SIX smokers have been hit with heavy fines – for throwing cigarette ends down on Huddersfield streets.
Each of them was ordered to pay at least £700 in fines and costs by Huddersfield magistrates, in the latest crackdown on littering by Kirklees Council.

And the council has warned that more people will be taken to court as they aim to clean up the streets.

The court results will come as a shock to the smokers concerned as none of them were in court for the hearings.

The litter offenders were prosecuted under the Environmental Protection Act (1990) Sections 88 and 89.

Each had originally been handed a fixed penalty fine of £50 by council officials but did not pay and were taken to court.

Clr Mary Harkin, Cabinet member for the Environment, said: “Our town centre streets can be pleasant and tidy if people use the bins provided to dispose of their litter.

“However, we will not hesitate to prosecute if litterbugs persist in dropping litter.

“As these people found out, dropping cigarettes and then failing to pay the fixed penalty fine issued can prove very expensive.”

A spokesman for Keep Britain Tidy said: “Cigarette litter is the biggest litter problem on our streets and the sheer size of the problem is shameful.

“Smokers need to take responsibility for their litter and dispose of it properly.”

A council spokesman added: “Our environmental enforcement team can issue £50 fixed penalties to anyone who throws litter from cars, or pedestrians who drop litter.

“Littering can also result in a fine of up to £2,500 and a criminal record.”

The six offenders were:

Emma Longley, of Underbank Old Road, Holmfirth, who threw a cigarette end on the ground in Market Place, Huddersfield. Fined £350 plus a victim surcharge of £15, plus costs of £398.

Carol Hirst, of Ashenhurst Road, Newsome, who dropped a cigarette end on Victoria Lane, Huddersfield.ŠFined £350 plus a victim surcharge of £15, plus costs of £377.

Vicky Merritt, of Chidswell Gardens, Dewsbury, who threw cigarette near Huddersfield Bus Station.Š Fined £350 plus a victim surcharge of £15, plus costs of £377.

Kirsty Garling, of Brooklands, Bradley, Huddersfield, who threw a cigarette end on Victoria Lane, Huddersfield.ŠFined £350 plus a victim surcharge of £15, plus costs of £350.

Jo Batey, of Kingston Avenue, Dalton dropped a cigarette end on King Street, Huddersfield.Š Fined £350 plus a victim surcharge of £15, plus costs of £377.

Patrick Lawrence, of Roger Lane, Newsome, who dropped a cigarette on Princess Street, Huddersfield.Š Fined £350 plus a victim surcharge of £15, plus costs of £364.

Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Whether it be water pipes or cigarettes, smoking in public spaces is now banned in Syria – an astounding development for the country and a first for an Arab state. Alfred Hackensberger has the details.

Drums beating and trumpets blaring, a band from the Revolutionary Youth Union (RYU) marches through the streets of Damascus. Their pace snappy and rhythmic, they are an impressive military sight in their blue uniforms. But this time there’s nothing to celebrate: no presidential birthday, no anniversary of the ruling Baath Party to which the youth organisation is affiliated.

The march is purely for educational purposes. Young girls and boys carry hand-painted pictures through the streets, warning of the fatal risks of cigarettes and water pipes.

The reason is the new law banning smoking, which came into effect on 21 April. “We want to support the new law so that all citizens stay away from tobacco and other drugs,” explains Wissam Khaddah of the RYU. “We want a strong and healthy population.”

Drastic penalties

Syria’s president, Bashir Assad, signed the act a whole six months ago, imposing a strict prohibition on smoking in all public spaces that do not have an open ceiling or roof. Hospitals and universities are now affected along with all restaurants, pubs and cafés. There are no exceptions, neither for the Sheraton and Four Seasons Hotel, nor for any other luxury hotels and restaurants.

Penalties can be drastic, ranging from 8 euro to 1600 euro. Those who are repeatedly caught smoking run the risk of imprisonment. Syrian civil servants can even lose their lifetime position with the state. A special police unit is responsible for the ban, touring cafés and restaurants to monitor compliance.

A telephone hotline with an easy-to-remember four-digit number has been set up for people to report violations. The new law is a final step, Syria having banned tobacco advertising in 1996 and smoking on all forms of public transport in 2006.

