All posts by Pepe Lepew

Fox News, Popeye, Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson is peeved that the new Popeye has no pipe — smoking is “masculine”

new and old popeye

Fox News dweeb Tucker Carlson continues to, well, be a irrelevant right-wing dweeb.

Carlson on a Fox News segment, complained that the new CGI Popeye no longer has his telltale corncob pipe in his mouth, that liberals are “wussifying” Popeye by taking away his pipe.

Carlson adds:

 “Nothing is scarier to a modern liberal than tobacco. If Popeye were driving around giving the morning after [birth control] pill to fourth graders, that would be totally fine.”

That just leaves me …. WT…F? … what does birth control have to do with Popeye?

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Carlson, you twit, if liberals are scared of tobacco, it’s maybe because they’ve watched their parents, partners and other loved ones die of lung cancer, COPD or the other myriad of diseases that tobacco causes. Yeah, liberals are afraid of tobacco — they’re also afraid of drunken drivers. It’s called COMMON SENSE.

OK, I don’t have a strong opinion about Popeye’s corncob pipe, but Carlson, wake up. This isn’t about political correctness.  Times change. 60 years ago, it was common for cartoons to show Daffy Duck getting shot point blank with a shotgun, and then simply readjusting his bill and wiping off the gunpowder — dimwit. Do you have cartoons today showing people getting blasted point blank in the face with a shotgun? NO. Why? Because it’s a stupid thing to depict and enough stupid people with little kids leave loaded guns lying around their homes that it might give kids the idea that it would be funny to shoot their little brother in the face with a gun. So, cartoon makers have bought a clue that it isn’t cool to depict “harmless” gunplay in cartoons anymore.

The same thing about Popeye. I mean, if they had left the pipe, I would have been fine with it, but I’m also fine with removing it because it’s aimed at small kids — not you or your bizarre ideas of liberals and smoking being cool. Ultimately, Popeye isn’t about his pipe, he’s about his canned spinach. In any case, it’s just a stupid thing to feign outrage about and typical of Fox to go mining for things to feign outrage over.

Carlson goes on to make the asinine statement that somehow:

 “… smoking a pipe, a symbol of freedom and masculinity in America itself, the reason this country exists, tobacco, that’s like, ‘Oh, that’s outrageous. That’s a major sin.’”

Wrong on so many levels. A) smoking a symbol of freedom and masculinity? Ask anyone attempting to quit cigarettes if they feel “free.” Ask anyone with smokers’ hack at 5 a.m. or any smoker getting the shakes on a long flight because they haven’t had a cigarette in 8 hours if they feel “free.”

Gable and Bogart

B) Masculine? Who are the best examples of Hollywood’s Golden era of  “masculinity” and smoking? Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable. Bogart made smoking cool. He also died at age 57 of esophagus cancer. Gable made smoking look suave. He died of a heart attack at 59. (I would love to post a photo of Bogart’s last year alive, but you know what, there aren’t any. He didn’t allow any photos to be taken of him while he was dying from cancer.)

C) Tobacco made America? Tobacco made the South … sort  of. So did cotton, but what really made the South wasn’t tobacco or cotton, it was slaves. What made America? The railroads did. Industry did. The oil industry did. Henry Ford did. Tobacco was never big north of Kentucky or west of Arkansas. It made a handful of people filthy rich … and killed millions in the process.

 

 

 

Uncategorized

Leonard Cohen celebrates his 80th … by lighting up

 

cohen

Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen last week celebrated his 80th birthday by announcing he would commemorate the day by smoking a cigarette.

Cohen, who was famous back in the day for being the last of the chain-smoking lounge singers, actually quit smoking 30 years ago.

According to this CBC article:

Cohen, who vowed to start smoking when he turned 80, told the crowd when asked if he would start next week: “Yes, does anybody have a cigarette?

“But quite seriously, does anyone know where you can buy a Turkish or Greek cigarette?” he said to laughs. “I’m looking forward to that first smoke. I’ve been thinking about that for 30 years. It’s one of the few consistent strings of thoughts I’ve been able to locate.”

