A day after Muhammadiyah issued a fatwa banning its followers from lighting up, both the organization and antitobacco campaigners have targeted cigarette advertising as one of the main culprits behind a generation of new smokers.

“We issued the fatwa because we believed those advertisements were targeting children and teenagers. This could ruin the country’s future generations,” Ahmad Zaenuddin, who heads the Jakarta office of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-largest Islamic organization, said on Wednesday.

He added that it was common knowledge that tobacco companies used prominent celebrities in their advertising to convince young people across the nation that smoking was fashionable.

“The children will follow the lifestyle of their favorite public figures and TV stars,” he said. “This is one of the dangers of tobacco advertising, because they use actors who can capture the young people’s attention.”

Aside from issuing the fatwa on smoking, Muhammadiyah is also expected to lobby the government to immediately ratify the World Heath Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which mandates that signatories implement methods to reduce tobacco use.

Adam Aliyyi, 15, a senior high school student in the capital, told the Jakarta Globe that he started smoking when he was 11 years old.

“I was able to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day,” he said. “But I have cut down somewhat because I am not so healthy anymore. I only smoke on Saturday nights now.”

Adam said that he had started smoking because cigarettes were heavily advertised and promoted at concerts and events, which are often sponsored by tobacco companies.

“I love attending youth events. Some are even held at my school and they discreetly offer us free cigarettes there,” he said.

Dr. Kartono Muhammad, a leading antitobacco campaigner and former chairman of the Indonesian Medical Association (IDI), confirmed that cigarette advertising had a significant impact on children.

“Children are the best imitators and they want to be like their role models,” he said. “Children are exposed to these advertisements on the streets and at musical performances where their idols light up.”

Kartono also said smoking could act as a gateway to hard drugs. “Once children are addicted to cigarettes, they tend to try other, stronger addictive substances. They will want more.”

A survey by the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak) in 2007 revealed that almost half of teens polled had taken up smoking because of advertising. The study also found that tobacco companies had sponsored 1,350 youth-oriented events from January to October in 2007.

By Nurfika Osman, Thejakartaglobe

Medical researchers have examined the incidence of Parkinson’s disease among long term smokers and have found an inverse relationship between Parkinson’s disease and smoking. The Paging Dr. Gupta blog reports as follows.

“The study, released today in the journal Neurology looked at the lifetime smoking history of more than 300,000 people, and confirmed the inverse relationship between smoking and Parkinson’s disease, established in earlier scientific studies. But, researchers say they’ve found a critical new piece to the puzzle: It appears to be the length of time one has been a smoker – not the number of cigarettes smoked – that has the most effect on disease risk reduction.”

Medical experts hasten to assure the public that they are not advocating that people take up smoking. But they do want to know what chemicals in cigarettes reduce the risks of Parkinson’s disease.

Perhaps this story might wake up the public to the possible medical benefits of tobacco. Certainly, smoking a pack a day is a poor idea, but there are reputable doctors who advocate the therapeutic use of tobacco. The Access Excellence web site reports as follows on the possible medical uses of tobacco.

“Nicotine in tobacco form accounts for millions of deaths each year from cancer, emphysema and heart disease. Yet, in certain neurologic and psychiatric conditions, nicotine can have useful therapeutic effects, reported scientists at the inaugural conference of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.

“Nicotine has long been a useful tool for researchers interested in probing the nervous system. Although the health risks associated with its intake via tobacco products has tended to tarnish society’s view of nicotine, it is important to recognize that nicotine may have therapeutic potential with a number of disease states,” noted Ovid Pomerleau, Ph.D., Director of the Behavioral Medicine Program, University of Michigan and President of the SRNT.

Nicotine is one of the most studied of all drugs. At the beginning of the century, the earliest research into neurotransmitters involved the effects of nicotine, indeed the first neurotransmitter receptor identified was the nicotine receptor. Nicotine mimics the actions of acetylcholine and has been shown to modulates many neurotransmitters.”