Nawfara Café, a family-run business handed down from generation to generation over the past 300 years, is located in the shade of Damascus’ Umayyaden Mosque. Almost every tourist who wanders through the old town centre takes a break here.

Under normal circumstances the Nawfara, meaning “source”, is a hub of constant activity. Since the smoking ban, however, the guests have only been sitting outside in the café’s courtyard. “We have space for fifty guests inside as well,” says the manager Shadi Rabbat. “But now it’s completely empty.” He and other café owners hope the government will reconsider the smoking ban.

Niches for hookahs

Ahmad Kozoroch of Rawada Café, a no less well-known spot close to the Syrian parliament building, knew that things would turn out this way as early as last year, when President Assad signed the act. “In France, for example, the smoking ban is not as bad – you can just go outside for a quick cigarette. But you can’t do that with a water pipe, unfortunately,” says the café proprietor.

The Rawada and Nawfara cafés are among the lucky ones, though. They both have courtyards where their guests can still smoke their narghile, as water pipes are called here. Other cafés that don’t have similar facilities are facing hard times. Many of them were opened after the narghile came into fashion in the 1990s, becoming big business. More and more people began meeting up to smoke water pipes together.

Soon the bubbling smoking utensil was everywhere: at home in front of the TV, after meals, at family get-togethers, in restaurants and cafés and on Sunday picnics.

The companionable narghile’s success had a lot to do with the misconception that it is healthier than evil, carcinogenic cigarettes. How can tobacco mixed with honey and tasting of apple, vanilla or strawberries be bad for your health, especially if everything is filtered through water?

Increasing tobacco consumption

For Dr Monique Chaaya, a professor at the American University in Beirut, this is a disastrous development in the Middle East. The harmless appeal of the water pipe has encouraged 60 per cent of 16-19-year-olds to try it, she says.

The new smokers also include a high rate of women. “It’s like an epidemic,” says Dr Chaaya. Between 1999 and 2007 alone, use of water pipes rose 200 per cent among women. The same figure for men came to only 60 per cent.

The main reason for the narghile’s popularity, according to Dr Widem Hizem Ben Ayoub of the Salah Azaiez Cancer Institute in Tunisia, is that “young people want to be like Europeans and see smoking as a sign of independence, especially young women.”

That does at least explain the rise in tobacco consumption in recent years – not only in the Middle East but in the entire MENA region, which includes North Africa. “It’s a challenging region,” says Dr Fatimah Al-Awa, the regional advisor for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) anti-tobacco initiative.

“Social acceptance for smoking, cultural diversity and new trends such as women’s emancipation have contributed to the rise in tobacco consumption,” she says.

According to a WHO report, some 60 per cent of men smoke in Syria and Jordan; in Tunisia around 50 per cent. In Yemen the proportion of men consuming some form of tobacco is apparently 77 per cent. Arab states have only recently signed up to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), gradually passing laws banning advertising and smoking since then.

Cigarettes, he says, are a social imperative and a step into adulthood for young men. “It’s not easy to convince people to give up when teachers and doctors smoke and a pack of cigarettes costs only 50 cents.”

Laissez-faire

Judging by the empty cafés in Syria, the smoking ban seems to be working. Yet it’s not a result of state PR or the Syrian Revolutionary Youth Union’s educational march.

The question remains as to how long Syria can afford to upset restaurant proprietors and smokers. Perhaps there will soon be a compromise, like in Spain for example, where café owners can decide whether to hang smoking or non-smoking signs on their doors depending on the size of their premises.

Smoking bans in other Arab states have either not been implemented at all or have only been enforced half-heartedly. Who cares whether someone smokes at the airport while waiting for their luggage, in a taxi or outside a train toilet? It’s just another law that exists only on paper.

It’s an attitude that sometimes gets the locals’ goat, but at other times can be very gratifying. In any case, it is part of the general laissez-faire attitude that makes the region so attractive, particularly for visitors from the West.

Should Syria set a precedent, hard times are on the way for the smokers of the MENA region, but also for smoking visitors from abroad, who have always savoured being able to do what their home countries no longer allow them to do: smoking (almost) wherever and whenever they like.

By Alfred Hackensberger

THE MASSACHUSETTS Public Health Council is expected to approve a new program requiring retailers of tobacco products to display graphic posters that show the damage that tobacco use can cause. The posters are intended to induce smokers to quit their habit.

