All posts by Pepe Lepew

Secondhand smoke, smoking, Smoking bans, Uncategorized, Workplace smoking

Lawsuit filed over “smoke shacks” built by Great Falls bars, injunctions filed, groups formed, it’s a mess

August 2, 2013 Pepe Lepew 7 Comments

This is a hell of a convoluted story. It’s too complicated to tell the whole story here, so I’ll sum up … It’s a city/county health department fighting the courts, owner of some Great Falls, Montana bars and a citizens’ group has gotten in the middle of it. It’s all over things called “smoke shacks.”

I only know of one bar locally that has one of these “smoke shacks” (Another one has some shelter in an alley behind the bar, but that’s different).

Under Montana law, bar owners could install a “smoke shack” in their bars. It’s usually a really small room, with a few video gambling machines, completely cut off from the rest of the bar. So, if you really want to smoke inside and play video poker or whatever, you kind of get shut off alone in these little rooms.

The owners of a bunch of casinos built these smoke shacks, but then received notices from the city and county that they were violating the state’s clean air act. The bar owners finally filed suit over it. The city and county health department requested an injunction against the smoking shelters and lost.

According this article, the judge ruled that the health department “took a ‘kaleidoscope of ever-shifting interpretations,’ concerning smoking structures in Cascade County, and that the board failed to adopt a coherent and logical interpretation of the Clean Indoor Air for bars and casinos in Cascade County.”

So… it gets more convoluted, because now a citizens’ group has gotten involved on the side of the city and the county, mad that these bars in Great Falls have found loopholes in the Clean Air act.

One of the strangest parts of this article is an interview with a former smoker/gambler:

Doug Richardson watched the tavern industry change from a gaming machine in the Palace Casino.

He was there before the law, when the law was implemented and today after the smoking shelters were built.

He smoked like any other gambler, until he was diagnosed with emphysema.

Now whenever he’s around smoke, whether it’s someone smoking a cigarette outside or if he’s near a backyard fire pit, his lungs act up and he has to use a rescue inhaler.

“These rooms have at least cured that as far as coming into places where people are smoking outside,” Richardson said. “They should build rooms like this. It takes the smoker away from people and into their own zone.”

Richardson was playing a game at the Palace Casino, adjacent to one of the Palagis’ smoke lounges, and he said on any given day the smoking room is full and there’s not a hint of smoke inside the main facility.

Whoa, the guy is dying of emphysema and he needs an inhaler if he’s around cigarette smoke, but I give him credit for being so tolerant toward smokers.

Anyway, it’s a big honkin legal mess … and headed to court, if not the State Legislature.

Personally, I’m not worked up about it too much, but it’s annoying to me when bars try to find these loopholes and just don’t deal with the fact that smoking bans are the future.

Altria, Big Tobacco, cigarettes, Philip Morris, smoking, Tobacco

Philip Morris profits down 8 percent in second quarter 2013

July 20, 2013 Pepe Lepew 3 Comments

Oh, happy day. Philip Morris (Altria), the No. 1 private cigarette manufacturer in the world, saw its profits drop a dramatic 8 percent in the second quarter of 2013, mostly due to lagging sales. Philip Morris shares dropped 2.5 percent as a result.

Here’s what is interesting. We all know the sales of cigarettes is down, so at first blush, this doesn’t seem to be a big surprise.

What IS a big surprise? The biggest reason for the drop in profits is the drop in sales of Philip Morris brands (mostly Marlboro) overseas.

One thing a lot of people may not realize is that while cigarette sales have been obviously dropping the U.S., the tobacco industry has weathered the storm just fine, mostly by expanding its overseas markets in burgeoning smoking regions such as India, the Philippines and Africa. Philip Morris is blaming a sluggish economy overseas:

According to USAToday:

The cigarette maker reported earnings of $2.12 billion, or $1.30 per share, in the quarter ended June 30, down from $2.32 billion, or $1.36 per share, a year ago.

Excluding excise taxes, revenue fell 2.5% to $7.9 billion despite higher prices. Costs to make and sell cigarettes rose more than 1% to $2.7 billion.

