Category Archives: Smoking bans

Michael Bloomberg, New York City, Smoking bans, smoking rate

Smoking rate in New York City goes up

September 17, 2014 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

Weird story and a little troubling, one that goes against the national trend. Recent data shows that the smoking rate in New York City — yes, rabidly anti-smoking New York City, has actually went up from 2010, and not by a tiny amount Officials are blaming budget cuts to education for the rise in smoking rates.

The smoking rate in New York is still relatively low. According to new data, the rate was 16.1 percent in 2013, up from 14 percent in 2010. The national average is around 18 percent, which is down fairly dramatically from about 10 years ago, when it was about 21 percent (thanks to smoking bans, higher cigarettes taxes, less smoking in movies, more kids buying a clue about cigarettes — and frankly, the rise of vaping I think is becoming a big factor in declining smoking rates.).

What is striking about that increase is New York City has some ridiculously high cigarette taxes (on top of some high New York State cigarette taxes), among the highest in the nation, and a pack of cigarettes there can cost up to $12 to $14.

According to the Daily News story:

The city’s annual tobacco control budget, which pays for anti-smoking programs and marketing campaigns, has been cut almost in half since 2009, to $7.1 million from $13.5 million.

Huh, you’d think with the smoking rate going up, New York City would have more tax revenue to fund tobacco education programs.

New York City had one of the most adamantly anti-smoking mayors in the country, Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg not only signed ordinances banning smoking in bars and restaurants,he raised cigarette taxes in New York and even signed an ordinance outlawing sales to adults under 21.

Here is one of the great New York City funded anti-smoking commercials.

Russia, Smoking bans

Russia bans smoking in restaurants, cafes and hotels — yes, Russia

May 31, 2014 Pepe Lepew

Russia, one of the most heavily smoking nations in the world is cracking down on tobacco use. I’m honestly kind of shocked by this.

Russia passed a smoking ban that had already been implemented at schools, public transportation and hospitals. Now, part two of the ban is coming into play — bans on smoking in restaurants, cafes and hotels (apparently not bars, yet, however.).

Russia joins most of the rest of Europe in implementing various levels of smoking bans.

In addition, according to this article from the French Press Agency, Russia has also raised the taxes on cigarettes, more than doubling the price of a pack from 25 rubles in 2010 to 59 rubles in 2014. (Still cheap, that’s $1.25 Euros vs. $1.70 Euros per pack).

Here is a funny article from NBC News about Russians complaining about the smoking bans, one of them saying, “We are a doomed country.” (Oh, Christ that reminds me of the some of the doom and gloom stuff from smokers’ rights weasels in the U.S. 10 years ago about smoking bans.).

Russia, like much of Eastern Europe, is a region of the world where people smoke heavily. According to this article, 40 million of the 143 million people in Russia smoke, about 28 percent, compared to about 19 percent in the U.S. And according to the same article, about 400,000 people in Russia die every year from smoking -related illnesses.

Unfortunately, Russia basically being the Wild, Wild west, especially when it comes to tobacco control, I fully expect these smoking bans to be flouted by a lot of people. The higher tax rate on cigarettes has created a huge black market in Russia, with dealers buying cigs in Belarus or Kazakhstan. Still in the French Agency article, tobacco officials concede their sales are dropping, and that blaming the black market is an excuse.

Michael Bloomberg, New York City, Smoking bans

New York City bans cigarette sales to people under 21

May 19, 2014 Pepe Lepew

OK, I’ve been called a do-gooder more times than I can count, but even for me this is a bit much (thanks to Haruko for the link). Sorry to the rest of my tobacco control brethren whom I support 97 percent of the time, I can’t completely jump on board this one. I have enough of a Libertarian streak that I think this is a little overboard.

The City of New York just imposed a ban on cigarette sales for people under the age of 21.

My problem with this is it likely will do little to cut down on smoking and it just smacks a little too much of “nanny state.” This is the same city under serial do-gooder Michael Bloomberg banned extra large sodas, which didn’t stand up to legal challenges (dumbest law ever. People would just buy two large sodas rather than one jumbo soda and drink the same amount.) Bloomberg was behind this law, too, though he is no longer mayor.

