Big Tobacco stooge John Boehner joins the board of RJ Reynolds

September 20, 2016 Pepe Lepew

Well, knock me over with a feather.

Chain-smoker and notorious Big Tobacco congressional stooge John Boehner last week joined the RJ Reynolds board of directors.

Why am I not surprised. Yeah, believe it or not, this is absolutely a true story, Boehner once handed out cheques from tobacco companies on the floor of the U.S. Congress before he became Speaker of the House. He did this actually on the floor of the U.S. Capitol in 1995. the cheques were an attempt to persuade representatives from voting against a bill cutting tax breaks to Big Tobacco. Boehner and Big Tobacco’s tactics won the day.

What a shill! What a sleaze.

Boehner reportedlt received nearly half a million in campaign contributions from Big Tobacco during his political career, and he was notorious for doing tobacco’s bidding during his many years in Congress.

From this story:

Big Tobacco made nice with Boehner early in his career and kept the money coming. Over his 14 years in the House, Boehner received $497,112 in direct contributions from the tobacco lobby. Boehner stayed loyal, consistently siding with the tobacco industry’s wishes in legislative battles.

And what a surprise! Boehner, after resigning his House seat and his Speaker of the House post, has glided into post-politics retirement as an actual corporate board member of RJ Reynolds.

From a National Public Radio story:

“RAI (RJ Reynolds) is striving to transform the tobacco industry through innovative strategies that include speeding the decline in tobacco use among young people and reducing the harm caused by smoking,” said a Boehner spokesman. “These are objectives Speaker Boehner supports and looks forward to helping RAI advance through his service on the board.”

Supposedly, Boehner was such a heavy smoker that current House Speaker Paul Ryan had to have the Speaker’s office fumigated and the furniture replaced because of the smoky stench.

I would never wish lung cancer on anyone, but John … dude … you’re pushing that sentiment to the limit.

e-cigarettes, e-cigs

Wow, video of an e-cigarette bursting into flames

September 18, 2016 Pepe Lepew

I’ve written a bit in the past about one of the issues with e-cigarettes … that there’s not a whole lot of regulation about how they’re built and they do have a dangerous habit of exploding/bursting into flames from time to time.

At this point, probably hundreds of people have suffered major and minor burns from exploding e-cigs. Granted, a might be a minor issue compared to the overall question of the safety of e-cigarette vapour, but it’s just another reason why I don’t trust these thing.

Watch the video. It’s pretty harrowing. It’s definitely a “holy crap!” moment. Imagine if you will if you were actually holding that e-cig when it erupted into flames.

African-Americans

African-American doctors urge banning menthol cigarettes

September 18, 2016 Pepe Lepew

For some reason, I’m not sure why, menthol cigarettes are favoured by black smokers (interestingly, my parents were big menthol smokers for years and they were decidedly not black)… and Big Tobacco has long marketed menthols to black smokers.

In fact, 75 percent of the smokers of the second biggest cigarette brand — Newport cigarettes — are black. Newports are mentholated. Man, here’s a shocking stat — 83 percent of older black smokers prefer mentholated brands, while 72 percent of young black smokers also prefer menthol cigs.

Newport trails only Marlboro as the most popular brand in the U.S. .. mostly because so many blacks smoke them. Newport was also the No. 1 brand for Lorillard, which is now part of RJ Reynolds.

Interestingly, several years ago, the Food and Drug Administration banned candy-flavoured cigarettes, such as cherry, raspberry, etc., because these cigarettes were obviously being marketed to kids. However, the FDA did nothing about menthol cigarettes, which have a candhy-like minty flavour. Menthol cigarettes were grandfathered in.

A group called the African-American Tobacco Control Leadership Council last week called on Barack Obama to ban menthol cigarettes (not really sure if Obama could actually do this by Executive action).

One of the big problems with menthol is that it makes cigarette smoke less harsh and easier to ingest, thus making cigarette smoke that much more dangerous for the smoker.

Yeah, I don’t get the logic of banning candy cigarettes, but not a minty cigarette. It just shows that there is a too-cozy relationship at times between the FDA and Big Tobacco.

Uncategorized

Update on the Lounge

September 18, 2016 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

Pepe-Le-Pew-pepe-le-pew-756076_294_278

I am going through a major life change right now, so haven’t been updating much and won’t be updating much for probably a couple of more weeks.

