All posts by Pepe Lepew

Big Tobacco, cigarette advertising, Herman Cain is a stooge

Really bizarre ad from tobacco stooge Herman Cain

October 26, 2011 Pepe Lepew 6 Comments

Thanks to Misti for digging this up.

This is really bizarre. It’s an ad from Herman Cain’s campaign manager. It’s a pretty direct matter-of-fact personal testimony from the guy about why he likes Herman Cain … and then at the very end, they show him smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke right into the camera.

Bizarre. It’s like an old cigarette ad. I think it’s just a clumsy ad. They probably just told him, “act natural,” while they continued filming him, so he lit up a cigarette and smoked it.

I think…

… then again, Herman Cain does have a long, illustrious history of being a tobacco industry stooge. While he was a lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association, he apparently took a shitload of money from Big Tobacco as he lobbied against smoking bans in restaurants. More on that in this New York Times article. Maybe it was a secret product placement for his tobacco buddies. Probably not…

… but then again, you never know.

What is funny is the reaction to the video, no one could tell whether or not it was REAL! It reminded me of these three videos, one of which pretty Haruko dug up.

You tell me which ones are real and which ones are fake:

Thank you, Haruko, I have WANTED to find this one, but you did for me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFhQu_v1LkY&feature=player_embedded

How about this ad. Is it for real?

Uncategorized

Ohio Supreme Court hears arguments challenging state’s smoking ban

October 19, 2011 Pepe Lepew

In the second-biggest news of the day in Ohio — the first being all the tigers and lions that had to be shot — the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments today challenging that state’s controversial 2007 smoking ban.

Ohio is one of the states where controversy over the smoking ban just continues to simmer. In most other states, everyone just gets used to it, but for some reason, in a handful of states, bans were massively controversial when they were being legislated, then continue to be controversial for months and even years afterward. In Ohio, it has dragged on for four-plus years. The most active thread on Topix is about the Ohio smoking ban — a thread that began nearly five years ago and has generated 75,000 comments … and is STILL generating comments. I find it fascinating that the same 20 or 30 people have been pissing at each other over smoking bans on the same thread for five years. (By the way, I highly recommend avoiding Topix because that site has become really lousy with spyware and malware.)

According to this article, more than 50 bars in Ohio have amassed more than $10,000 in fines. There have been a total of 33,000 citations written against bars over the past four years, totalling $2.5 million in fines. The state has collected about $775,000 of that money.

Part of Zeno’s argument is that it is being cited, even for posting “no smoking signs” and not putting out ashtrays, while the people lighting up — the smokers — are not cited. And it is not their responsibility to enforce the state law. (Not sure I buy that theory — businesses are liable for what goes on their premises. For instance, many bars have been sued and servers criminally prosecuted for letting people leave shit-faced drunk and then getting in a wreck.)

Zeno’s Bar in Columbus, Ohio, owes $33,000 in fines for repeatedly ignoring the smoking ban. The bar has sued to overturn the ban. A county judge ruled in favour of the bar, but a state court of appeals overturned that ruling and upheld the state law. Zeno’s is challenging the appeals court ruling.

Anti-tobacco campaign, baseball, Chewing tobacco, U.S. Senate

Senators renew call for banning chewing tobacco in baseball

October 19, 2011 Pepe Lepew 3 Comments

Four senators are using the attention being given to the World Series by issuing a statement this week renewing the call for Major League Baseball to ban chew on the field and in the dugouts.

Sens. Dick Durbin, Frank Lautenberg, Richard Blumenthal and Tom Harkin, who is the Senate Health Committee chairman, all signed the letter to Major League Baseball. The letter states in part:

“When players use smokeless tobacco, they endanger not only their own health, but also the health of millions of children who follow their example.”

The senators cited the 2009 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which showed a 36% increase in use of smokeless tobacco products among boys in high school since 2003. The survey also showed that 15% of high school boys now use the products.

