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Man denies attack near live rail track  

A man has denied assaulting a rail passenger who was allegedly pushed off a platform onto the track at a station.

Ionel Rapisca, of Joyce Green Lane, Dartford, entered not guilty pleas at Maidstone Crown Court to causing Linda Buchanan grievous bodily harm with intent and an alternative charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm.

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EDITORIAL: Smoke-free benefits proved 

There is now tangible evidence to back up claims that secondhand smoke adversely affects nonsmokers, particularly the secondhand smoke that is increasingly being outlawed in public places in communities across the country. . . .

In addition to long-term health effects, smoking increases the danger of fire. Most states, including Maryland, now require that all cigarettes sold in-state be "fire-safe." . . .

Delaware's newly enacted law took effect Jan. 1., which is good for Maryland because residents who travel across the state line to avoid sales tax on their cigarettes will now be buying the same safer product that's sold in-state. . . .

The combination of making cigarettes less likely to ignite an accidental fire and less acceptable -- even banned --in more public venues should reduce the number of untimely deaths attributed to the smoking habit. More importantly, it should greatly reduce the number of smoking-related deaths among nonsmokers.

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Smuggling of alcohol and tobacco into UK costing £5.5bn  

One in eight bottles of spirits consumed over Christmas and one in six cigarettes smoked are likely to have been smuggled into the UK, figures in the annual estimate of revenue lost by customs suggest.

The latest report by Revenue and Customs (HMRC) puts the maximum amount lost from smuggled alcohol, cigarettes, hand-rolled tobacco and petrol at nearly £5.5bn. The share of smuggled alcohol has increased over the past year, from one in 10 to one in eight bottles. The trade in illegal cigarettes also went up. The government has been at pains to clamp down on the smuggling of cheap cigarettes, amid reports that poorer smokers are more likely to quit if prices increase. In October a report published in the British Medical Journal said that cheap cigarettes and other tobacco products smuggled into Britain caused 4,000 premature deaths, four times the number from illegal drugs. The study by Prof Robert West found that if smuggling were stopped, tobacco prices would rise by about 12%. A price increase would encourage over 5% of smokers to stop smoking, his report added.

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China seizes 7.35 bln counterfeit cigarettes in first 11 months  

A total of 7.35 billion counterfeit cigarettes were seized nationwide from January to November in China, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) said Tuesday.

Law enforcement agencies raided 2,912 counterfeit cigarette warehouses and rounded up 6,068 people in connection with the false brands, prosecuting 3,056 people, said STMA deputy head Zhang Hui.

He added law enforcement agencies also solved 6,208 cases, each of which involved more than 50,000 yuan (7,309 U.S. dollars). The 7.35 billion counterfeit cigarettes had an estimate street value of 4.1 billion yuan.

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Smoking Down In Iowa, Tobacco Sales Up In Nebraska 

Governor Chet Culver's resolution is to make Iowa the healthiest state in the nation, and the habit he wants Iowan's to kick is smoking. Recent studies show it may already be happening.

Governor Culver recently announced that smoking in Iowa is down 22 percent since 2006 - one of the most significant drops in any state in recent years. But some Iowa smokers are saying his anti-smoking legislation is hurting business and not convincing them to quit.

For most Iowans, getting a nicotine fix is not a part of their everyday life. But for some it's a hard habit to kick, and for one Iowa business its hard to believe that less people are smoking.

Cashier Traci Heath says tobacco sales at the Select Mart on Gordon Drive in Sioux City have been fairly steady since it opened in 2006.

"Since 2006 I haven't seen a decline at all," said Heath. "The only thing I've seen a decline on is with the new FCS law, that's the only decline I've seen."

The Select Mart on Gordon Drive has seen some of their business go across the river to Nebraska thanks to high state taxes and the new fire-safe cigarettes that Iowa stores are required to sell.

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Polish Cigarette Traders Bemoan Tougher Rules for EU’s Frontier  

It’s Christmas in frozen eastern Poland, and Pawel Mlynarski is blaming the government for taking away his livelihood: contraband cigarettes.

Until recently, Mlynarski, a 25-year-old unemployed builder, would cross the border into Ukraine as many as four times a night. Each time, he would return with at least one carton of 200 cigarettes, or 10 packs, to sell in the bars of his hometown of Przemysl, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the European Union’s eastern frontier.

Then, on Dec. 1, Poland cut the import allowance to 40 smokes, or two packs. “This is an absolute tragedy,” says Mlynarski, who used to make as much as 20 zloty ($6.80) per carton selling packs of Prima. “Most people around here did the border. It was our only way of earning decent cash.”