Leonard Cohen

I found this kind of an interesting story and I discovered a blog dedicated to Leonard Cohen with an entry about how he went from the “Marlboro Man” to an “anti-smoking troubadour.” The post focuses on how Cohen’s song “Everybody Knows” was used in an Australian anti-smoking campaign. This line in “Everybody Knows” which is apparently about cocaine, could easily apply to cigarettes:

“And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you’ve done a line or two”

There are a bunch of articles and links on this blog about interviews done with Leonard Cohen in which he is chain-smoking through the interview. Here is my favourite entry on this post:

Cigarettes, once an obligatory accoutrement for Cohen, have apparently been vanquished. In a June 12, 2008 interview, Cohen discusses his drinking and smoking patterns on earlier tours and how he stopped smoking:

Q: You’ve been working in a room for years; now you’re on a stage. What are the pros and cons?

A: This way, without drinking and smoking, it’s a very, very different situation. Anyone who’s been a heavy drinker and heavy smoker and has the good future to survive that and give it up knows what a very different kind of daily existence one has. I was smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes a day. And I was drinking heavily on these tours.

Q: How did you stop drinking? Did you go into a program?

A: I lost my taste for it. Just like cigarettes. I lost my taste.

lc-nosmoke

The point of the blog post is that while Cohen quit smoking himself, he kind of epitomized the idea that cigarettes were cool in the 70s and 80s, and when asked why he quit, didn’t exactly come across as an advocate against cigarettes. He just said he simply quit. Here is the ad (Warning, Australian ads are really graphic):

 

 

Jay Cutler smoking

Jay Cutler is one smokin’ dude

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jay cutler 3

OK, I found this site just bust up funny.

Someone set up a site with Jay Cutler, one of the poutiest looking players in the NFL, with a bunch of photoshopped images of cigarettes in his mouth because it looks like Jay is always attempting to look too cool for school (I really have no idea if Jay Cutler even smokes, doubtful, since he’s an athlete and a diabetic).

Rumour is (a very unconfirmed rumour, I admit), is that one of the reasons that Jay Cutler looks like he is always pouting and one of the reasons he rarely shows much emotion is that he is has a high-functioning mild form of Asperger’s. Again, if you go online, you will find a million links about Cutler’s supposed Asperger’s, but absolutely zero confirmation. It’s something he’s never confirmed. (If it’s not Asperger’s, I wonder if it’s some other kind of disorder, like social anxiety disorder like Zach Grienke of the Dodgers, who very similarly always seems to have an expression of simply not caring.)

I first heard about these smoking photos from the Simpsons, which had a cartoon of Jay Cutler smoking.

In any case, I really laughed out loud looking at some of these photos. Ther’s about 50 of them on this site, so I’m not going to download them all, click on the link to see them all. Enjoy.

 

 

 

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Michael Bloomberg, New York City, Smoking bans, smoking rate

Smoking rate in New York City goes up

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new york city

Weird story and a little troubling, one that goes against the national trend. Recent data shows that the smoking rate in New York City — yes, rabidly anti-smoking New York City, has actually went up from 2010, and not by a tiny amount Officials are blaming budget cuts to education for the rise in smoking rates.

The smoking rate in New York is still relatively low. According to new data, the rate was 16.1 percent in 2013, up from 14 percent in 2010. The national average is around 18 percent, which is down fairly dramatically from about 10 years ago, when it was about 21 percent (thanks to smoking bans, higher cigarettes taxes, less smoking in movies, more kids buying a clue about cigarettes — and frankly, the rise of vaping I think is becoming a big factor in declining smoking rates.).

What is striking about that increase is New York City has some ridiculously high cigarette taxes (on top of some high New York State cigarette taxes), among the highest in the nation, and a pack of cigarettes there can cost up to $12 to $14.

According to the Daily News story:

The city’s annual tobacco control budget, which pays for anti-smoking programs and marketing campaigns, has been cut almost in half since 2009, to $7.1 million from $13.5 million.

Huh, you’d think with the smoking rate going up, New York City would have more tax revenue to fund tobacco education programs.

New York City had one of the most adamantly anti-smoking mayors in the country, Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg not only signed ordinances banning smoking in bars and restaurants,he raised cigarette taxes in New York and even signed an ordinance outlawing sales to adults under 21.

Here is one of the great New York City funded anti-smoking commercials.

