Smokers everywhere complain about taxes tacked on to cigarettes, but those in some states have far more reason to complain than others. An unscientific but seemingly thorough spot check found that New Yorkers have to fork over $11.90 for a pack of Marlboro Reds, while West Virginians need only part with $4.74. [More]
smoking
Don't Even Think Of Smoking In New York Parks And Beaches
By 5.23.11
New York City, a pioneer at smoking bans in restaurants, bars and workplaces, has extended its policies to the outside world, with a new law that makes smoking in city parks, beaches or public plazas a crime punishable by a $50 fine. [More]
FDA Panel Recommends Ban On Menthol Cigarettes
By 3.18.11
If you like your cigarettes minty fresh, you might want to start stocking up now. Earlier today an FDA panel announced that a ban on menthol smokes would be a good thing for the public health. [More]
Study: Secondhand Smoke Increases Risk Of Stillbirths, Birth Defects
By 3.8.11
Those who smoke around pregnant women could be poisoning the fetuses, judging from the results of a a study that found exposure to secondhand smoke greatly increases the risk of stillbirths and ups the odds the baby will be born with defects. [More]
Trick Yourself To Quit Smoking
By 3.3.11
The most effective business model is to physically addict your customers. It’s a lesson smokers know all too well, and a reason many smokers are in a perpetual, unsuccessful state of “quitting.” [More]
Brooklyn Smoker Grows Own Tobacco To Avoid Cigarette Taxes
By 2.25.11
Frustrated by the tax-fueled rising costs of cigarettes, a Brooklyn woman has developed a private tobacco garden to feed her addiction frugally. She buys her seeds for $2 online and plants her tobacco along with roses and geraniums in her back yard. She expects to yield a total of 45 cartons of cigarettes from crops planted in 2009 and last year, saving her $5,000 from what she’d pay at retail. [More]
MGM Grand No Longer Charging $20/Night To Get A Non-Smoking Room
By 2.17.11
A couple weeks ago, we told you about how the MGM Grand Las Vegas had begun charging $20 per night to guarantee non-smoking rooms to guests. That didn’t go over well with the general public and now the resort tells Consumerist that it’s rescinded the policy. [More]
Would You Pay $20/Night To Guarantee A Non-Smoking Room?
By 2.9.11
You can almost imagine the moment when some executive at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas was walking by the check-in counter and heard an employee ask a guest, “Will that be smoking or non-smoking?” And in that moment, yet another idea for a tack-on fee was born. [More]
NYC Bans Smoking At Parks, Beaches
By 2.3.11
The smokers of New York City will soon have even fewer places to light up this summer after the Big Apple’s city council voted to expand the existing ban on smoking in restaurants and bars to include, beaches, parks, boardwalks and other public spaces. [More]
Study: Smoking Increases Breast Cancer Risk
By 1.25.11
If you were looking for yet another reason to trash that last pack of cigarettes, medical journal Archives of Internal Medicine has got one for you. Smoking slightly ups your odds of developing breast cancer, according to a study. [More]
Cigarettes Start Giving You Cancer Within Minutes, Not Years
By 1.18.11
It doesn’t take years for smoking to start the cancer-making process in your body, but minutes, according to a new study in the Chemical Research in Toxicology. [More]
Judge: NYC Can't Make Cigarette Sellers Post Anti-Smoking Ads
By 12.30.10
While the FDA prepares to roll out graphic warning labels for cigarette packages, the city of New York had been hoping to get a head start on the agency by requiring stores that sell cigarettes to put up anti-smoking posters. However, a judge in U.S. District Court has ruled that the city doesn’t have the authority to enact such a regulation. [More]
Camel Wants To Give Hipsters Cancer With Brooklyn-Branded Cigarettes
By 11.11.10
Showing just how much they have their fingers on the pulse of 2006, the folks at Camel have decided to come out with packaging for their cigarettes that tries to cash in on the hipster cachet of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. [More]
FDA Proposes More Graphic Warning Labels For Cigarettes
By 11.10.10
In an effort to convince cigarette smokers to quit — and to stop potential smokers from picking up a pack — the FDA’s Dept. of Health and Human Services has proposed a series of larger, more graphic warnings for cigarette packs and advertising. [More]
FDA Fuming Over E-Cigarettes
By 9.10.10
It’s been a busy week of letter-writing for the FDA. First, they sent out miffed missives to Canada Dry and Lipton over their questionable claims about their green tea drinks. Now the regulators are going after five manufacturers of electronic cigarettes for what the FDA alleges are illegal marketing tactics. [More]
Hyatt Charges Asthmatic Woman $250 For Smoking, Says It Has Secret Photos
By 9.8.10
A woman who stayed at a Hyatt in Milwaukee last month was hit with an extra $250 charge for smoking in her room. The problem, she says, is that she has severe asthma–she offered to show Hyatt her prescriptions–and is not a smoker. When she complained to Hyatt, the hotel’s director of operations told her “the Hyatt had photographic evidence of smoking in the room and would absolutely not refund her money.” [More]
Which States Have The Worst Smoker's Breath?
By 9.8.10
In spite of all the ads with coroners squeezing fat out of a smoker’s diseased heart and all the taxes levied on tobacco products, the percentage of adults who smoke on a regular basis has held steady at just over 20% for the last five years, says a new report from the Centers for Disease Control. But that percentage can vary wildly depending on location, education, race and gender. [More]
Should Parents Be Fined For Smoking With A Kid In The Car?
By 7.2.10
I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life, but I sure inhaled my fair share of my mom’s, dad’s and stepfather’s tobacco when I was a child. Surely one of my earliest developed motor skills was learning how to roll down the window in our Chevy Nova. Now a bill under consideration by the New York State Assembly seeks to put an end to such behavior by fining adults who light up with a child in the vehicle. [More]