The new limits are a result of the EU’s expansion a year ago of its passport-free movement of people, the so-called Schengen area, to include Poland.

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North Yorkshire | Four held in fake tobacco raids 

Four people have been arrested in an operation aimed at people dealing in large amounts of fake tobacco products across the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Addresses in Leeds, Sheffield and Hull were targeted in a crackdown led by the trading standards Scambuster unit.

Counterfeit cigarette factories were uncovered in Leeds and Sheffield as well as a cannabis factory in Leeds.

The Scambuster team worked alongside police and customs officers in the day of action on Monday.

In Sheffield, two people were arrested after more than 58kg of counterfeit tobacco and manufacturing paraphernalia were found.

Around 10,000 fake cigarettes were seized from an address in Hull.

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Cigarette smugglers nabbed at Woodlands Checkpoint  

Officers from Singapore's Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) have foiled another attempt to smuggle cigarettes into Singapore.

The latest incident involved a Malaysian-registered lorry which arrived at the Cargo Complex of the Woodlands Checkpoint at 10.55pm on January 1.

The driver and his accomplice, a Malaysian, had tried to pass off the loot as a consignment of 1,250 cartons of detergent.

However, ICA officers uncovered 6,311 cartons and 1,875 packets of duty-unpaid cigarettes hidden in boxes amidst the detergent packing.

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Trading Standards cracks down on illegal cigarettes  

TRADING Standards officers swooped on shops in Rhondda Cynon Taff to crackdown on illegal tobacco products.

But, bucking the trend seen across the rest of South Wales, RCT stores did themselves proud with no illegal goods found.

Trading Standards joined forces with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to ensure counterfeit products were not being offered for sale.

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• Electronic Clearing House, Inc., Agrees to Stop Enabling Online Tobacco Sales 

An electronic payments processor has agreed to stop handling transactions for the illegal online sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products. Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and the attorneys general of New York and California reached the settlement with Electronic Clearing House, Inc. (ECHO), of Los Angeles, California.

"Online tobacco retailers are a major source for young people to buy cigarettes illegally," Attorney General Wasden said. "Stopping the illegal sale of cigarettes, especially to minors, is a major step in protecting public health. ECHO has acted responsibly in agreeing to stop processing payments for these illegal sales, and we hope other companies and banks involved in online tobacco sales will follow their lead."

The three states began an investigation of ECHO following a lawsuit Wasden brought against Scott Maybee, one of the highest volume Internet cigarette sellers. Maybee was ordered to pay Idaho more than $160,000 for illegal Internet sales of millions of cigarettes into Idaho.

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• L.A. company agrees to stop processing online tobacco sales in Idaho, elsewhere  

An electronic payments processor has agreed to stop handling transactions for the illegal online sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden's said.

Wasden and the attorneys general of New York and California reached the settlement with Electronic Clearing House, Inc. of Los Angeles -- often called "ECHO.".

"Online tobacco retailers are a major source for young people to buy cigarettes illegally," Wasden said in a release. "Stopping the illegal sale of cigarettes, especially to minors, is a major step in protecting public health. ECHO has acted responsibly in agreeing to stop processing payments for these illegal sales, and we hope other companies and banks involved in online tobacco sales will follow their lead."

The three states began an investigation of ECHO following a lawsuit Wasden brought against Scott Maybee, one of the highest volume Internet cigarette sellers, Wasden's office said. Maybee was ordered to pay Idaho more than $160,000 for illegal Internet sales of millions of cigarettes into Idaho.

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• Tribes triumph tobacco tax 

Driving onto the Allegany Indian Reservation from the west, Ron's Smoke Shop makes an inviting first stop.

It's just one tax-free tobacco shop on Seneca Nation territory. And with state cigarette taxes on the rise, more Southern Tier smokers are making the trip to the reservation.

"Everyone I know goes down there," says Jill, a smoker from Olean. "A lot of people do."

Cars bustle in the shop's parking lot. A stream of people makes its way into the store, eager to pick up some Saturday morning smokes.

Stacks of cigarette cartons sit on several rows of shelves. Winstons. Unions. Markets. The works.

The cheapest brand? Seneca Cigarettes - $13.60 for 100 smokes.

Drive across the street. Next stop: M & M Smoke Shop.

Cigarette billboards plaster the store's exterior. Camels. Kools. Dorals also available.

Another vendor of Seneca Cigarettes. Big Flavor. Small Price. Huge Selection.

Piles of cigarette cartons add color to the store's pure white interior. . . .

Cigarettes off-territory have never been more expensive. June's cigarette tax increase bumped New York state's tax to the highest in the nation.

