I don't know if you have heard the news yet but CVS will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco-related products. They say that selling cigarettes is in contrast with there policy of promoting healthy.

To find out more about this just click here.

According to one online article the fact that CVS will phase out cigarettes and other tobacco-related products will decrease their profit rate by2 BILLION dollars!

I don't know about the other smokers that read this blog but my personal opinion is that I won't be doing any more of my shopping at the CVS stores on September 30th.

What are your opinions about this?

Labels: In The News, Links

Large E-Cigarette Company Settles Law Suit Makes Major Concessions, Copycat Suits Likely One of the country's largest e-cigarette [e-cig] companies has been forced to make major concessions to settle a law suit which threatened to put it out of business, says Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the national legal-action antismoking organization which helped inspire the legal action. Under the legally-binding settlement agreement, the company agreed not to sell e-cigs to minors, sell flavored e-cig cartridges that could appeal to minors, advertise its product as a device that can help people quit smoking, sell cartridges that contain vitamins unless they're scientifically proven to boost health, or claim its e-cigs are safer than tobacco cigarettes without scientific proof. Previous law suits actually stopped several e-cig companies from continuing to do business in a state, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of ASH. The settlement comes on the heels of an announcement by ASH of a new scientific study highlighting new dangers to users of e-cigs. http://www.prlog.org/10831614-cigarettes-new-potential-dangers-for-users-and-new-ban-in-singapore.html The Food and Drug Administration [FDA] had already concluded that e-cigs pose "acute health risks," that the "danger posed by the unrestricted distribution of [these] unregulated products containing toxic chemicals cannot seriously be questioned," and that they have caused a wide variety of potentially serious problems "including racing pulse, dizziness, slurred speech, mouth ulcers, heartburn, coughing, diarrhea, and sore throat." It has declared the products "illegal." Many medical experts, as well as major public health organizations, share these concerns, and have argued for many of the restrictions included in this new legal settlement. E-cigs have already been banned in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, and Singapore, restricted in Finland and Malaysia, are pending restriction in the UK as a drug, and the subject of law suits in several states. In part as a result of urging by ASH, New Jersey and Suffolk County, NY, have prohibited their use in no-smoking sections, and New York is also moving to ban them. E-cigs, which emit into the air a mixture of nicotine (a deadly and addictive drug which can contribute to fatal heart attacks), propylene glycol (a respiratory irritant used in antifreeze and known to cause respiratory tract infections), and other substances the FDA has labeled "carcinogenic" and "toxic," can also be used to administer other dangerous substances. ASH has previously reported to the FDA instances in which e-cigs are being marketed as containing Ciallis, as well as others containing a potent form of marijuana. http://www.cigarettesreviews.com/fda-may-ban-marijuana-e-cigarettes

Banzhaf suggests that this very recent legal victory will probably encourage additional law suits against e-cig companies, since the legal complaints which initiated them as well as the settlements are public documents which can easily be copied and/or rewritten by others. With minor modifications, they can easily be used in other jurisdictions also, he notes. ASH is actively encouraging such law suits, says Banzhaf.

ASH does not oppose the use of e-cigs to help smokers quit. But it has actively sought - through legal action, regulation, and legislation - to attain many of the goals just achieved in this settlement. These including restrictions on the sale to minors, prevention of misleading claims, bans on kid-friendly-flavors, etc.

For a copy of the settlement, see http://ash.org/settlementcalecig

PROFESSOR JOHN F. BANZHAF III Professor of Public Interest Law at GWU, FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor, FELLOW, World Technology Network, and Executive Director and Chief Counsel Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) America's First Antismoking Organization 2013 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20006, USA (202) 659-4310 // (703) 527-8418 Internet: http://ash.org/

Labels: In The News, Links, Misc

Many States Debate Banning Smoking in Cars Dramatic On-Line Video Shows How Dangerous It Is

Six countries, five states, and many local jurisdictions have banned smoking in cars when children are present to protect them from the clearly established dangers of tobacco smoking pollution, and an estimated sixteen states are now debating similar restrictions, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), America's first antismoking organization, who just finished a heated debate on this topic on Fox News. http://video.foxnews.com/v/4305659/government-control-or-child-safety

In preparation for the debate he posted on his website [http://ash.org/] a brief video showing just how dangerous tobacco smoke in the car can be. It shows that, within a few seconds of lighting only one cigarette, the level of particulate pollution goes from the EPA's SAFE level to a level the agency regards as HAZARDOUS. Indeed, in a few more seconds, the level of pollution is at least ten times higher than the level the EPA considers HAZARDOUS to all, not just to the elderly, children, or those who might have conditions making them especially susceptible. http://ash.org/carsmoking

