The average consumer won’t recognize a pack of counterfeit cigarettes, but they might recognize the taste is different.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been seeing an increase in counterfeit cigarettes, which mimic brand-name products, according to Teresa Merhige, resident agent in charge of the ATF’s Norfolk office. Raids this week targeted those cigarettes or other tobacco-related offenses.
Federal authorities announced Thursday they had made arrests in Hampton Roads involving people charged with counterfeit and untaxed cigarettes. Local law enforcement also raided stores on Wednesday that were believed to be selling untaxed cigarettes after being tipped off by federal authorities.

The average consumer won’t recognize a pack of counterfeit cigarettes, but they might recognize the taste is different.The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been seeing an increase in counterfeit cigarettes, which mimic brand-name products, according to Teresa Merhige, resident agent in charge of the ATF’s Norfolk office. Raids this week targeted those cigarettes or other tobacco-related offenses.

Federal authorities announced Thursday they had made arrests in Hampton Roads involving people charged with counterfeit and untaxed cigarettes. Local law enforcement also raided stores on Wednesday that were believed to be selling untaxed cigarettes after being tipped off by federal authorities.

Eight individuals were suspected in the trafficking operation, which the U.S. Attorney’s office said originated in New Jersey and New York under two different criminal enterprises. The investigation began in June 2009.

Federal authorities said that the groups received the contraband cigarettes in exchange for more than $4 million in cash and other counterfeit goods, such as tax stamps and postage stamps.

ATF believes many of the counterfeit cigarettes might be coming in from overseas. “You’ve got to really be trained,” Merhige said. “Some of these counterfeits are pretty doggone good.”

Mike Campbell, a spokesman for ATF, said on Wednesday that these crimes are on the rise because the profit margin is quite lucrative for traffickers. “The tax on a pack of cigarettes in New York is considerably higher than in Virginia,” Campbell said. Campbell said local law enforcement officials helped in some of the undercover portions of the federal investigation.

“For example, we’ve had people come to Northern Virginia and pay for cigarettes with two kilos of cocaine,” Campbell said, illustrating the worth of the untaxed cigarettes. Campbell said that there is a state tax on cigarettes and different cities also have taxes on them as well.

Merhige said that retailers selling the untaxed cigarettes, which should have a tax stamp affixed to them by the wholesaler, is a regionwide problem that affects all of Hampton Roads.

By Austin Bogues, dailypress.com, June 11, 2010

Vancouver parks officials will look at ways to get butts off our beaches.

The Vancouver park board is set to discuss the issue of banning cigarette smoking on Vancouver beaches and in parks at a meeting Feb. 1.

Staff will then prepare a report with a recommendation on which way to proceed.

“During the summer period there was the forest fire at Stanley Park and there was some concern,” said park board commissioner Raj Hundal. “I approached staff to look into the matter and that led to a staff briefing sometime in November to look into the issue.”

Hundal said a public survey accompanied the briefing and an overwhelming majority (about 85 to 90 per cent) said they were in favour of some kind of regulation of smoking on beaches.

There are several options on the table, including partial bans with smoke-free zones, said Hundal, a non-smoker.

Another option is to have a trial period.

“Anything is possible at this moment. I personally have not made a decision one way or the other,” he said. “I am a non-smoker and would rather be in an environment where people don’t smoke.”

Advocates of a ban also argue that all the cigarette butts left on the beach cause environmental damage. Machines used to clean the beaches don’t pick up the butts.

“People have to pick those up by hand,” Hundal said. “And they wash up on our shores.”

The move toward prohibiting people from having a puff on the beach isn’t new. White Rock, West Vancouver and the District of North Vancouver have implemented smoking restrictions.

Those against the move say a law preventing someone from lighting up outdoors is “too heavy-handed,” said Hundal.

MyChoice.ca, a Quebec-based association which advocates for smokers to have a say in the debate, is concerned that liberties are be taken away. On its website, the organization claims such political decisions are biased because governments legalize and heavily tax tobacco and then punish customers by “not giving them any real say in how they are treated as citizens.”

Hundal said no decision has been made. “We want to listen to everyone,” he said.

ticrawford@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

RALEIGH — Most bars and restaurants are obeying North Carolina’s new indoor smoking ban, but some hookah bars are ignoring the law, saying they are exempt.

The Winston-Salem Journal reported that state officials say the state’s no-smoking law, which took effect Jan. 2, applies to all bars, even the state’s approximately 20 hookah bars.

But hookah bar owners and their proponents point to a section of the law that defines “smoking” as “the use or possession of a lighted cigarette, lighted cigar, lighted pipe, or any other lighted tobacco product.”

They say that while the tobacco used in hookah smoking is heated by charcoal, it’s never lit because a small metal screen or piece of foil provides a physical barrier between the coals and the tobacco.

Hookahs are long pipes used with flavored tobacco. Smokers heat tobacco and flavoring and use a tube to draw the smoke through a bowl of water to cool it.

An attorney for the Division of Public Health says hookahs fall under the “lighted pipe” definition.

