Tobacco.org

Report: State loses millions due to tobacco use 

Tobacco use costs Wyoming hundreds of millions of dollars each year in lost productivity and health care, according to a report released by the state on Thursday.

The University of Wyoming and the Wyoming Department of Health said Wyoming lost $155 million in productivity and $136 million in health care costs because of tobacco use in 2004.

Tobacco is the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the world, Dr. Brent Sherard said during a press conference on the report.

Sherard, director of the Wyoming Department of Health, said smoke-free policies and increases in taxation on cigarettes should be the priority to increase the health of Wyoming residents.

The report concluded the same.

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• Statewide ban, higher tobacco taxes may cut smoking, study finds  

Increasing taxes on tobacco and employing a statewide ban could reduce smoking and its effects in Wyoming.

That's according to a report by the University of Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center. It was presented Thursday at a news conference here by the Wyoming Department of Health.

Making cigarettes more expensive and enacting bans on smoking in public places make people think twice about starting and encourages others to quit, Brent Sherard said.

He's the director of the state Department of Health and the state health officer. . . .

The UW report concluded: "enacting a cigarette excise tax increase and/or a statewide smoking law could improve the health and increase the life expectancy of Wyoming citizens by reducing the prevalence of the leading cause of preventable death."

And it's not just a health issue.

Based on figures from 2004, Wyoming could save over $1,500 in health-care costs for every smoker that quits.

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Smoking caused Wyoming County fatal fire 

WASHINGTON TWP - Careless use of smoking materials ignited a fire on Thursday afternoon that killed a 72-year-old woman in her Lemon Creek Road home, according to Tunkhannock Borough Police.

Sgt. Roger Hardy said on Friday that Sharon Thompson was smoking in her bedroom, where the fire started.

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Report: Smoking bans lead to quitting 

A new study for the Wyoming Department of Health says more people quit smoking in communities that have enacted strong laws against smoking in public places.

The study by the Survey and Analysis Center at the University of Wyoming comes as Wyoming lawmakers prepare to revisit a possible statewide smoking ban.

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Woman dies after clothes caught fire while smoking 

An autopsy is slated for Thursday for an elderly woman who died Wednesday after her clothes caught fire in southwest suburban Tinley Park more than a week ago.

Mary Frogner, 79, of the 6600 block of 165th Place in Tinley Park, was pronounced dead at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood at 4:34 p.m. Wednesday, a spokesman for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said. . . .

Apparently, the fire started when Frogner, who was on oxygen, was smoking. Her clothing caught on fire and the people in the house -- reportedly her relatives -- put the fire out, Dunn said.

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'Guitar Man' Jerry Reed Dies of Smoking-Related Emphysema  

Known in country music as "The Guitar Man," singer-songwriter Jerry Reed parlayed a music career into acting and won roles as a good ol' boy in movies like "Smokey and the Bandit” in the '70s and ‘80s. But a life of cigarette smoking took its toll, and Reed died early today (Sept. 1) from complications related to emphysema. He was 71.

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Major NCI Report Concludes Tobacco Marketing Causes Kids to Smoke, Underscores Need for U.S. Senate to Pass FDA Tobacco Regulation This Year (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids) 

The comprehensive report released today by the National Cancer Institute provides the government's strongest conclusion to date that tobacco marketing causes kids to smoke and that anti-tobacco advertising campaigns prevent smoking. The 684-page report, The Role of the Media in Promoting and Reducing Tobacco Use, is an exhaustive review of more than 1,000 scientific studies and presents definitive conclusions that a) tobacco advertising and promotion are causally related to increased tobacco use, and b) exposure to depictions of smoking in the movies is causally related to youth smoking initiation. The report also concludes that mass media campaigns can reduce smoking, but so-called "youth smoking prevention campaigns" sponsored by the tobacco industry have been generally ineffective and may actually have increased youth smoking.

This report sends a loud and clear message to the nation's policy-makers: We need less tobacco company marketing and more anti-tobacco advertising.

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Art Review - Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Rum - At MoMA, Appropriation From Duchamp's Urinal to Photos of Photos  

Back in the '80s, when Sherrie Levine exhibited photographs she made of photographs by Walker Evans, and Richard Prince made photographs of Marlboro cigarette ads leaving out only the text, a new genre was born: Appropriation Art. . . .

"Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Rum: The Art of Appropriation" continues through Nov. 10 at the Museum of Modern Art; (212) 708-9400, moma.org.

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• Despite Tobacco’s Perils, Kremlin Yields to Smokers  

Mr. Yashkin is among the 60 percent of male Russians who smoke, and if statistics are any guide, he is already near the end of his lifespan. The average life expectancy of male Russians hovers around 60, and health analysts say the heavy rate of smoking here plays a big role in a looming population drop that has economists here quite worried.

