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Clearing the smoke 

A Latin American vacation in 2005 was the beginning of a bold entrepreneurial move few young Canadians have taken up. Long-time friend and Toronto beer entrepreneur Cameron Heaps visited Nicaragua, where by chance he met cigar-master Silvio Reyes.

Mr. Heaps, already president of independent beer-maker Steam Whistle Breweries Co., immediately "fell in love" with Mr. Reyes' family and business, Mr. Raty says, and returned home with another enterprising itch -- to create a premium cigar business in Canada.

The timing was right for Mr. Raty, a University of Toronto business graduate who was looking for a career away from Bay Street. Mr. Heaps, Mr. Raty and another friend Martin Ritchie, who's no longer a partner in the venture, spent the following year mulling the idea while researchingthe Canadian marketplace.

They quickly learned the domestic industry was virtually bereft of home-grown cigar firms, Mr. Raty says. There were domestic distributors of imported brands, but almost no one making their own. . . .

In July, Mr. Raty arrived in a 1963 Mercedes Unimog in a hangar at Toronto City Centre Airport to officially launch Mombacho Cigars. More than 650 friends and clients greeted him. Orders for the cigars, which sell for $385 for a box of 24, have poured in since.

As for swapping investment research notes for tobacco leaves? "It was a slam-dunk decision."

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COCCO: A detour on tobacco road 

Congress is known for leaving business unfinished, but rarely is a task left undone for more than four decades.

The tobacco industry is a prolific donor of campaign funds and a lobbying titan. So the federal government has left it mostly alone since the 1964 Surgeon General's report declared that cigarette smoking causes disease and death. . . .

The politics of this belated action are notable and, it must be said, should give pause to any American who thinks that Congress, or "Washington," can never ever achieve anything of genuine significance.

Finally, a bipartisan -- and veto-proof -- majority of House members voted to support public health rather than suck up to Big Tobacco. In the Senate, supporters of the measure believe they have enough votes to survive a veto and perhaps even a threatened filibuster. Both presidential contenders are co-sponsors of the Senate bill.

Which leaves the Bush administration isolated. . . .

The reasoning is positively Orwellian. "FDA regulates drugs and devices by approving products after weighing the benefits against the risks of a product," the White House policy statement on the bill says. "In contrast, there is no such thing as a cigarette in which the benefits outweigh the risks. The use of tobacco products is inherently unsafe." . . . The only other translation possible is that the White House has concluded cigarettes are so dangerous the government should do nothing about them.

You might recognize this as the sort of doublespeak the industry itself mastered long ago. . . . a handful of opponents could still impede action. These are the kinds of smoke screens that have been used to shield tobacco in the past: The first effort at legislation along these lines was introduced more than two decades ago.

With 400,000 deaths each year and more than four decades after we were told this would be tobacco's effect, it is awfully hard to see how congressional delay and political denial should still carry the day.

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Smoking law to hit teens 

If the proposed Tobacco Products Control Amendment Bill is passed as law, the sale of tobacco products at hospitals and universities will be a thing of the past.

The new law would also see the sale of tobacco products prohibited to people under the age of 18.

The bill proposes that the minimum age for the legal sale of tobacco products be raised from 16 to 18.

Briefing the standing committee on social development on the bill, a representative of the national Health Department said that among the steps to reduce the purchase of tobacco products by minors would be the regulation of the display of tobacco products at retail outlets.

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• Tobacco claims 5.4m a year worldwide: WHO report  

About 5.4 million people die every year across the globe due to tobacco consumption and the number will go over 8 million by 2030 if immediate steps are not taken, the World Health Organisation (WHO) report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2008 said yesterday.

At the launching ceremony of the report at a city hotel, it was also revealed that more than 80 percent of the tobacco victims would die in the developing countries alone by 2030 if tobacco control programme is not augmented by this time. . . .

The report outlined the MPOWER package, a set of six key tobacco control measures . . .

This year National Tobacco Control Cell (NTCC) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has won the Global Award on the World No Tobacco Day.

WHO representative to Bangladesh Dr Duangvadee Sungkhobol handed over the crest to Uzzal Bikash Dutt, joint secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, on the occasion.