Cigarette shipments fell about 4% to 228.9 billion cigarettes as it saw volume declines in all of its regions. Total Marlboro volumes fell nearly 6% to 72.4 billion cigarettes.

Philip Morris International said economic woes in the European Union and increased excise taxes drove shipments down nearly 6% during the quarter. Shipments fell 3.6% in the company’s region that encompasses Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Shipments also fell 2.4% in Latin America and Canada.

In Asia, one of its largest growth areas, the company said that cigarette volume fell 3.5%, hurt by a recent tax increase in the Philippines, which saw a 16.5% decline in shipments.

Smokers face tax increases, bans, health concerns and social stigma worldwide, but the effect of those on cigarette demand generally is less stark outside the United States. Philip Morris International has compensated for volume declines by raising prices and cutting costs.

Anytime the tobacco industry is hurting that is great news. Perhaps its a bad economy, but maybe smoking bans, higher taxes and lower smoker rates in other countries is having an effect, as well. Of course, Philip Morris would never admit THAT.

Anti-tobacco campaign, smoking, smoking around kids, Teen smoking

Good news everyone … teen smoking reported at lowest point ever

July 19, 2013 Pepe Lepew 7 Comments

This is such good news, I’m actually having difficulty believing it at face value. (Too good to be true syndrome…).

According to a federal study (called the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics), the rate of teen smoking has dropped dramatically from 18 percent in the 1990s to 5 percent in 2012. That’s how many high school sophomores smoked a cigarette daily in the past 30 days.

Wow, 5 percent. That teen smoking rate was stubbornly stuck at 15 to 25 percent for 10 years, long after Joe Camel was forced into retirement … mostly because the tobacco industry was still finding subtle ways to market cigarettes to kids, and mostly because Hollywood stubbornly continued to show smoking in a “cool” light.

Numbers have also dropped for high school seniors and 8th graders.

“According to the report, 2 percent of 8th-graders, and 9 percent of high school seniors said they smoked daily in 2012. Compare that data to the survey’s peak smoking years in the mid-1990s, when those numbers were 10 percent for 8th graders, 18 percent for high school sophomores and 25 percent for high school seniors.”

This has really been my No. 1 priority personally over the last 10 years I’ve been into this issue … somehow finding a way to get fewer kids to start up smoking. Just telling them it’s bad for them doesn’t do it.

Not sure why those numbers are so dramatic, but I would give some credit to cigarette taxes and the cost of cigarettes going way up in the last 20 years. $6 for a pack in most places, compared to about $3 a pack 20 years ago. I also think less smoking in movies plays a role (no pun intended.).

The other good news, and a bit more scientific (this first study was based on surveys among kids, which has its merits), is that fewer kids are being exposed to secondhand smoke.

LA Times:

“The percentage of nonsmoking kids ages 4 to 11 whose blood had a detectable level of cotinine, a breakdown product of nicotine, fell from 53% to 42% from 2007-08 to 2009-10.”

That’s the result of fewer people smoking overall and more smoking bans.

cigarettes, smoking, Smoking bans, smoking in movies

Keanu Reeves does not approve of you smoking!

July 19, 2013 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

From the new movie “Generation Um”

Hah, I actually saw something like this about 10 years ago, in which a drunk chick threw a massive temper tantrum for being told a bar was a non-smoking establishment and she stomped out of the bar, after vandalising her table.

Reeves was also in “Constantine,” a few years back, probably the most blatantly anti-tobacco movie I’ve ever seen.

Affordable Care Act, Insurance, smoking

Oops, “Smokers’ glitch” means smokers won’t pay more for “Obamacare” coverage — for the moment

July 14, 2013 Pepe Lepew 5 Comments

Hah, OK, this is actually kind of funny. An example of government bureaucracy at its best.

Under the Affordable Care Act, smokers were looking at paying up to 50 percent more than non-smokers through government insurance plans sold to small companies or individuals.

