red berries plus lots of spice. Extremely well balanced and structured, this Australian offering was an elegant wine for this price.

» 2005 Innocent Bystander Shiraz Viognier, $20. Aromas of ripe plums, licorice and spice. The palate of this wine from down under was fleshier than the aroma led us to believe, with blueberry and blackberry flavors.

» Graham’s Six Grapes Reserve Port, $23. This nonvintage port resembled a young vintage port with its flavors of plums, cherries and raisins. Intense yet full of finesse.

» 2008 Peter Lehmann Layers, $15. This Australian white wine, a blend of pinot gris, muscat, gewurztraminer, chardonnay and semillon, offered scents of banana, pineapple and kiwi. In the mouth layers of melon, apricot and lemon flavors rolled across and lingered on the tongue.

Gainesville tobacco shops may find it tough to survive under a Food and Drug Administration regulation, which was recently signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act illegalizes clove, candy, fruit and spiced cigarettes to curb youth-focused marketing. Menthol flavoring is an exception.

Additionally, the use of words such as “light” and “mild” will be banned by July 2010, and tobacco product ingredients will be required to appear on packaging, according to a White House Press release.

Nazim Uddin, owner of Gator Tobacco, said business has already slowed down since the law was passed.

“It is affecting us big time,” Uddin said. “This law was a big surprise.”

Uddin does not believe that banning flavored cigarettes will prevent kids from smoking; however, he said he does think that it may eventually mean the end of his store.

“We have to pay the rent. We have to pay the employees. The day is going to come that we are going to close down,” Uddin said.

Pat Patton, an owner of Modern Age Tobacco, is a bit more optimistic.

“There’s no telling [what is to come] really until it happens, until we’ve been dealing with it for a couple of weeks,” Patton said. “People aren’t going to quit smoking. I’m curious to see what they’re going to change to.”

Hookah tobacco is exempt from the flavored tobacco prohibition; however the law will double the price of the product, according to Nick Farah, owner of Farah’s on the Avenue.

“The law really doesn’t affect us except on a tax structure basis. Next time we buy, I’m sure that the cost of goods will be greater. But I don’t believe it will affect our business,” Farah said.

According to Maureen Miller, health educator with UF’s GatorWell, the new law may not directly impact the smoking habits of current UF students but might have an effect on future statistics.

“If it helps prevent younger children from smoking, then a few years down the road it may have an impact on our future students,” Miller said. “But we’re not going to see a change in rates overnight.”

Roll-your-own smokes could be even more harmful than factory-made cigarettes because people suck them harder and more efficiently, Christchurch research indicates.

The researchers are calling for the Government to act on their findings by applying a higher tax and specific warnings on roll-your-own tobacco.

In the first comparison between the two types of smoking using people rather than smoking machines, the study suggests rollies are “apparently no less and possibly more dangerous” than factory-made cigarettes.

Public health specialist Dr Murray Laugesen and his co-researchers found roll-your-own smokers inhaled 28 per cent more smoke per filtered cigarette, even though the rollies contained less tobacco than the factory-mades.

And both types boosted the level of carbon monoxide, measured in exhaled breath, by the same amount.

“Whereas a smoker of factory-mades lets a lot of the smoke go up in the air, these roll-your-own smokers suck like crazy and don’t let so much be wasted,” Dr Laugesen said yesterday. “They’re getting more value out of the tobacco – and more harm.”

The study, using cigarette holders containing flow meters, compared 26 people who usually smoke rollies with 22 who usually smoke factory-mades.

In their paper, the researchers said rollies accounted for nearly a third of tobacco used in New Zealand.

The country’s comparatively high tobacco excise tax – levied by tobacco content, not per cigarette – had encouraged smokers to hand-roll thin cigarettes and pay less tax.

“Thus excise increases have perversely encouraged cheaper smoking rather than quitting.”