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• New tobacco law ineffective, says Industries Union  

Instead of deterring smokers, the new set of warning pictures printed on cigarette packs are driving up the sales of metal cigarette boxes, Ibrahim El Embaby, head of the Tobacco Industry Division of the Industries Union, told local press.

According to the new tobacco law, which was approved by the People’s Assembly (PA) last June, a detailed health warning has to cover 50 percent of the pack on both sides. In addition to warning labels, cigarette packs now feature pictures explaining the side effects of smoking: a dying man in an oxygen mask, and a limp cigarette in reference to impotence, among others.

In addition, all forms of tobacco advertising are prohibited, and a 10 percent increase is added to the price of cigarettes. . . .

numbers show that the law is ineffective.

“For the manufacturers, pictures and warning labels on packs are nothing but a routine procedure and will not make their consumer quit smoking because it’s the ingredients of the cigarettes, like nicotine, which are addictive,” said Mahmoud Aoshb, a economics expert at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

“The Ministry of Health has to step in with intensive awareness campaigns in order to get Egyptians to quit smoking,” he added.

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• Alcohol-free hotel bar owner seeks to reverse smoking ban 

THE WOMAN with Ireland's first alcohol-free hotel bar has launched a campaign to reverse the smoking ban in pubs.

Ann Sweeney said the first mission for her one-person New Ireland party is to seek to have luxury smoking rooms attached to pubs.

Ms Sweeney has issued a rallying call to smokers throughout Ireland to get in touch with her at her Carraig Rua hotel in Dunfanaghy, Co Donegal. She plans weekly meetings of supporters and aims to take the issue as far as the European Court if necessary.

She is encouraged by a recent judgment in Germany . . .

I find the Government's double standards fascinating. If it insists on raising revenue with heavy taxes on tobacco products, then there is an obligation that smokers be treated the same as drinkers and proper facilities should be put in place for them." . . .

She formed her New Ireland party after gardai seized all alcoholic drink in her hotel and pub because of a licence dispute.

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• Newly Discovered Air Pollutants May Cause Lung Problems  

Recently discovered so-called free radicals that are attached to small particles of air pollution could cause lung damage and perhaps even lung cancer, researchers report.

If confirmed through further research, the finding could help to explain why nonsmokers develop tobacco-related diseases like lung cancer, said lead researcher H. Barry Dellinger, the Patrick F. Taylor Chair of environmental chemistry at Louisiana State University.

It has been known for years that free radicals exist in the atmosphere, and these atoms, molecules and fragments of molecules can damage cells. It had been thought that these particles, which can be produced by combustion, exist for less than a second and then disappear.

"What I found out is that combustion-generated particles contain environmentally persistent free radicals," said Dellinger. "When the radicals are associated with particles, they can apparently exist indefinitely."

These free radicals are remarkably similar to the free radicals found in cigarette tar, Dellinger said. "The implication is you can have the same environmentally related diseases by exposure to airborne fine particles that you can get from cigarettes," he said.

Dellinger noted, however, that one would have to smoke about 300 cigarettes a day to be exposed to the same level of environmental free radicals found in moderately polluted air.

The findings were to be presented Monday at the American Chemical Society annual meeting, in Philadelphia.

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Feds Break Up D.C.-Area Cigarette-Smuggling Ring 

Authorities said they've broken up a major cigarette-smuggling ring in northern Virginia.

According to documents filed in federal court, conspirators in New York paid smugglers in Fairfax County more than $4 million for about 200,000 cartons of cigarettes over two years.

Officials said many of the deals were done at an Annandale restaurant. Cigarettes were delivered from northern Virginia to warehouses in Queens and the Bronx.

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• SOLONS TO TOBACCO FIRMS: You don’t like graphic? Then we’ll make it plain  

Valenzuela Representative Magtanggol Gunigundo said if the firms continue to resist House Bill 3364, a law which proposes the use of prominent, colored and graphic-based health warnings on cigarette packs, they would call for plain packaging instead.

Gunigundo explained that if the law would make plain packaging of cigarette products mandatory, it would completely deter tobacco firms from using their products as advertising tools, which could hurt their sales. "It is the worst case scenario to them," he said.