But as we rush headlong into this state-sponsored effort at behavior modification, we ought to ask ourselves exactly what our goals are. Will we be satisfied by anything less than a smoke-free community? And is the health of adults really anyone’s business but their own?The posters are promoted as vehicles to enhance public health, presumably by helping to cut down on smoking and therefore secondhand inhalation. But Massachusetts already has an indoor smoking ban that ensures no one in the state can be exposed to cigarette smoke in an enclosed space apart from a private residence.

Since smoking outdoors has little discernible effect on others’ health (assuming people can move around freely), there is no longer any place in the state where a person legally can be subjected to secondhand smoke in a manner that is damaging to health, except by choice.

But let’s not mince words about public health. Even proponents admit that the real aim is to pressure individuals to cease smoking.

Antismoking crusaders have established a goal of zero. Ultimately, they want smoking to be illegal, but if this cannot be achieved, they will go to increasingly invasive and degrading lengths to ensure that every smoker quits “voluntarily.’’ If a small textual warning on the pack is not enough, then it must be enlarged. If a large warning on the pack isn’t enough, then there must be a warning placard in the store. If the placard fails to bring incidence of smoking to zero, there must be a grisly visual reminder.

What will be next? We all know that these posters will not eliminate smoking in Massachusetts. Will smokers at some point be required upon purchase of cigarettes to sign notices indicating that they recognize the health risks? Perhaps we will demand that they watch videos of surgeries or smokers on their deathbeds. Certainly we are not at this stage now, but we must ask whether there are lengths we will not go in order to humiliate the smokers among us.

And let us not forget that requiring store owners to display posters is an act of compelled speech. There are any number of precedents for compelled speech of this sort, but we should not mistake the legality of such orders for their desirability. Whenever the government requires that private persons disseminate its message, it undermines our freedoms of speech and conscience. Even if the mandated message is one that we support and would announce proudly without coercion, the mandate itself proscribes the sphere of personal agency.

Yet many do not seem to care about this narrowing of individual liberty. This is what we exchange for the opportunity to harangue fellow adults about their private choices.

Some proponents of these posters and other extremist antismoking measures would reply that they are primarily concerned with youth smoking.

Very well. That is why it is illegal to sell and market cigarettes to minors. At some point, we must recognize that we have done all we reasonably can to insulate youth from smoking and that in ostracizing adults, we only create pariahs in our communities.

What is more, how can it be ethical to harass adults for the ostensible benefit of children? Human beings do not have greater moral worth as children than as adults. An adult’s freedom to pursue legal activities in peace shouldn’t be sabotaged because some of his peers want a different lifestyle for their children.

These posters represent merely the latest indignity that smokers must suffer in order to shield radical nonsmokers from behaviors that disgust them. But it’s not the government’s job to protect people from offense, and existing laws in the Commonwealth are adequate to guard nonsmokers from secondhand smoke. It’s time antismoking zealots stopped shouting and gave their lungs a rest.

By Simon Waxman, Boston

New York’s top court on Tuesday rejected prosecutors’ cases against two Indian-owned convenience stores in central New York for selling tax-free cigarettes.
The Court of Appeals, divided 4-3, said the stores acquired by the Cayuga Indian Nation in 2003 qualify as reservation lands under state tax law and can sell the cigarettes to tribe members free of tax.

While sales to non-Indians should be taxed at $2.75 per pack, the court majority said that proposed state regulations aren’t yet in effect and defending against county enforcement efforts is too burdensome on the Indians.

“The issue in this case is not whether sales taxes are due when non-Indian consumers purchase cigarettes from Indian retailers – they are,” Judge Victoria Graffeo wrote. “The issue is whether Indian retailers can be criminally prosecuted for failing to collect the sales taxes from consumers and forward them to the (Tax) Department.”

Graffeo, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and Judges Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick and Theodore Jones Jr. agreed that prosecutors cannot do that. Authorities in 2008 seized 176,000 cartons of cigarettes without tax stamps from the two stores in Seneca and Cayuga counties. Indictments were handed up but never unsealed. The Cayugas sued.

The court’s ruling Tuesday ends those possible criminal cases, attorneys said.

