China’s had such a bad safety record lately that it’s a little surprising to find out their latest plans for health warnings on packs of cigarettes: skulls, blackened teeth, and diseased lungs, covering at least 30% of the pack’s surface area. The move is an attempt to curb the growing market of smokers in the country, where the average age of people who start smoking is as low as 10 in some areas.
smoking
Senate Committee Votes To Give FDA Power To Regulate Tobacco
By 8.3.07
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee voted 13-8 to empower the FDA to regulate tobacco products. States and municipalities have spent years shoving cigarettes out of the public domain, but the FDA would be able to control cigarette advertising, mandate bigger, European-style warning labels, and regulate nicotine content. Only Congress has the power to ban cigarettes outright. From the Boston Globe:
Yesterday’s slim majority however, came as Republican-sponsored amendments loom that could gut the bill’s main intent.
Cigarette Taxes Rising To $1 Per Pack
By 7.17.07
Sorry smokers, the federal cigarette tax will soon be $1 per pack, a 61 cent increase, if the Senate Finance Committee has its way. Both chambers of Congress agree that a higher tax is needed to help finance an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. From the Times-News Online:
Addicted to Cool: Menthol Cigarettes Are Harder to Quit
By 9.26.06
Is the minty freshness of menthol cigarettes more addicting than regular cigarettes?
Blogobitchin!
By 7.26.06
• Ah, this is great, the wife of a Marriot employee, a smoker herself, chimes in on the hotel’s smoking ban. If only she didn’t have to say, “If a person wants to kill themselves they should bring innocent people down with them.” [HotelChatter]
Superman Hates, Kills Smokers
By 4.17.06
For your Monday Morning Bemusement, Superman takes on Nick O’Teen, insidious Irish personification of underage smoking.
Fred Flintstone: “Winston Tastes Good Like A Cigarette Should”
By 3.27.06
Ah, the halcyon days of advertising, where Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble relax with a refreshing Winston cigarette while their wives slavishly toil.
World’s Largest Collection of Cigs
By 3.21.06
We’ve never quite gotten the knack of smoking cigarettes. While friends of ours twirl a zippo across their knuckles like a small blue steel ball spouting flame, then clamp down upon a smoke with the effortless, anti-authoritative sneer of James Dean, the best we can manage is a fag prissily inserted between our pursed lips. When we inhale, we inevitably start coughing, the cigarette goes tumbling out of our mouths and burns its way through our pants. Next thing we know, we’re applying salve to our groins for the next 72 hours.
Vice Costs More Money Than Money That Exists
By 3.20.06
Cigarettes costs society $167 billion dollars a year in health costs and lost productivity. Sweet liquid bread costs us $185 billion dollars a year. McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s? $115 billion. And indulging in carnivorism alone costs over $1 trillion a year. The tab of costs to our economy, according to research by various interests groups, is truly astronomical.
NYC eSmoke Shoppers Burn City, Bloomberg Seeks Back-taxes
By 3.8.06
Thousands of New York City consumers who purchased cigarettes from eSmokes.com will be forced to collectively cough up $33 million in unpaid taxes.
FedEx Clamps Down On Online Cigarette Retailers
By 2.8.06
Bad news for you Internet-shopping tobacco monkeys out there: Fed-Ex is clamping down on online tobacco merchants.