Overseas research has shown roll-your-own smokers are twice as likely as smokers of factory-mades to believe rollies are less risky. Norwegian research shows they also have twice the lung-cancer risk. Although rollies contain less tobacco, they contain no fewer additives and their smoke contains much more tar.

Associate Health Minister Tariana Turia wants more tax on roll-your-own tobacco, but a spokesman for the Finance Minister said the Government was not considering it.

© Nzherald

Smokers, what if you could smoke a cigarette that didn’t contain any tobacco or carcinogens and didn’t stink?
And nonsmokers, how would you feel about walking past a pack of smokers without coughing, or worrying your lungs were filling up with chemicals from secondhand smoke?

Ivon Patel, of Naperville, waves to Shabana Mohiuddin, manager of Tobacco and Cigars in Naperville, after buying a pack of Newport cigarettes. “I wouldn’t stray from my menthols, but if they come in menthol I’ll give it a try,” said Patel of electronic cigarettes, which are smokeless so may be used in public places.

A new product on the market, widely known as the electronic cigarette, is changing the rules of smoking for those wishing to puff wherever and whenever they want.

Two businesses at Westfield Fox Valley mall in Aurora sell the e-cigarettes, including retail store Cigar Box and Chicago-based Elxtro Vapor Cigarette Co., which has a kiosk near the mall’s Carson Pirie Scott store.

Elxtro has caught the most attention by far at the mall. Employees take drags on the e-cigarettes as shoppers pass. They exhale what looks like smoke, but actually is a vapor mist.

“People tell me all the time that there’s no smoking and it’s good advertising because I unscrew (the cigarette) and say, ‘It’s not a cigarette,’” employee Chris Trajanovski said while manning the kiosk at the mall this week.

The e-cigarettes look like a real smoke at first.

Up close, each cigarette includes an LED tip that lights up when the smoker takes a draw. Unscrew the metal cigarette and inside is a battery, a microprocessor that controls heat and light, a sensor that detects when the smoker is taking a puff, a heater to vaporize the nicotine and a cartridge that holds the nicotine in propylene glycol so it doesn’t come out in the vapor.

When you exhale it isn’t hot, and there are none of the ashes that fall from the end of a cigarette.

Elxtro claims that the product contains no tobacco, tar, carcinogens, carbon monoxide or secondhand smoke.

And you can tell when you need to “recharge” the cigarette, too.

Trajanovski took a drag and a cloud of vapor barely formed. “It’s time to charge this one,” he said.

He unscrewed the cigarette and placed the battery in a charger.
Choose your poison
Trajanovski, 24, said he first heard about e-cigarettes from a fellow smoker friend. Both were trying to quit, but nothing seemed to have worked in the past.

Trajanovski decided to buy a kit, which costs about $100 for the cigarette, five cartridges and the charging equipment, so he could smoke inside his house and not disturb his roommates.

The former pack-a-day smoker says the e-cigarettes have helped him nearly quit. After about two months, he is down to smoking a few times day. His e-cigarettes do not contain nicotine though.

That’s the other thing about e-cigarettes: You can choose cartridges with low, medium or high nicotine levels or, like Trajanovski, no nicotine at all.

“We’re promoting a product to help you quit smoking or at least smoke healthier,” he said.

However, the company does not guarantee that e-cigarettes would help anyone quit smoking.

Its Web site states, “This product in no way claims to assist user in quitting or lessening frequency of smoking traditional cigarettes.”
Health officials don’t buy it
The product doesn’t sound appealing to at least one smoker, Priscilla Hollingbird, 26, of Aurora.

“It just takes the whole idea of smoking out. I would think it would be weird,” said Hollingbird, who said she has about five cigarettes a day.

She admits, though, that she despises the smell her cigarettes leave on her furniture, clothes and carpet.

The e-cigarettes have perplexed anti-smoking groups and officials — it’s still unclear if e-cigarettes obey the Illinois Smoke Free Act, said Donna Sperlakis of the Kendall County Health Department.