In a dissent, Judge Eugene Pigott Jr. wrote that it’s “undisputed” that most of the cigarettes should be taxed, and the lack of regulations doesn’t change the Indians’ obligation to collect that money from non-Indian consumers. Judges Susan Read and Robert Smith agreed with Pigott.

Daniel French, an attorney for the Cayugas, said they’ve always been willing to negotiate these issues with the counties. “Now there’s a half-million dollars of spoiled product and the Cayuga Nation fully intends to litigate for those expenses,” he said of the seized cigarettes.

The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to determine if parcels of aboriginal lands like these two, later reacquired by Indians, actually constitute reservation property under federal law, Graffeo noted. The Court of Appeals is ruling only that the two stores have “qualified reservation” status for tax purposes, and the tribe does not argue it can exert full sovereign authority, she wrote.

The state court agreed that cigarette taxes are owed, and only ruled that they cannot be collected without state regulations in place, said attorney Philip Spellane, who represents the counties. “In essence, it’s a very narrow holding saying these two prosecutions cannot go forward,” he said.

The New York Department of Taxation and Finance is reviewing public comments on its proposed regulations, spokesman Brad Maione said. The comment period ended April 26.

by MICHAEL VIRTANEN, 
Associated Press Writer

The health benefits of increasing the state’s tobacco tax are so obvious that health professionals were astounded that the Legislature kept delaying an increase year after year.
The last increase in the cigarette tax, before Thursday, was 33 years ago.

“It’s amazing for those of us in health care that it took so long,” said Jim Thrasher, with the health promotion office at USC’s Arnold School of Public Health. “They finally took to heart the message that’s been out there for so long, that people want an increase in cigarette tax.”

Although he is disappointed the state’s new 57-cent-a-pack tax is still below the national average, Thrasher celebrated the state Senate vote to override Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto of the tax.

“The long-term benefits are that we’re going to have fewer smokers,” Thrasher said. “In terms of health care costs, It’ll take a long time for it to be felt, but it will be felt.”

Studies estimate the higher cost of cigarettes will deter some youngsters from starting to smoke and will give adults another excuse to stop. Fewer people smoking translates into fewer cases of lung cancer, throat cancer and “just about any cancer you can name,” Thrasher said.

Dr. Gary Ewing, who helps run a smoking cessation program at Palmetto Health Richland, said the tax “could be huge for our state in terms of health care costs and absenteeism. Children who don’t start smoking today won’t have those health care costs down the road.”

As for those who already have started, cessation programs have become more successful in recent years. And a portion of the higher tobacco tax will go to cessation programs and research.

“About 25 percent of South Carolinians still smoke, but we’re chipping away more and more,” Ewing said.

The S.C. Medical Association termed the passage of the tobacco tax bill a “monumental accomplishment. … Today hard work finally paid off.”

By JOEY HOLLEMAN, Thestate

The Legislature finally passed a cigarette tax increase that will keep the state Medicaid program alive, cut teen smoking and provide the Hollings Cancer Center with $5 million a year. Those benefits are hard to argue against, but it took the General Assembly a decade to make the tax hike happen.

And it required state lawmakers finally to overcome Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto, something that the House failed to do in 2008. This time the governor’s flawed arguments against the tax hike were repudiated by large margins in the votes to override.

South Carolina’s 7-cent per pack tax is the lowest in the nation, and hasn’t been raised since 1977, when the dollars it generated had considerably more buying power. The 50-cent increase will take effect on July 1, and will bring the tax to less than half the national average.

It will, however, provide $136 million for the state Medicaid program, and bring in three times that amount in federal dollars. It also will generate $5 million for smoking cessation programs aimed at teenagers, plus the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center allocation. Just raising the price of a pack will cut smoking, and will discourage young people from taking up an unhealthy habit that can be excruciatingly difficult to break.

Hollings Cancer Center Director Andrew Kraft says that’s particularly important: “Time and again, we’ve seen that the vast majority of our patients with smoking-related cancers took up cigarettes when they were in their teens and went on to smoke for many years.” He described the tax hike as “a significant child-protection measure for the young people of our state.”

Gov. Sanford vetoed the increase earlier this week with an accompanying message contending that the tax hike would be a burden on “working South Carolinians,” and should have been offset with a comparable tax decrease elsewhere. The governor also cited his opposition to the federal stimulus plan and federal health care reform as figuring into his veto decision.