The article lists Tourette’s Syndrome, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease as possible candidates for treatment with some form of tobacco derivative. Tobacco has been in use for centuries. It is well studied. If it can be established that it has medical and industrial uses, perhaps it could be grown for purposes other than smoking. It might even be possible to work nicotine into a beverage, much as caffeine is used now.

With all of the interest in herbal medicine, it is odd that tobacco has been excluded. Hopefully, the medical profession will take a second look at tobacco as a medicinal herb. We have put a lot of energy into demonising “big tobacco” and the tobacco lobby. It makes not only medical but economic sense to rebuild a tobacco industry that improves public health rather than endangers it. There is no doubt that this strategy could save and create jobs as well as improve life and longevity. It would be bitterly ironic if what we have learned about the dangers of smoking were to blind us to the possible life saving qualities of tobacco. Science should not be a slave to the fads of the age.

George Washington Carver discovered hundreds of uses for peanuts, as food and in industry. The time seems ripe for tobacco to have its own George Washington Carver. Tobacco clearly has many uses. For the good of humanity, it is about time that we discover them.

Rudi Stettner, Rantrave

UNM students said a 75 cent tax increase on cigarettes won’t be driving them to Nicorette any time soon.
The state legislature passed a 75 cent increase to the current 91 cent cigarette tax last week, bringing the overall tax to a $1.61 per pack. However, smokers say the increase will not deter them from lighting-up.

“People pay out the nose for heroin,” UNM sophomore Jesse Clifton said. “I think an addiction is an addiction.”

Graduate student Sophia Hammett said imposing the cigarette tax is a way to tax a population that is least likely to resist and is often a more viable option for legislators than other tax increases.

“It is more ‘moral’ to raise a sin tax than acknowledge that we’re in a deficit,” Hammett said. “And either raise taxes across the board or make painful cuts.”

The state will be raising a projected $33 million per year in cigarette taxes.

Pug Burge, head of UNM’s Smoke-Free Environment Committee, said the cigarette tax is trying to make it financially uncomfortable for smokers, so they may consider quitting.

“I think those that have been smoking for years and years probably won’t quit,” she said. “I am hoping that younger people who are on the borderline will use this as an opportunity to stop smoking.”

Historically, cigarette tax increases have resulted in reduced sales. According to its quarterly reports, Philip Morris USA, which sells cigarette brands Marlboro, Parliament and Virginia Slims, saw a 10.5 percent decrease in 2009 domestic cigarette shipments after federal law increased cigarette taxes by 62 cents in April 2009,

Hammett said the federal increase did not affect her habit, and she does not expect the state increase to have a bigger impact.

“That didn’t slow me down,” she said. “I do not imagine that another 75 cents will hurt me that much.”

New Mexico is not the only state that has forced smokers to pay more as it tries to balance its budget. Last year, 16 states increased their cigarette taxes, according to StateLine.org.

Major tobacco-producing states generally charge less, while the rest of the nation charges more. Currently, 14 states tax cigarettes by $2 or more.

Rhode Island has the highest cigarette tax at $3.46 per pack, while South Carolina only taxes cigarettes 7 cents, according the American Lung Association.

Clifton said New Mexico’s average price of about $4.82 per pack is not bad in comparison to some other states.

“I heard in New Jersey they’re almost $10 a pack,” he said. “But 
people still smoke in New Jersey.”

Freshman Joshua Torres said an extra 75-cents-or-so a week was not enough to get him to quit.

“Definitely not,” he said. “I’ll just donate more plasma, I guess.”

Burge said that since the smoking ban on campus was enacted in August 2009, the UNM health centers have seen more students, faculty and staff expressing interest in quitting.

“I am hoping, with the cost of cigarettes going up, that we will see more people trying to quit,” she said.

By Leah Valencia, Dailylobo

Victor DeNoble has traveled the land the past 15 years accompanied by a frozen monkey brain, a frozen human brain, a true-life tale of corporate espionage, a stand-up comedian’s timing and a million reasons not to smoke.