On Raw Story, which is a pretty liberal web site, even most of the supposed “nanny state liberals” are opposed to this. 18-year-olds can get a full driver’s licence, they can join the military, they can vote, they can see R-rated movies by themselves. But, they can’t buy a pack of cigarettes in New York City. Really? I’m old enough to remember that 45 years ago, young adults protested for the right to vote. And after years of protests and the ugliness of the Vietnam War, in which they could not vote but were asked to die for their country, they’re told in NYC they can’t buy a pack of smokes?

Haruko beat me to this point. The only thing 18-20 year olds can’t do is legally buy or use alcohol. The theory behind keeping alcohol illegal for kids under 21 is that teens haven’t developed the common sense yet to know when they are too drunk to drive. Of course, you can say this about ANYONE, but it’s particularly acute for kids 18-21. So there is some common sense to that law. But, I’m not seeing the common sense in the New York City law and I question whether it will accomplish anything. I doubt it will stop 18-21 year-olds from smoking.

The difference between alcohol and cigarettes is cigarettes aren’t an intoxicant, well, not much of one … let’s put it this way, no one ever got killed from someone smoking and driving. And frankly, I don’t see how this is going to save anyone’s life. Very, very few people start smoking between 18-21. Almost everyone starts smoking at 15-18, when cigarettes are already illegal for kids. All this is going to do is encourage adult teens to get their older brothers or friends to buy their cigarettes for them, or they can just drive or take the subway to Hoboken or out to Uniondale or Hempstead or to Yonkers and buy all the cigs they want (or frankly, it will probably encourage more adult teens to use e-cigs. The law also banned e-cig sales to adult teens, but again, they can just take a subway to Long Island to buy their e-cig products.). Again, it’s laws like this that don’t seem to be based on a lot of common sense that give the tobacco control crowd such a bad rep as do-gooders. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone files suit over the law (like people did against New York’s really stupid jumbo soda pop law).

Frankly, I support an approach of continuing to educate kids of the dangers of smoking rather than this law. In the long run, education will make more inroads than laws that adult teens will see as specious and hypocritical.

Military, Smoking bans

Committee votes to allow tobacco sales on military bases

May 14, 2014 Pepe Lepew

A loss for the anti-tobacco crowd.

They had been a proposal to ban tobacco sales on military bases (not smoking, but sales), but the House Armed Services Committee (obviously stacked with Republicans) did the opposite, approving a measure to specifically protect tobacco sales on military bases. (Had to use a Stripes link, because the only other stories I found were Washington Times and Fox News. I don’t post links to the Moonie Times or Faux News.).

Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, a former Marine, said:

young servicemembers should have the right to smoke or chew, and lawmakers who support base tobacco bans should “just outlaw war” because it also damages servicemember health.

OK, fair enough, I guess, except the proposal never said that service people couldn’t smoke or use tobacco products on bases; it just said that these products couldn’t be sold on the bases. So, that is a false analogy, I think. By protecting tobacco sales on military bases, you aren’t doing the service people any favours, you’re just making it easier for Big Tobacco.

Smoking bans, U.S. Military

Tobacco sales may soon be banned on U.S. military bases, U.S. Navy ships

April 6, 2014 Pepe Lepew

Remember the ubiquitous image of a dog-faced World War II soldier smoking a Lucky Strike between shellings from the Nazis? Well, that image has come a long way.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel came out last week and said he is considering banning all tobacco sales on military bases.

Hagel was quoted as saying:

“We don’t allow smoking in any of our government buildings. Restaurants, states, [and] municipalities have pretty clear regulations on this. I think in reviewing any options that we have as to whether we in the military through commissaries [or] PXs sell or continue to sell tobacco is something we need to look at. And we are looking at it. And I think we owe it to our people.”

A recent DofD study showed that smoking rates among people in the military is slightly higher than among civilians — about 24 percent to 20 percent.

No word when such a recommendation might be coming forward.

Additionally (nice sidebar on this story), the Navy is considering banning tobacco sales on all of its ships. Surprising, a commander actually tried to ban tobacco sales on his ship — the USS Theodore Roosevelt, back in 1993, but get this, a Congressional subcommittee got involved (wonder if Big Tobacco got in the middle of this) and mandated that tobacco sales be allowed on all vessels. Then the Navy passed a regulation allowing smoking on all ships. Unbelievable!