Because they contain nicotine, however, the products are banned in some countries and have come under fire from anti-smoking groups in the U.S.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration stopped shipments of the product at the borders earlier this year, saying it has no data on them.

In March, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids put out a joint news release lauding a New Jersey senator for calling on the FDA to remove e-cigarettes from the market. The agencies said no studies have been done on e-cigarettes regarding their health effects or cessation aides.

Lauren Johnson of the American Cancer Society in Batavia said she believes products like these are “a ploy to circumvent the law.”

“They may have found a loophole” to the Illinois Smoke Free Act, she said.

Elxtro’s e-cigarettes also come in 31 flavors like vanilla and coffee, which Johnson says makes smoking attractive to children and teens.

“The major issue here is that they’re trying to make it look like a cigarette and function like a cigarette. … It’s essentially showing that it’s normal to smoke,” Johnson said.

According to Chicago-based Elxtro, e-cigarettes cost a smoker about $2 a day.

© Suburbanchicagonews

A pparently, President Obama and I share the same regret over our teenage stupidity.

When signing our nation’s toughest anti-smoking law to date on Tuesday, Obama said he has been struggling with his addiction to cigarettes his entire adult life and rued the day he smoked his first cigarette as a teen. He was very critical of the tobacco industry and chastised companies for marketing their products to children and young adults, who are too naive and too confident of their own mortality to understand the severe consequences of becoming a smoker.

“The decades-long effort to protect our children from the harmful effects of smoking has finally emerged victorious,” Obama said while signing the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The new law allows the Food and Drug Administration to ban “low tar” and “light” labels on cigarettes, outlaw candy flavoring and order tobacco companies to reduce nicotine in tobacco products. It also allows the FDA to regulate ingredients in tobacco products, make those ingredients public and prohibit marketing campaigns that target children.

I applaud Obama’s effort to tighten tobacco laws because I, too, share his regret of becoming a smoker as a teen. I tell my three children constantly that starting to smoke is the single biggest regret of my life, and I have struggled to quit numerous times over the past 20 years. I am ashamed to admit that I still find it hard to stop completely.

So I cannot help but commiserate with Obama when he talked about his continuing efforts to stop smoking. Two years ago, he promised his wife, Michelle, he would quit if she agreed to let him run for the presidency, but admitted he still occasionally “falls off the wagon.”

“I constantly struggle with it. Am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker? No. I don’t do it in front of my kids, I don’t do it in front of my family, and I would say that I am 95 percent cured, but there are times where I mess up,” Obama said.

Almost 90 percent of people who smoke began at 18 or younger, according to national surveys. In Illinois, 29 percent of teens smoke, compared to 23 percent of Illinois adults. Almost every smoker I know said they started the bad habit when they were between 12 and 15 years old. No one I spoke with started smoking as an adult, most likely because adults understand the health risks and costs involved. Teens are much more vulnerable to tobacco marketing because they view themselves as invincible.

“I know – I was one of those teenagers,” Obama said Tuesday. “I know how difficult it is to break this habit when it’s been with you for a long time. This legislation will protect our kids and improve our public health.”

It took 10 years for the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act to become law. Tobacco companies no longer will be allowed to create and sell teen-friendly cigarette flavors such as “Caribbean Chill” and “Twista Lime,” or design teen-attracting cigarette packages that look like mp3 players or cell phones.

The Centers for Disease and Prevention Control says more than 3,000 teens smoke their first cigarette every day in the United States, and 70 percent of all teenagers admit they have tried smoking at least once.

John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network, says the new legislation “will finally put an end to Big Tobacco’s despicable marketing practices that are designed to addict children to its deadly products.”

I wish this law would have been approved 30 years ago. I don’t remember being influenced as a teen by tobacco marketing, but I see the power a McDonald’s commercial has over my own children, and don’t doubt my friends and I were impacted by clever ads featuring kid-friendly characters such as Joe Camel.