This is not the first time Congress has gotten involved in trying to get tobacco out of baseball. (And if you think this is weird, it is already banned at the Minor League level for 18 years now and most colleges do not allow their players to chew on the field.) The push has been ongoing for about a year now. And I even found out it is against the rules to smoke on the field. (Many years ago, Orioles manager Earl Weaver used to chain smoke during games. I wonder if Detroit manager Jim Leyland sneaks cigarette breaks in the clubhouse during games? He is a chain smoker.)

Baseball has been pretty stubborn about this and has yet to respond, saying it is a collective bargaining issue.

Really, it’s time. I know this sounds like the “pussyfication of America,” but the fact is, chewing is a big problem with more kids taking it up than in the past, and one of the reasons they do take it up really is because they see their heroes on the field chewing.

Big Tobacco, phillip Morris, right-wing douchebags, RJ Reynolds, Secondhand smoke, Smoking bans

Herman Cain — Tobacco industry whore douchebag stooge

October 14, 2011 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

OK, if Herman Cain’s pathological bigotry toward Muslims and his borderline Uncle Ruckus “Blacks have been brainwashed into voting for Democrats” schtick wasn’t enough reason to hate him, now there is this.

(Thanks to Sandy at Current for cluing me in on this, BTW.)

In the 1990s, when Herman Cain, owner of Godfather’s Pizza, was a lobbyist for the restaurant industry, he partnered with RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris to oppose smoking bans for restaurants. Cain helped lobby against local and state smoking bans on behalf of the tobacco giants. Why? Whoooooaaaa, Nelly! Here we go! A letter from Herman Cain to SAFE — the Save American Free Enterprise fund, a tobacco industry front group at the time:

On behalf of National Restaurant Association and the
Save American Free Enterprise (SAFE) fund, I want
thank you for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company’s generous
contribution to the SAFE fund.
As you know, the purpose of the SAFE fund is to provide
financial support to state restaurant associations in
their efforts to defeat anti-business ballot initiatives,
along with pro-actively promoting free enterprise
through federal and state legislation .
Rob, as we head into a new millenium, it will take
courage and leadership from industry leaders like you if
we are to Save American Free Enterprise .
Again, many thanks for your ongoing support and
participation with the National Restaurant Association.

Sincerely,

Herman Cain

What a fucking weasel. We are talking about smoking bans in … FAMILY RESTAURANTS … where children eat. It’s bad enough for employees to breath secondhand smoke for 40 hours a week, but they were fighting bans around kids.

Wow, just when you think a guy couldn’t be a bigger douchebag (and really, after Cain’s cracks about Muslims and towns should be able to ban mosques, he’s pretty damn high on the douchebag scale.), Cain takes it one step higher.

By the way, Cain IS Uncle Ruckus!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsbZ2C9bH1k

centers for disease control, Lung cancer, Lung disease, smoking among women

Lung cancer rates dropping for men … and finally for women, too

October 11, 2011 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

Great news from the Centers for Disease Control.

Compiling data from 2008 (it takes a few years to put this together), in a trend that began in the 1990s, the lung cancer rate for men in the United States continued to drop.

Better news, however, is the lung cancer rate for women dropped for the second straight year. Lung cancer rates for women have been highly stubborn in refusing to drop, even though the smoking rate among women has dropped over the past 30 years. The fact that more non-smoking women get lung cancer than non-smoking men might also have some effect on the lung cancer rate for women being so stubborn.

In 1999, the lung cancer rate for men was about 93 cases per 100,000 population. In 2008, that dropped all the way down to about 79 cases per 100,000.

In 1999, the lung cancer rate for women was about 54 cases per 100,000. That increased to about 57 cases per 100,000 by 2006, but then has dropped back down to about 53 cases per 100,000 in 2008. Finally, that lower smoking rate for women is starting to pay dividends (Remember, there is an infamous “30-year lag” between smoking rate and lung cancer diagnoses. Lung cancer really didn’t become an epidemic in America until the 1930s, after cigarettes became popular in the early 1900s.)