On another note, this week was the second anniversary of the Lounge with our current Web host, so thanks for them for good, consistent service. Our previous Web host was a nightmare, and don’t get me going on WordPress.

Anyway, thanks for hanging in there on the Realm! A couple of updates tonight, then will be off for probably two weeks.

France, Teen smoking, Uncategorized

NPR report: French teens continue smoking despite government crackdown

August 31, 2016 Pepe Lepew

Heard a radio report on NPR last week about how efforts to curb teen smoking in France are flagging, because smoking is still considered hip and suave among French youths.

According to NPR, smoking remains wildly popular among teenagers in France. This despite a very aggressive anti-smoking campaign in France over the past several years. (Check the photo I included of a French anti-smoking ad. That image of a girl giving a blow job to a tobacco executive? That’s a real French anti-smoking ad. There’s another one with a teen boy.).

Anyway, according to NPR, in spite of all the anti-smoking efforts, smoking remains deeply entrenched in French culture About 40 percent of French teens smoke, according to NPR. That compares to less than 10 percent of American teens that now smoke (Smoking among teens in America has declined partly because of an aggressive Truth anti-smoking campaign and higher cigarette taxes, and to a very large extent because of the meteoric rise of popularity of e-cigarettes among kids.).

2djbbpz — Real, honest-to-goodness French anti-smoking ad

France is implementing a number of measures to cut that smoking rate, including bans on menthol cigarettes and prohibiting sweet e-cigarette flavours. France will also soon mandate disgusting images of tobacco-related diseases on cigarette packs and there have also been some very edgy anti-smoking ads there over the years and the government will crack down on tobacconists who don’t card underage customers. Apparently, in France, tobacco shop (cigarettes are primarly sold in tobacco shops in France) owners have not been carding kids buying cigarettes.

Interestingly, kids interviewed by NPR said the plain packages won’t stop them from smoking, but higher taxes probably would. Higher taxes in America have proven very effective in pricing kids out of the cigarette market. Teens simply can’t afford the $6 to $8 a pack cigarettes cost in most places.

One quote in the NPR piece made me kind of want to smack this kid (metaphorically smack her … I would never actually smack a kid around). From the story:

Smoking is often popular among girls, who see it as a rite of passage and a part of French culture, says Naomi Finel, 16.

“If you’re young and you walk in the streets and you’re in Paris, you will see people at cafes smoking and having a glass of wine,” she says. “And it’s like, ‘Good. They seem happy. They seem to enjoy their life.'”

Oh, honey, you little French nitwit. They won’t be enjoying their smokers’ hack in the morning. They won’t be enjoying their loss of lung capacity. They won’t be enjoying their arthritis, heart disease, COPD or cancer that their smoking will likely give them. Smoking is not about joie de vivre, smoking is death.

Caesar, smoking, smoking in media, smoking in movies

“Hail, Caesar!” — and the shame of smoking

August 27, 2016 Pepe Lepew

Finished watching “Hail, Caesar!” this week, a campy Coen brothers comedy that actually made some gentle, yet moving, statements about smoking.

The movie, which takes place in 1951, begins with a studio “fixer” Eddie Mannix played by Josh Brolin, in a confession booth giving his confession to a priest. His big sin? He had promised his wife that he would quit smoking and he lied to his wife that he had sneaked two (maybe three) cigarettes during the past 24 hours.

Brolin’s character is so wracked with guilt he actually breaks down crying confessing to the priest that he’s trying to quit smoking, but can’t.

Perhaps the scene was meant to be comedic, but honestly, I found it really touching, because I’ve talked to so many people who try desperately — and some people are legitimately desperate — to quit, but simply cannot break free of the nicotine. I’ve seen people almost on the verge of tears just talking about it. They hate smoking, they hate their addiction and they hate the fact that they cannot quit, no matter how hard they try.

hail caeser 1 — Josh Brolin breaks down crying because he can’t quit smoking in “Hail, Caesar!”

Later in the movie, Eddie asks to bum a cigarette from a cop with a look of abject self-loathing in his face. He hates how weak he is when it comes to cigarettes. I found this interesting, because as mentioned before, the film is set in 1951, pretty much the height of smoking in America. Smoking was portrayed making men appear either virile or sophisticated in all of the advertising — and Hollywood films — of the time. But, for this particular character, smoking made him feel weak — and a sinner. It to me showed a dramatic change in the culture of film. It was only 10-15 years ago that Hollywood was still portraying smokers as tough or macho — in PG-13 films. Those days are quickly fading, much like the studio system portrayed in “Hail, Caesar!” was shown to be in its final days. The portrayal of smoking in “Hail, Caeser!” reminded me of “Stranger Than Fiction,” a 2006 film that under pressure from productor Lindsay Doran, was forced to portray a chain-smoking character in a negative light (The character, played by Emma Thompson, spent much of the film coughing and spitting up sputum into a handkerchief.).