But no preaching.

“I’m not here to tell people what to do,” DeNoble told about 200 students at Chavez High School on Tuesday afternoon.

The message, though, was easily discernible. And, coming as it did from a former behavioral scientist for Philip Morris, it was profound.

It’s a message the 60-year-old DeNoble is bringing to Stockton for the first time this week, with additional visits scheduled for today at Plaza Robles and New Vision high schools, and at Venture Academy on Thursday.

Thirty years ago, DeNoble was assigned by Philip Morris to develop a safe substitute for nicotine, a chemical that makes tobacco addictive but also causes the heart to race, sometimes dangerously. His research with countless rats and a drug-addicted capuchin monkey named Sarah led to his discovery of the long-term changes to the brain that smoking causes.

Eventually, DeNoble developed a nicotine-free cigarette, but Philip Morris wasn’t interested because it feared the new product would kill its other brands. Executives with the company also sought to silence DeNoble from publicizing his research about tobacco’s brain-changing properties, but eventually he tipped off the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

DeNoble testified before Congress in 1994, revealing the lies of the tobacco industry. Cigarette companies have paid out more than $700 billion in legal damages.

Ever since, DeNoble has been speaking to students for Kaiser Permanente’s “Don’t Buy the Lie” program. Students attending the program this week have the opportunity to win $1,000 in an anti-smoking billboard design competition. The winners’ creations will appear on billboards in the Stockton area.

DeNoble arrives at his school visits bearing organs – the monkey Sarah’s brain and the brain of a 63-year-old man who was dying of cancer in the early 1980s.

“After you’re dead, can I have your brain?” DeNoble recalled asking the man.

The Chavez students roared.

The man asked DeNoble, “What are you going to do with my brain?”

DeNoble replied, “Well, I’m going to take it out of your head, I’m going to cut it in half, I want to look in the middle, I want to see if your brains cells are changed by the nicotine.”

The man soon died and DeNoble got his brain as well as invaluable research material. DeNoble showed the brain to the Chavez students, holding it in hands covered by blue surgical gloves and jogging around the school’s auditorium as some students stood and craned their necks and others squealed in low-grade horror.

“He was funny and entertaining, funny but still informative,” said Alicia Moore, 18, a senior in Chavez’s health sciences academy who wants to become a nurse.

Moore said she never knew before DeNoble’s visit that smoking causes chemical changes in the brain. She admitted that once when she was younger, she took a few puffs.

“I have tried a cigarette,” she said. “When I was in elementary school, I stole my mom’s one time when she wasn’t looking. It wasn’t a good experience. I didn’t like it.”

By Roger Phillips, Recordnet

Global tobacco giant Philip Morris said Tuesday it planned to take the Norwegian state to court in an attempt to overturn a law in the Scandinavian country banning the display of cigarettes in stores.

“Philip Morris Norway (PMN) will today start legal proceedings to overturn the ban on displaying tobacco products in retail stores,” the company said in a statement.

Following in the footsteps of several other Western countries like Ireland and Iceland, Norway on January 1 this year banned the display of cigarettes in stores in an attempt to cut impulse buys of tobacco products.

In Norway, cigarettes have been banished to closed cases, while cigarette dispensers may no longer display brand labels.

“Display bans have had no impact on reducing smoking in the countries that have implemented them, a fact acknowledged by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services,” PMN spokeswoman Anne Edwards said in the statement.

“These regulations prevent adult consumers from seeing the available product range and overly restrict competition,” she said, adding that “we have raised these issues with the government to no avail, which has regrettably left us with no choice but to litigate.”

Norwegian health officials did not appear troubled by the pending litigation.

“This shows that we are on the right track. If Philip Morris really felt the ban would not reduce the consumption of tobacco they would not worry about this law,” Bjoern-Inge Larsen, who heads up the Norwegian Directorate of Health, told public television NRK.

