Hee, I stole that headline joke from this graphic.
I was shocked to find out that until this week, you could apparently use an e-cigarette on commercial flights (depending on the airline’s policies).
Not anymore. As of now, vaping is strictly prohibited on commercial flights. The U.S. Department of Transportation announced the new rule Thursday. It will take effect within 30 days.
From The Hill:
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the final rule applies to all flights with both national and foreign airline carriers traveling to and from the United States.
“This final rule is important because it protects airline passengers from unwanted exposure to aerosol fumes that occur when electronic cigarettes are used onboard airplanes,” Foxx said in a news release. “The Department took a practical approach to eliminate any confusion between tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes by applying the same restrictions to both.”
Not even getting into the unwanted aerosols issue and the fact that vapour has formaldehyde and diacetyl in it, these things do on rare occasion actually blow up and catch fire. I seriously would not want to be on an airplane with an e-cigarette suddenly erupting into flames. (Jesus, here’s another story about an exploding e-cigarette. There’s literally like one or two or these stories every week.) Just the potential of one of these things erupting on a plane is reason enough all by itself to ban them on airplanes.
The California State Assembly approved a bill this week to raise the state’s smoking age from 18 to 21. A number of cities and states have been doing this the past couple of years. I’ve on record as having a somewhat mixed view of this — 18-year-olds can vote, join the military and go to jail, but they can’t buy a pack of cigarettes? I get it that they can’t buy alcohol, but alcohol is an intoxicant.
Again, there is a big, big push going on to raise the smoking age to 21, and most of the tobacco control movement is behind it. Maybe I’m behind the times on this. Whether I’m fully on board or not, this movement is gaining steam. The bill would prohibit stores from selling cigarettes to young adults between 18 and 20, but there would be no penalties for young adults for possession or using tobacco. I’m cool with that.
Young Bay Area residents had mixed reactions to the legislation.
“I’ve been smoking ever since my mom put my first cigarette into my hands at age 13,” said Juan Parada, a hip hop musician taking a smoking break Thursday in downtown San Jose. Now, at 21, he declares, “I know that each time I take a puff, I am killing myself slowly.”
Yet Parada, who performs under the moniker “Young Manny,” said increasing the smoking age to 21 will have little effect.
“Kids will find a way to get what they want — like getting an older person to buy cigarettes for them,” he said. “That’s what I did. That’s what lots of young kids do, and it’s just not that difficult.”
I guess my response to that is … your mom was giving you cigarettes when you were 13? … no offense, dude, but your mom is an idiot.
E-cigarette bill
However, I was more intrigued by another bill that also passed the Assembly — regulating e-cigarettes. Much overdue, in my opinion. The bill would treat e-cigarettes as a tobacco product, it would ban e-cigarette use in all workplaces and would require people selling e-cigarettes to get a special licence. It also would make it a misdemeanor to sell or provide vaping products to people under the age of 21 (I like this part of it because vaping has absolutely skyrocketed among teens in the past three years.). It doesn’t sound that strict, but it’s a beginning. We’re all still waiting for the Food and Drug Administration federal regulations for e-cigarettes, so states are having to pass their own regulations.
These bills had been proposed in earlier years but got bogged down to a large degree because of lobbying from the tobacco industry. I found a couple of stories about just how powerful the tobacco lobby is in California. You’d be surprised to hear that California actually has one of the lowest tobacco taxes in the whole country — just 87 cents a pack. The Legislature simply will not pass a tobacco tax increase and tobacco industry lobbying is a reason why. California alone represents nearly 10 percent of the cigarette market in the entire country.
Major tobacco companies Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds spent $1 million lobbying lawmakers in 2015. R.J. Reynolds also gave $240,000 to candidates and campaign committees last year, while Philip Morris contributed $1 million, including $200,000 to the California Republican Party.
Democrats who voted against or abstained on the tobacco measures received at least $26,000 from the two companies last year. In November and December, they gave a combined $35,000 to a ballot committee run by Assemblyman Adam Gray, a Merced Democrat who chairs the influential Governmental Organization Committee and voted against raising the smoking age to 21.
