Leaders in Wrightsville Beach could have to consider a smoking ban on the beach for a third time, and time is running out for the need to hold a special election to decide it.
Wrightsville Beach Alderman voted against a ban to keep smoking off their beach back in March, but a petition to override the vote and enforce a smoking ban has been circling ever since.
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On June 5, California voters will be asked to make legislative careers shorter and cigarettes more expensive.
Under a proposed measure billed as term-limit legislation, politicians would be allowed to spend fewer total years in the California Legislature, but craft longer careers in either of its houses.
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On June 5, California voters will decide whether or not to increase the tax on each cigarette package by $1 with the intention of raising money for research.
Proposition 29 would raise the tax to $1.87 per package, which would raise an estimated $810 million by 2013-14. Also known as the California Cancer Research Act, Prop. 29 would save an estimated 104,500 lives from premature smoking-caused deaths, prevent 228,700 children from becoming smokers, and save California taxpayers an estimated $5.1 billion in long-term health costs, according to backers of the measure. Read more…
Free tobacco blog: www.freetobacco.info
Under pressure from health advocates, Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday removed a controversial physician from a state health board after she appeared in an industry-funded ad against a tobacco tax hike on the June ballot.
La Donna Porter, a physician at San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp, had served since 2005 on a state advisory panel of medical experts and scientists that identifies chemicals known to cause developmental or reproductive harm. She was an appointee of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Read more…
Tobacco news at: www.tobacco-news.net
Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco wants further amendments to the sin tax bill that was passed by the House committee on ways and means last Wednesday.
Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco president Chris Nelson told ANC the company supports an increase in the tax rate of cigarettes, but not as much as what it says is a 700% tax hike that will be slapped against its products.
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Kool cigarettes and tobacco news: www.cigarettesflavours.com
Barnstable’s board of health still has a ban on tobacco sales at pharmacies on its radar, but there’s nothing immediately before the three-member board.
Although the item appeared on a recent agenda, Health Director Tom McKean said that no draft regulation has been submitted by the board for its review. Read more…
Karl Penn’s letter of April 12 about smokers’ rights got on my last nerve. I’ve grown so weary of reading about smokers’ rights that I almost lose my breakfast every time I open my paper and there is yet another self-serving individual wasting paper over his or her plight.
Smokers have plenty of rights. Smokers seem to have the right to increase insurance, Medicare and Medicaid costs due to more patients with lung cancer, emphysema, Read more…
Kansas officials played a shell game with government reports they used to support a statewide tobacco ban.
In arguing that the state’s 2010 Kansas Indoor Clean Air smoking ban hasn’t hurt business, officials and activists pointed to Kansas Department of Revenue data that showed no decline in revenues.
There’s just one thing wrong with that KDOR data: it’s irrelevant.
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The following editorial appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday, April 18:
When Congress gave the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over tobacco products, the industry actually promoted the plan. But that support seems to have lasted about as long as a typical smoke break. Read more…
More young cigarette smokers may also be lighting up joints than was previously thought, a new study finds.
In a survey of young adults aged 18 to 25, more than half said they also use marijuana. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), say that’s a big increase from the 35 percent of young adults that, in prior research, had admitted to using both marijuana and tobacco within the past month. Read more…