BUT, the ACA also allows insurers to charge three times more to older workers than what they charge to younger workers. That limit is set in stone — 3X more than the lowest premium is the most an insurer can charge. So, the problem is for an older person who smokes, the formula should be 4.5X more than the minimum premium amount … but that conflicts with the 3X maximum.

So, in short, the Obama administration had to scrap the whole smokers’ surcharge for the time being until they can figure out a new formula to fix this. What I’m buffudled by is … no one thought of this or noticed it until now….? Really? They didn’t think of it when they wrote the bill to begin with?

So, possibly for another year, smokers getting insurance through ACA programs won’t see higher premiums than non-smokers, but in the long run, they will.

Secondhand smoke, Smoking bans, Workplace smoking

Smoking ban relaxed in Casper

June 30, 2013 Pepe Lepew

Here’s something you don’t see very often. A town actually remove or relax a smoking ban.

Late last month, Casper, Wyo., removed its smoking ban on bars because some bar owners complained to the city that the ban was hurting their business (the ban is still in place in restaurants.).

Smokefree advocates are now collecting signatures for a voter referendum to restore the smoking ban. Not sure how such a referendum would do in such a Libertarian/conservative state like Wyoming, but it would be interesting to see.

Wyoming has no statewide smoking ban and likely will NEVER have a statewide smoking ban as it is one of the most anti-regulation, conservative states in the nation. I know Cheyenne and Laramie have smoking bans, and Jackson, Wyo., attempted to implement a smoking ban, but that ban was tossed by a Wyoming court because the wrong agency implemented it (a county health board). Casper is the second-biggest city in Wyoming next to Cheyenne.

Interesting, bar owners claimed the ban hurt their business, but according to this Casper article from April, there didn’t seem to be any effect in the bars. I’ve always thought some bar owners exaggerate some these claims, but of course, without looking at their books, who knows? At the very least, with the ban in place for only two or three months, business owners and more importantly, the city council, did not give the ban a legitimate chance.

I’ve seen this happen before. It only takes a handful of “squeaky wheels” to get a small town government council to respond (I’ve seen three or four loud parents talk school boards into sneaking intelligent design into their curricula, etc.). Again, I’m not that dogmatic about bar smoking bans, but I hate to see a small town council NOT give their new regulations a chance to succeed, and I hate to see a small town council cave to a small and likely loud group of complainers.

Interestingly, they held a referendum to get rid of a smoking ban in Springfield, Mo., and Missouri is a pretty conservative, anti-regulatory state … the referendum failed with the pro-ban side getting 64 percent of the vote.

I wish the petitioners luck and I’ll be keeping an eye on if it succeeds.

e-cigarettes, smoking, Uncategorized

Sexy e-cigarette advertising

June 5, 2013 Pepe Lepew 3 Comments

I noticed this beginning a couple of months ago — a sexy new ad campaign for an e-cigarette called Blu.

I first saw an ad on TV and was shocked to see a cigarette ad on TV, then realized it was for an e-cigarette. However, it was using the same techniques used in old cigarette ads — hip, young, sexy people using their product looking cool.

The TV ad features B-movie actor Stephen Dorff (remember him as the evil vampire in “Blade?”) talking about how e-cigs have freed him from being a “human ashtray” and allows him to “enjoy smoking without infecting the people around me.”

“C’mon, rise from the ashes,” Dorff concludes.

You’ve probably seen Dorff in a bunch of magazine ads. Sports Illustrated and many other magazines have them every week. Cool, sexy-looking, using retro B&W photography (with the Blu e-cig standing out in blue). This Business Insider article is pretty critical of the whole campaign for employing ancient cigarette advertising techniques.

Here’ is Joe Rogan’s really funny take on the Dorff commercial, mashing it up with a really bad Brad Pitt Chanel No. 5 ad to create the “douchiest ad ever.”