Again, this is outstanding news. Lung cancer is the No. 1 cancer killer in America (about 160,000 people a year), and more than any other cancer, it is almost directly the result of lifestyle choices. About 85 percent of the people who get lung cancer are either smokers or former smokers (about 90 percent of men and 80 percent of women).

The CDC study broke down the lung cancer rates by region:

In the South, among men, the lung cancer rate dropped from about 106 cases per 100,000 population in 1999 to about 88 cases per 100,000 in 2008 (Another way of looking at this is one male out of 940 in the South had lung cancer in 1999; back in the late 90s, the smoking rate among men in the South was still above 40 percent.).

In the South, among women, the lung cancer rate dropped from about 61 cases per 100,000 in 2005 to about 60 cases per 100,000 in 2008. Not much of a drop, but it might be the beginning of a long-term trend.

In the Northeast, among men, the lung cancer rate dropped from about 91 cases per 100,000 in 1999 to about 81 cases per 100,000 in 2008. Among women, the lung cancer rate unfortunately rose from about 55 cases per 100,000 in 1999 to about 59 cases per 100,000 per 2008. This is the one bit of bad news in the study.

In the Midwest, among men, the lung cancer rate dropped from about 97 cases per 100,000 in 1999 to 86 cases per 100,000 in 2008. In the Midwest, among women, the lung cancer rate has dropped from about 59 cases per 100,000 in 2006 to 57 cases per 100,000 in 2008.

In the West, there has been the most dramatic drop in lung cancer rates. The West also has the lowest smoking rates of any region in the country. Hawaii, California, Utah and Idaho are among the four lowest smoking rate states in the country.

In the West, the lung cancer rate for men dropped from about 77 cases per 100,000 in 1999 to about 60 cases per 100,000 in 2008, a decrease of 22 percent. In fact, the lung cancer rate for men in the West was roughly the same as women in the South in 2008.

In the West, among women, the lung cancer rate dropped from 50 cases per 100,000 in 2006 to about 45 cases per 100,000 in 2008. It appears the West is a driving force for that lung cancer rate finally beginning to drop among women nationwide.

Uncategorized

“Moneyball” spits up — a LOT

October 7, 2011 Pepe Lepew 6 Comments

There was actually some controversy over “Moneyball,” a pretty tame PG-13 flick about the book about Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. There is one swear word, no violence and no sex, but some people were tweaked that almost constantly throughout the movie, Brad Pitt is seen chewing tobacco.

As you know, a lot of us fought long and hard to get smoking scenes out of PG and PG-13 movies. Hollywood has long had a fascination with smoking that became corrupt, archaic and then for the past few years mystifying.

Smoking scenes have dropped dramatically in PG-13 movies over the last two years. The issue to me are movies that make smoking and the stars who smoke appear glamourous. You and I know that’s BS, but kids 8-13 years old don’t. They see people onscreen looking glamourous with a cigarette in their hands and studies have shown this is a factor for encouraging kids to start smoking.

I didn’t really have a problem with the chewing scenes in Moneyball for two reasons. One, Billy Beane in real life was a big chewer (I have no idea if he still chews today.). The book Moneyball talked about his constant chew. So, it was included for authenticity. Secondly, it was fucking GROSS in the movie.

At no point do you actually see the spit, but Brad Pitt carried a cup with him at all times through the movie and every five minutes, you saw him spit his chew into the Dixie cup. I actually heard people in the theatre say, “Ewwww,” whenever he did this. Jonah Hill, playing his assistant, actually flinched a couple of times when he did it. It certainly didn’t make chew look glamourous. It made it look disgusting. I mean, having to carry a Dixie cup with you at all times where ever you go? Nasty.

Overall, Billy Beane came off like a slob in the movie. He also had a big pile of sunflower seeds on his desk at one point (A really disgusting habit I once had personally), and was constantly eating Twinkies and doughnuts and always had food stains on his clothing. The chew was part of his slovenly character. Not the usual Brad Pitt glamour role.

