Newport Ads Target Black Youth

Cigarette maker Lorillard Inc targeted California school neighborhoods with high proportions of African-American students for its Newport menthol cigarettes, Stanford University said on Friday.

Stanford School of Medicine researchers compared pricing and advertisements for Lorillard's Monte Carlo cigarettes, the top menthol brand, and Marlboro, the top non-menthol brand, at 407 stores within walking distance of 91 schools in California in a 2006 survey.

Big Tobacco Targets City Ordinance

Big tobacco wants a federal judge to snuff out the citywide ban on all visible tobacco product and Lucky Strike advertising.

In a filing yesterday, the city agreed not to enforce the advertising section of the ordinance while a civil action filed last week by a tobacco group and several tobacco companies is pending. Enforcement was scheduled to begin Friday.

Both the city and plaintiffs agreed to the stay.

The plaintiffs are R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.; Philip Morris USA Inc., Lorillard Tobacco Co. and the National Association of Tobacco Outlets, which is a membership association in Minnesota that promotes and represents the interest of tobacco companies, distributors and retailers.

A portion of the city’s tobacco-control ordinance approved last month bans advertisements of cigarette and tobacco products visible from any city street, park, school or educational institution.

When Tobacco Was Center Stage

The fate of historic buildings in Durham generally remains parlous until something nasty happens to them. Last month, the city condemned part of Liberty Warehouse - Durham's only extant tobacco auction house - after a roof collapse. The Rigsbee Street warehouse, one of Greenfire Development's 30-odd properties, had gotten minimal upkeep, much to the chagrin of its small-business tenants.

I doubt that either the city or Greenfire will let Liberty Warehouse crumble, for the historic building served purposes well beyond auctioning bright leaf. In the fall, Liberty became a one-stop shop for farm families, complete with shops, eateries, bank offices and piles of pungent tobacco - "sweet smellin' stuff" - that seemed to go on forever. But perhaps Liberty's most understated role was that of a theater for tobacco auctioneers.

The great auctioneers knew they were performers. Youngsters trying to imitate them quickly discovered that the auctioneer's chant was easy to learn and hard to master:

Engine, Engine Number Nine, runnin' on the Chicago line. If the engine jumps the track, you will get your money back.

Dubai shops sell cigarettes to minors

The World Anti-Tobacco Day has come and gone. As expected there were free health camps, awareness campaigns and a slew of familiar programmes on May 31. Not to be left behind 63 Dubai hypermarkets and supermarkets took cigarettes off their shelves, with some even getting certificates of recognition from Dubai Municipality for showing solidarity with the cause.

But if you thought the World No-Tobacco Day gesture by retail outlets here was a positive (healthy) step towards a tobacco-free world, you couldn't be more mistaken.

Guernsey Smoking-Free by 2040

If a Guernsey campaign group are successful, they say Guernsey could be free from any smokers by 2040. GASP want the island to follow countries who have already set targets for stamping out smoking completely.

The group believes curbing the use of tobacco so that the island becomes smoke-free will have the single greatest significant impact on public health.

Finland and New Zealand have already set themselves the goal of being smoke-free by 2040 and GASP believe it is an achievable aim in Guernsey.

Over the past 15 years the number of adults and young people who smoke in the island has significantly reduced - and 81% of people in Guernsey are non-smokers.

Attitudes to smoking have also hardened, especially among young people. In the recent Guernsey Young Peoples survey 97% of primary school pupils (87% of secondary and post-16 pupils) answered no when asked if it is OK for adults to smoke around children.

Cigarette Advertisements in Albania

Adopting stricter tobacco control laws, but inadequately enforcing them, does not curb Wont smoking prevalence, according to research from Albania. Despite the adoption of strong anti-smoking policies and restrictions on cigarette adverting in 2007, the smoking rate in Albania has risen. The increase in cigarette smoking has been driven by higher smoking rates among women and young adults.

Albania's anti-smoking laws have, however, contributed to reductions in exposure to secondhand smoke and tobacco advertising.

"The impacts of smoke-free policies and an advertising ban have been limited due to lack of enforcement and failure to adopt a comprehensive set of tobacco control measures," said the researchers of a study that appears in the December 2010 issue of the journal Tobacco Control.

An Appeal to Smoking Ban

The attorney representing American Legion Post 23 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1298 in the organizations’ battle against the city’s Bond smoking ban has appealed the citation issued last week at a charitable gaming session hosted by the Legion.

Alan Simpson of Bowling Green wrote a letter Friday to the Bowling Green Code Enforcement Board requesting a hearing regarding the citation, which names Jim Manley, chief finance officer for the American Legion, as the alleged violator.

Issued Thursday - the first day the ordinance against indoor smoking went into effect - the citation has three provisions of the ordinance marked as having been violated.