The Blu commercials are very careful not to tout their product as an aid to quitting smoking. They’re more about how to avoid smoking. E-cigs don’t have a good reputation for helping people quit. Every single person I’ve ever talked to who has used them has told me they were no help at all. (If you don’t know much about e-cigs, they’re not cigarettes at all, they give the user a little jolt of nicotine-laced steam to curb their nicotine cravings. Relatively harmless and totally harmless to people nearby.)

What I noticed is that Blu and other e-cig companies are using techniques mastered by cigarette companies — make their product appear sexy by using young, smart-looking sexy people to promote the product.

Check it out. 1970s-era cigarette ad:

Now, e-cig ads from a company called Ever Smoke

smoking, Uncategorized, Workplace smoking

Smokers cost employers an average of $5,800 a year

June 5, 2013 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

Yoiks, I can only imagine the comments at the old Smokers’ Club (I haven’t a clue if that is even around anymore. It’s been years since I looked.) on this story!

According to an Ohio State University researcher — between absenteeism caused by added health problems and lost productivity due to smoking breaks, smokers cost companies on the average of $5,800 a year and possibly up to $10,000 a year.

Let me do some math on that smoking break thing. Say a smoker, not too heavy of a smoker, takes four smoking breaks during an eight-hour shift. Say each break takes 10 minutes. That’s 40 minutes a day in lost productivity. That’s 200 minutes a week. That’s 10,000 minutes a year.

10,000 minutes = 160 hours a year. Say a smoker makes a relatively modest wage, $15 an hour, that comes up to $2,400 a year in lost productivity in of itself.

Here’s the OSU numbers. Pretty close to what I did in my head:

The OSU researchers’ calculations show low productivity due to excess absenteeism costs employers, on average, $517 a year per smoking employee and working while sick cost $462. Smoking breaks tack on $3,077 and excess healthcare another $2,056.

There is a LOT of data showing smokers increase everyone’s insurance premiums, which is why many employers now add a premiums surcharge for smokers and some companies won’t hire smokers, period. So, I think that $5,800 a year number, while it sounds surprising, is totally plausible.

The study was published in Tobacco Control.

Uncategorized

Starbucks bans smoking within 25 feet of doors

June 2, 2013 Pepe Lepew

This is an interesting story that a lot of people are misinterpreting.

Starbucks announced this week that they are banning smoking within 25 feet of their entrance ways. This sparked a lot of heated debate online about how they can’t ban smoking on sidewalks and streets, etc.

Well, not so fast. Basically, all Starbucks is doing is banning smoking within its own outdoor seating areas, regardless of what state laws are. Some states already ban smoking within 25 feet of a business, other have no rules about outdoor smoking. Starbucks is saying, “we don’t care. You’re on our property no smoking.” They can’t actually ban smoking on a sidewalk or street.

This could still cause some headaches for them. I’ve seen restaurants get into knockdown drag-outs trying to convince patrons they can’t smoke on an outside deck. And I’ve seen a brewpub that is fighting with a bar next door because all the bar’s customers go outside to smoke right in front of the brewpub.

Uncategorized

New York to restrict candy-flavoured cigars?

June 2, 2013 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

Candy-flavoured cigarettes have long been banned, but candy-flavoured cigars are still legal.

The American Cancer Society is pushing to limit the sales of candy-flavoured tobacco products — cigars, chewing tobacco and loose tobacco leaf for water pipes — mostly because it’s well-known that these sweetened products are marketed not-so-subtly to teens. These sugary tobacco products are also suspiciously cheap (as in trying to be the gateway tobacco for kids.).

Honestly, I didn’t realize they made candy-flavoured chewing tobacco. I knew about Swisher Sweet cigars.

The state couldn’t ban candy-flavoured cigars, but they could ban them from convenience and grocery stores and mandate that they could only be sold in tobacco shops.

I have no idea if this will go anywhere, but if it does, New York would be the first state to restrict the sales of these products. New York is one the leading states in fighting tobacco. The state’s tobacco taxes are among the highest in the nation and New York City has the toughest anti-smoking laws in the country (partly because Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a health nut and anti-smoking zealot; I’m not sure I’m 100 % comfortable with all his proposals and tactics — such as trying to ban large sodas.)