The two Republicans who voted for the bill, Catharine Baker of Dublin and David Hadley of Manhattan Beach, returned almost $11,000 in contributions from the tobacco companies over the summer.
In remarks to reporters after the vote, Assembly Speaker-elect Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, called the tobacco industry “a strong force in this town” and alluded to “threats involving electoral efforts” against legislators.
“It’s exceptionally aggressive,” Rendon said.
Both bills go to the State Senate, where they are expected to pass.
A ballot measure to raise California’s cigarette tax by $2 a pack is being proposed. The last similar ballot measure (Again, the Legislature won’t approve a cigarette tax measure, so it keeps getting punted to the voters) in California failed by just a few thousand votes after Big Tobacco spent millions to defeat it. However, this ballot measure is being proposed for November, when voter turnout is expected to be very heavy, in part because there will be another ballot measure to legalize pot in California.
New York is considering a similar ban at Yankee Stadium and the Mets’ Citi Field. Meanwhile, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston have already banned chew by players, coaches, umpires and fans (though I have to believe most of these ballparks weren’t allowing fans to chew because of the clean-up issues.) It appears chew will also be banned soon by the state of California at ballparks in San Diego, Oakland and Anaheim.
In response to chew being banned at as many as six Major League ballparks this summer, Major League Baseball is actually sending out “nicotine therapy” packages to teams for free. These packages will contain nicotine gun, patches and lozenges. This is included in the bottom of this story here. I thought it was pretty funny and could’ve been the lead of its own story.
Getting back to Toronto, the city’s health board is supposed to decide by March 21. From an article on the topic:
“While chewing tobacco has long been part of the culture for many professional sports, especially baseball, research shows that it has very real and serious health consequences,” City Councilor Joe Mihevic said in a release. “We need to be at the forefront of the movement to restrict its use and join with major cities such as L.A., Boston, and New York.”
These proposals are getting some resistance from ballplayers. Roughly about 30 percent of baseball players are believed to be tobacco chewers (versus about 7 percent of adult men in general and less than 1 percent of adult women.).
From the article:
“For some guys, it’s part of their playing routine,” Chicago Cubs catcher David Ross told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s hard to tell somebody what tools they can take to their work.”
Is this Jonny Gomes? I’m not sure. That’s Mike Napoli behind him.
Jake Peavy of the San Francisco Giants agrees. “It’s really, really hard to tell grown men who have been in this game and done it for a long time that they can’t do something that’s legal,” he said. “Old habits die hard.”
Josh Thole, Justin Smoak and Chris Colabello are counted among Toronto Blue Jays who regularly chew tobacco on the field.
Unofficial stats show that the number of players who still chew tobacco has decreased in recent years, from about one-half of players to one-third. Instead, ballparks have gotten into the habit of making chewing gum and sunflower seeds available as alternatives.
Blue Jays Manager John Gibbons quit two years ago, following the death of Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn of salivary gland cancer.
“I was a tobacco user for a lot of years. I’m not proud of that. I finally was able to quit. It’s a dirty, filthy habit,” Gibbons told the Toronto Star. “I wouldn’t want my kids doing it. You hope in some way, they can eliminate it and wipe it out.”
Chew being phased out; nicotine kits sent to teams
As Gibbons mentioned Tony Gwynn, it was Gwynn’s death a couple of years ago that provided much of the recent impetus to banning chew on the field. Gwynn was a longtime chewer who blamed his habit for his cancer.
Players were informed this week they will be facing chewing tobacco bans in as many as six stadiums this season and sent out the nicotine therapy packets to every team free of charge (Like guys making $15 million a year need freebies?)
Washington Nationals manager Dusty Baker was a big dipper for a long time. He’s cut back over the years, but still might pop in a pinch when games get tight.
“It’s a bad influence for the kids. Big time. I’ll say that. But also they’re adults, too, at the same time,” Baker said.
“We’ll see,” he said. “My daughter used to put water in my can and put it back in my truck. Or my son, he has lip check — ‘Get it out, Dad!'”