“On the contrary, I think this legal action is an indication that the ban will contribute to reducing tobacco consumption in the long term,” he said.

In June 2004, Norway became the second country in the world after Ireland to ban smoking in public places, including bars, restaurants and night clubs.

Some 21 percent of Norwegians aged 16 to 74 smoked on a daily basis in 2009, while an additional nine percent smoked occasionally, according to Statistics Norway.

While a Senate committee began hearings on bills to increase sales taxes and tobacco taxes, another bill has been advanced that would increase the cost of a 12-ounce can of soda.

The Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee began hearings over raising tobacco taxes by 55 cents and will continue hearings regarding Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson’s plan to increase the state sales tax by 1 percent from 5.3 percent to 6.3 percent for three years.

The soda tax, which was advanced by Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, increases the tax on soda by one penny for every teaspoon of sugar — or an estimated 10 cents — and would raise an estimated $90 million during the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

“It is amazing just to see how much can be generated,” said Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita, chairman of the Assessment and Taxation Committee. “There is a lot more consumed than I could have ever dreamed.”
Both the tobacco and sales tax increases would constitute an overall increase of just over $377 million in the state general fund receipts in the next fiscal year. Currently, the state is facing a projected $467 million shortfall for FY 2011.

“We’re hoping that the gap is not that broad,” Donovan said. “If it is we have bigger problems than we thought.”
Vratil proposed his soda tax during a meeting of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which agreed to sponsor it. The committee also agreed to sponsor a bill that doubles the per-gallon taxes paid by distributors of beer, wine and liquor and the tax that retail stores pay on their gross receipts. That measure would raise an additional $50 million.

As for the tax increases that the Assessment and Taxation Committee started hearings for Tuesday — in favor of the Governor’s increases — Donovan said that state agencies are warming up to the proposal.
“There are a lot of people that get the funding that are excited about us discussing these tax increases,” Donovan said. “They get the money … that is a pretty good connection and without the tax increases, they are not going to get the funding they need.”

The testimony came on the same day that advocates for the disabled staged several small protests at the Statehouse.
The tobacco tax proposal would increase the cigarette tax by 55 cents, to $1.34 a pack, and to quadruple the tax on other tobacco products to 40 percent.

Hearings on tax increases will continue today with cigarette tax opponents and Donovan said that hearings are scheduled to continue into next week.

“When we start hearing the other parts of the bill — soft drink tax bill and liquor bill — there will be hearings on each one of those,” Donovan said. “We want to give everyone a fair hearing and exhaust all possibilities to help those that get the funding while trying not to destroy those that are being taxed.”

By MATTHEW CLARK, Morningsun

A lawsuit over the marketing of light cigarettes could be headed back to the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal judge denied a motion to apply facts found in a previous case to the current one.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock said in a 16-page decision issued Friday that it would not be fair to the litigants to apply the facts found by a judge in a jury-waived criminal trial in a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against tobacco companies to the potential class-action civil suit.

The lawsuit contends smokers of Marlboro Lights, Virginia Slims Lights and other light cigarettes were misled into thinking that the cigarettes contained less tar and nicotine than regular cigarettes.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs, who live all over the country, had asked Woodcock to apply the doctrine of collateral estoppel to the current case and adopt the facts found in the 2005 verdict in which a federal judge in Washington, D.C., concluded cigarette makers had violated racketeering statutes.

Efforts to reach attorneys representing cigarette makers this week were unsuccessful.

Bangor lawyer Samuel Lanham Jr., who represents the three Maine plaintiffs, said Tuesday he and other attorneys were “considering all the options,” including a possible appeal to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

“Judge Woodcock’s ruling means we have to be put to our proof and we are prepared to do so,” Lanham said.

The next step in the litigation is for Woodcock to consider a motion to certify the case a class-action lawsuit.

The lawsuit is the first multidistrict litigation case ever assigned to federal court in Bangor. Multidistrict litigation, or MDL, is the label the federal judiciary gives cases filed against the same party or parties in federal courts around the nation. Once cases have been combined, a three-judge panel assigns them to one federal judge.