 

E-cig advertising, e-cigarette advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, FDA

CDC: E-cig use more than doubles among teens — see, I TOLD YOU

Electronic cigarette

The Centers for Disease Control released a report last month (in a major catch-up mode right now with the Lounge going down for a couple of weeks), that the use of e-cigs  more than doubled from 2011-2012.

I reiterate … I reiterate until I make your eyes bleed reading it, I don’t have a problem with e-cigs EXCEPT for the way they are being marketed to kids. Sure enough, according to the CDC, the use of e-cigs rose from 4.7 in 2011 to more than 10 percent in 2012 among high school and middle school kids (I cringe at what the rate is today, it takes a year or two to compile this data.). 10 percent in 2012? That rate might be 25 or 30 percent by 2014.

According to the CDC press release:

“These data show a dramatic rise in usage of e-cigarettes by youth, and this is cause for great concern as we don’t yet understand the long-term effects of these novel tobacco products,” said Mitch Zeller, director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. “These findings reinforce why the FDA intends to expand its authority over all tobacco products and establish a comprehensive and appropriate regulatory framework to reduce disease and death from tobacco use.”

Unlike cigarettes, there are absolutely no regulations regarding the marketing of e-cigs. Big Tobacco in the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement agreed to stop marketing — at least blatantly marketing — to teens. That meant no more Joe Camel, and no more product placement of tobacco products in PG and PG-13 movies. The MSA was a badly flawed agreement, but that is genuinely one of  the really good things that came out of it — marketing of tobacco products to kids (or what Big Tobacco calls, “new smokers,”) has ostensibly stopped.

However, the FDA recently completely punted on controlling the marketing of e-cigs to kids. The FDA did ban e-cig sales to minors, but run away like a spinless banshee from the idea of controlling the advertising of e-cigs, apparently paranoid over a First Amendment lawsuit (never mind the fact that nicotine is now officially a federally controlled substance, like Vicodin or codeine, which means the FDA has the regulatory authority over how it’s promoted … it’s THEM, not ME). Me — and thousands of others, hopefully — wrote the FDA about this and told them they were screwing the pooch on this issue and hopefully when the agency releases the final version of its regs, it will show more spine over marketing of e-cigs. Then again, I’m not holding my breath.

I’m perfectly OK with e-cigs being used by people trying to quit cigarettes, especially as a last resort when all else has failed, in fact I’ve urged my brother to try e-cigs, but I am not OK with kids using e-cigs instead of cigarettes. E-cigs still contain nicotine, which is a staggering addictive substance and it doesn’t do anyone any good for kids to get physically addicted to something that has little other value than a short-term jolt of energy.

 

 

 

e-cigarette advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, World Health Organization

WHO: Regulate e-cigs, control marketing to teens

WHO
I missed this a couple of weeks ago. The World Health Organization came out with a very strongly worded statement ripping e-cigs, over both their marketing and lack of regulations.

WHO, a United Nations agency, joins the American Heart Association in expressing strong concerns about the exponential growth of mostly unregulated e-cigs. WHO specifically talks about its concerns that the tobacco industry, seeing cigarettes in decline and a booming new industry in e-cigs, is getting aggressively involved in the e-cig business. (Blu E-Cigarettes, which is the No. 1 e-cig company, was purchased last year by Lorillard, which in turn is being purchased by RJ Reynolds.

In its report, released late last month, WHO specifically calls for:

* Stopping the marketing to teens

* Banning them in public places

I’m 100 percent for the FDA to control the marketing of e-cigs to teenagers, as I see this as by far the biggest problem with e-cigs. More and more kids instead of becoming addicted to nicotine through cigarettes, are becoming just as addicted to nicotine through e-cigs. And the industry has been incredibly blatant in marketing to kids. In my opinion, the FDA has this power over tobacco products because tobacco products contain a controlled substance — nicotine — and thus the agency has the same power over e-cig marketing. However, in its draft regulations on e-cigs released several months ago, the FDA completely punted on the marketing issue and instead focused on banning sales to teenagers, which to me is just a start.

I’m not so worked up about banning them in public places, at least not yet, because the effects of the e-cigs’ steam doesn’t appear to be nearly as bad as cigarette smoke (studies are mixed on this and I’m trying to keep an open mind on it.)

WHO doesn’t have any regulatory authority so its report is simply a recommendation to world governments.