Brad Pitt has been guilty of glamourizing smoking in some of his early movies, such as Thelma and Louise, but he claims now that he has quit smoking for his kids.

Interestingly, I found two articles that take two completely opposite tacks on the spitting in Moneyball. Bloomberg Businessweek thinks it could actually help chewing tobacco sales because Brad Pitt is a glamourous movie star . I don’t see it, frankly. Like I said, most of the people in the theatre seemed to find it disgusting.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which I would expect to rail about the PG-13 rating, instead took a more reasonable angle. This pretty militant group points out that the movie highlights the problems of chewing tobacco in baseball, which is absolutely true. For some mystifying reason, chew is rampant in baseball. Billy Beane was a Major League player and kept up his gross habit as general manager of the A’s. Tobacco-Free Kids used the movie as an opportunity to advertise their “Knock Tobacco out of the Park” campaign, an effort to ban chewing tobacco at the Major League level (don’t laugh, it’s been banned in the minor leagues for several years now.).

Anyway, it was a very good movie, going to great lengths to humanize Billy Beane. I ended up understanding his reasons for turning down a glamour job with the Red Sox (stuff involving Beane’s daughter that was not in the book.).

My favourite part of the film was when the Red Sox offered him a huge contract and John Henry essentially told him right to his face, “we’re going to steal your ideas..,” which the Red Sox proceeded to go out and do, putting a huge emphasis on on-base percentage and OPS in the guys they brought onto their team while winning two World Series. The Yankees, Rays, Giants and plenty of other teams have likewise put the same theories into play, emphasizing OPS and on-base over batting average and steals. They have out-Moneyed Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s, who have been a pretty mediocre franchise the last 5 or 6 years.

Anti-tobacco campaign, centers for disease control, Smoking bans

New data on smoking rates by age, sex, occupation — Miners smoke the most!

October 5, 2011 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

Quelle shock, miners are heavy smokers!

I haven’t done a piece on the annual Centers for Disease Control report on cigarette smoking in the U.S. in quite some time.

This report takes a slightly different tack — breaking down smoking rates by occupation.

Overall, the adult smoking rate in America was 19.6 percent in 2010, down ever so slightly from the 19.8 percent in 2009, but roughly the same as the past 5 years, where it has hovered around 20 percent.

The CDC has been doing these surveys for about 10 years now, and they are very accurate. These entail surveys of tens of thousands of people each year.

The smoking rate among 18-24 year olds is 23.8 percent; among 25-34, it’s 23.5 percent; among 35-44, it’s 21 percent; and among 45-64, it’s 19.8 percent. Among people over 65, it’s only 10.2 percent.

The smoking rate for men is 21.5 percent and for women it’s 17.9 percent.

Here’s the stats I find interesting. Again, these numbers have been pretty consistent over the years. Smoking rate for high school dropouts; 27.1 percent. For high school grads, 21 percent, and for college grads, 9.1 percent.

So lack of education = higher smoking rate.

Another interesting stat. Smoking rate for people living below the poverty line, 27.7 percent; near the poverty line, 26.3 percent; middle income or upper income, 18.1 percent.

It’s not surprising since education level tends to correlate with income. What I find interesting is cigarette taxes have gone up astronomically in the past 10 years. An average pack of cigarettes nationally is about $5. So if you just smoke one pack a day (and that’s not a heavy habit), you’re spending $1,800 a year just on cigarettes. The people who can least afford that expense are the ones buying cigarettes and most hit by cigarette taxes. You can bet a lot of these people don’t have health insurance, as well.

The Midwest has the highest smoking rate, at 21.7 percent, followed by the South at 20.8 percent (bit of a surprise, but Oklahoma and Indiana have high smoking rates and I believe they are included in the Midwest). The Northeast has a smoking rate of 18.7 percent and the healthy and tanned West is lowest at 15.9 percent.