Authors of the bill include Representatives Anna York Bondoc, Arthur Pingoy Jr., Teodoro Casiño, Neil Tupas Jr. and Jose Antonio Roxas, who recently attended a study tour in Thailand to learn from their counterparts on how to wage the legislative battle in pushing for the bill.

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Cancer-stricken Patrick Swayze puffs away on a cigarette while filming show  

In his own words, he is a 'miracle man' who is fighting a winning battle against pancreatic cancer. But that still hasn't stopped actor Patrick Swayze from puffing on cigarettes between breaks from shooting his latest TV show.

The Dirty Dancing star was given just weeks to live after being diagnosed with the disease in January but quickly set about returning to work, where he has looked anything but a man facing a death sentence.

But our pictures show Swayze hasn't been able to kick his smoking habit. The actor openly smoked on the Chicago set of The Beast, in which he plays an FBI agent.

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EDITORIAL: Fire retardants vs. dangerous chemicals 

This year's bill, AB 706, doesn't ban brominated and chlorinated fire retardants outright, which this page supported. Instead of wielding a legislative sledgehammer, Leno has chosen a microscope -- proposing a process of chemical scrutiny rather than prohibition. The revised bill would make the state responsible for analyzing the toxicity of all chemicals used in products sold in California and ranking them in terms of greatest concern. And the chemicals of most concern to Leno still come in for special treatment. The bill directs the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to start its analysis with chlorinated and brominated fire retardants -- and gives the department discretion to prohibit the use of specific chemicals. . . .

The bill also updates the 30-year-old regulation that created the need for fire retardants in foam. California has the most stringent fire safety standards in the world, among them a requirement that foam padding in furniture be able to resist an open flame for 12 seconds. But fires do not spontaneously ignite inside sofas; they start with the fabric. And 90% of the time, that's because a smoker forgot to put out a cigarette. AB 706 changes California's "flame-to-foam" standard to a cigarette-resistance standard similar to one recently enacted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The federal law will take effect in 2010, but California doesn't have to wait to change its law before it becomes obsolete.

Fire-related deaths in this country have decreased over the years, but that mostly has to do with the reduction in smoking, fire-retardant cigarettes and better alarm and sprinkler systems. . . .

Leno's bill made sense before, and the revisions have made it better. We hope it lands on the governor's desk and leaves it with his signature.

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Fla. revenue estimate down, governor eyes reserves 

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said he may ask lawmakers to tap reserves and a tobacco settlement trust fund to make up for the latest in a series of revenue shortfalls that emerged Friday from a meeting of state economists.

The new estimate cuts general revenue by nearly $1.8 billion below a March forecast the Legislature used to write the state's $66 billion annual budget that took effect July 1. The revenue estimate for the next budget year also is being reduced by almost 2.2 billion.

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Secondhand Smoke Education  

Details of the revamped campaign, called BreatheND, are to be announced Monday in Fargo and Bismarck by the health units` Public Education on Tobacco Task Force.

The campaign already sponsors TV ads. One facet of the new campaign is a Web site, www.breatheND.com.

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Mental hospital bans smoking long condoned for its patients 

As smoking was banned in more public places over the past decade, one of the state's most vulnerable populations was permitted to puff away: psychiatric patients at the Arizona State Hospital.

Exempted from ever-widening smoking bans, the hospital practically encouraged people with serious mental illnesses who live at the hospital to smoke. Up to 20 cigarette breaks a day were written into some patients' daily schedules.

That changed on July 1 when the entire campus of the hospital on Van Buren Street went tobacco-free. Residents, staff, visitors, vendors and all others who set foot on the Phoenix property are forbidden from lighting up.

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Eight county stores fall short in ID check sting 

A "back to school" sting by the Putnam County Sheriff's Office on Thursday led to 40 percent of the stores visited failing to check identification.

Twenty stores in Palatka, East Palatka and San Mateo were challenged by undercover operatives seeking to buy beer or tobacco. Of those, clerks at eight of the stores failed to check the age of the buyer.

"We didn't have as much compliance as we would appreciate," said Sheriff Dean Kelly. "I'm not sure why that message is not being received, but we are going to continue to send it."

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