His website also shows that the federal government has reported that secondhand tobacco smoke kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, that a leading medical journal has reported that parental smoking kills thousands of children annually, and that many studies - including the dramatic video - have shown that the pollution level from smoking in a car is UNHEALTHY even with all the windows rolled down. Rolling all the windows down, however, isn't healthy for the children inside when its very cold, very hot, or raining, notes Banzhaf, and it is not reasonable to expect drivers to roll all the windows down in these conditions. In sharp contrast, asking them to refrain from smoking during the very brief period of most drives with children seems very reasonable.

Banzhaf noted that laws already require parents to protect their children by buckling them into expensive safety seats, locating them only on the rear seat, refraining from watching TV or having an open bottle of liquor in the car, and other requirements far more bothersome that simply not smoking. He also notes that we have accepted laws which require adults to buckle up - a requirement which is even more intrusive, especially since it aimed at protecting adults from their own carelessness rather than protecting children.

We ban smoking in bars so that adults will not be exposed even to a whiff of smoke, but we provide no protection whatsoever for millions of children who are daily strapped into rolling smokehouses, argues Banzhaf. That's exactly backwards because children are for more vulnerable to tobacco smoke pollution and, unlike adults who can avoid bars or leave if they are bothered by the smoke, children have no choice but to suffer, and no one will heed their cries.

Banzhaf's organization has helped many nonsmoking parents obtain court order against smoking around their children, and more recently helped persuade more than a dozen states to ban smoking in cars when foster children are present. This helped lead to the breakthrough where more and more states are likely to ban smoking to protect children in cars.

PROFESSOR JOHN F. BANZHAF III Professor of Public Interest Law at GWU, FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor, FELLOW, World Technology Network, and Executive Director and Chief Counsel Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) America's First Antismoking Organization 2013 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20006, USA (202) 659-4310 // (703) 527-8418 Internet: http://ash.org/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/AshOrg

Labels: In The News, Misc

There Are Many Reasons to Ban Smokers From Adopting - Midlothian Council in the U.K. is just the latest entity to prohibit smokers from adopting or providing foster care for children, a step Portsmouth, Hants, in England and other jurisdictions took several years ago, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Anyone wanting to care for a child under the age of five will be required not to have smoked for at least six months, even if they only smoke outdoors.

"This is just the latest step in a growing movement to protect the most vulnerable and most defenseless victims of tobacco smoke pollution," says Banzhaf, noting that there are many reasons supporting the prohibition on adoption by prospective parents who smoke, even if only outdoors.

For similar reasons judges in more than half our states in the USA, and a few in foreign countries, have recognized that smoking around children can be not only dangerous but deadly, and have ruled that smoking around a child can be grounds for losing custody. In some situations, parents have been prohibited from smoking 24 or even 48 hours before a child is due to arrive in the home because of the lingering effects of tobacco smoke.

Similarly, more than a dozen states have ruled -- or are in the process of issuing rules -- prohibiting smoking in the presence of foster children, and several states and cities have banned smoking in cars when any children are present.

"Smoking kills thousands of children every year (largely from respiratory infections), is also a major factor in SIDS, and causes millions of medical problems in kids each year ranging from asthmatic attacks (and new cases of asthma) to ear aches, so protecting young children from tobacco smoke is long overdue," says Banzhaf.

"A growing number of people consider smoking around children to be the most prevalent and dangerous form of child abuse, so it is not surprising that an adoption agency would want to protect their wards to whom they owe both a legal (fiduciary) duty and a moral obligation."

In a situation where a smoker seeking to adopt claims that he or she does not smoke in the home, there may be no way to independently confirm that, or to make sure that there are never any exceptions -- e.g., when the weather is very cold, when the smoker is too ill to go outdoors, etc.

So it may not be unreasonable for the government or a social welfare agency to have a rule against permitting adoptions where a prospective parent smokes, and therefore is more likely than not addicted to nicotine. For similar reasons, a welfare agency might not wish to place a child with someone with a history of addiction to alcohol or illegal drugs, even if he promises to change his behavior as a condition of becoming an adoptive parent, suggests Prof. Banzhaf.

Otherwise the health and perhaps the life of a child could be put at risk, especially since there is no way an agency could possibly monitor for -- much less prevent -- any smoking around a child by a new parent who is already a smoker. The same problem might also apply to anyone with a history of alcohol or drug addiction.