Local laws will prohibit the use of all tobacco products at Fenway Park, Dodger Stadium and AT&T Park this year, meaning players, team personnel, umpires and fans. The letter advises the same ban will take effect at every California ballpark in December.
“I support it,” new Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think that the intentions are there, and there’s obviously going to be some resistance with players.”
“Like it or not, players are role models, and we have a platform as coaches and players. So if that’s the law, then we definitely support it,” he said.
Major League Baseball actually wants to ban chew on the field, but needs the cooperation of the Major League Players’ Association, which has so far not given its OK. Chewing tobacco use is expected to be part of the next contract being negotiated between MLB and the players.
I have no idea if this bill is going to pass, but this in itself is a pretty amazing development.
West Virginia, a solidly red Republican state (Obama got less than 30 percent of the vote in 2012) and either the No. 1- or No. 2-ranked smoking state in the nation (in the last survey, West Virginia was No. 2 at a staggering 29.9 percent smoking rate, just a tick behind Kentucky.), passed a pretty significant cigarette tax increase in the State Senate.
West Virginia’s cigarette tax is one of the lowest in the nation at 55 cents a pack, no surprise in such a conservative state with such a high smoking rate. The average state cigarette tax in the nation is about $1.50 a pack.
A bill was introduced in the W.Va. Legislature to raise the cigarette tax to $1 a pack, a pretty modest increase that would leave W.Va. still well below the national average tax. However, that bill, proposed by the governor, was amended to raise the tax by $1 a pack to $1.55 a pack, right around the national average.
In a Republican-dominated State Senate, the bill passed by a margin of 26-6. Wow. Republicans favoured the bill 12-6, joining 14 Democrats in favour. That blows me away.
Smoking rates in the U.S. West Virginia is pitch black.
The tax increase would raise an estimated $115 million and would help West Virginia balance a severely strapped budget.
In my mind, more importantly, the tax increase would likely make a dent in West Virginia’s shockingly high smoking rate. Studies have shown that a $1 a pack cigarette tax effectively lowers the smoking rate by 10 percent. It actually does help encourage smokers to quit to hit them in the pocketbook.
Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, a physician, noted that 10 times as many West Virginians die from tobacco-related illness as die from narcotics overdoses and said the existing 55-cent-a-pack tax is not enough to motivate smokers to quit.
“You have to hit somebody hard enough in the pocketbook that they say, ‘Now, I’ll quit,’ ” Takubo said.
While tobacco taxes are sometimes seen as inordinately burdensome on the poor, Takubo said smokers spend an average of $4,700 a year on cigarettes, money he suggested would greatly benefit low-income families.
“That’s a big number that can help out a lot of people — that’s cash,” he said.
West Virginia also has one of the highest lung cancer rates in the U.S.
Not coincidentally, West Virginia also has one of the highest lung cancer death rates in the nation, (also partly because of the state’s coal industry.).
The governor is apparently on board with the cigarette tax increase, but I have no idea if the tax increase will pass in West Virginia’s State Assembly. As I pointed out before, the state’s budget is extremely tight and they’d be pissing away $115 million a year in revenue rejecting the tax.
I can’t keep track in every single state, but I know cigarette tax bills are making their ways through legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Louisiana and California. California plans a state ballot measure to raise its ridiculously low 87 cents a pack cigarette pack. A similar bill in California barely failed a couple of years ago, literally by a few thousand votes, after Big Tobacco poured millions of dollars into defeating it.
Philip Morris International’s earnings and revenue are dropping, dropping faster than forecast by the company.
Philip Morris is a spin-off from Altria, which handles Philip Morris’ domestic production of cigarettes.
According to several stories I came across, Philip Morris’ revenues dropped 11 percent at the end of 2015, dropping faster than projected. Cigarette shipping volume also dropped 2.4 percent, excluding acquisitions.
What this tells me, surprisingly, is that even internationally, the tobacco industry is hurting. Now, by “hurting,” I mean, they aren’t raking in the kinds of billions there were raking in 20 and 30 years ago. The biggest declines were in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where revenues were down 19 percent — that is interesting.