Not everyone is on board with the WHO recommendations as a number of public health officials signed a letter asking WHO not to overreact and over-regulate e-cigs because of their potential health benefits of helping some smokers quit.

 

CVS Pharmacy, e-cigarettes, tobacco sales

CVS pulls all tobacco products, changes name

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lockup_fnalv6 As the company announced a few months ago, CVS went ahead this week and pulled all tobacco products off its shelves — and changed its name to CVS Health in conjunction with this move. However, CVS, the second largest drug store company in the U.S., made the decision more quickly than they announced they would. It was supposed to happen in October, but they went ahead and made the change shortly after Labor Day. CVS is expected to lose up to $2 billion a year in retail sales, but this move is also part of a “rebranding” for the chain  to become more of a health care provider, rather than a general drug store with film development, candy, office supplies, etc. So, the company is looking to make up for those losses by making more money on health care services, products, etc. This is according to the New York Times

The decision to stop selling cigarettes is a strategic move as pharmacies across the country jockey for a piece of the growing health care industry. Rebranding itself as a company focused on health could prove lucrative for the drugstore as it seeks to appeal to medical partners that can help it bridge the gap between customers and their doctors.

Again, from the New York Times:

CVS has entered partnerships with more than 40 health systems, including local hospitals, to help run its clinics. The company opened 32 clinics last quarter and is on track to open at least 150 more this year, Carolyn Castel, a CVS spokeswoman, said. Revenues at the clinics are up 24 percent in the second quarter, compared with a year earlier, and the company plans to operate 1,500 clinics by 2017, CVS said.

As CVS seeks new health partners, its decision to end cigarette sales may make it more appealing than its tobacco-selling rivals.

“Think of it this way: Would you find cigarette machines or retail stores in the gift shops in a hospital selling cigarettes? Of course not,” said Nancy Copperman, the corporate director of public health initiatives for the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, a minute clinic partner. “I think it does give them a leg up.”

Interestingly, according to the Washington Post, CVS Health also will not sell e-cigarettes either.

No electronic cigarette sales, either. CVS doesn’t sell electronic cigarettes, but after making its tobacco announcement in February, Merlo said the company was monitoring Food and Drug Administration action on the products. Still, it sounds like CVS won’t lift its current ban on e-cigarettes. “We don’t carry them today, and we don’t have plans to carry them,” Chief Executive Officer Larry Merlo said on Tuesday.

American Heart Association, E-cig advertising, e-cigarette advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs

American Heart Association issues warnings about e-cigs, need for stricter regulation

e-Cigs-3-Man-smoking-AmieVanderford-300x199

Oh, very interesting. The American Heart Association (not some rabble-rousing anti-smoking group — the AHA), this week came out with a very strongly worded position paper on e-cigarettes.

Specifically, the AHA expressed the need for the Food and Drug Administration to regulate e-cigs. The FDA proposed some regulations on e-cigs a few months ago, and is still taking public comment on those regs.

NBC story. (Emphasizing that e-cigs should only be used as a “last resort” to quit.

USA TODAY story.

To wit, the AHA brings up three main concerns about e-cigs:

  •  They target young people
  • They keep people hooked on nicotine
  • They threaten to “re-normalize” tobacco use, according to the American Heart Association’s first policy statement on these products.

I really appreciate what the AHA is saying because while in a lot of ways I am on the fence about e-cigs (If they legitimately help people quit smoking, and some people swear they do, more power to them), BUT the major issue I have with e-cigs is the way they are being marketed, and in some cases, downright blatantly so, to kids.

From the AHA statement:

“Nicotine is a dangerous and highly addictive chemical no matter what form it takes – conventional cigarettes or some other tobacco product,” said American Heart Association President Elliott Antman, M.D. “Every life that has been lost to tobacco addiction could have been prevented. We must protect future generations from any potential smokescreens in the tobacco product landscape that will cause us to lose precious ground in the fight to make our nation 100 percent tobacco-free.

Manufacturers present e-cigarettes as “cool and sexy and acceptable, which is a problem because you’re increasing addiction,” Bhatnagar said.