But the large majority of legislators looked at the state budget for next year, and the worsening projections for the year after that, and made a decision based on pragmatism rather than ideology. It’s about time.

To James Monsees and Adam Bowen, the biggest problem with the smoking industry is that it stopped innovating 50 years ago. And the two San Francisco entrepreneurs have set out to get that innovation engine moving again.

Monsees and Bowen, who were classmates at Stanford’s design school, worked on a master’s thesis together about smoking and in their research, discovered that many smokers love the ritual and the social elements of having a cigarette, but hate the fact that doing so often bothers people and is known to be unhealthy. With their degrees in hand, the two decided to build a product around helping people maximize those positives and minimize those negatives.

That was four years ago. Now, their company, Ploom, has just released its first product, the Model One. The $40 Model One is a vaporizer built around patent-pending technology that heats tobacco to a temperature that releases its flavor, but doesn’t burn it. It’s intended to be a white-gloved slap to the face of the traditional cigarette and the companies that make them.

The Model One looks something like a cross between a flute and a high-tech pen. Yet, despite what the company says is a design totally dependent on technology, it contains no electronics. Rather, the Ploom system enables a mixture of air and fuel in a small area with a heat exchanger. The system catalyzes the butane fuel, which is pushed out of the sides of the vaporizer, allowing a smoker to get the flavor from the tobacco without the contamination of actual smoke.

Ploom says its patent claims “revolve around an ‘old’ but very important idea: heat anything to low temperature and only the more volatile compounds will escape. The tobacco industry left us a large patent loophole…because we believe they were completely focused on perpetuating the cigarette icon: burning tobacco stick.”

The Model One, by comparison, is built on a new design principle popularized by the Nespresso and other “capsule” based coffee systems. That means that Ploom’s customers will buy packages of small “pods,” essentially small, thimble-shaped and foil-covered containers that are placed inside the Model One and then punctured and heated.

The pods come in several flavors–like “kick ass mint,” “cafe noir,” “blue tea,” and others–and cost $6 for a pack of 12. The pods are said to last about 10 minutes of continuous use.

The requirement of using these small pods will probably discourage people using the Model One to smoke their own tobacco or other substances–such as marijuana, Monsees and Bowen said. However, if one simply refilled the pods, it would seem to be possible to put just about any smokable substance in them.

While Ploom clearly is hoping to attract users looking for a new and better way to get their tobacco fix, the company is unwilling to say that its system is healthier than cigarettes.

Health is “a delicate topic,” said Monsees. “We have to tread carefully, but always the goal was to introduce something we feel comfortable with [regards to] health.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has strict guidelines on what companies like Ploom can say about health issues regarding products, Monsees added. But Ploom was “started to be as safe as possible, and if we ever felt that wasn’t happening, we’d just pack our bags.”

Regardless of whether vaporizers like the Model One are healthier than cigarettes, the two founders said their system is legal to use in indoor public places because rather then emitting smoke, they essentially give off steam. That doesn’t mean that every Model One user should be blowing clouds in people’s faces at bars, though. Monsees and Bowen say they take a much more cautious approach and encourage their users to be respectful of those around them.

In the end, it’s too early to know whether smokers are really looking for a new solution. The cigarette business is still earning huge profits, and companies like Ploom are barely on the radar.

But Monsees and Bowen have put years of research and design into their new vaporizer, and they intend to convince smokers that applying some new technology to their tobacco indulgence might make them happier. And not least because their design is built around the most efficient heating system they could imagine.

“The device uses so little butane for maintaining temperature that sometimes it shuts off the flow of fuel completely,” Monsees explained in an e-mail. “The design of the Model One’s catalytic heating system keeps the platinum above light-off temperature for several seconds so that the device continues working even after it’s starved of fuel for some time.

“The completely mechanical nature (no electronics) of the Model One maintains the allure of smoking: fire, glow, heat, sound; and achieves all of the above design constraints without the luxury of programming it into a chip. To the user it’s magic and one of the rare technical devices that they may own with no electrical components.”

By Daniel Terdiman, News.cnet

Chinese scientists say they have found a way for the countless cigarette butts that are tossed every day on streets, beaches and other public places to be reused — in protecting steel pipes from rusting.

The remnants of used cigarettes, among the world’s most common form of trash, leak chemicals that have been shown to kill fish and damage the environment. The problem could be alleviated if new uses are found for the cigarette butts.

