Wednesday, February 27, 2013
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The Property Rights Newsletter March 1, 2013 - Issue #702 "Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else."- Epictetus |
UK Sir Humphrey is now in drag. By David Atherton. The civil service's actions on the plain cigarette packs consultation have been nothing short of a disgrace. You see, it turns out the DH commissioned two anti-smoking zealots, Professors Gerald Hastings and Linda Bauld, from the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies to review the "proof." Biased evidence, collusion with other governments, the leaking of confidential information, and the possible misuse of public money/fraudulent skewering of public consultations. This is a disgrace. Seventy three MPs have written an open letter to Health Secretary asking for plain packaging to be abandoned.
ME: Bangor Council rejects park smoking ban. Councilors and city staff had previously spent hours in committee crafting and adjusting the ordinance. Originally, the proposal was an outright ban on smoking in all city parks, but after multiple Parks, Recreation and Harbor Committee and Government Operations Committee meetings, it was scaled back to only apply to some parks and then was amended to have Parks and Recreation Director Tracy Willette designate specific areas within parks where people could use tobacco products. Councilor David Nealley argued that the city should not restrict the rights of residents to smoke in parks because smokers pay taxes, too. He and Councilor James Gallant called the ordinance a "nanny clause" and an overreach by the city. MO: Knightyme is latest bar to close since Springfield smoking ban. A supplier of pool tables and juke boxes says 10 bars have closed since Springfieldians banned smoking in them. "I think I realized it maybe six, eight months ago, but I kept hoping and kept putting money in it, and finally I said, 'No more,'" said Knight. He says, since the smoking ban, he's had about a 60-percent drop in business. USA: Citizens for Tobacco Rights helps adult smokers and dippers stay informed about tobacco issues and learn how to become effective legislative advocates. It is supported by Philip Morris USA, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company and John Middleton. Canada: Peel bans smoking around recreation areas and municipal buildings. Michael Perley, director of the Ontario Campaign for Action on Tobacco, was part of a committee in Peel that had been working on passing the bylaw for two years. The legislation was also designed to reduce opportunities for adults to role model smoking behaviour in front of children, he added. He says next up he'd like to see Peel ban smoking on patios as well. UK: They Got Me Over A Barrel. By J Mark Dodds. About why pubs are closing all over Britain and about how some people are trying to stop it happening. A bit about Camberwell. A bit about me. And a bit about them. and some photographs... World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs. |
 Watch! Make cigarettes prescription-only drugs? |
Thursday, February 21, 2013
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The Property Rights Newsletter February 22, 2013 - Issue #701 "For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to livein a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." - Nelson Mandela |
Oklahoma: Senate committee kills anti-smoking bill. In a victory for the tobacco industry, an Oklahoma Senate committee snuffed out a bill Monday that would have let cities and towns craft their own anti-smoking laws. The 6-2 vote not to pass Senate Bill 36 ensures the proposal is dead for the next two years, or the length of the 54th legislative session, said Sen. Greg Treat, chairman of the Senate General Government Committee. The measure would have repealed a 1987 law that prevents cities and towns from enacting tobacco use restrictions stricter than that of the state. State law bans smoking in most public buildings. It is allowed in bars and in separately ventilated rooms in restaurants. Opponents said the bill would have been unfair to businesses that built these special rooms and that they should not be penalized for playing by the rules.
The Return of the Professor of Prohibition. "Jim Beam-branded clothing is being sold to children as young as four, in what public health experts have said is one of the most shocking examples of alcohol advertising they have seen." OK, let's just analyse that one sentence and ask ourselves these questions... 
IA: Effort to ban smoking in Iowa casino gaming areas stalls. Hopes for anti-tobacco forces to ban smoking at the gambling floors of state-regulated casino were stalled Tuesday when a Senate subcommittee decided to delay action to gather more information. Senate Study Bill 1107 seeks to lift the exemption from Iowa's Clean Indoor Air Act that took effect July 1, 2008.
**************** NJ: Bankrupt Revel suffers fate of other casinos. From the day it opened last April, Revel insisted it was a different kind of casino. It shunned bus-riding day-trippers, banned smoking... Yet less than a year after it opened, Revel finds it has become like many other Atlantic City casinos: drowning under way too much debt, fighting for a share in a shrinking market and preparing for a date in bankruptcy court with major questions about its future looming large. 
OH: Hillsboro Mayor Drew Hastings on Monday asked city council members to investigate illegal drug use in the city, which he called an "epidemic" that is getting worse, saying, "I would like to take a hard line this spring and summer" in fighting the problem. Hastings urged council members to "get grassroots" and talk to individuals in their wards "and give whatever information you get to the administration and the police department. I want to try to put a dent into this."
NC: Bill could mean prison time for topless women. Triggered by two topless rallies held in Asheville, the Republican-backed bill headed to a floor vote in the House and would amend the state's indecent exposure law to expand the legal definition of "private parts" to explicitly include "the nipple, or any portion of the areola, or the female breast." The woman could be charged with a felony, punishable by up to six months in prison for first-time offenders. More mundane exposure would be a misdemeanor, meriting up to 30 days in jail.
NY: Bloomberg Says No More Jail Stays for Minor NYC Marijuana Busts. In his final state of the city address Thursday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that people caught with small amounts of marijuana in the city will no longer be subjected to overnight stays in the city's jails, but will merely be taken to the precinct for a desk appearance and then released.