Exactly, the point is, e-cigs are being marketed as cool and sexy and acceptable, but in fact, they contain nicotine. So while they might help some smokers (emphasis on “some”) quit, they are keeping those smokers addicted to nicotine, which has its own health issues (such as increasing blood pressure, etc.). And worse yet, if kids use them because Blu ads make them look hip and cool, then they’re being turned into nicotine addicts to begin with — not by cigarettes, but by e-cigs.

The AHA agrees:

The FDA’s proposal fell short of what was hoped for by the AHA and other public health advocates. They believe e-cigarettes should be regulated under the same laws as other tobacco products and prohibited from being marketed or sold to young people. The proposal, they said, did not go far enough in limiting online sales, advertising and flavored products, all tactics used to make e-cigarettes appealing to young people.

I personally don’t get that worked up about the flavoured e-cigs, but I completely agree with the AHA about the marketing issue. The FDA in its original proposal declined to address e-cig marketing (possibly because the agency is concerned about being sued over the First Amendment), but did ban e-cig sales to minors. That’s a start, I suppose.

 

Chew in baseball, Chewing tobacco, Curt Schilling, Tony Gwynn

Boston Herald columnist calls for banning chewing tobacco in baseball

300schilling

Boston Herald columnist Michael Silverman wrote a powerful column this week that it’s time for Major League Baseball to ban chewing tobacco.

This is hitting home in Boston right now because former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who helped the Sox win two World Series, recently revealed that he is battling a serious form of oral cancer — cancer he blames on his 30-year chewing habit. Schilling’s cancer and Tony Gwynn’s (another chewer) death this summer from salivary gland cancer have put chewing tobacco in baseball front and centre.

Schilling actually did quit chew for a while, but after a year-and-a-half the power of nicotine won and he started dipping again. From Silverman’s column:

“None of it [lectures] was enough to ever make me quit,’’ Schilling said. “The pain that I was in going through this treatment, the second or third day, it was the only thing in my life that I wish I could go back and never have dipped.”

Actually, MLB does want to ban chewing tobacco. Cigarettes are banned in the clubhouse and dugouts. Chew is banned (on the field, mind you) in minor league baseball and in college, but MLB can’t ban it because the Player’s Association won’t allow it.

 

Silverman writes:

If only the players and Major League Baseball could see that they are dead wrong when it comes to how they rationalize and allow the use of smokeless tobacco rather than eliminating the addictive and cancer-causing substance.

Anyone who heard the higher timbre in the 47-year-old voice of Curt Schilling on WEEI radio and on NESN for the Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon as he spoke for the first time about his battle with mouth cancer yesterday, or anyone still grieving the loss of 54-year-old Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn in June to a similar cancer, received a chilling reminder that, incredibly, tobacco still has a place in baseball.

Silverman further writes:

Schilling didn’t need an ashtray at Fenway when he played since smoking tobacco had long been banned.

But chewing tobacco?

Oh no, you must understand: That’s totally different. Smoking tobacco’s bad. Chewing the stuff? Well, players in Schilling’s era and players in today’s game can chew all they want. Just don’t let anyone see the telltale circular bulge of a can of snuff in your back pocket, try not to pause in the middle of an interview to spit out the juice and by all means, don’t ask a clubbie to head down to the local convenience store to stock up.

No, MLB forbids and frowns on all of that.

But otherwise, go right ahead: Kill yourself if you want to.

That’s your right.

And finally, Silverman concludes:

Baseball survived when smoking was banned from the clubhouse.

Banning smokeless tobacco won’t kill it, either.

 

John Boehner, Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan hates John Boehner’s constant smoking

AP BUDGET BATTLE A USA DC I’m just posting this because I think it’s hilarious. According to this USA Today story, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan said that in meetings with House Speaker John Boehner, he tries to sit as far away as possible because of Boehner’s constant smoking.

“I try to sit as far away from him as I can in meetings that I know are going to be stressful,” House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told Time in a Q&A published Thursday. “I just hate getting that smell in my clothes.”

OK, maybe just worth a chuckle. What isn’t quite as funny is Boehner has long been a stooge for Big Tobacco in Congress and has taken hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) in contributions from Big Tobacco. boehner Several years ago, Boehner even handed out checks from the tobacco industry’s lobbyists to members of Congress — on the floor of the House no less —  in order to garner their votes on some issues benefiting the tobacco industry.