All posts by Pepe Lepew

Anti-tobacco campaign, Department of Justice, Uncategorized

Department of Justice urges Big Tobacco to finally tell the truth

An interesting story here. The Department of Justice is urging Big Tobacco (RJ Reynolds, Altria and Lollilard) to admit that for decades, it lied about the safety of “light” cigarettes and that it lied about how addictive nicotine is.

These “corrective statements” are part of a 2006 federal judge’s decision that Big Tobacco had engaged in racketeering (while it was an amazing ruling, that judge unfortunately did not hand down any monetary punishment). This is part of their “punishment,” so to speak. This was a civil case, not criminal, so no one is going to jail.

The DOJ wants Big Tobacco to make its admissions in major newspaper advertising and on cigarette packaging.

Here are the two statement’s the DOJ is demanding:

“We falsely marketed low tar and light cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes to keep people smoking and sustain our profits. We knew that many smokers switch to low tar and light cigarettes rather than quitting because they believe low tar and lights are less harmful. They are NOT.”

“We told Congress under oath that we believed nicotine is not addictive. We told you that smoking is not an addiction and all it takes to quit is willpower. Here’s the truth: Smoking is very addictive. And it’s not easy to quit. We manipulated cigarettes to make them more addictive.”

Big Tobacco is of course resisting and will be submitting their own proposed statements to the judge. I hope the judge makes the right decision.

COPD, Lung disease, Uncategorized

Danica Patrick joins COPD campaigndrive4

I don’t follow car racing (I mean, I don’t follow it with extreme prejudice), but I have of course heard of Danica Patrick — I mean you can’t hardly get away from those Go Daddy! commercials of hers.

Anyway, I saw an ad in this week’s Sports Illustrated with her in it, for a campaign called “Drive4COPD.” I thought that was pretty cool. COPD is a little understood disease that doesn’t get a great deal of publicity even though it kills nearly as many smokers as lung cancer (COPD among non-smokers is exceedingly rare. A lot of people in the mining industry also get it.). The campaign’s symbol is an orange and purple pinwheel.

COPD is a collection of lung function diseases that a few years ago got lumped together in one category — emphysema, chronic bronchitis being the main two. It kills more than 100,000 Americans a year … the No. 4 killer in America.


I went to the web site, I hadn’t heard of it before. The other celebrities involved in the campaign are Patty Loveless, Bruce Jenner and Michael Strahan. The whole point of the campaign is to educate people about COPD and identify more people who are likely suffering it but aren’t even aware of it (symptoms are constant lung and respiratory infections, constantly coughing up gunk, and a chronic cough.)

www.drive4copd.com

baseball, Chewing tobacco, Tobacco, U.S. Senate

U.S. Senators getting involved in trying to ban chewing tobacco in MLB


Well, this usually not a good thing when the U.S. Senate butts (hah, pun on a tobacco site) into something, but maybe this isn’t a bad thing, either.

Dick Durbin of Illinois and Frank Lautenburg of New Jersey both wrote Major League Baseball this week urging the league and the players’ union to work together to ban chewing tobacco in baseball. I wrote a few weeks ago about the effort to ban the use of chewing tobacco in MLB stadiums. Before you all start screaming, “Fascist” one me, it’s already banned in Minor League Baseball and has been for several years now. Last I checked, the Earth is still revolving around the Sun.

They point out that use of chewing tobacco has increased among high school boys by 36 percent since 2003:

The senators wrote:

“The use of smokeless tobacco by baseball players undermines the positive image of the sport and sends a dangerous message to young fans, who may be influenced by the players they look up to as role models.”

Hey, MLBers, kids really do copy more than just your batting stances. Seriously.

As recently as 1988, 39 percent of MLB players chewed tobacco (that number has to be lower now). There is some talk that a ban on chew in stadiums will be part of baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement.

Probably, I would’ve smirked at this a few years ago, a couple of U.S. Senators butting into a baseball issue, but then I remember everyone scoffed at Congress for holding hearings on steroids in baseball, and while it seemed like pretty pathetic empty theater at the time, those hearings actually ended up drawing a hell of a lot of attention toward steroids in baseball.

Smoking bans

Quick updates on Kentucky, New York smoking ban

Here’s something you don’t see every day. In Newport, Kentucky (a suburb of Cincinnati), a county board overturned a smoking ban that never took effect. The county board had two or three new members voted on it in the November election and they immediately vowed to overturn a decision the previous board had just approved. Weird. You don’t see many local boards overturn local smoking bans. It’s only the second or third one I can remember.

The issue was highly contentious, with six public hearings held on it to packed audiences. More than 140 people spoke.

People care about smoking bans.

New York Times comes out against city’s strict smoking ban
Oh, oh, Jackhole won’t like this! 🙂
The New York City Council extended the city’s already fairly strict smoking ban to parks and beaches, something I honestly will be pretty hard to enforce in a city of 7 million. The New York Times, surprisingly to me, took issue with the extended smoking ban, saying Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council had “overreached.”
The NYT opined:

Instead of smoking on Brighton Beach, what does a smoker do — take a boat out 12 nautical miles into international waters?

Anyway, I’m actually all for beach bans because of the mess cigarette butts make. Park bans are a tougher nut. Like I said, the biggest problem with it is good luck enforcing that ban.

Secondhand smoke

Las Vegas hotel charged $20 extra per night … for a non-smoking room


OK, sorry, this was just FLAT STUPID.