Here is an interesting paragraph from the the MySA Website:
International tobacco company Philip Morris International has been an attractive stock ever since it split off from domestic peer and former parent Altria Group , combining growth prospects from foreign markets with solid dividend income. But 2015 has been a tough year for Philip Morris, and between foreign currency weakness and new regulatory threats that, in some cases, are even worse than what Altria has had to face in the U.S., the global tobacco giant has seen its financials under pressure. Coming into Philip Morris International’s fourth-quarter financial report Thursday, investors were prepared for declining fundamentals, but worse-than-expected results and gloomy guidance went beyond those initial expectations.
There’s the important sentence: “new regulatory threats that, in some cases, are even worse than what Altria has had to face in the U.S.” What this is referring to are small countries around the world attempting to pass restrictions on marketing and packaging of tobacco. Philip Morris International has been in a massive legal battle for years with Australia over that country’s plain packaging laws, and they’re battling a bunch of other countries like Uruguay and New Zealand over marketing and plain packaging laws.
John Oliver’s “Jeff the Diseased Lung” was a giant “screw you” to Philip Morris International for its tactics bullying small countries around the world.
And here we go … I’ve talked about this extensively, that the tobacco industry absolutely is looking to take over the e-cig industry. From this Investor’s Business Daily article:
Chief Executive Andre Calantzopoulos said efforts to develop electronic cigarettes and other cigarette alternatives picked up steam.
“We continued to make exciting progress on the development, assessment and commercialization of our Reduced-Risk Products,” he said. “We significantly expanded the roll-out of iQOS (smokeless cigarette) in Japan and introduced it into several new markets.”
Yup, they’re absolutely going to be looking for e-cigs to help save their skins.
Anyway, I thought this was great news. Big Tobacco is slowly shrinking, not fast enough for my taste, but make no mistake, an 11 percent drop in revenue is a real hurt. I look for Big Tobacco to respond by diversifying more into e-cigs and possibly one day, marijuana.
Damn, there were at least a dozen stories today on the tobacco news about exploding e-cigarettes. I posted something about this some time ago.
In a story I found all over the place, some guy in Utah was badly burned by his e-cigarette battery exploding in his pants while he was driving. He ended up in the hospital with second- and third-degree burns on his hands and legs. Sounds awful. Don’t watch the video unless you have a strong stomach. The fire was so bad, it literally melted his pants to his car seat.
Well, these are probably still a bit rare, but according to this story from Seattle, it’s a growing problem. Harborview Medical Center in Seattle reported that it treated four people in the past three months alone for severe burns caused by exploding e-cigarettes
National fire experts say the Harborview cases are part of a small but disturbing trend linked to battery failures in the popular devices often touted as a safer substitute for tobacco cigarettes.
“I realized that this was something that was happening more frequently than we had previously recognized,” said Dr. Elisha Brownson, the Harborview trauma and burn critical-care fellow who’s tracking the problem.
“I just think that if people really knew this could explode in your face, they would consider twice putting a device like this to their mouth.”
Remember, these things are cheaply made and are often made in China where safety standards are pretty lax. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, there were 25 injuries in the U.S. caused by e-cigarette explosions between 2009 and 2014. Well, heck, e-cig use has exploded (no pun intended) since 2014, so I bet that number has gone up quite a bit. The number of nicotine poisonings from e-cig vials has gone up exponentially in the past two years, mostly because many more people are using them than ever before.
In a couple of cases cited in this article, one person lost 12 teeth when an e-cig blew up in his mouth. Another woman had injuries to her nose when an e-cig explosion ripped out her nose ring.
This brings up the fact that sticking anything that generates heat into your mouth is going to have an inherent danger. One issue with cigarettes was the number of fires — both home and wildland — caused by cigarettes. At one time, it was estimated that over 1,000 people a year were being killed in the U.S. in cigarette fires (Obviously, that number has dropped largely because the smoking rate has dropped … and it still pales by comparison to the 400,000 who die from tobacco-related illnesses, I know). I’m amazed my dad never burned down the house. His smoking habit left burns in all of the furniture in the house, including his bed and linens.