If this new law prevents teens from starting to smoke, it will go a long way toward making our next generation healthier. And a lot less stinky.

Everyone knows the dark and dangerous side of the tobacco industry. The ill effects of cigarettes on the health of smokers, non-smokers, and the environment are well established. So is it fair or ethical for such a heinous and disgusting product to promote eco-friendly improvements to its packaging?

This is precisely what has happened recently with one of Canada’s leading cigarette brands, du Maurier. Du Maurier is using a more sustainable grade of paper for the outer cardboard packaging and they have removed the traditional inside foil liners with ones made of paper. To promote these green initiatives, du Maurier invested in a full-page color advertisement in a major Canadian magazine.

While it seems laughable that a tobacco company would be trying to paint itself with a shade of green, does this constitute greenwashing?

Gideon Forman of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment said: “Is it green washing? Yes.” According to the ‘Seven Sins of Greenwashing’, the closest sin that du Maurier might be guilty of is the Sin of Lesser of Two Evils. This is where an environmental claim makes consumers feel ‘green’ about a product that is lacking in environmental benefits.

Obviously cigarettes are lacking in environmental benefits. But was the intent of the advertisement to trick people into thinking they were improving the environment by smoking du Maurier cigarettes? Doubtful. My guess is that they are trying to convince existing smokers to try their brand because of their green actions, basically saying ‘if you are going to partake in this senseless habit you might as well use one with green packaging’. Maybe they did some research and found there are enough smokers out there with an environmental conscience to warrant this advertisement.

If they truly are just promoting their recent green packaging without trying to pass off cigarettes as a green product, the greenwashing angle might be unfounded. Yet all of these issues may soon become irrelevant, as wheels are in motion to close the Canadian tobacco advertising loophole that allows ads like this to continue to be published.

© Redgreenandblue

Don’t fret smokers. There are alternative ways that tobacco smokers can save money and avoid the price hike of cigarettes. At least, this is what the Portsmouth Herald raved on the front page of their Sunday edition this morning.

With the increase of 45 cents per pack which will take effect this Wednesday, many individuals are scrambling to stock up while the prices are low. But, the media just took on a new “low” by providing solutions to offset the taxes. They propose: rolling your own cigarettes.

First of all, these taxes are meant for us to improve our standard of living. They were designed to bill people who are choosing to smoke at the cost of their lives and the lives around them. Our country is flooded with enough problems for the people who make healthier choices of living, yet are still scraping to pay bills.

Further more, much of the community that reads the Portsmouth Herald are parents of children in the school systems. These systems strive to help children make smart choices about drugs and alcohol. Every opinionated article has its place, but this front page “helpful hint” overstepped the boundaries of its devoted readers.

So, when a minor is caught rolling tobacco at Portsmouth High School, will that be reported on the front page, too?


Copyright © Examiner

Walking through the door of Sky Hookah Lounge is like entering another world.

One passes from the bustling pavement of commercial Kings Highway in Fairfield into a dim, curtained room carpeted with oriental rugs, where smoke that smells of fruit and honey hangs in the air.

Middle Eastern and American music mingles with the smoke, as people sit around the edges of the small room on cushioned booths, chattering and luxuriously inhaling from large, ornate water pipes. Two young women dance in the center of the room.

Sky is apparently the first hookah lounge in Fairfield County and one of two in the region that opened this month. Trying to brew a new, culturally diverse pastime, the lounges unintentionally stoked up controversy and confusion among local and state officials who are mulling where they fit in with the state ban on smoking in public places.

The confusion is evident in the reactions of Fairfield and Milford’s health departments — both of which initially told the lounges not to serve food or alcohol on the premises but didn’t bar them from opening. Fairfield approved the opening after an inspection.

Milford’s department forced The Olive Tree Hookah Lounge to close June 19, about two weeks after it opened in a small shopping plaza on Bridgeport Avenue, citing state law and city ordinance.