Yet the Russian government seems reluctant to tackle the high smoking rate. Even as it tries to forestall a sharp drop in the population with campaigns that heavily promote family life and a higher birthrates, it has barely invested in anti-tobacco ads and education. A pack of cigarettes here can cost as little as 25 cents because, unlike in the United States and many Western European countries, in Russia, tobacco is hardly taxed.

The government appears to have allowed cigarette sales and smoking to flourish in part because it is wary of engaging in the kind of anti-vice campaigns that have historically produced a sharp backlash in Russia. . . .

Dmitri Yanin, chairman of the Consumer Societies Confederation, a nonprofit group in Moscow, and one of Russia's top specialists on tobacco control, said officials did not want to curb smoking because they remembered the response to cigarette shortages and crackdowns on alcohol in the 1980s.

"The ineffectiveness of these anti-tobacco measures is connected to the state being scared of provoking the protests of various social groups," Mr. Yanin said.

When the Soviet government ran low on state-brand cigarettes in the late 1980s, smokers took to the streets in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, then the Soviet leader, had to appeal to international tobacco manufacturers to send an emergency shipment of 34 billion cigarettes.

Since then, foreign tobacco companies have become among Russia's biggest foreign investors. . . .

Russia has the fourth-highest annual per capita consumption of tobacco in the world, and smoking is responsible for 42 percent of early deaths among Russian men 35 to 59 years old, according to Euromonitor International, a consulting firm.

Those figures are feeding fears about what will happen to the Russian economy in the coming years if, as the United Nations Population Division suggests, the Russian population will experience a drop of 21 million people from 2000 to 2025, to 120 million people.

Even so, Russia's Parliament left for its summer recess without approving any new anti-tobacco measures. In June, Russia signed the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

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Details about Altria, UST 

WHAT THE COMPANIES SAY: Altria Group, which owns Marlboro-maker Philip Morris USA, called a New York Times report that it would buy rival UST Inc. for more than $10 billion ''pure speculation.'' UST declined to comment.

WHAT ANALYSTS SAY: Observers say Philip Morris USA has long considered buying UST for the company's smokeless products. Smokeless sales are growing as Americans buy fewer cigarettes.

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Tropical Storm Closing In on the Carolinas  

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — With wary eyes cast at Hurricane Ike farther out at sea, coastal Carolina residents prepared on Friday for gusting winds and torrential rain as Tropical Storm Hanna sped toward them. The storm was expected to make landfall near the North Carolina-South Carolina border early Saturday. . . .

Beach erosion was a major concern here, and farm workers were hustling to harvest tobacco and corn crops before the storm hit.

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'It's Time for Us to Show . . . How Americans Lead'  

I've fought the big spenders in both parties, who waste your money on things you neither need nor want, and the first big-spending pork-barrel earmark bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it. I will make them famous, and you will know their names. You will know their names.

We're not going to allow that while you struggle to buy groceries, fill your gas tank and make your mortgage payment. I've fought to get million-dollar checks out of our elections. I've fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes. I've fought crooked deals in the Pentagon. I've fought tobacco companies and trial lawyers, drug companies and union bosses.

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Altria in advanced talks to buy UST: source  

Cigarette company Altria Group Inc (MO.N) is in advanced talks to buy Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco maker UST Inc (UST.N), a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters on Friday.

The New York Times reported that a deal worth more than $10 billion could be announced on Monday or even sooner. The source could not confirm the price or say when a deal might be announced. . . .

Buying UST would be a quick way for Altria to expand in the growing smokeless tobacco market as the company looks to branch out from a U.S. cigarette market in steady decline. Altria, whose Philip Morris USA unit makes Marlboro cigarettes, has already tried to expand by test-marketing smokeless tobacco products under the Marlboro name.

"It expands their portfolio," Ken Harris of consumer products consulting firm Cannondale Associates said of a possible deal for UST. "They get into a major smokeless tobacco business."

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Altria calls reports on UST 'pure speculation'  

Altria Group, which owns Marlboro-maker Philip Morris USA, said Friday that a report of its impending acquisition of UST was "pure speculation." Analysts said the deal makes perfect sense. . . .

So parent company Altria bought cigar maker John Middleton Inc. in December 2007, and Philip Morris USA has tried to sell smokeless products under its own brands. The company's efforts to sell Marlboro-brand smokeless products has not gone especially well, analysts say.

"If it is a raging success, I think we would hear much more in the way of chest-thumping than we have," Kaufler said.

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In Her Own Voice 

For a long time, Juliana Hatfield was uncomfortable with her voice. The indie-rock legend always wanted a tough, raspy, rock-and-roll voice, but she was born with a high, girlish soprano. She even smoked for five years in an effort to coarsen her singing voice. It didn't work.

"I gave it up when I realized it would take a lifetime of smoking for me to sound like Marianne Faithfull," she says over the phone from her home in Cambridge, Mass. "I was kind of tortured for a long time, because I wanted to have a low, cool, serious voice like Chrissie Hynde or Patti Smith. I thought people wouldn't take me seriously otherwise."

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