OK, initially, I thought this was a bit of a humourous story until I actually read it, and now I’m left feeling like, “WTF?”
The Utah State Senate voted 15-14 last week to keep smoking rooms in the Salt Lake City Airport. Two of the reasons cited were personal freedom and worries about Utah’s “image.” Wut? What do smoking rooms at the airport have to do with Utah’s image?
Here’s the quote from the Desert News:
Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, said Salt Lake City carries a “different brand” and has to be careful about how people view it. He told a story about a Catholic nun from Utah who on a flight years ago had a passenger ask her if she minded him smoking. When she said yes, he replied, “You damn Mormons are all alike.”
“I’m very nervous about giving Salt Lake City a different image because people already have an image of Salt Lake City that we damn Mormons are all alike,” Hillyard said.
Also from the Deseret News, the bill sponsor’s response, which is pretty funny:
But Sen. Evan Vickers, R-Cedar City, said he intends to talk to some of his colleagues about reconsidering SB61 after they voted it down 15-14.
“The image thing kind of threw me off guard. I didn’t see that coming,” he said after the Senate debate.
Vickers said during the Senate debate he could understand the argument that Utah would look “weird” if it were the first state to ban smoking in airports. He told his colleagues to travel to other states if they think it’s a perception issue.
“This is a not a new, revolutionary idea. This is something that has happened across the country. The traveling public is very much used to it,” he said. “If we’re the only ones standing at the end of the day, then the perception is going to be there. But it’s not going to be the perception you want.”
To the dillweed from Logan, if you’re concerned about Salt Lake City’s “image,” then why don’t you allow the bars at the airport to serve alcohol on Sundays? Salt Lake City is the only airport I’ve ever been in that shuts down alcohol sales on Sunday. I’ve flown through Salt Lake City countless times and spent many hours stuck in that airport. I’m very familiar with the smoking rooms in the airport; it’s the only airport I’ve seen that has them. (In fact, according to the Deseret News, only seven airports in the U.S. have smoking rooms. If it’s only seven then how does getting rid of them in Salt Lake somehow hurt Utah’s image again?)
I’m not that dogmatic that the smoking rooms have to be banned, it was just that part about Utah’s “image” that kind of threw me for a loop.
These smoking rooms are a trip and I’m convinced they’re purposely set up to discourage people from smoking. They’re glass-walled, so everyone can see the people in there smoking. There’s absolutely no privacy, and I can just imagine that it must feel embarrassing for the smokers sitting in there, as everyone walking through the airport watches them smoking.
As an aside, one of the many times I flew through Salt Lake City, my head ABSOLUTELY exploded on this one trip. I kid you not, I actually saw a woman sitting in the smoking room with a baby carriage. Oh .. my … God. So not only was that nitwit exposing her baby to her cigarette smoke, she was exposing her to the cigarette smoke from half a dozen other smokers … in an enclosed room with negative air pressure so the smoke wouldn’t leave the room. It was one of the most mind-blowing things I’ve ever seen.
As I’ve talked about in the past on the Lounge, something that makes me absolutely crazy is seeing people smoke around children. Fortunately, I see it less and less. In fact, I bet it’s been at least a couple of years since I’ve seen someone smoking in a car with kids.
Also mentioned in this story is the fact that Salt Lake City has a new mayor who is in favour of a smoking ban, and the mayor could simply shut down smoking at the city’s airport if the Legislature fails to do so.
I was glad Ken Stabler finally got in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, unfortunately a few months after his death, but it was long overdue. Granted, his great period of play was pretty short — only about five or six years — but he was one of the great and most iconic quarterbacks of the 1970s, a Super Bowl champion and MVP.
This column was originally going to be about Stabler and another player who has been ignored by the Hall of Fame committee. I’m glad Stabler got in (as well as Eddie DeBartolo, who was one of the great owners in the history of the NFL), but I wish the NFL would correct another great oversight, a real injustice in my view. When I was a kid, one of the great quarterbacks in the NFL was a guy named John Brodie.
Ken Stabler finally got in the Hall of Fame after 33 years, seven months after his death.