A hotel in Las Vegas, the MGM Grand, was actually charging non-smokers a surcharge of $20 a night for a non-smoking room. A surcharge for non-smoking. REALLY? That’s insane.

I guess the hotel management didn’t bother looking into how much smoking costs in extra cleaning costs to their carpet, walls, air ducts, furniture, etc. If anything, the surcharge should be charged to the smokers, not the non-smokers. From an economic standpoint, MGM Grande, it makes sense to reward non-smokers, not punish them.

What’s cute is after this was publicized by a Chicago Tribune columnist, the hotel immediately stopped the practise. Ah, the power of the press.

Smoking bans, Uncategorized

Court shoots down Jackson, Wyoming smoking ban


A state court in Wyoming overturned Teton County (Jackson’s) smoking ban, saying it violated the state constitution. This ban, implemented over a year ago, had been tied up in courts for months.

Essentially, the problem is one of process. The ban was imposed by the Teton County Board of Health, an appointed board. The judge ruled that only an elected entity, such as a city council or county board of commissioners, can impose such a ban according to the state constitution. I don’t know of any other bans around the country that were imposed by an appointed board, rather than an elected one.

So bans in Cheyenne and Laramie remain in place. Apparently, the Teton County board and Jackson council had declined to impose smoking bans, so the board of health took the reins in its teeth.

The county board of health says they will appeal. From a legal standpoint, they might not have that strong of a case.

Anti-tobacco campaign, cigarette advertising, Uncategorized

Fuck you, GQ

2 Comments

And when I say, “Fuck you, GQ,” I do mean, go fuck yourselves…

GQ this month is featuring the “most cool athletes of all time” on its covers. Who was on the cover of GQ in OUR town. Arnold Palmer … smoking a cigarette … with a big headline “The Coolest Athletes Ever.” Remember, this is a magazine that anyone of any age can buy, too.

I’m sure there were lots and lots and LOTS of perfectly good photos available of Arnold Palmer NOT smoking.

Go fuck yourself, GQ. Jesus fucking Christ, in this day and fucking age, still equating smoking with “cool.”

Smoking bans, Uncategorized

Smoking bans in New York City, Indiana, Raleigh, Texas

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Times Square Billboard

New York City this week banned smoking, well, everywhere.

Smoking is now banned at 1,700 city parks and beaches and in pedestrian plazas like Times Square. Needless to say, this was controversial, and the rhetoric ran hot and heavy over civil liberties, but in the end, the city council passed the ordinance by a vote of 36-12.

Good luck getting 7 million New Yorkers to stamp out their cigarettes in Central Park or Times Square, however. 😆

I know part of where smoking bans on beaches comes from is governments’ frustration with the littering. Whenever beach cleanups are done, the No. 1 item volunteers pick up is tons and tons of cigarette butts. Smokers have no one to blame but themselves, in my opinion, for beach smoking bans. If so many of them weren’t litterbugs, the bans wouldn’t have picked up so much steam.

Indiana
The Indiana House passed a smoking ban, that was watered down somewhat to exclude bars. Indiana is the only state left north of the Mason-Dixon line that has NO smoking ban whatsoever (Pennsylvania has a weak restaurant ban). Indiana is a very Republican state and Republicans tend to loathe new regulations, but this did pass by a 68-31 vote, and smoking bans aren’t quite as partisan as they used to be. This bill, though it is a watered-down ban, has a real chance to pass this year.

Texas
Speaking of Republicans.

This poll, funded by the Robert Wood Foundation, found that 70 percent of people in Texas favour a comprehensive smoking ban, including 67 percent of self-identified Republicans. One thing that bodes well for a smoking ban in Texas is several large cities in that state — Houston, Dallas, Austin, Corpus Christi and El Paso — have comprehensive smoking bans, and gosh, the sky really hasn’t fallen. The Smokefree Texas Coalition is backing a statewide ban; this group includes several national and Texas health organizations, including Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation, which is based in Austin. There are two bills in the Texas Legislature, one sponsored by a Democrat and the other sponsored by a Republican.

Raleigh, North Carolina
Speaking of parks.

The centre of the tobacco world, Raleigh, North Carolina, headquarters to Altria (Philip Morris), just banned smoking in city parks. That’s gotta chap those Altria execs!

Anti-tobacco campaign, Teen smoking, Tobacco

Oh, this makes me so angry — Montana GOP trying to eliminate anti-tobacco programs

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Excuse my French, but FUCKING REPUBLICANS. FUCK THEM!

Fucking batshit insane Montana Republicans on a budget subcommittee yesterday voted to gut the state’s highly successful anti-tobacco programs. Why? This is a lousy $15 million, a pittance in the state budget, and the programs have been noncontroversial and extremely successful. Why? Because Republicans are FUCKING ASSHATS. Montana’s teen smoking rate has dropped dramatically the last 10 years. Why? This highly successful program is one big reason why.

Like one Democrat said, “It seems to me at this point there are just random acts of cuts, when there is no reason to do this. We heard all the talk the other day about prevention, and what it’s done to prevent problems in Montana. This makes no sense. Here we go again.”

That came from Rep. Trudi Schmidt, D-Great Falls.

I think Republicans are doing this because they see these kinds of programs as nothing but “Nanny State Socialism.” It pisses me off. However, they have no problem with Nanny State Socialist laws telling women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies.

The one good news is, they can’t cut these funds without screwing with state law. These monies are designated specifically for anti-tobacco programs BY STATE LAW, which means they can’t SIMPLY BE CUT. You have to rewrite law. And we still have a sane Democratic governor with a veto pen.