Moreover, if a violation occurred once the child had been placed for adoption, or if the smoker simply decided to change his practice and begin smoking within the family home once the adoption became final, it might be very difficult as well as expensive for the social welfare agency to then remove the child from the home.

"If a natural father or mother of a child can lose custody by endangering its welfare by smoking in his presence, as several courts have ruled, it should not be surprising that smoking can be a barrier to an adoption; i.e., where -- unlike the situation with a natural child -- there is no biological connection between the adults and the child up for adoption, and no bond has yet been created," says Banzhaf.

There are several other logical reason for preventing smokers from adopting young children, suggests ASH. The first is that a child is much more likely to grow up to be a smoker, and to face the enormous health hazards this imposes, if one or both parents are also smokers, regardless of where they do their smoking.

Second. thirdhand tobacco smoke, what the New York Times called "the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers' hair and clothing," has just been reported by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to combine with a common indoor air pollutant to form very potent cancer causing substances. This, the researchers say, places children at serious risk, even if parents smoke only outside the home, because they carry the residues inside with them.

Dr. Lara Gundel, a co-author of this study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned: "Smoking outside is better than smoking indoors but nicotine residues will stick to a smoker's skin and clothing. Those residues follow a smoker back inside and get spread everywhere. The biggest risk is to young children. Dermal uptake of the nicotine through a child's skin is likely to occur when the smoker returns and if nitrous acid is in the air, which it usually is, then TSNAs [tobacco-specific nitrosamines] will be formed."

Indeed, as another researcher has reported, thirdhand tobacco smoke is "much more toxic" than secondhand tobacco smoke because the aging of secondhand smoke absorbed on surfaces gives risk to new toxicants not present in fresh secondhand smoke.

Third, a related study shows that the tobacco-residue chemicals in smokers' breath were by themselves sufficient to cause or aggravate respiratory illnesses -- including asthma, coughs, and colds -- among children in smokers' homes as compared with kids in homes with nonsmokers, even if the parents only smoked outside the home.

There is just no justification for unnecessarily exposing children to any level of toxic or cancer-causing chemicals, since there is no safe level of exposure to any human carcinogen like asbestos or secondhand smoke, argues ASH, echoing the U.S. Surgeon General's warnings that: "It hurts you, It doesn't take much. It doesn't take long. . . .There is no safe amount of secondhand tobacco smoke. Breathing even a little secondhand smoke can be dangerous."

The law protects us all against exposure to even minute amounts of substances known to cause cancer in humans like asbestos; shouldn't the same protections apply to carcinogens in both secondhand and thirdhand tobacco smoke, which kill many more people each year, suggests Banzhaf.

Labels: In The News

FDA Can't Regulate E-Cigarettes, Judge Rules

While CA, NJ, Others Crack Down

A federal judge has reportedly just ruled that the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] does not have any authority to regulate e-cigarettes; a move which -- if it stands up on appeal -- will mean that the only protection the public might have lies with the states, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, whose organization petitioned the FDA to regulate e-cigarettes, and whose scheduled appearance on a national TV caused the agency to declare the product "illegal".

More and more governments are cracking down on e-cigarettes, with California and New Jersey the most recent states to weigh in, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who is leading the movement to use legal action against their new products which present many significant potential dangers.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has just filed a major law suit against various businesses involved with e-cigarettes. At about the same time, the Governor of New Jersey has signed legislation which bans the use of e-cigarettes in areas where smoking is prohibited, and also bans their sale to children.

California's law suit follows the model set by Oregon which has prepared three legal actions on behalf of the state. Two were settled, with the defendants agreeing not to sell e-cigarettes in Oregon, and one is still pending. E-cigarette makers are facing a civil class action in California, and the Attorney General of Connecticut has vowed to also follow Oregon by bringing his own law suit. Suffolk County, New York, has also banned the use of e-cigarettes.

E-cigarettes have already been banned in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, and Mexico, and restricted in Finland, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Food and Drug Administration [FDA] has determined that e-cigarettes are a "misbrand[ed]" product, an "unapproved new drug" and "are illegal until they are cleared." The agency has blocked imports of the new product, which emit nicotine (a deadly addictive drug) and propylene glycol (which can cause respiratory problems)

In addition to nicotine and propylene glycol, the FDA has reported that it found in samples of e-cigarettes a variety of "toxic and carcinogenic chemicals"
including diethylene glycol, "an ingredient used in antifreeze, [which] is toxic to humans"; "certain tobacco-specific nitrosamines which are human carcinogens"; and that "tobacco-specific impurities suspected of being harmful to humans - anabasine, myosmine, and β-nicotyrine - were detected in a majority of the samples tested."