I wondered a bit if this was a gimmick by the Coen Brothers to dodge an R rating. I have no idea. There’s a fair amount of smoking in “Hail, Caesar!”, but it wasn’t what I would call “pervasive” (“Pervasive” smoking in films can trigger an R rating, however, the MPAA has this funky rule that “historically accurate” smoking is OK. The year 1951 would obviously contain a lot of historically accurate smoking.).

Anyway, it was a cute movie with a cute take on smoking.

California, Cigarette taxes, Prop 56

Big Tobacco files litigation, raises $17 million to fight California tobacco tax

August 15, 2016 Pepe Lepew

Big Tobacco has already filed bullcrap litigation attempting to get a ballot measure removed from the November 2016 ballot that would raise the California cigarette tax by $2 a pack. And on top of that, the industry is planning to spend at least $17 million in order to defeat the measure.

Big Tobacco spent up to $40 million several years ago to defeat a $1 a pack cigarette tax increase. That measure was defeated in 2012 by an incredibly narrow margin — 50.2 percent to 49.8 percent. It lost by 24,000 votes out of 5.1 million votes cast.

Prop 56 would double that increase to $2.87 a pack. Right now, the state cigarette tax is only 87 cents a pack, which surprising to a lot of people, is one of the lowest state cigarette taxes in the U.S. Yup, tax-happy California is actually in the bottom third for cigarette taxes in the country. The $2.87 a pack tax would be one of the highest in the nation. New York has the highest at $4.35 a pack.

First, the industry filed a suit claiming that proponents of the measure have lied that the measure — Proposition 56 — would actually take money away from schools rather than provide a new big revenue stream for education (estimated to be $20 million a year). The industry is claiming that the title of the ballot measure contains inaccurate information and is therefore against the law.

A hearing was held last week, not much must have happened because I can’t find any news stories about the result of the hearing. According to a letter written to the court by Tom Torlakson, head of Public Instruction for California, the tobacco industry states that “make no mistake, Proposition 56 will not take a dime away from education.” Torlakson calls Big Tobacco’s claims “false and misleading,” “preposterous” and “insulting.”

This LeftofCenter story, not particularly well-written honestly, talks about the measure’s effect on e-cigarettes and how this is one of the reasons Big Tobacco is opposed to it. This is an important point. Prop 56 would not only raise the tax on cigarettes, it would add a tax to vaping products, too. On the Crooks & Liars article about it, some commenters mistakenly state that Big Tobacco is threatened by or competing against the vaping industry. Not really, not as much as a lot of people think. The article is correct that this would hurt Big Tobacco by taxing vaping products. Big Tobacco actually controls 75 percent of the vaping industry. The top three vaping brands on the market are actually owned by RJ Reynolds, British-American Tobacco and Philip Morris. So, yeah, this tax is hitting Big Tobacco in two directions.

Big bucks to fight the tax measure

While this lawsuit apparently didn’t accomplish anything, Big Tobacco has put together a war chest of $17 million to advertise against Prop 56.

From Capitol Public Radio:

Proponents such as Jim Knox of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network say they’re preparing for an onslaught of opposition.

“This is classic tobacco industry strategy and deception,” Knox said of the cash infusion. “They will spend tens of millions of dollars to confuse and deceive the voters about the deadly nature of their product, as they have been doing for decades.”

Expect the industry to hide behind a bunch of Libertarian anti-tax “choice” bullshit in its advertising. That’s Big Tobacco’s MO.

From the story:

Beth Miller, a spokeswoman for No on Prop 56, says her campaign wants to educate voters about the problems it sees with the cigarette tax. She said it sidesteps requirements that money from new taxes fund schools.

“The proponents claim the tax increase will help people quit smoking. But it really is a tax hike grab by the insurance companies and other wealthy special interests,” Miller said.

The good news is Prop 56 backers have raised $16.6 million themselves to promote the measure.

Polls show roughly two-thirds support for the proposed tax increase. However, the 2012 measure also had strong public support until the tobacco industry spent millions to defeat it.