At least 20 lawsuits from around the country were combined last year and assigned to Woodcock, who has not handled one since his appointment to the federal bench in 2003.

Moreover, the original Maine case that led to the 20-case MDL is once again in the hands of Woodcock, whom the U.S. Supreme Court reversed. In a 5-4 decision won by the court’s liberals, the justices ruled in December 2008 that smokers may use state consumer protection laws to sue cigarette makers for the way they promote “light” and “low tar” brands.

The Altria Group Inc. argued on behalf of its Philip Morris USA subsidiary that the lawsuits are barred by the federal cigarette labeling law, which forbids states from regulating any aspect of cigarette advertising that involves smoking and health.

Lanham filed the lawsuit in August 2005 on behalf of Lori A. Spellman of Levant and Stephanie Good and Allain L. Thibodeau, both of Bangor. Each smoked Marlboro Lights for 15 years or more. The plaintiffs are not seeking damages for personal injuries or health problems caused from cigarette smoking.

Instead, the lawsuit alleges that they were hoodwinked into thinking that “light” cigarettes contained less tar and nicotine than full-flavor cigarettes. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified compensatory, punitive and other damages.

Woodcock granted summary judgment in the cigarette makers’ favor in 2006. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling the next year, and attorneys for the tobacco firm appealed to the nation’s highest court. It was the first case argued during the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 term.

By Judy Harrison, Bangordailynews

DANA POINT Want to take a drag at a city park? You might want to reconsider.
On the heels of the results of a community opinion survey in which nearly two-thirds of respondents wanted smoking prohibited in all areas of local parks, a divided City Council on Monday gave initial approval to a new law banning the activity there.

The no-smoking ordinance will go into effect 30 days after the panel votes again in two weeks to give a final approval to the prohibition. Violations are a misdemeanor, the city said, punishable by a fine of up to $500 and six month in county jail.

Dana Point is set to join several other cities in Orange County, including Laguna Beach and Irvine, which have already banned smoking in their city parks.

Speaking before the council’s 3-2 vote to outlaw smoking in parks, Gwen Drenick, vice chair of the Orange County Tobacco Education Coalition, said 87 percent of the county’s population does not smoke and that’s a large percentage affected by those who do.

“I am proud of my city for proactively promoting a healthy environment,” said Drenick, who also lives in Dana Point.

Council members Joel Bishop and Lisa Bartlett voted against the majority, saying that the proposed ordinance was overreaching.

“I hate smoking. I am not a proponent of smoking in any way,” said Bishop. But he added that he had not observed smoking to be an issue in the city.

“Are we creating a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist?” he asked. “Are we adding legislation that really doesn’t need to be there?”

Bishop suggested modifying the ordinance to limit it to what he said other cities had done, suggesting that smoking be restricted at public parks during sporting events, concerts and other group activities.

Bartlett chimed in her support saying she thought the pendulum swing from allowing smoking to a ban was too wide.

Without much comment, Mayor Steven Weinberg and council members Scott Schoeffel and Lara Anderson voted in favor of the ban.

“I can’t think of a compelling reason why you would need to smoke at the park,” Anderson had said before Monday’s meeting. “You go to the park for healthful reasons.”

She had wanted the city to look into a prohibition, both from a health and litter standpoint.

“I think we have an overwhelming number of people who are very receptive to banning smoking in the parks,” she said, following the release of the community opinion survey results last month. “Cigarette butts are just insidious and everywhere.”

The last question in the poll of 400 randomly selected registered voters in the city had dealt with whether smoking should be banned in parks.

Sixty-one percent said they want a ban in all areas of public parks; 20 percent preferred that smoking be allowed only in designated smoking areas; and 17 percent favored allowing people to light up in all areas of public parks.

Based on the results and the “health and environmental risks the act of smoking cause,” city staff in a report recommended instituting a “smoke-free” law for public parks.