Now, as far as occupation, mining and food services have the highest smoking rates at 30 percent (let’s face it, if you’re breathing coal dust all day, I can understand why miners would feel, “fuck it” about smoking.), followed by construction at 29.7 percent. Everything else is below 25 percent. Interestingly, arts and entertainment has a smoking rate of 14.9 percent. That’s lower than I would expect, because there is a LOT of smoking in the music, film and theatre industries.

Health care and social assistance smoking rate is 15.9 percent, though health care support is 23.7 percent. The lowest smoking rate is in education, at 8.7 percent (not many school campuses allow any smoking anymore.) Interesting, a job classification as “physical,” (I assume this means trainers and people in rehab services) is 9.2 percent.

Anti-tobacco campaign, Big Tobacco, cigarette advertising, FDA, phillip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Surgeon General, tobacco litigation

Big Tobacco sues U.S. government over warning labels as being too “depressing”

August 20, 2011 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

File this one under, “you have to be absolutely shitting me.”

Five Big Tobacco companies, led by (cue shock) R.J. Reynolds, the sleaziest of the sleaze Big Tobacco companies, filed suit against the Food and Drug Administration over graphic warning labels being required by the agency.

Get this, the complaint claims the labels would make their customers, i.e., smokers, “depressed, discouraged and afraid” to buy their products.

Oy.

That’s the FUCKING point! To DISCOURAGE and make people AFRAID to use the product.

Arrrrrggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!! Must …. avoid … kicking …. cat…..

These warning labels are all part of legislation signed into law in 2009 that gave the FDA regulatory authority over Big Tobacco. These same kinds of graphic warnings have been implemented in Great Britain, Canada and Australia (and they’ve been controversial in those places, as well.)

Altria, i.e. Philip Morris, as usual likes to play nice and has not joined this litigation. With 60 percent of the cigarette market cornered, Philip Morris doesn’t need to jump into these frivolous suits (and Philip Morris actually helped write that 2009 law to begin with, which is weird, because if their competitors can no longer advertise, they can cling on to that 60 percent market share much more easily.).

These images, which will be unveiled a year from now, include sickly children, people dying of cancer and diseased gums and lungs. These kinds of images have been on cigarette packs in Commonwealth countries for a few months now.

Anti-tobacco campaign

Smoke Damage: Voices from the Front Lines of America’s Tobacco Wars

July 12, 2011 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

Or … the more you know, the angrier you get

University of North Carolina sociologist Michael Schwalbe wrote this book, a collection of interviews from cancer patients, smokers, ex-smokers and anti-smoking advocates, after his father, a lifelong smoker, died of lung cancer at the age of 65. This is what he came up with: “Smoke Damage — Voices from the Front Lines of America’s Tobacco Wars.”

“Almost everyone knows that ‘smoking is bad for you.’ The purpose of Smoke Damage is not merely to repeat this message. Certainly, one purpose is to show, in concrete terms, how tobacco-related disease changes people’s lives for the worse, causing not just debilitation and premature death but also death but also emotional suffering for those who are connected to tobacco users,” Schwalbe writes.

This is a powerful book. Really one of the best anti-tobacco books I’ve come across. It really blew me away. And Schwalbe is not a professional writer.
Schwalbe simply allows people to tell their stories with no editorializing on his part. The book is a series of one-page interviews with a number of subjects involved in tobacco, with a stark full page black-and-white photo opposite the text. There are several professional anti-tobacco advocates that I’m personally familiar with included in the book, but most compelling are the stories from people physically devastated by their smoking habit; people breaking through holes in their throats, people hooked up to oxygen. This brings the reader up front and personal with what the war against tobacco is all about. I urge everyone to buy this book or check it out at their local library. You will not be the same afterward.

A common theme comes through all the stories — suffering, self-flagellation and most of all, anger. Anger at the tobacco companies for lying and allowing its customers to be poisoned. A common questioned asked by several of Schwalbe’s interview subjects, “Why was the industry allowed to do this..?”