Labels: Electronic Cigarettes, In The News

Now here is a very interesting article that I found online!

One company has forbidden smoking anywhere on it's grounds! An interesting question has been raised - "Can a worker be fired for smoking?". It raises an interesting question! One person has already sued another company that they worked for saying that they were fired because he still continued to smoke! (The case is still pending!)

Personally I think it's wrong and it's one of the reasons that I'm glad that I work from home!

You can read the article yourself by clicking here.

There is even a blog posting about a government grant program that is going to start to help promote a more "healthier" lifestyle and that includes providing government grant money to business that start some type of smoking preventative program! You can read that blog post by clicking here.

Other Comments

I am a partial smoker but use an electronic cigarette as an alternative to having a real cigarette when I need to. Employers should look into allowing electronic cigarettes in the workplace as they are quickly being accepted in many areas and making national news as to the healthier advantage and lower cost to conventional cigarettes.

Labels: In The News, Links

It seems that cigarettes are going to have more graphic warnings on them. This is because of the government (of course) that is trying to deter people from smoking.

I know that President Obama smokes although he has said that it is something that he is struggling with.

But according to an online article, cigarette labels will now come with more graphic pictures and warnings, I guess in an attempt to get people to stop smoking.

Of course this does not deter me at all! I'm not too anxious to see what these kinds of warnings and pictures will look like but it still isn't going to stop me from smoking!

On another note I am without cigarettes again! My Adsense won't be kicking in until around the 25th of this month (according to The Adsense Consultant so I'm working with the law of attraction to attract more cigarettes into my life!

Graphic Cigarette Warning Lables

Labels: Experiences and Musings And Observations, I'm Out Of Cigarettes Again, In The News

I'm sorry to say that that still hasn't deterred me from stopping!

Imagine my surprise when I heard on the news that the price of cigarettes would go up and go up a LOT! I was already shell-shocked from my last cigarette buying excursion when I found out that the price of cigarettes had gone up so much! My favorite "second-choice" cigarettes had jumped from $3 to $4 and some change! And of course my beloved Kool cigarettes now cost over $5! And the price increase won't be just limited to cigarettes but to cigars and other smoking-related products as well!

They interviewed some smokers on the news and the majority of them said that the price increase was enough to make them want to stop smoking. One man said that he tries to buy the cheapest brands of cigarettes that he can find!

Me? Sorry folks but I'm still going to be a smoker! I guess that this just means that I just have to make more money so that I can have cigarette money in my budget! According to the poll that I have on the side of this blog there have been a few people that have voted and said that they think that their cigarette habit is even more worse than mine and I'm wondering how they feel about the cigarette price increase? How do YOU feel about the cigarette price increase?

How do I feel about the cigarette price increase? Well being a smoker and smoking as much as I do, when I first heard the news about the big price increase my thought was oh well - have to have more money for cigarettes! Not once did I think about quitting! I mean when I am out of cigarettes the cravings are sometimes just too much to bear! I get moody and cranky and am just not a good person to be around!

It's probably due to the fact that the nicotine is so addictive and I don't like how I feel when I am out of cigarettes! So I'll continue to buy them as much as I can!

So it's more money that I have to make, increase my income - I don't think I'll get to the point where I'll cut something else out because my budget is already at its bare minimum! Smoking is one of the few pleasures that I allow myself to have!

Labels: In The News, Paying For Cigarettes

I was just reading one of the smoker-related newsletters that I subscribe to and read that Scotland wants to make itself smoke-free however they seem to be having a problem with their teenage population which records indicate that their rate of smoking is increasing.

Now the reason why I mention about this is because I just don't believe that you are going to make an entire big area 100% smoke-free!

As a smoker myself I just know how addictive smoking can be and I have quite a few friends, co-workers and family members who have said that they were going to quit smoking. While some of them managed to quit, not all of them did!

That is why I just can not imagine a smoke-free Scotland!

Labels: In The News

Probably best known for his role in "Dirty Dancing", actor Patrick Swayze has been admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. Swayze admitted himself to the hospital for observation.

Even though Swayze is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, in an interview with Barbara Walters the actor still admitted that he still smokes cigarettes.

Labels: Famous Smokers, In The News