“When people walk on the streets, they usually see cigarette butts scattered everywhere, on the ground or the grass,” said Jun Zhao, a Ph.D. student at the Xi’an Jiaotong University, by telephone. “I felt it was quite significant to do a project related to environmental protection.”

The study is particularly relevant to China, where about 30 percent of the world’s smokers live, a number roughly equal to the entire U.S. population. The country is home to both the world’s largest tobacco grower and cigarette producer.

Zhao and other researchers in northwest China said Friday they have found that cigarette butts soaked in water can help guard against corrosion in a type of steel commonly used in the oil industry.

The finding was recently published in the American Chemical Society journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

Zhao said she started the research after noticing that cigarette butts turn the color of water brown when immersed in it, like the color of antiseptics. “That inspired me to wonder if the two are related,” she said.

The researcher started collecting cigarette butts for the project around 18 months ago, picking them up from ashtrays atop roadside trash cans and collecting them from friends whom she had asked to save the butts.

“I have bags and bags of cigarette butts for the project. I have no idea how many of them I have,” she said.

Researchers found that extracts of cigarette butt water could substantially protect N80 type steel from corroding when in hydrochloric acid at 90 degrees Celsius (194 degrees F). That type of steel is often used to make drill rods, which costs oil producers millions of dollars annually when they corrode.

A compound material produced from the burning of nicotine and tar is what protects against corrosion, Zhao said, adding she planned to study its effect on preventing rusting in other metals.

The findings are “very convincing,” said Guy D. Davis, a materials consultant based in Baltimore, Maryland, with 30 years of experience researching the treatment of surfaces.

Together with another researcher, Davis has previously studied the use of tobacco extracts on steel and aluminum. “Tobacco seems to be one of the best plant-based inhibitors” of corrosion, Davis said.

But using tobacco to guard against metal corrosion has its limitations, Davis said, including that it acts as a nutrient for mold over time and “develops an obnoxious odor.”

By GILLIAN WONG

Wrightsville Beach will hold a hearing and might vote Thursday on whether to ban smoking along the shoreline.First raised at a candidates’ forum in October by a resident who hates the cigarette butts left behind by smokers, the possible ban was also discussed during the aldermen’s retreat in February.

Some smokers visiting the beach this week strongly opposed the idea.

“I think banning smoking on the beach is too far an approach into people’s lives,” said Scott Walker of Raleigh. “What’s next? I want to ban people talking on cell phones on the beach.”

He said he was a “staunch opponent to littering” and carries his butts away, and even picks up others’ trash to leave the beach a better place.

Chris Weyers, another smoker, said he always picks up after himself. He claimed this year is the cleanest he’s seen the beach in 10 years, so he didn’t think the ban was needed. “What, are they going to hire 50 more cops to catch everybody smoking a measly cigarette, that ought to be legal?”

Cape Fear Community College students Tracy McMillan, Rachel Nunalee and Kelly Bloom, nonsmokers, didn’t object to cigarettes on the beach, either.

“I think it would be OK if they’d clean up after themselves,” said McMillan.

But other beachgoers supported a ban.

“I’d be thrilled if there were a ban,” said Lynn Dilen of Cary, who recently got a headache from a nearby smoker.

“I think that’s a good idea. … There’s butts all over the place,” said Gregg Dilen.

Marc Crocco, Spencer Robinson and Spencer Percy, who just graduated from Wingate University, supported the idea.

“I want it to be clean,” said Crocco.“It’s got to be a family atmosphere,” said Robinson.

A state law that banned smoking in bars and restaurants on Jan. 2 also allows municipalities to restrict smoking in public places, including outdoor sites such as parks. Wrightsville Beach would be the first place in North Carolina to ban smoking on the beach, although Surfside City, S.C., did so last year.

Enforcement has been a concern for officials, since even the current ban on drinking or using glass bottles on the beach is difficult to enforce. Alderwoman Susan Collins and Mayor Pro Tem Bill Blair have expressed reluctance to direct lifeguards or police to add cigarette patrols to their duties.

Alderman Bill Sisson said in February that cigarette litter was a real problem on the beach, not just looking bad, but harming wildlife.

Alderwoman Lisa Weeks said the ban could at least be a “deterrent factor.”