Rather than give you my two cents, I’ll just let you read their stories yourself. Here is a sampling. These are perhaps about 20 percent of the stories in the book:

“They’ve still got people smoking in the movies. Actors and tough guy detectives — people who look sophisticated. And the people smoking in the movies are romancing the kids who watch them … That’s what makes them smoke. Nobody smokes for nutrition. They smoke for romance, in the head, in the mind. It’s a big game. We fall in love. It can’t be helped.”

— John Eastman, emphysema sufferer who lost his career in radio due to his disease

“I said to my son, ‘Smoking killed your father. It killed your grandparents. It killed your cousins. It killed you aunts and uncles. Why are you doing this?’ And he said between coughs, ‘I don’t know, Mom, I like it.'”

— Monnda Welch, who lost 10 family members to tobacco-related diseases

“I believe that if an alien from another planet — or historians, hopefully, a hundred years from now — were to look at the period from 1964 through to today, they would ask how a society knowing what we knew about what tobacco did — and does — could do so little. The leaders of our scientific and health communities in the 1960s had the incredibly mistaken belief that once the surgeon general had condluded unequivocally that smoking caused lung cancer and other diseases, society would respond. I don’t think it dawned on them that there could be an industry run by people wou would respond with such callousness and disregard. When you examine it, you recognize that if didn’t dawn on them was kind of unscrupulous, amoral foe they were facing.”

— Matt Myers, Campaign for Tobacc-Free Kids

“A lot of people who have laryngectomies wear stoma covers. I go out with mine open. I wear tank tops, sleeveless tops. And the more people that see me and are aware of it, the more who are going to be aware of the facts. I’m going to be like this for the rest of my life, and I don’t want to hide it. The first questions they usually ask me is, did you smoke? And I have to say, yes, because that’s the truth.”

— Terrie Hall, smoker who contracted mouth and throat cancer

“(Teenagers today) buy the illusion that I bought, which is presented through the marketing of the product, that smoking is cool. That if you smoke, you’ll be successful. You’ll be hip. You’ll be rocking. You’ll be macho. You’ll be sexy. You’ve be accepted, wanted, loved. When I do a presentation, I go through that whole list. And then, I go, ‘Bang! Lies! All lies! Don’t believe a word of it.’ I tell them what a con job it is, what’s in the product, the chemicals and carcinogens. You’re making them rich and you’re dying.”

— Alan Landers, former “Winston Man” who died of lung cancer

“When I started smoking, I thought I was bulletproof. What I found out is that I was vulnerable, that life is a fragile thing. I think it’s a gift from God. We’re blessed to have it. As long as smoking was good for me, the heck with anybody else. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I didn’t think it was bad. I never thought it would touch me. I didn’t realize John Wayne died from it. I didn’t realize Babe Ruth died from it. Nobody puts out a coroner’s report that says, ‘Hey, it was cigarettes that put John Wayne in his grave.'”

— Wade Hampton, survivor of larynx cancer

“Maybe, I’m naive, but I didn’t believe the United States government would allow a product like this to be sold and be legal, if they knew it was going to kill you. I also didn’t believe a big gigantic company like Philip Morris would sell ’em if they knew they were going to kill you. I didn’t believe they would lie under oath to the Congress of the United States. But then all these documents started coming out. And I said, ‘I was stupid.’ It was tobacco (that made me sick), beyond a doubt. I had bought their story. I admit, and I feel bad about it. But, I had bought into their lies.”

— Frank Amodeo, throat cancer survivor who has not been able to eat or drink through his mouth for 18 years

“I started looking into the issue and noticed there was very little in the overground press. All that magazines told you was what the ads told you. There was very little in the newspapers. I just thought, what’s going on here? This thing (tobacco) is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year, and nobody wants to talk about it? It looked like a great big fat conspiracy. That’s when I started getting involved in it and looking into things.”