“Enforcement of the proposed prohibition on smoking in City parks would begin after staff initiates a public education campaign about the newly adopted regulations,” the report said. “Enforcement would include park signage with a posted telephone number that residents could call for information and/or make a complaint.”

Secondhand smoke causes an estimated 46,000 heart disease deaths and about 3,000 lung cancer deaths among nonsmokers each year, according to statistics cited by the CDC.

As smokers increasingly become social pariahs, the success of proposals to ban smoking in public places has usually been a foregone conclusion, but anti-smoking efforts have occasionally encountered setbacks in recent years.

California lawmakers have repeatedly balked at legislation to make state beaches smoke-free, and Orange County supervisors shot down a county beach smoking ban in 2006, citing concerns of excessive government regulation.

Smokers’ rights groups have also pushed back against the notion that brief exposure to secondhand smoke is harmful.

Robert Best, western regional director for The Citizens Freedom Alliance, Inc./The Smoker’s Club, said in an interview last week that the group holds the view that people don’t get cancer walking by a person smoking outside and banning it sends the message that smokers are not welcome at parks.

“We create entire parks for dogs and skateboarders, but we’re throwing people out of the parks,” he said. “The city is just basically jumping on a bandwagon to attack a minority. If I am getting my history right, it’s something our country doesn’t want you to do.”

The Smoker’s Club is a non-profit organization that educates people about smoker’s rights and property rights in general, Best said.

Cities already have anti-littering laws and “if the city can’t enforce the one law, how can they enforce the second law?” he asked.

The city staff report says that, “As a result of its 2008 Annual International Coastal Clean-Up, the Ocean Conservancy announced that six million pounds of trash was collected in just one day on beaches worldwide and that one-third of the items came from smokers.”

Since 2003, California has prohibited smoking within 25 feet of a playground or tot lot sandbox and as of Jan. 1, 2009, more than 169 cities and counties have adopted policies restricting or eliminating tobacco use in public places, the city said.

BY VIK JOLLY, Ocregister

A new law targeting cigarette smugglers has cleared both houses of the General Assembly and now goes to the governor for his signature.
The House of Delegates on Wednesday joined the Senate in unanimously passing Senate Bill 476, sponsored by Sen. John C. Watkins, R-Midlothian.

The bill would establish additional penalties for “any person who sells, purchases, transports, receives, or possesses unstamped cigarettes” in Virginia.

Cigarettes are stamped in most states to ensure that the tax on them has been paid. If a pack of cigarettes is sold in Virginia without a stamp, that means no tax has been paid to the commonwealth.

In Virginia, the tax on a pack of cigarettes is 30 cents. In South Carolina, the tax per pack is 7 cents, and that state doesn’t stamp its cigarettes. Smugglers often purchase cigarettes in states with low tobacco taxes and sell them illegally in states with higher tobacco taxes, pocketing the difference as profit.

If Gov. Bob McDonnell signs SB 476 into law, first-time offenders would be charged $2.50 a pack, up to $500. For a second violation within 36 months, the fine would be $5 per pack, up to $1,000. And for a third violation, the penalty would be $10 per pack, up to $50,000.

If authorities determine that the violator had a willful intent to defraud the commonwealth, the penalty would be $25 a pack, up to $250,000.

On another tobacco-related issue, the House last week also gave final approval to SB 478, which would change the tax on moist snuff tobacco.

Currently, snuff is taxed at 10 percent of the manufacturer’s sales price. Under SB 478, which was proposed by Watkins, the tax would be 18 cents an ounce.

The House voted 92-6 for the bill. It passed the Senate last month, 38-2. If McDonnell signs the bill, it would take effect on Jan. 1, 2011.

Bill Phelps, a spokesperson for the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., said the bill would help both tobacco companies and the commonwealth. Phelps said it makes sense to change the tax on snuff to an excise tax, as Virginia taxes gasoline or beer. That way, the tax is based on the amount of the product sold, not the quality.