The hearing will be held during the aldermen’s meeting at 6 p.m. at the town hall.

By Patricia E. Matson, Star news online

A group of researchers has developed a novel tea filter to treat cigarette addiction and have discovered the molecular mechanism behind the smoking cessation effect.

Professor Zhao Baolu and his group from the State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences identified theanine as the active ingredient in the tea filter that inhibits nicotine addiction.

Their work entitled “The cessation and detoxification effect of tea filters on cigarette smoke” was published in the X. edition Science of China in 2010.

Cigarette smoking has been linked to many life threatening diseases including heart disease, cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Many methods have been developed for smoking cessation by researchers and clinicians. Despite all efforts, currently available smoking cessation methods produce only modest success rates with frequent relapse. Due to the addictive nature of nicotine, quitting smoking remains an extremely difficult task. Therefore, the need for developing new smoking cessation strategies with better efficacy and fewer side effects is urgent.

Human tests using a newly developed tea filter were conducted at the Addiction Branch of Beijing Military Region General Hospital. A total of more than 100 male smokers participated in this study. The results from the first trial showed that the participants’ average daily cigarette consumption decreased by about 43 per cent and 56.5 per cent after using the tea filters for 1 and 2 months, respectively. The results from the second trial showed that the participants’ average daily cigarette consumption decreased by about 48 per cent, 83 per cent and 91 per cent after using the tea filters for 1, 2 and 3 months, respectively.

The average daily cigarettes consumed by the participants decreased from about 24.5 per day to about 3 per day at the end of 3 months of treatment. In addition, most participants indicated that sputum and their smoking-related symptoms were reduced compared with the control group. Physical examinations of the participants did not reveal any apparent side effects.

The mechanism of action (MOA) studies indicated that theanine in the filter exerted an inhibitory effect similar to the nicotine acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) inhibitor. In addition, theanine could significantly inhibit the nicotine-induced increased expression of nAChR and the increase of the neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) released in mouse brains.

The toxicological studies showed that the tea filters could significantly reduce the carcinogenic materials such as tar, free radicals, nitrosamine, benzo[a]pyrene, benzo[a]anthracene, chrysene and total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) generated in cigarette smoking.

Animal studies also revealed that tea filters could significantly reduce the acute toxicity, mutagenicity, lung damage and carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) levels in the blood caused by cigarette smoking.

Timesofindia

The rising popularity of hookah smoking in Canada is a boon to lounge owners and a bane to anti-smoking groups.
Hookah smoking, a centuries-old tradition in the Middle East, has found a resurgence in North America in recent years, with lounges and cafes popping up in most major cities to meet the demand.

A hookah is a large bowl connected to a vase of water with a long tube or mouthpiece used for smoking flavoured tobacco known as shisha.

It has become a popular social activity for young adults in the the U.S., Canada and Europe, thanks to the mass production of shisha in a variety of flavours.

A new study out of Montreal confirms hookah smoking’s rising popularity in Quebec.

Researchers from the University of Montreal, the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec and McGill University surveyed 871 people between the ages of 18 to 24 and found 23% had used a hookah within the past 12 months, and 5% had used one in the past month.

Patrick St-Onge has been running the Hookah Cafe Lounge in Montreal for six years. He says his customer base is steadily growing, especially among the 18 to 30 age group.

St-Onge, who sells over 30 flavours of shisha and a variety of teas at his establishment, said the beauty of hookah smoking is that it’s more social than smoking cigarettes.

“It’s a social context. You can come in with friends and you share a hookah. It opens up conversation.”

Nathan Downey, a 24-year-old student in St. John’s, N.L., loves the experience of smoking shisha. He used to frequent a local hookah lounge regularly when he lived in Calgary.

“The thing I really enjoyed about it was that the cloud of smoke you exhale is thick and white and almost never-ending, and you could make killer smoke rings with it. It was almost like smoking steam rather than smoke, since it passed through water before reaching the smoker’s lungs,” he said.

A lot of shisha smokers praise the health benefits of the hookah — after all, the tobacco isn’t packed full of chemical additives like cigarettes.

But health agencies are worried that people don’t fully grasp the dangers associated with hookah smoking.

Michael Perley, director of the Ontario Campaign for Action on Tobacco, said too many people mistakenly believe the water filters out the unhealthy chemicals, but medical studies prove that’s just a myth.