— Gene Borio, former smoker and founder of Tobacco.org, which is where I get most of my tobacco news

“There are some people who disbelieve the connection between heart trouble and secondhand smoke. You’ve got the hardcore smokers who believe they’re not hurting anybody. With them they think it’s a right to smoke. I once had a doctor, he was a guest at my restaurant, tell me he’d seen no studies that could prove that secondhand smoke was harmful to anyone. The guy was a medical doctor. He was a smoker, too. Thank God he was not someone giving me professional help.”

— Mike Clark, non-smoker, bartender who required an angioplasty after breathing secondhand smoke most of his life

“The tobacco companies have hidden the truth from the American public. They have lied, deceived, cheated and caused a tremendous amount of grief and misery. They don’t care aobut our welfare or our health. They only care about profits. And that to me is one of the most unforgiable sins — to benefit from someone else’s misery, simply because of money. I can understand killing for revenge or jealousy. But not greed. I can’t understand that. And that’s what they done for years and year.”

— Shannon Suttle, who lost both parents in their 50s to smoking-related diseases

“It’s the most difficult thing in the world to stop smoking, and that’s what frightened me so much. There were moments that I didn’t think I could because it’s …. more difficult to stop than it is for a junkie to kick smack. From what I went through, where I felt every single nerve-ending on fire and this desperation to get this thing, this feeling back — I understand it. That’s why — and I feel the exact same way about the drinking — that’s why you know, I will take it day by day until it ends, and I will keep looking over my shoulder.”

— Hollywood script writer Joe Eszterhas, cancer survivor, former chain smoker and now an active campaigner to get smoking out of film

“When my wife’s sisters were diagnosed with cancer and one of them died not to long after that — well, one day when I was thinking about it, and something just tore away and I knew I had to leave tobacco alone. That was my cash crop. That was a hard decision. And I have never regretted it. I think it was the right — well, I know it was the right thing to do.”

— O.K. Bellamy, former tobacco farmer who lost several in-laws to lung cancer

“I’m an economist and I ever much believe in the free market. But the free market only works if there are rules that the competitors have to comply with … in the case of tobacco, we’ve totally dropped the ball. So it isn’t really the industry that we can expect to heal itself or fix itself. It’s us. It’s our responsibility … Someone at this morning’s session was talking about their leaders being evil people. Well, maybe their evil. But, if so, they’re evil in virtually every major corporation in the country, because the leadership is interchangeable.”

— Ken Warner, University of Michigan dean, chair of editorial board of Tobacco Control

“What’s beautiful about a long trial is that the jury is not getting snapshots, they’re not getting soundbites, they’re getting the total picture. And the (Engle) jury basically came to understand that the tobacco industry was a bunch of liars. The jury saw through the lies and the duplicity and realized that their intelligence was being insulted. So they knew when they were being bullshitted.”

— Stanley Rosenblatt, attorney for the plaintiffs in $145 billion Engle lawsuit

Smoking bans, Uncategorized

CDC predicts every state will have a smoking bans by 2020

April 21, 2011 Pepe Lepew

First of all, the headline is a little misleading. It says “Every state will ban smoking.” They aren’t banning smoking, they’re just banning it in bars and restaurants.

It will be interesting to revisit this in 9 years to see if the CDC is right. It’s not a particularly bold prediction, since there are only 12 states left that *don’t* have smoking bans. The article says seven — Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, Wyoming, South Carolina — but that’s incorrect. They forgot to mention Alaska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Alabama and North Dakota. It’s 12 states that do not *effectively* have smoking bans in either bars or restaurants.

What’s interesting is, in most of these states, the major cities all have smoking bans — Houston, Dallas, Austin, El Paso, Charleston, Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis, Casper, Cheyenne, Kansas City, St. Louis and now Bismarck (Bismarck voters just approved a smokefree law — by a HUGE margin — about 60-40 percent). So, even though there are no statewide bans in these states, there really aren’t that many places in those states where you can still light up in a bar or a restaurant.

By coincidence, most of these states have high smoking rates and high lung cancer rates.

The article correctly states that smoking bans do drive down smoking rates and that hospital admissions for heart disease among *non-smokers* have consistently declined in communities that have smoking bans.