I’m amazed at how many people don’t realize Brodie isn’t in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He’s in a bunch of Hall of Fames — the NCAA Hall of Fame, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame, the Multi-Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame (which is based in the Bay Area), but not the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It makes no sense to me. He’s part of a great legacy of 49er quarterbacks from Frankie Albert to Y.A. Tittle to Brodie to Montana to Young. (Frankie Albert is another great quarterback passed over by the Hall of Fame, though his career was really short due to World War II, only about seven years.). In fact, this article says the 49ers have the fourth-best quarterbacking legacy in the NFL, and the story doesn’t even mention Frankie Albert or another very good quarterback, Jeff Garcia.
All I can think of is Brodie has simply been forgotten about. I see Brodie as the Gil Hodges of the NFL. A really great player who has been largely overlooked, at least outside the Bay Area, where he’s literally a legend. The 49ers retired his number decades ago, though Trent Dilfer wore his number for a while with the 49ers to help lobby for getting Brodie into the Hall of Fame.). He was nominated by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce for the Hall of Fame in July of last year, but I was really disappointed that yet again, the Hall overlooked him.
The 49ers have a legacy of great quarterbacking, from Frankie Albert to Y.A. Tittle, John Brodie, Joe Montana and Steve Young.
Here’s some things about Brodie I bet a lot of people don’t realize. When John Brodie retired in 1973, he was:
* Third all-time in passing yardage in the history of the NFL with 31,548 yards. Only Johnny Unitas and Fran Tarkenton were ahead of him. That’s it, just Unitas and Tarkenton. Think about that!
* Fourth all-time in the NFL in passing touchdowns with 214. Only Unitas, Tarkenton and Sonny Jurgensen were ahead of him.
* Seventh all-time in wins as a starting quarterback with 74.
These rankings don’t include Len Dawson, Tittle or John Hadl because Hadl and Dawson racked up most of their stats in the AFL and Tittle played a couple of years in the All-American Football Conference. These are strictly NFL numbers, but still — third all-time in yards and fourth in TD passes? (Even including these guys who played in other leagues, Brodie still ends up fifth all-time in yards and seventh all-time in touchdowns at the time of his retirement.)
In addition, he:
* Won the NFL MVP in 1970 and was a first-team All Pro (he made two Pro Bowls total). In 1970, he was simply the best quarterback in football, hands down.
* Led the league in touchdown passes twice, led the league in passing yardage three times, led the league in completions three times, led the league in completion percentage twice, led the league in passer rating once and led the league in yards per attempt once.
His career passer rating wasn’t spectacular at 72.3, but for his time, that was pretty good — it’s higher than Hall of Famers Bobby Layne, Joe Namath, Bob Waterfield, George Blanda and Terry Bradshaw. Y.A. Tittle was 74.3. Stabler 75.3. Even Unitas, considered the best quarterback of that era, was 78.2. Not that much higher.
John Brodie and Sonny Jurgensen ended their careers with very similar numbers. Jurgensen is in the Hall, but Brodie isn’t. Check out those weird Washington uniforms.
The only real knock on Brodie is he didn’t win any championships. He didn’t play on bad teams for most of his 49ers’ career, but he played on mediocre teams, and back then, it was extremely hard to make the playoffs, so he only started five postseason games in his career. Brodie played from 1957 to 1973 and only two NFL teams made the postseason until 1967, then after that only four out of 16 teams made the postseason. Teams commonly went 10-4 and missed the postseason back in those days. Guess what? Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen never started a playoff game in his entire career.
So, in my opinion, you can’t beat him up for playing on mediocre teams in the 1960s. The 49ers were usually one of the top offensive teams in the NFL during his era (they led the NFL in scoring twice during Brodie’s tenure, were fourth two other times and sixth two other times), but they also usually had poor defenses. I checked and virtually every year in the 1960s, the 49ers were always 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, etc. in scoring defense. Here’s just some of the scores those teams lost by — 20-61, 28-34, 41-42, 31-39, 34-35, 28-31, 21-33, 30-41, 24-45, 38-43, 20-30 (and a 30-30 tie) — and man that was in the 1960s … in the NFL, not AFL. They just had no defence for years. Their defence was never in the upper half of the NFL for about eight straight years. Still, without much help on the other side of the ball, Brodie managed to go a respectable 74-77-8 for his career. It’s not like he was Norm Snead filling a roster spot on a bad team year in and year out. Those 49er teams in the ’60s could light it up. They just couldn’t stop anyone.