“We think that taxing moist tobacco by weight … is a fair way to tax the product,” Phelps said.

He said taxing snuff by the ounce will provide a more stable source of revenue for the commonwealth, because the price of snuff has gone down every year for the past six years.

By Rich Griset, Wpcva

Now that it appears we’re going to get the money needed so those 29 Utah Highway Patrol troopers won’t have to be laid off, and those 213 prison inmates won’t have to be released early, and that juvenile court judge in St. George can be hired, and the drivers’ license bureaus can open on Fridays, and any number of the state’s health and social services can be funded, I thought it only appropriate to thank the people who will be paying for it.

And let me tell you, they’re not exactly saying, “You’re welcome.”

I’m at Tobacco Max, a smoke shop on State Street. If it involves tobacco, this is the place. The store is wall-to-wall stuff you can smoke. Wallpaper by Marlboro.

By midmorning Friday, the news that the state Legislature just voted for a dollar-a-pack cigarette tax increase — the basis for the projected $44 million that will pay for all of the above — has filtered into the shop.

Scott Gunn is working his usual shift at the counter. He provides a description of the kind of people he sells cigarettes to every day — the people who will be paying that extra dollar per pack tax.

“A lot of them can hardly afford to live to begin with,” he says. “They pay with dimes and quarters. I’ve had half a dozen this morning digging for change, pulling lint out of their pocket. And it’s the first of the month. You should see it toward the end.”

And this is before the increase.

“To tax the little guy,” he says, shrugging, “seems kinda hard.”
Scott allows that it might be incentive for people to quit. Everything has its price. He uses himself as an example. When he started smoking, at age 13, cigarettes were 75 cents a pack. Every time the price went up he’d think about stopping. “When they reached $2, I’d say, ‘I’m quitting,’ ” he says. “Then it was $3. Now I’m paying $4.15 a pack, and I still haven’t quit. It’s addictive. It’s hard.”

We did some quick math. At a pack of Marlboros a day, Scott is spending $135 a month on tobacco (counting sales tax). With the new proposed tax, it will be $165.

Scott is 40. He’s been smoking for 27 years. “Maybe this will be what gets me to finally quit,” he says.

Just then, Paul Steck comes in for a carton of Pyramids.

Pyramids are the cheapest cigarettes in the store at $2.75 a pack.

“I used to smoke Parliaments,” Paul says — the Parliaments are on the shelf next to the Pyramids; they’re $4.79 a pack — “but I smoke what I can afford.”

Hearing Scott talk about “maybe quitting,” Paul, a truck driver during his working days, volunteers the not especially inspirational information that he has tried to quit 30 times.
“I know smoking’s not healthy,” he says. “But every time I stop smoking, I gain weight — so I have to decide, am I going to die from obesity or from smoking?”

Smokers, he says, are a “scapegoat” for taxation.

“Nine percent of taxpayers smoke. Out of that 9 percent, they’re trying to take care of the majority. It isn’t fair. But what can you do?”

Next to come in the shop is Sy Pham, the owner of Tobacco Max and a tobacco wholesaler who distributes to more than 100 gas stations and convenience stores in the Salt Lake Valley.

Sy says he is still reeling from the 62-cents-per-pack federal tobacco tax increase that was implemented a year ago — an increase, he claims, that cut his profits by 20 percent.

Tobacco taxes not only target a minority of the public, he says, but they target the poor over the rich.

For evidence, he explains that he consistently delivers 65 percent of his tobacco to the west side of the freeway that dissects the valley, with just 35 percent going to the more affluent east side.

“That tells you who will mostly be paying this tax,” he says.

Unless, miracle of miracles, they all quit, which will put us back to square one.

In the meantime, the least we can do, as they dig that lint out of their pockets, is thank them for their generosity.

By Lee Benson, Deseretnews

Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to produce between 400 million and 450 million kg of tobacco in 2010, similar to 2009 output, a senior industry official said on Thursday.