However, the department rescinded that order on Friday, following an appeal by Olive Tree owner Sammer Karout and his attorney.

“Since this is somewhat precedent setting … since there are implications here, we have to approach this in as objective a way as we can,” said Dr. A. Dennis McBride, Milford health director, who’d deemed the lounge “a public health nuisance” earlier in the week.

McBride said his department would inspect the business “promptly” following its opening. “Once we have an inspection … we will be able to make decisions based on that,” he said.

Karout’s Milford attorney, Steve Leo, said his client’s business is not a “public place” as defined by state statute. “I just didn’t see how the city was going to win on that,” he said. “He (Karout) put a lot of time and money into that, so I’m glad it’s not down the drain.”

Hookahs are 3-foot-tall water pipes with charcoal-heated mixtures of tobacco, fruit and/or herbs smoked through hoses. In the case of Sky Hookah, the tobacco-free mixture includes molasses, honey and sugar, owners said.

Karout said there are different types of hookahs, and the ones he serves contain no tar, .05 percent nicotine and about 5 percent tobacco. He planned to reopen Friday night.

Hookah, or “shisha” smoking is a popular pastime in the Middle East — typically accompanied by tea or coffee — as well as in clubs, bars and coffee shops in major U.S. cities and college towns.

But in Connecticut, where smoking in public places — not in private clubs — was outlawed in 2004, there are few hookah lounges, and it is unclear where they fit into the law. The owners of Sky said they knew of other lounges in New Haven, Hartford, Waterbury and Woodbridge, but those establishments weren’t common knowledge.

“No one knows what a hookah is,” said 25-year-old Jimmy Azhari, of North Haven, who co-owns Sky with his cousin, Anwar Malas. “If you go to New York or New Jersey, they’re like grocery stores — they’re on every corner.”

“It’s the social life of it,” said 23-year-old Malas, a Fairfield resident and native of Syria. “The tradition is for people to go relax. It’s not about the hookah.”

Sky patrons said they used to drive long distances, from Stamford to New Haven or even to other states, to smoke communal hookahs, and are happy to have a lounge close by.

“The location has a lot to do with it,” said Ahmed Shilleh, of Stamford. “There’s not really anything like this around. It’s something new to try for everyone.”

Not everyone greeted the concept so happily, however.

McBride indicated Wednesday he wouldn’t be sad if the Olive Tree disappeared in a puff, saying he was concerned about public access.

Karout, who holds dual American and Syrian citizenship and owns the deli next door, said he’d thought he’d jumped through the appropriate hoops and borrowed roughly $150,000 to outfit the lounge, which he runs as a private club.

The Fairfield Health Department looked into state and local regulations and determined that “you can’t have smoking and food service in the same enterprise,” but — sans food and beverage — the hookah lounge could open, said Sands Cleary, Fairfield health director.

Health officials in both towns cited “gray areas” in the law, when it’s applied to hookah lounges.

“This particular type of thing doesn’t fall directly within the language of the regulation,” Cleary said. “These hookah lounges and hookah bars are new to this area, and I bet in a couple of years there will be some legislation proposed to address any public health concerns. I guess it’s the rage in college towns and New York City — it’s very popular there.”

Both area lounges feature belly dancing on weekends. Owners of both said they are typically packed on weekends and screen patrons to ensure they’re at least 18.

State law defines “smoking” as “the lighting or carrying of a lighted cigarette, cigar, pipe or similar device” and makes exemptions from the ban, such as workplace smoking rooms and grandfather provisions for tobacco bars.

Jennifer Squires, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Health, said the department issues no special permit or policy for hookah lounges and views hookahs “as dangerous as smoking cigarettes” because smokers inhale more smoke with them.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said his office wasn’t consulted regarding the lounges and he’d been unaware of them until contacted by a reporter last week.

They seem “problematic” under state law, but he’d need to know all the details to know whether they’re within legal boundaries, he said, adding that the smoking ban is typically enforced by local police.