“Using a water pipe to smoke tobacco is not a safe alternative to cigarette smoking,” reads a 2007 World Health Organization report. “Contrary to ancient lore and popular belief, the smoke that emerges from a water pipe contains numerous toxicants known to cause lung cancer, heart disease and other diseases.”

Studies from the Mayo Clinic and the American Lung Association echo those findings.

“The popularity of water pipes may be due in part to perceptions that they are safer than cigarettes. However, water pipe smoke contains nicotine, carbon monoxide, carcinogens and may contain greater amounts of tar and heavy metals than cigarette smoke,” said Jennifer O’Loughlin, a University of Montreal professor and senior investigator in the Quebec study.

When asked if Health Canada would be looking into the effects of hookah smoking in light of its rising popularity, a spokesperson issued the following statement:

“Health Canada does not have current plans to look at the health effects of hookah smoking, as it has been scientifically established that all tobacco products pose significant risks to health, including waterpipe tobacco.”

St-Onge makes no bones about a hookah’s side-effects. “For sure it’s not good for your health. It’s still tobacco. It’s still smoke,” he said, adding that it is, at the very least, less addictive than cigarettes.

The lack of research into hookah smoking is such that there’s enough legal ambiguity to get around a lot of Canada’s anti-smoking laws, which vary by province.

Many hookah lounges purport to only sell tobacco-free shisha, thereby avoiding the same anti-tobacco laws that force smokers to stick to the sidewalks, explained Perley.

“Health units and inspectors have to get a hold of the material being sold, take it away and get it tested,” Perley said. “It’s a very cumbersome process and a very expensive process.”

Plus, if an establishment says it’s tobacco-free, and police have no reason to suspect otherwise, it’s legally difficult to come in and seize product.

That’s why Perley believes provincial laws should be re-written to cover anything that’s lit and smoked, not just tobacco.

But as the laws catch up to the trend, hookah lounges that openly serve tobacco are under threat.

St-Onge is only able to do what he does because Cafe Hookah Lounge opened before a 2005 bill outlawing indoor smoking in Ontario and Quebec came into effect.

When he opened shop in 2004, he had to get government approval by demonstrating proper ventilation and promising not to sell shisha to minors — the same legal hoops a cigar bar would have to jump through.

While he lucked out with his timing, he doesn’t foresee any more genuine hookah lounges opening in the city any time soon.

“You won’t see another place,” he said. “(The new law) is really restrictive.”

Authority to regulate Internet cigarette sales made from an American Indian reservation in another state was upheld Wednesday in a ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals.
Scott Maybee, an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians in New York state, had argued Oregon law did not apply to the reservation and he was subject only to federal law.

The court rejected his claims, ruling that Oregon law did not regulate his business operations on the reservation, and instead affected only the products his business sold in Oregon.

In an opinion by Presiding Judge David Schuman, the Court of Appeals said that “state courts may exercise jurisdiction in civil cases involving Native Americans and relating to conduct that extends beyond the reservation’s boundaries.”

The case involved cigarette brands that were not part of a 1998 national settlement with large tobacco companies and the attorneys general of 46 states that required cigarette manufacturers to make payments to the states to help recover their health care costs for smoking-related illnesses.

Oregon lawmakers required manufacturers that did not participate in the agreement to pay into an escrow fund that would be used to ensure payment of any future judgment the state won against those manufacturers.

But the court noted that Oregon lawmakers in 2003 limited sales of those nonparticipating brands because violations of the escrow fund requirement threatened to undermine the $206 billion “master settlement agreement” with the major tobacco companies.

The opinion said Maybee sold cigarettes in Oregon that were not listed on the attorney general’s directory of brands that have met the required state certification.

Maybee was sued by former Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, who specifically mentioned Maybee in a 2006 report on various law enforcement problems in Oregon, including cigarette tax evasion.

Although the appeals court case dealt with limits on cigarette brand sales and not taxes, Myers noted in his report that in 2006 Maybee operated three of the top eight Internet cigarette retail sites with the largest number of sales in Oregon.

As a result of enforcement action, Myers also said in that report the Oregon Department of Revenue collected more than $680,000 in past-due taxes from consumers who purchased from Maybee’s sites.

By WILLIAM McCALL, Associated Press