Prop 56 and marijuana measure
expected to raise $2 billion

One of the arguments in favour of the proposed tax is that it along with a measure to legalize marijuana, would raise $2 billion annually for the state of California.

Currently, California brings in $800 million in tobacco taxes. A state agency has estimated that Prop 56 would generate another $1 billion to $1.4 billion a year for state coffers. While the tax would triple, the revenue would roughly double. That makes sense, because such a huge tax increase would likely drive down the smoking rate.

Additionally, the state is estimating another roughly $1 billion a year in tax revenue from legalizing marijuana. That’s based on revenue increases seen in Colorado and Washington from their marijuana measures (I suspect pot hasn’t been legal in Oregon long enough to get a lot of revenue information).

Keytruda, Lung cancer

Jimmy Carter on the forefront of possible breakthrough in lung cancer drug

August 7, 2016 Pepe Lepew

Jimmy Carter was diagnosed about a year ago with advanced liver cancer that had metastasized into his brain and other organs. Usually, for a 90-year-old man, the prognosis is not good.

However, a year later, Carter is at the moment cancer-free and apparently has no plans of dying any time soon. Carter was given an experimental immunotherapy drug called Pembrolizumab (trade name Keytruda, which I’m going to use because it’s easier to spell), which worked wonders on his cancer.

Keytruda has also been shown to be effective in treating small-cell lung cancer, still one of the most difficult types of cancer to treat. Despite the dramatic drop in smoking rates the past 25 years, lung cancer remains the No. 1 cancer killer in the West.

Because Keytruda is working so well in treating lung cancer among 300 trial patients, the drug company Merck announced that it will no longer hold trials and will make Keytruda available to these lung cancer patients. According to Merck, Keytruda worked as well if not better than conventional chemotherapy and helped stopped the growth of lung cancer tumours.

From an NBC story:

The details are not available yet. “We look forward to sharing these data with the medical community and with regulatory authorities around the world,” said Dr. Roger Perlmutter, president, of Merck Research Laboratories.

Independent committees look at the details of the patients and how well they are doing in drug trials like these. It was one of these independent committees that recommended stopping the trial based on what they saw but that doesn’t necessarily mean they shared the details with the company or anyone else.

“I suspect the findings were significant enough that this will be a practice-changing finding,” Dr. Pasi Janne, lung cancer specialist at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told NBC News.

Keytruda has not been approved yet for wide use by the Food and Drug Administration, but the process of getting its approval has begun. Keytruda has been OK’d for patience for whom standard chemotherapy has failed. Merck is seeking its approval as a first-line drug for lung cancer. The FDA has been known to give quick approval to these kind of immunotherapy cancer drugs.

From NBC News:

They treat cancer by stopping tumor cells from cloaking themselves against the normal, healthy immune system response.

They work on the principle that it’s not where cancer starts that matters, but the genetic mutation that causes the cancer. So a lung tumor in one patient may look like the melanoma in another.

— targets the activity of genes called PD-1 (anti-programmed-death-receptor-1) and PD-L1. The interaction between the two genes lets some tumors escape detection and destruction by immune system cells.

PD-1 stops immune cells from attacking normal healthy cells by mistake. Tumor cells make PD-L1 turn on PD-1 when immune cells approach.

This trial only included patients whose tumors cells made a lot of PD-L1. That is only a portion of people with lung cancer – 25 percent in one recent trial.

Immunotherapy is a whole new way of treating cancer, including lung cancer,” said Janne, who was not involved in the study. “Having seen patients benefit who failed existing therapies, now doing well on these new therapies, is fantastic.”

Mike Pence

Mike Pence: Cigarettes aren’t deadly … yes, he really said this

August 7, 2016 Pepe Lepew

In case you needed another reason not to vote for Donald Trump/Mike Pence. Pence, the governor or Indiana, once wrote an oped piece about how cigarette smoking is not dangerous.

I’m serious. He really did. I’m not talking secondhand smoke, either. Pence wrote his column about smoking … period. And this was 15 years ago — 2001 — not the 1960s.

Here’s an excerpt of the idiocy that Pence wrote:

Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill. In fact, 2 out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer. This is not to say that smoking is good for you…. news flash: smoking is not good for you. If you are reading this article through the blue haze of cigarette smoke you should quit. The relevant question is, what is more harmful to the nation, second hand smoke or back handed big government disguised in do-gooder healthcare rhetoric.

