Light Up and Laugh at the Anti-Smoking Policies Posted

Despite four years this month of the smoking ban in England, and a vigorous anti-smoking campaign paid for by the taxpayer, it has not lowered the number of Esse cigarettes smokers. Their number remains at about 20 per cent – the hardcore, of which I am one. It might kill me, although if it doesn’t, something else will.

Bohemia has been banned. We might pay a heavy price for that. New York City is a lot duller for its smoking ban than it was in the past. Cole Porter would think the Sunday school teachers had taken over – and they have.

I am aware how fanatical anti-smokers can be, as my father was one. My brother has a video of him trying to take a cigarette from my mouth 40 years ago.

Perhaps you can get a smoking room at a hotel in London, but you certainly can’t in the city of Oxford. In France and Germany it’s a lot more civilised.

The Lutèce Hotel in Paris has a floor of smoking rooms. It also has a small lounge near the bar with a sealed door: you can smoke in there, but you have to take your own drink in. Arriving back at the hotel one late evening, the bar was very quiet. We got a drink at the bar and opened the sealed door. It was full of music and young people dancing on the tables, cigarettes in hand. I couldn’t stop laughing (it’s good for you and it clears the lungs).

Does the new Savoy have anything like it, or Claridge’s, or any other London hotel? No.

In Germany I go to Baden Baden every few months to enjoy the rejuvenating waters at the Friedrich’s Bath. I stay in a very nice hotel, the Brenners Park. I can still smoke in the room and downstairs is a lovely cigar lounge. You don’t have to go out in the cold or rain for the enjoyment of a cigar or cigarette. Try that in London.

The smoking ban works, say some of my friends – but do you know how? Through punishment. I met a publican who was sent to jail for letting two old men smoke in his pub. England was once a tolerant place with a live-and-let live attitude to many things. Not any more. I have utter contempt for the politicians who do this. These politics stink, they have a vile, unfree stench.

You will never get rid of smoking, or alcohol or drugs: they might kill, but they also give pleasure. Tobacco is a great pleasure that a large number of people deny.

The dreary and the bossy who cannot accept this will try to take over even more: everywhere has to be safe for little Emily with asthma. Focusing on such small things, the professional anti-smokers miss out on the bigger pleasures of life. I wouldn’t want to spend much time with them. When a doctor announced that 100 million people were “killed ” by tobacco in the 20th century, I pointed out that governments killed the same number, and that their deaths were very unpleasant by comparison.

The prohibitionists can feel sorry for me all they want; I am just going to laugh at their smallness.

My little corner of Bohemia has now been reduced to my house, where free spirits are welcome and I try to keep the dreary and the boring away. I have a large sign that points out “Death awaits you even if you do not smoke”. I like to enjoy Now, as there is only now. Longevity as an aim in life seems to me to be life-denying.

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Reduced smoking saves state money

Ohio once had a model tobacco-prevention and cessation program that helped reduce smoking rates among adults and children in Ohio.Currently, more than one-fifth of Ohio adults smoke. About the same percentage of children smoke and 17 percent use other tobacco products.

The new state budget will destroy Ohio’s program, since it does not fund prevention programs, enforcement of the Smoke Free Workplace Act, or Ohio’s successful Quit line.

Ohio currently collects more than $800 million in cigarette taxes each year. None of that money is invested in tobacco prevention and cessation or enforcement of the Smoke Free Ohio law.

Funding tobacco cessation saves lives and money. Lawmakers should consider making the tax on cigars, snuff and chewing tobacco equal to the tax rate on cigarettes. This could provide funding for tobacco-prevention and cessation programs.

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Tobacco-Facts ads Philip Morris International: Alternative Annual Report » Combine tobacco tax hike with effort to get rid of low-cost cigarettes

Missouri hospital executives who lost a long-simmering lawsuit against tobacco companies last month shouldn’t fret over the potential loss of more than $455 million in civil damages.

A better method exists to collect that revenue, and if the hospitals are smart about it, they’ll make the tobacco companies their partners, not their enemies.

It is time for the state of Missouri to get serious about raising its lowest-in-the-nation tobacco tax. The path to victory will require a partnership that might make both sides uncomfortable.

As the legislative session winds down this week, there are two proposals unlikely to pass that should be combined into a ballot initiative in the near future to raise needed revenue for the state while cutting down on tobacco use and improving the health of Missourians.

Both results would be good for the hospitals stinging from their losses in City of St. Louis v. American Tobacco, which took 13 years to litigate before verdicts came down April 29 favoring the tobacco companies.

Tobacco taxes should have been raised long ago, but the Legislature won’t consider the idea, even though the state desperately needs revenue and even though Missouri’s 17-cents-per-pack tax is shamefully below the national average of $1.45 per pack.

Tobacco tax increases have failed on the statewide ballot twice in the past decade. They were close votes, but in one case, proponents sealed their fate by earmarking the funds — a process voters don’t trust. In the other case, proponents tried to place the increased tax in the state constitution, where it doesn’t belong.

For a tobacco tax hike to escape heavy opposition from tobacco companies and their supporters, it should be combined with a provision that would end Missouri’s status as the nation’s dumping ground for low-cost cigarettes.

In 1998, when most states in the nation entered into an agreement with the major tobacco companies to settle lawsuits over misleading marketing, the settlement left a loophole that allowed small tobacco companies that weren’t parties to the agreement to flood the market with lower-cost products.

Except for Missouri, every state that is part of that agreement has fixed that loophole. The result is that Missouri has the fifth-highest smoking rate in the nation, which results from its low tax and low prices.