John Brodie in some 1970s George Peppard TV show called “Banachek:
He finally got to play with a decent defense in the early 1970s, winning three straight division titles from 1970-72. He won two postseason games and played in two NFC Championship games, losing twice to Dallas in 1970 and 1971. Then, he lost a legendary heartbreaker to Dallas again in the divisional playoffs 30-28 in 1972 when the 49ers had a 28-13 lead in the fourth quarter (I think this is one of the first NFL games I remember watching). That Cowboys team went to two Super Bowls and won one of them, so they were a serious powerhouse. Brodie and the 49ers simply couldn’t get past them. They likely would have won a Super Bowl or two if they could’ve. And I wouldn’t even be writing this post because Brodie would be in the Hall.
I think the most amazing thing about Brodie is he threw for 31,500 yards in an era in which teams hardly threw the ball, especially in the NFL, because the rules at the time didn’t allow for today’s wide-open passing games. This was also an era of 12- (until 1960) and 14-game seasons. So, to get to 30,000 yards in that grind-it-out period of running offences is really impressive (By comparison, Bart Starr threw for 24,700 yards and he started 156 games.).
On top of everything else, though it really shouldn’t matter for the Hall of Fame … it’s just interesting … he also turned into a champion golfer on the PGA Seniors Tour. He actually beat Chi Chi Rodriguez in a playoff once to win a PGA Seniors Tournament event, and had 12 top 10 finishes on the tour.
So, here’s one of the strangest things I don’t get about why Brodie’s been ignored for the Hall of Fame. I check the numbers and you know whose stats are really similar to Brodie’s? Sonny Jurgensen. Jurgensen played on mostly mediocre teams during the same era for Washington. His won-loss record as a starter was 69-73-7. And as I mentioned earlier, not a single playoff start. He did get to play on some good playoff Washington teams in the ’70s, but as a backup to Billy Kilmer. Jurgensen ended up only throwing for 700 more career yards than Brodie. He did throw a few more touchdowns — 255 vs. 214 — but Jurgensen also never won an MVP. So some of their numbers are virtually the same. In fact, Tarkenton, Brodie and Jurgensen really were the three dominant quarterbacks in the NFL from 1965-1970 (Unitas faded quite a bit after 1967).
Trent Dilfer is a big advocate of enshrining John Brodie in the Hall of Fame.
Yet, Jurgensen was elected in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983. What gives? Again, I scratch my head.
Bob Griese, whose career overlapped with Brodie’s by a few years, ended up with 25,092 passing yards and 192 touchdown passes and not once passed for as much as 2,500 yards in a season. He was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1990. I guess because he did a really good job of handing the ball off to Larry Csonka in a couple of Super Bowls. A high profile helps apparently. You’ll never convince me Griese was a better quarterback than Brodie.
John is getting pretty old. He’s 80 years old and had a major stroke in 2000. I sure hope the Hall doesn’t make the same mistake they made with Kenny Stabler, of waiting until after a guy passes away to put him in the Hall of Fame.
I’ve posted earlier stories about as part of a Justice Department RICO (a federal racketeering law usually used against organized crime) lawsuit, Big Tobacco was ordered some time ago to come up with “corrective statements,” ie, full-age newspaper ads admitting that tobacco companies have lied and covered up about the dangers of smoking.
Well, those full-page ads have yet to show up, partly because Big Tobacco is wrangling big time with the courts about what it has to say in its “corrective” ads. This has actually been dragged out now for SEVEN years. (And that’s SEVEN years after all the appeals over the original order were exhausted). The final order was issued in May 2015, and still no ads.