… Those of you who find the tobacco deal acceptable should be warned as you sit, reading this magazine, sipping a cup of hot coffee with a hamburger on your mind for lunch. A government big enough to go after smokers is big enough to go after you.

Sigh … Mike, Mike, Mike.

First of all, it’s utter BS that 2 out of 3 smokers don’t die from a smoking-related illness. It’s actually about 2 out of 3 that DO die from their smoking — either through cancer, respiratory disease, heart disease or other illnesses. Not to mention the loss of quality in their lives from various diseases such as arthritis and diabetes now known to be linked to smoking.

Secondly, yeah, about 1 out 10 smokers gets lung cancer … but Pence neglected to mention that the ratio among non-smokers who get lung cancer is less than 1 out of 100 people. This is just stupid and lazy and massively debunked thinking by Pence: That because all smokers don’t get lung cancer, therefore smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer. My parents used to argue this 40 years ago … before they got cancer.

So, never mind what the EPA, U.S. Surgeon General and countless physicians and scientists say … Pence says smoking doesn’t kill people … so there. If he had written this in the 60s or 70s, I might give him a pass that people just didn’t have all the information, but no, people KNOW today smoking kills. End of discussion. It’s like trying to argue that lead plumbing or asbestos insulation isn’t dangerous. It’s just … STUPID.

I would dearly love some interviewer to call this idiot on his words, but to my knowledge, no one has, and as long as Pence only gives interviews on Fox and CNN, I’m not holding my breath.

What such an oped shows me is Pence, regardless of his or my politics, is simply not a bright guy (what a shock, he’s also a global warming denialist). I can’t believe in this day and age there’s still people trying to argue that smoking isn’t dangerous.

Big Tobacco, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, FDA, Full Frontal

Samantha Bee: Big Tobacco and Little Vape — and a criticism of “Full Frontal”

July 31, 2016 Pepe Lepew

This is a really funny and fairly sympathetic piece done by Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal” about the new Food and Drug Administration regulations and its effect on the vaping industry. The piece did miss one big point about the vaping industry, however.

The proposed regs, while missing a lot of important proposals anti-tobacco advocates wanted, like curbs on marketing and Internet sales, would require all vaping products to individually go through a lengthy approval process. Vaping advocates say this would cripple if not completely wipe out the vaping industry because the costs to go through this process would be so onerous. The FDA itself estimates that between 30 percent to 70 percent of e-cig businesses may be forced to go out of business due to the new regulations.

Full Frontal visited a vaping conference and did have a good time poking fun at vapers. For instance, Samantha Bee sends a correspondent to the conference rather than go herself because she doesn’t want to be around vapers, then the correspondent immediately runs out the door as soon as she encounters e-cigarette steam blown in her face. However, the show was fair to e-cigs and did acknowledge that some studies have shown that vaping is far less dangerous than smoking.

One thing I honestly learned from the segment is that there is a pretty distinct actual honest-to-goodness “vaping culture,” that at least according to the show, has a counter-culture edge. Sort of like cigar culture only with lots of piercings, I suppose. I never realized this culture existed, though, as I thought about it, some of the e-cig proponents I’ve dealt with online are almost messianic in their defence of e-cigarettes.

One thing the Full Frontal segment did get wrong, however, (and they got this like … really wrong), was that suggesting that Big Tobacco has “struggled to compete” in the e-cigarette market. That’s really not true. Vuse E-Cigs (35 percent market share, Blu E-Cigs (23 percent) and MarkTen (16 percent), the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 e-cig brands on the market, are actually wholly-owned subsidiaries of RJ Reynolds, Imperial Tobacco Group and Altria (Philip Morris). In fact, these three brands represent a combined 74 percent of the e-cig market. Seventy-four percent is hardly “struggling to compete.”

Yeah, maybe Big Tobacco wants to crush all the smaller makers through FDA regulations (Though, Altria has expressed its opposition to the FDA regulations), but if that’s the case, the real story is the tobacco industry is already deeply entrenched in and dominating the e-cig industry. Will these regulations help Big Tobacco dominate it even more? Full Frontal didn’t even mention that Big Tobacco owns the three most dominant e-cigarette brands and I really think the show either missed or ignored that dynamic between Big Tobacco and e-cigarettes.

Big bucks to fight the tax measure

Prop 56 and marijuana measure expected to raise $2 billion

Prop 56 and marijuana measure
expected to raise $2 billion