According to Stars & Stripes:

Although the statute was overturned later by Congress, the story of the Roosevelt demonstrated the former power of the tobacco lobby and its interest in the military market.

In 20 years, times have changed. The Navy now does not allow sailors on active duty to take “smoking breaks.

Friday Harbor, smoking, smoking around kids, Smoking bans

When I became militant about cigarettes

April 5, 2014 Pepe Lepew

This image I saw from Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids reminds me of a story. I pinpoint it to the day I became militant about smoking.

I grew up around smoking. I breathed six packs a day worth of secondhand smoke from my parents (dad — 4 packs a day, mom — 2 packs a day). I remember whining to them about how much their smoking was bothering me in the car, and I was told “just roll down the window.” They didn’t want to hear it. I remember how bad their smoke was in the RV all night when we went camping.

Well, sure enough, I had a ton of ear infections as a kid. Had to have surgery on my ears because of the ear infections, probably caused by my parents’ smoking. In my early teens I started getting bronchitis all the time. By the time I hit college age, any head cold would immediately migrate to my chest and it would turn into 6 weeks of coughing. Twice in my 20s, I came down with pneumonia (and one time pleurisy). Only at the age of 29 did I finally grow out of that annual cycle of bronchitis and 6-8 weeks every winter of nonstop coughing.

Anyway, this brings me to Vic’s Drive Inn in Friday Harbor, Wash. Vic’s was a smoking joint, and in fact, I never sat down in Vic’s as a result. The smoke was SO thick in that place that one time I walked in just to grab a pickup order and walked back to work and everyone made fun of me because I reeked of smoke. I was in the building for less than 10 minutes. It was so bad, I went home and changed.

So, this one other time I walked into Vic’s, there was a fisherman sitting at a table (Friday Harbor was once a fishing town — no more, the fishing industry was in its dying throes at the time), puffing away on his cigarette with about a two-year-old boy sitting in his lap, coughing his head off and bawling. It just made me livid. The kid obviously had a respiratory infection, and there’s dad sitting 12 inches away literally blowing cigarette smoke in his face. Boy, I’m a big believer in not giving smokers shit, but I gave that guy a good glaring. What an asshole, I thought. What a self-centered idiot. It just brought back all my memories of those awful trips in the car and awful nights in the RV around a haze of cigarette smoke, and awful nights with burning eyes and a burning throat. I literally felt like punching the moron. I was really, really furious. I have never been so angry at a smoker.

Instead, years later, I decided to blog about tobacco and to try and be a bit more constructive. Like I said, i will never forget that day, or that kid, or how amazingly stupid that guy was being. This would have been sometime in the mid-1990s.

(As an aside, Vic’s Drive Inn was sold a couple of years after that, and the new owners made it smokefree. I did a big article on it at the time. They said they lost a few customers, but gained a lot more than they lost. Washington went smokefree about 10 years ago and smoking restaurants went away.)

e-cig bans, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, Smoking bans

Los Angeles, San Francisco, Long Beach ban e-cigs indoors

March 20, 2014 Pepe Lepew

I think you’re going to see more and more of this, and I’m becoming more and more OK with it.

The cities of L.A., San Francisco and Long Beach last week all banned e-cigarette use indoors — that means mostly bars and restaurants and workplaces.

Now, e-cigs put out a vapour that has virtually no smell, and it does not irritate your eyes and nose like cigarette smoke. However, it is laced with nicotine, and people are not comfortable being in a room with nicotine-laced steam floating in the room.

It was apparently a very heated debate in L.A. as the city council heard impassioned pleas from e-cig users not to ban them.

According to the LA. Times:

“We have a right to … choose to breathe clean air,” Councilwoman Nury Martinez told her colleagues. “And if this device turns out to be safe, then we can always undo the ordinance. But if this device proves not to be safe, we cannot undo the harm this will create on the public health.”

and the other side of the argument:

Councilman Joe Buscaino led an unsuccessful attempt to exempt bars and nightclubs from the ban, a measure sought by lobbyists for the e-cigarette industry. He too invoked a family member while making his arguments.

E-cigarettes “are not tobacco,” he said. “I don’t think they should be regulated exactly the same way. And I’ve heard from so many people, including my cousin Anthony, that they’ve stopped smoking from the help of e-cigarettes.”