The world’s top cigarette makers, including British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International, all source tobacco from Africa, which could increasingly play a part in meeting global demand.

“With subsidies going to disappear in Europe we expect in the next couple of years a 100 million kg of tobacco production will be lost in Europe, so somebody must take that gap… and Africa is ideally placed to up their production and fill that gap,” Francois van der Merwe, chief executive of the Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa, said.

Malawi, the world’s biggest producer of burley tobacco, will dominate Africa’s production with a crop forecast at 215 million kg, of which 185 million kg would be burley and the balance flue-cured tobacco, he told Reuters.

“If you take countries like Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique Zambia and Zimbabwe, the total forecast is estimated at between 400 and 450 million kg,” he said.

He said Malawi, where good prices on auction floors fuelled a rise in tobacco production in the last four years, could scale down production if an oversupply of the golden leaf threatened prices.

“We believe that the production in Malawi is maybe a bit on the high side…and the Malawians reckon the production of burley should be in the region of between 130 and 150 million to maintain reasonable prices and to supply the market sufficiently,” Van der Merwe said.

Tobacco is the southern African nation’s main foreign exchange earner and accounts for more than 60 percent of exports and 15 percent of the gross domestic product in Malawi.Van der Merwe said a political solution was necessary to resuscitate Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry.

Output in Zimbabwe, Africa’s former No.1 tobacco grower,

dropped from a peak of 235 million kg to around 40-50 million kg at the time white-owned farms were seized in 2000.

“For the region Zimbabwe is extremely important because of the quality and the volumes they produced. It draws world buyers right down the southern tip of Africa,” Van der Merwe said.

Zimbabwe was expected to produce 60 million kg of tobacco this year, similar to that of Tanzania, while output in South Africa is expected to be 12 million kg.

By Wendell Roelf, Reuters

A new study has revealed that the more teenagers see cigarette ads, the greater they are at risk of taking that first puff.

According to the study, the particular content of tobacco marketing resonates with youth and that the vivid imagery in tobacco advertising captures their interest, although teens typically are more resistant to the promotional seduction of other products.

“Cigarettes have created a brand for every personality trait,” study lead author Reiner Hanewinkel, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Therapy and Health Research in Kiel, Germany, said.

“If you are looking to project independence and masculinity, think of the lonely cowboy in the Marlboro ads.

“On the other hand, if you’re looking to project a desire for romantic relationships, and friendships are playing a role, then you will choose Lucky Strike if you are a man and Virginia Slims if you are a woman,” Hanewinkel, who collaborated with Dartmouth Medical School, added.

Kids with high exposure to tobacco advertising were twice as likely to have tried smoking and three times as likely to have smoked in the past month, compared to those with low exposure.Exposure to tobacco advertising also was associated with higher intent to smoke in the future among the never-smokers, suggesting that it affects how adolescents perceive smoking even before they start.

The study has relevance for the United States and other nations with partial advertising bans similar to Germany’s restrictions.

The 2008 survey involved 3,415 German schoolchildren, ages 10 to 17, in rural and urban areas.

Students saw images (with all the writing and brand logos removed) of six cigarette ads and eight commercial products such as clothing, cars, candy and detergent.

With the brand information missing, researchers measured adolescents’ ad recognition by applying psychological assumptions about attention and memory.

They inquired about how frequently students had viewed each ad image and asked about smoking habits and intentions.

“We were amazed at how often they had seen the images and could correctly recall the cigarette brand,” study collaborator James Sargent, M.D., a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth, said.

“For example, 55 percent had seen the Lucky Strike image and almost one quarter correctly decoded the brand,” he stated.

After analysing the data, the researchers assessed how likely non-smokers were to try smoking.

Researchers classified survey participants as current smokers if they reported smoking at least once a month.

“This is a well-done study. They controlled for all the things they needed to control for,” Stanton Glantz, Ph.D., director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said.

The study appears online and in the April issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.