This two-pronged approach to raising the tobacco tax while ridding the state of its lowest-cost cigarettes would accomplish three positive goals:

Tripling Missouri’s tax would raise an additional $190 million per year and still keep the tax below every border state. Going higher is tempting, but it would invite opposition.
Increasing the costs of cigarettes lowers smoking rates. Various studies have shown a direct correlation between raising the price of tobacco products and reducing their use. This would make a long-term dent in the more than $2 billion spent on health care in Missouri each year as a result of the devastating effects of smoking.
Finally, by helping Big Tobacco to solve its unfair market competition problem, the health care groups that have been yearning for a tobacco tax increase for more than a decade can keep the major tobacco companies on the sideline in a statewide initiative campaign.

Missouri’s health-conscious voters should be given a chance to do what the anti-tax Legislature won’t even consider: Raise tobacco taxes to a reasonable level, get rid of Missouri’s status as a cigarette dumping ground and improve the chances that our next generation can grow up healthy.

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Electronic cigarettes and vaping

Electronic cigarettes are battery powered drug delivery machines that allow a consumer to breathe in a high dose nicotine aerosol. (See previous article “Electronic cigarettes, nicotine and antifreeze?” with research source citations in the comments section at Examiner.com/Roanoke Longevity Examiner.) No tobacco is used in the plastic machine cartridges, just pure nicotine in an artificially flavored liquid. Many scary questions have arisen about e-cigs:

Just how much nicotine gets in your brain when you vape one cartridge? Without extensive animal testing this question is not answerable. Extensive animal testing has not been done on e-cigs. The amount of nicotine that you take in from e-cigs will depend on how many cartridges you suck on, how deeply you inhale, how often you partake, and to some extent, how much money you have to buy replacement cartridges. Manufacturers may make claims about the actual dose received but without pharmacological and physiological testing, the answers don’t have meaning.

Are e-cigs more addictive than tobacco cigarettes? Again, no one knows yet. The product is too new, and too few people have used it to date. A full blown epidemiology study is required.

Can e-cigs make you sick? Electronic cigarettes use nicotine extracted with petroleum-based chemicals from tobacco leaves and, as such, are artificially flavored. Nicotine is deadly when blood levels reach about 60 mg in a 150 pound male. Quick smoking of sixty tobacco cigarettes would be required to reach this level. One Roanoker, Gus T. Castros, flatlined from a heart attack after he smoked 80 cigarettes over seven and a half hours. He had accidentally reached the 60 mg toxic dose plus some. When nicotine is inhaled, it inhibits blood flow to the skin which is one reason why smokers don’t heal well after surgery or from wounds and why smokers develop loads of wrinkles. Also when nicotine is inhaled, it is converted to amino ketones which can cause kidney damage.

The most frightening aspect of electronic cigarettes is that consumers who do not seek out data and who do not think critically might be convinced by the old hackneyed ad line: “This is Safe!” This same line was shouted by physicians in the 1950′s about tobacco cigarettes before the data was in and the truth was known–decades and millions of deaths and inpatients later. We just don’t know yet, but if you want to be one of the first poor guinea pigs who reveals the dangers and illnesses associated with e-cigs feel free. Vaping is your right.

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Smoking ban a limit on freedom but a big step forward for Springfield

As members of civilized society, we all accept limits on our freedom.
We know we can’t drive 60 mph in a school zone.
We understand we shouldn’t dump raw sewage into a lake.
We know it’s wrong to yell “fire” in a crowded theater.

On April 5, we strongly urge city voters — smokers and nonsmokers alike — to accept another limit on freedom: Vote “yes” on the proposed ordinance to ban smoking in all indoor places accessible to workers or the public.

It is the right thing to do for public health: Despite the protestations of opponents, it is clear that secondhand smoke, as much as smoking, is hazardous to your health, not just a nuisance to be tolerated.

The ban recognizes the danger being imposed on workers, including many with little choice about their place of employment, and it’s especially important to those working in food service or bars where literally every breath they take exposes them to risk of harm.

Finally, the ban is an important step forward for the image of Springfield, putting our city on even footing with hundreds of smaller and larger cities in protecting the public’s right to clean air.

Reasonable smokers understand that when they light up, they are imposing on their nonsmoking friends, associates and the perfect strangers at the restaurant table next to them. Many smokers are courteous enough to ask if others mind — or voluntarily step outside to avoid stinking up a house or blowing smoke in someone else’s face.

This recognizes the basic limits of freedom. You are free to put yourself at risk, or do whatever you want, so long as it does not violate the rights of others — or put others at risk of harm — without their consent.

What opponents of the ban seem to ignore is how the freedom of one person to smoke infringes on the personal liberty of others who would like to be able to enjoy being out in public, or do their jobs, without the annoyance and danger posed by secondhand smoke.

Opponents argue that the ban interferes with the rights of businesses to choose — and that if an individual does not want to patronize a smoking establishment, they can find a nonsmoking alternative. We argue that all businesses are regulated for the common good. Restaurants and bars, in particular, face myriad regulations to ensure public safety. In that regard, banning smoking is no different.

The ban will level the playing field for restaurants and bars, which is important to fostering competition. And the evidence suggests that businesses in other cities with such bans do just fine, if not better, after the law is enacted.

The proposed ordinance would replace the city’s existing smoking regulations, which are riddled with exemptions and result in unequal playing rules. The proposal also would ban smoking in some outside areas such as playgrounds and within five feet of building entrances and windows.

Opponents have attempted to downplay the health risks of secondhand smoke, although even Dr. John Lilly, a spokesman for Live Free Springfield, acknowledged in an interview he was “not going to say it doesn’t cause cancer.” He just says they haven’t proven it.

Surgeons general for 25 years have been saying just the opposite. For instance, Vice Adm. Richard H. Carmona, surgeon general under President George W. Bush, reported in 2006 that nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke are at risk of inhaling more than 50 carcinogens and at least 250 chemicals known to be toxic or carcinogenic.

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