I guess I feel like if e-cigs have helped you quit smoking real cigarettes, then that somehow being banned from smoking them in bars or restaurants really isn’t going to change anything for you. More power to you if they’ve genuinely helped you quit smoking. You can continue not smoking cigarettes in spite of this ban.

Meanwhile, in nearby Long Beach, a similar ban was passed, and then San Francisco banned them indoors just yesterday. San Francisco is also requiring a special licence to sell e-cigs.

These major California cities join Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago as cities banning e-cigs indoors. Again, a growing trend. People are just not comfortable breathing that steam despite the lack of odour.

Smoking bans

A smoking ban in the Deep South — Georgia bans smoking on college campuses

March 20, 2014 Pepe Lepew

Normally, a story like this wouldn’t really get on my radar, but then I remembered this is Georgia, buried well into the Deep South.

I haven’t written much about smoking bans in the last couple of years, mostly because not a lot has been happening on that front. Places that are going to ban indoor smoking have done it and places that haven’t done it — mostly Southern states — have if anything the last few years become more stubborn about passing regulations on private businesses.

Georgia has some city bans, but statewide, the only ban is on smoking in restaurants. This week, the state of Georgia banned all tobacco products on its state college campuses — Univ. of Georgia, Georgia Tech and 29 other campuses. This even includes outdoor football stadiums. I have no idea if this also includes e-cigs, which aren’t mentioned in the article (debatable if e-cigs are a “tobacco product.”)

I think this is a fairly big deal because Georgia’s university system is huge, with more than 300,000 students, and like I said, it’s in the Deep South, where the laws are pretty lax about cigarette smoking. Few states in the Deep South even bother to ban smoking in restaurants, much less bars (though a number of major cities in the South do have smoking bans). And not coincidentally, partly because of low state cigarette taxes in many of these states, the Deep South has some of the highest smoking rates in the country.

e-cigarettes, e-cigs, Lorillard, smoking, Smoking bans

2013 — The Year of the E-Cig

January 9, 2014 Pepe Lepew 4 Comments

You’ve seen the ads, we’ve all seen them. They’re almost ubiquitous on TV and in magazines.

One publication called 2013 the “Year of the E-cigs.” E-cigs are expected to seriously take off in 2014.

I can type “e-cig” into Google or into the Tobacco.org database and I will literally get hundreds of hits. You can find hundreds upon hundreds of articles about e-cigs all over the Internet. It reminds me of Googling “smoking ban” five years ago.

Here’s a sampling of articles I found.

France will regulate e-cigs as tobacco products.

E-cig industry booming.

2014 expected to be a huge year for e-cigs.

E-cigs booming, government rushing to regulate them.

Philip Morris getting involved in e-cig business.

I see them on sale now at every mini-mart I walk into. Two years ago, you never saw them for sale anywhere. E-cigs became a billion dollar industry in 2013, and the tobacco companies are jumping on board to get a piece of the pie (until now, mostly smaller companies made this things.) Blu, the biggest e-cig company out there was bought by Lorillard last year (Lorillard makes Newport cigarettes which are heavily marketed to African-Americans.)

But, what does it mean? And what are e-cigs, exactly?

E-cigs are not fully understood by a lot of people, but more people are learning. I related a story the other day about when Montana’s smoking ban went into effect, the state issued a ruling saying e-cigs were banned, too. After the state was given more information about what e-cigs were, the state quickly lifted that ban. It was obvious that state officials weren’t even sure what they were.

Here’s the deal, e-cigs are not literally an electronic cigarette. A better definition is that they are a battery-powered nicotine delivery system. Essentially the user gets a little jolt of nicotine-laced steam. They don’t have any smell, they don’t irritate the eyes. I’ve tried them. There is no flavour. You just get a jolt, like a cup of coffee.

Is this a bad thing? A good thing? I’m honestly on the fence here.

Honestly, on some levels, I don’t see a difference between e-cigs and nicotine patches. The person is getting a jolt of nicotine, but not the 1,000 other carcinogens and toxins contained in real cigarettes. There isn’t the benzene, formaldehyde, Polonium-210, toluene, acetone, cyanide and arsenic as found in tobacco.