“Your typical modern hookah tobacco is tobacco mixed with molasses or honey — depending on the brand — glycerin, flavoring and sometimes a little dye. So it’s very wet. If you tried to take a lighter to it, it just wouldn’t work because it’s too wet,” said Adam Bliss, the owner of Hookah Bliss, a hookah bar in Chapel Hill.

Hookah Bliss is doing business as usual, as are hookah bars in Wilmington and Asheville. In Burlington, Racco Hashem, owner of the county’s lone hookah bar, said he has added outdoor seating to accommodate customers who want to use the pipes at his restaurant, Racco’s Italian Restaurant and Café.

Hashem said that so far, the smoking ban has not affected business at the hookah bar, which he opened as part of the restaurant in September 2007.

State Rep. Hugh Holliman, the chief sponsor of the smoking ban, said the Legislature never intended to cripple hookah bars.

“It’s not our intent to penalize hookah bars. We just don’t want to start making exceptions that are adverse to healthy consequences,” said Holliman, D-Davidson and the majority leader in the N.C. House.

It’s possible the Legislature would revisit the issue later this year, he said. “I would be willing to take a look at that and see if we could work a compromise,” he said.

Under the law, bars and restaurants that allow customers to smoke inside get written warnings for the first two offenses. After that, they can be fined $200 for each offense.

Local health directors are responsible for enforcing the law, based mostly on public complaints.

Jerome E. Horton, Vice Chairman of the California State Board of Equalization (BOE), announced that the BOE has notified wholesalers and distributors that it is illegal to sell flavored cigarettes or roll-your-own (RYO) under the federal U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provision of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The BOE sent a special notice by email informing them of this new federal regulation.

Under federal law, these products can no longer be manufactured, imported, or sold in the United States and could be seized by federal, state or local law enforcement authorities. Cigarettes and RYO products banned by the FDA have been and continue to be removed from the California Tobacco Directory by the California Attorney General and the California Department of Justice.

This federal ban prohibits a cigarette or any of its component parts (including the tobacco, filter, or paper) from containing, as a constituent (including a smoke constituent) or additive, an artificial or natural flavor (other than tobacco or menthol) or an herb or spice, including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry, or coffee, that is a characterizing flavor of the tobacco product or tobacco smoke.

For general information regarding the FDA´s Tobacco Program and the ban on flavored cigarettes and RYO products, please refer to the FDA´s website at www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/default.htm.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is exercising its recently acquired regulatory authority over the tobacco industry by targeting online ads for cigarette products that are aimed at youth.

In this case, the government agency has sent warning letters to several companies selling flavored cigarettes through their websites, directing them to either cease their marketing or sales or bring the products into compliance with the law.

The cigarettes are flavored with fruit or candy, making them enticing to teenagers and children, the FDA said. The agency received its authority to act against tobacco products in June 2009, under the the Tobacco Control Act, which gives the FDA authority to regulate what goes into tobacco products and specifically bans cigarettes containing certain characterizing flavors. It does not, however, allow the FDA to ban nicotine or tobacco outright.

Questions Over E-Cigarettes

Flavored cigarettes are not the only tobacco product the FDA seeks to control; the agency came out against electronic cigarettes this summer. These are battery-operated devices that contain nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals. They “turn nicotine, which is highly addictive into a vapor that is inhaled,” the FDA said.

E-cigarettes also are available online and could serve as gateway products to traditional cigarettes for young people, the FDA claimed. Companies that market these devices are fighting back, however. One firm filed suit against the agency earlier this year, claiming it overstepped its authority. Others maintain that the products are not as dangerous to health as the FDA purports.

Enforcement Up Overall

In general, regulatory authorities such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration are stepping up their enforcement activities for online marketing and sales as the internet has proven to be a very effective channel for marketers that seek to flout US regulations, or to find new, unrestricted channels to sell their wares.

The tobacco industry falls in the latter category as it has been chased out of many traditinal advertising venues. RJ Reynolds, for example, pulled out of print advertising in response to an outcry over sultry print ads.

November 10, 2009 Marketingvox

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed legislation on Wednesday to prohibit the sale of most forms of flavored tobacco products in New York City. The new law is more extensive than the federal Food and Drug Administration’s ban on candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes, which took effect last month.

The City Council approved the bill on Oct. 14. The legislation covers “chocolate, vanilla, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, herb or spice flavors,” but exempts “tobacco, menthol, mint or wintergreen flavors.”

The city ban includes cigars and smokeless tobacco, while the federal ban is limited to cigarettes. That ban prohibits the sale of cigarettes with “an artificial or natural flavor (other than tobacco or menthol) or an herb or spice, including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry, or coffee.”

While the city’s adult smoking rate has fallen — a development that the mayor has repeatedly trumpeted as a public health success — the Council said that the proportion of public high school students in the city who said they smoked only cigars and cigarillos had tripled since 2001. Flavored tobacco products are often marketed at the young.

Violators of the new city law may be fined up to $2,000 or have their tobacco-vending license suspended.

The mayor signed two other bills into law on Wednesday.