The wording of the ads has been directed by federal court judge Gladys Kessler (District of Columbia). The ads are supposed to hit on five major points:
* The adverse health effects of smoking;
* The addictiveness of smoking and nicotine;
* The lack of any significant health benefit from smoking “low tar” or “light” cigarettes;
* The manufacturers’ manipulation of cigarette design to ensure optimum nicotine delivery;
* The dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke.
But the tobacco companies appealed. Apparently, the fifth total appeal filed by Big Tobacco in this case. Big Tobacco continues to try and weasel its way out of these corrective ads and Kessler is getting fed up:
“That is ridiculous — a waste of precious time, energy, and money for all concerned — and a loss of information for the public,” writes Kessler [PDF]. “The Court has no intention of following that path, although it is obvious that Defendants are, once again, attempting to stall any final outcome to this long-standing litigation.”
In her order, Kessler notes that the revision offered by the government and its allied public health groups should suffice, as it simply shortens the disputed preamble to “A Federal Court has ordered Altria, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard, and Philip Morris USA to make this statement…”
“The newly crafted preambles do not in any way send a message to the public that Defendants deceived them in the past,” explains the judge, “nor that Defendants are being punished for their previous conduct.”
Apparently, one of the things the tobacco companies are asking for is having their corporate names removed from the corrective statement (By the way, they are ALTRIA, RJ REYNOLDS and BRITISH-AMERICAN TOBACCO)
ALTRIA, RJ REYNOLDS, BRITISH-AMERICAN TOBACCO. First Amendment, bitches!
They’re also fighting over ticky-tack language issues, such as not wanting the word “ordered” in the ad, and wanting that word replaced with “determined.”
From the Consumerist story:
A lawyer for one of the firms representing the public health groups involved in the case tells theNational Law Journal that everyone is onto the tobacco companies’ tactics.
“I think it’s safe to say that [Kessler] believes that the defendants are trying to delay the issuance of the corrective statements and that’s certainly the concern that my clients have had for many, many years,” he explains, “that the defendants have done and continue to do whatever they can to delay the day of reckoning.”
Several U.S. Senators and Congresspeople have signed a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice urging the agency to begin an investigation into bribery accusations against British-American Tobacco.
I wrote about some of these accusations a few weeks ago here. However, according to the letter from Congresspeople, the accusations go beyond those exposed in a recent BBC documentary about British-American Tobacco.
The politicians, led by congressman Lloyd Doggett and senator Richard Blumenthal, suggest that BAT’s actions may have violated both the Anti-Bribery and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Acts (FCPA). If proven, the allegations – denied by BAT – could result in jail terms for the company’s executives.
Some of the allegations about BAT’s activities in parts of Africa first surfaced in a BBC Panorama documentary last year. Since then, US lawmakers say that additional documents have come to light, which they claim suggest alleged bribery may have been more widespread than previously thought.
It is alleged that the documents raise questions as to whether BAT paid people off to protect its corporate reputation and to cover up scandals, including environmental damage caused by a warehouse fire in Uganda. There are also claims that the company engaged in corporate espionage and the sabotage of competitors in Kenya. “If true, these allegations would demonstrate a deplorable choice by BAT to balloon its profits through bribery at the expense of the health of millions,” said Doggett. “Any corporation that enjoys the benefits of our stock exchange must comply with our anti-bribery laws.”
According to a BBC documentary on British-American Tobacco, the company was bribing officials in African nations to weaken laws regarding tobacco marketing and packaging. Tobacco companies have been pulling out all the stops, including intimidation, threats of lawsuits and getting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to pressure countries to combat any kind of anti-smoking measures in small nations, which simply don’t have the money or resources to fend off these powerful companies.
The nations involved in the BBC documentary include Rwanda, Burundi and the Comoros Islands.
Though British-American Tobacco is based in the UK, the company is the third-largest tobacco comglomerate in the U.S., behind Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds. BAT brands include Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, Kool, Kent and Benson & Hedges. British American Tobacco is already under investigation in the UK and has publicly stated that whatever bribery schemes took place were the result of a “rogue employee.”