[EDIT: Someone pointed out to me after reading this that some studies have shown there ARE some of these carcinogens found in e-cig vapour such as formaldehyde and toluene, etc., and that the vapour is not “pure” nicotine. I was not aware of these studies. The amount of these carcinogens is vastly lower than what is found in cigarettes. One study showed 9-450 times lower.]

But, what there is is nicotine. Nicotine itself is not well understood, either. It’s actually not the ingredient in cigarettes that gives people lung cancer (a lot of people believe it is.). Nicotine all by itself isn’t that bad for you, other than it’s not good for your blood pressure.

It isn’t that bad for you except for one devilish trait. It is incredibly addictive, possibly ounce for ounce the most physically addictive substance on the planet. Like heroin and cocaine, it’s an alkaloid that triggers an incredibly powerful addiction response. That’s the evil of nicotine. It physically addicts people to a product that is incredibly toxic and poisonous.

So, when a smoker puffs on an e-cig, they’re satisfying that nicotine addiction, similar to a nicotine patch, without all the other poisons. Is this a good thing? I don’t know. I don’t have a problem with nicotine patches. I would prefer people use patches or e-cigs than Chantix as a way to quit tobacco because of Chantix’s side effects of causing depression and suicide.

But one of the way nicotine patches work is through a regimen of lowering the dose of nicotine until the person can go “cold turkey.” The down side of e-cigs is sure, there’s not the same level of toluene and benzene, but you’re still feeding that addiction. And ultimately, if you want to break away from cigarettes, you have to break away from the nicotine.

In talking to people who use e-cigs, I’ve gotten mixed feedback. A lot of people use them so they can get their little jolts of nicotine when they go out because they’re no longer allowed to smoke anywhere. Some people have told me they helped them quit smoking, but most people told they don’t really help. Because they’re tasteless, they don’t satisfy the urge to smoke.

So, I remain on the fence. I simply cannot develop a strong opinion pro or con — though I detest the “sexy” advertising Blu is using to sell its product — using the same ad techniques that the tobacco industry has used for years to make their products look sexy and sophisticated. They might help some people quit smoking, but it appears, at least anecdotally, they aren’t that effective as a quitting tool. They aren’t as toxic as cigarettes, but they keep the nicotine addict addicted to nicotine. I know this, they aren’t going away, not anytime soon.

China, smoking, Smoking bans

China orders government officials to stop smoking in public

January 1, 2014 Pepe Lepew 3 Comments

Got this interesting article from the Epoch Times, a website by Chinese dissidents about China. It’s become home to a lot of HuffingtonPost refugees who are understandably pissed off about having to use their real names to comment on HP.

I did a quick search on Epoch Times, and they have a ton of articles about smoking. I’m linking to two of them today (well, because I hate college football.). Anyway, the upper echelon of the Communist Party central committee in China has ordered public officials to stop smoking in public. Here’s the new rules:

Officials are not allowed to smoke in schools, hospitals, sports venues, on public transport or any other places where smoking is banned, or to smoke or offer cigarettes when performing official duties, the official Xinhua News said. They also cannot use public funds to buy cigarettes, and within Communist Party or government offices tobacco products cannot be sold nor adverts displayed.

This is likely a major breakthrough. For the first time, very high-level attention and support is being given to anti-tobacco efforts,” said Ray Yip, head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s China program. The foundation has been working on smoking cessation campaigns in the country.

China smokes more cigarettes than any nation on the Earth (more than 300 million Chinese smoke in a nation of 1.3 billion), and this might be the first step in a public smoking ban in that country. Don’t look for China to crack down on smoking entirely, since the cigarette industry is a state-run monopoly (U.S. Big Tobacco has tried to make inroads into China, but have been seriously rebuffed — Big Tobacco has since given more of its attention to India and Africa.)

According to Epoch Times:

Smoking, which is linked to an average annual death toll of 1.4 million people in China in recent years, is one of the greatest health threats the country faces, government statistics show. The annual number of cigarettes sold in the country increased by 50 percent to 2.52 trillion in 2012 compared with 10 years earlier, according to the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, which is overseen by health authorities.

So interesting first step to try and curb smoking in China. I’ll peruse Epoch Times from time to time to see what else they offer on the issue.