One seeks to improve safety at construction sites where work has been suspended, by encouraging property owners to come forward with faltering or halted projects and craft a plan to increase safety on their sites, and by making it easier for city inspectors to monitor compliance and for work to resume on these sites once the owners get financing in place. In return for the developers’ participation in the program, the Buildings Department will renew a stalled site’s permit for up to four years.

The other new law requires the Department of Education to report on the implementation of Billy’s Law, a state law created to improve the monitoring of students placed in out-of-state residential facilities.

By Sewell Chan, October 28, 2009

The CHART OF THE DAY shows how one issue, the Tobacco Settlement Financing Corporation of New Jersey’s 5 percent bond due in 2041, has outperformed the Bond Buyer 40, a price index of long-term benchmark municipal debt, since the end of the first quarter of 2009. The New Jersey security gained 83 percent by the end of the third quarter, while the index rose 32 percent.

Long-term tobacco bonds, sold by states and municipalities to cash in on their shares of the 1998 settlement with cigarette makers, have rallied more than any other major segment of the municipal market this year, according to Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch & Co. About $37 billion of such bonds have been sold.

“I think the current rally has to do with money moving back into mutual funds, and the resurgence of high-yield muni funds, because interest rates on munis have fallen relative to Treasuries, and investors are still looking for 5-plus percent yields,” Richard Larkin, research director at Herbert J. Sims & Co., a municipal-bond firm in Iselin, New Jersey, said in an e- mail.

“I feel that if you still have tobacco bonds, this may be a good time to sell, with prices on some bonds as much as 50 percent higher than they were in the spring,” Larkin said. “In the long run, I don’t believe the rally is sustainable, given the predominance of bad news.”

The bad news for tobacco bonds includes declines in consumption driven by higher federal and state taxes, the industry challenging settlement payments in past years, and the likelihood of more downgrades in bond ratings, Larkin said.

Joe Mysak in New York at jmysakjr@bloomberg.net.
October 1 Bloomberg

A place where people can legally smoke indoors now is open in Coralville.
Chicha Shack, a hookah lounge, opened Thursday at 89 Second St., in the shopping center next to the Heartland Inn.
This will be the third Chicha Shack location for owner Mohamed Ali, with the first opening in Ames in 2004 and a second in Des Moines.

Hookah bars are one of the places that fall under the Iowa Smokefree Air Act exceptions.

Passed in spring 2008, the Iowa Smokefree Air Act eliminated smoking in almost all public places, including restaurants and bars. To allow smoking, establishments must meet exceptions to the law. One exception is for establishments that generate at least 80 percent of revenue from tobacco sales. The other is for casinos.

People need to be 18 or older to smoke hookah and 21 or older to drink.

“It’s a great facility for everybody,” Ali said.

The hookah lounge also offers cable television, free wireless Internet and will host belly dancing events, he said. Ali said they will play a versatile mix of Middle Eastern, Indian and American music.

Until the end of September, the lounge will offer specials on beer and hookah as part of the grand opening celebration, Ali said.

The lounge offers more than 20 flavors of tobacco, including grape, strawberry, mint, melon and pineapple. A hookah is an ancient Middle Eastern water pipe used for smoking tobacco.

Smoking hookah is “a good experience,” Ali said. “It’s a different kind of experience.

“It smells good, it tastes good, it’s not harsh like cigarettes or cigars.”

If people don’t want to smoke hookah, they can come in and watch TV or play cards. They have 30 hookahs in the lounge, and Ali said he has 100 hookahs between his three locations.

According to a World Health Organization advisory note from 2005, waterpipe smoking, or hookah, is associated with many of the same risks as cigarette smoking. A typical one-hour session of water pipe smoking involves inhaling 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from a single cigarette, according to the advisory.

This is the second hookah lounge in the Iowa City area. The Red Poppy Tea & Hookah Parlour, located in downtown Iowa City, opened in 2005.

Ali said he chose Coralville “to be away from downtown, the big crowd.”

“I have my own crowd,” he said. “People will drive and target us.”

Seattle, Washington – Rain City Cigar of Seattle, like other members of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association, is remembering September 11 this year by celebrating America and honoring her troops overseas with – what else – premium cigars.

“Along with many cigar stores and manufacturers of cigars – members of IPCPR – we have donated premium cigars to our troops overseas in the past. This year, we have joined with CAO International to remember and celebrate the selfless acts of heroism exhibited by thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001,” said Kirsten Wolfe, store manager.

Between now and September 11, Rain City is joining with premium cigar manufacturer CAO International and will be taking donations of cigars for the troops. Although they will accept all cigars donated for the troops, for every CAO cigar donated by Rain City customers, CAO International will match it.

To help commemorate the event, CAO’s West Coast representative Ed Trevino will be at the store from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm on September 11 to discuss the program and raffle off incentives and premiums to encourage donations.

Active duty military personnel in uniform will receive an additional free cigar.

“We usually have a promotion every three weeks or so. When the September promotion came along and happened to fall on the 11th, we decided to focus on celebrating America’s best and a remembrance of our troops,” Wolfe said.

Rain City Cigar is located in historic Georgetown off I-5 at Exit 162, on the corner of Corson and Michigan at 5963 Corson Ave.