But not everyone is forking over the extra cash. Twenty percent of New York smokers buy tax-free cigarettes from Indian reservations on a regular basis.

"The incentive for them to do that has just gotten a lot bigger in the form of this tax increase," says Jim Calvin, president of the New York Association Convenience Stores.

And New York is left losing cash. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that the state's reluctance to enforce cigarette taxation laws is costing it more than $500 million a year.

"I think the governor should go to the reservations and say, 'As of tomorrow morning, stop this practice,'" Mayor Bloomberg said in the New York Times. "And if it requires law enforcement, that's what the governor has the State Police for �?" to enforce the law."

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• Cigarette groups warned Lynch of Marxist and IRA alliance dangers 

Tobacco adverts ban: IRELAND'S MAIN cigarette brands privately warned the taoiseach three decades ago that a tobacco advertising ban could plunge the country into disaster by sparking a deadly fusion of Marxists and the IRA.

State files also reveal fears in Jack Lynch's department at the time that moves to curb smoking could become another contraception-type row that would embarrass the Republic and isolate Protestants in Northern Ireland.

The chairmen of Carrolls, Gallahers and Player Wills tobacco companies demanded a meeting with Mr Lynch in 1978 as then health minister Charles Haughey prepared new laws to stamp out cigarette promotion.

In minutes of the meeting, newly-released into the National Archives, an aide of the Taoiseach records how the three men warned of potentially dire consequences from any restrictions.

They argued it would cut back on their sales, leaving them less money to create new employment in other non-tobacco industries.

"They saw the dangers that if employment was not provided for our growing young population, there could be a fusion between Marxism and the IRA, with disastrous effects for the country," the minutes state. . . .

Later that year, the Tobacco Products Act was passed into law which allowed for restrictions to be introduced.

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Second native tobacco company searched 

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - - Investigators are looking into another New Mexico cigarette distributor with Native American connections.

State agents searched the Hemi Group's warehouse in northeast Albuquerque on Aug. 20.

The Hemi Group is owned by members of the Jemez pueblo and sells tobacco online.

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• SMOKE2U 

There's something odd about PO Box 365, Irving, New York. Located on the Seneca Nation -- nestled just at the Empire State's southwestern tip -- the box is the mailing address for at least 10 online vendors registered in far-flung locations, from New York City to Ankara, Turkey. Boasting names like BigChiefCigarettes.com, Smoke2U.com, and EZTobacco.com, the sites bear no apparent affiliation to one another, except that they all sell one product: untaxed cigarettes. . . .

Over the past decade, as cigarette taxes have soared throughout the United States -- rising an average of nearly 90 percent between 1998 and 2002 alone -- websites catering to tax-dodging smokers have proliferated. In 2006, an estimated 772 sites were selling to U.S. consumers, up from just 88 in 2000. According to Jeff Cohen, associate chief counsel for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) Northeast division, it's common for entrepreneurs to maintain five or six differently branded websites to drive traffic, "even though they're just shipping from one address."

Some sites are based in low-tax states such as the Carolinas; others sell duty-free packs from overseas. Increasingly, overseas cigarette vendors drive traffic: The number of sites based overseas jumped from at least 10 percent in 2003 to over 45 percent by 2006, according to Kurt Ribisl, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health, who has extensively studied online sale patterns.

In the United States, the real action is taking place on Indian reservations. . . .

Thus, even with states' best diligence, cigarettes continue to slip through. "They [the Internet sellers] are resourceful," said California Deputy Attorney General Laura Kaplan. "They always seem to be one step ahead of us." In the latest development, she said, California secured an agreement with First Regional Bank to stop processing unlawful cigarette purchases -- to her knowledge, the first of its kind in the nation. But as Kaplan notes, there are thousands of other banks out there who have yet to sign on.

Online sites are also moving offshore, beyond the reach of effective U.S. law enforcement. In one high-profile 2004 case, the ATF raided a cargo plane that touched down at John F. Kennedy Airport bearing 60 million duty-free cigarettes from a Switzerland-based company, Otamedia. The company's original URL Yesmoke.com was shut down, but its operators simply packed up shop and today continue to do business from Italy. . . .

But given how one site can pop up as quickly as another is shuttered, suppressing the trade has become something of a global game of "whack-a-mole." "We see a lot of sites operating outside the country: Moldova, Israel, Russia, Ukraine," Kaplan said. Despite states' best efforts, she said, "We haven't noticed a real reduction in sales." . . .

To that end, advocates such as Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, and the National Association of Attorneys General are actively pushing the optimistically titled Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act

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