NY: New York mayor seeks to ban Styrofoam. Mayor Michael Bloomberg will propose a ban on Styrofoam, the substance commonly used for take-out food containers that is almost impossible to recycle. While Bloomberg's aggressive campaigns have won him plaudits from some, others have dubbed him a "nanny" mayor and said his ideas limit choice and pre-empt individual responsibility.
World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs. |
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1. Choose an industry. 2. Regulate the industry. 3. Tax the industry. 4. Sue the industry. When one source of money dries up, return to Step 1 and repeat. By S. Phillipe |
Thursday, February 14, 2013
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The Property Rights Newsletter February 15, 2013 - Issue #700 "Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing."- Calvin Coolidge |
Canada: Valley tobacconist awaits court ruling. Decision on constitutional challenge expected May 1. Bob Gee, owner of Mader's Tobacco in Kentville, was charged with violating the provincial Tobacco Storage Act by improperly storing tobacco products in his shop in 2009. The businessman turned to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to refute the charge, claiming it violates his freedom of expression through advertising, and won the first stage of his constitutional challenge in 2010. Now, the province must prove the law prohibiting retailers from openly displaying tobacco products is constitutional. Gores attempted to discredit sources used in Fullerton's expert report, and poke holes in Fullerton's argument that there is not sufficient evidence to prove display bans reduce smoking rates. In his brief cross-examination of Fullerton, defence lawyer Curtis Palmer asked his witness to explain what impact the required warning labels have on potential buyers.
Ohio Bible study group blends stogies with Scripture. The Rev. Eric Van Scyoc, lecturing on the miracle of the Transfiguration of Christ, is blowing a lot of smoke. Literally. That's because he is actually puffing on a big cigar as he discusses St. Matthew's Gospel writings of Jesus meeting Moses and Elijah -- back from the dead -- on a mountain top. "His face shown bright as the sun," Van Scyoc reads from the holy text, between tokes on a $10 Perdomo Grand Cru. The preacher's listeners, all men, also are puffing big stogies, gathered at a round table in a back room of a cigar shop. It's a twice-a-month Bible study group that meets at Cigar Cigars, a storefront smoke shop in a Rocky River shopping plaza. "It's an opportunity to get out of the cold, have a cigar and learn some Bible," says Larry Gilbert, tapping the burning end of his smoke into a deep ceramic ash tray. Van Scyoc, pastor of St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Rocky River, has been conducting Bible studies at Cigar Cigars for about three years. So far, the group has puffed through John and are now smoking into Matthew.
Oklahoma: Gov. Mary Fallin's support may make difference with smoke-free bill. Gov. Mary Fallin used a piece of her State of the State speech to say she supports letting cities and towns craft their own anti-smoking laws. Legislators often preach the importance of local control in schools and other areas, yet they've been OK with the state dictating cities' and towns' smoke-free policies. Fallin's right: This needs to change. 
Bulgaria: Bulgarian Smokers to Stage Yet Another Anti-Ban Protest. Andrey Slabakov, Bulgarian movie director and fervent campaigner for reintroducing smoking in establishments, has described the ban as "absurd, repressive, intolerant and non-European." Slabakov has noted that the protesters demand the reintroduction of separate smoking and non-smoking areas in restaurants and bars. "We (smokers) won't enter the non-smoking areas," he has pointed out.
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 World Smokers Blogs: Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs. |
Thursday, February 07, 2013
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The Property Rights Newsletter February 8, 2013 - Issue #699 The Borg are a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones of the collective or the hive.You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Lieutenant Worf: "Kill it now. Make it appear that it died in the crash. Leave no evidence that we were ever here." |
Tougher smoking laws proposed in EU. Tobacco should look like tobacco and taste like tobacco to protect the young, EU health chief says. He said that beyond the attractive packages, "even more worryingly, smoking has been made more attractive with the use of strong flavors, e.g. vanilla or strawberry." Borg wants the health warnings, which already take up a sizable part of a pack, to increase to 75 per cent on the front and backs, and 50 per cent on the sides, plastering them with such warnings "Smoking kills - quit now" and pictures of cancer-infested lungs. Individual member states could push the labeling restrictions even further.
Bursting bubbles is such fun! Long ago, somewhere pre ban I think, it was stated categorically that the smoking ban was merely to protect "the workforce." Of course much of the pre ban workforce is totally unprotected now as approximately 200,000 (UK) jobs have been lost thanks to the closure of thousands of pubs, clubs, Bingo halls etc, therefore those 'workers' that would have been protected are no longer at work and being protected from anything! If anything at all has arisen from their point of view they are even more at risk now they have all the time in the world to roam the polluted streets, inhaling all those beautifully aromatic exhaust fumes. A Tax Reminder: By Leonard Spencer. Exorbitant tobacco taxes are, after all, imposed despite the objections of smokers, and are enforced by a heavily-armed paramilitary police apparatus, and thus, by armed force. Smokers and Obamacare: Penalty could keep smokers out of health overhaul. Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation. Insurers won't be allowed to charge more under the overhaul for people who are overweight, or have a health condition like a bad back or a heart that skips beats - but they can charge more if a person smokes. For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums. World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs. |
 Watch Addicted to Pleasure: TobaccoBBC One | Revealing the rich and controversial past of sugar, alcohol, tobacco and opium, Hollywood actor Brian Cox embarks on a thought-provoking journey to uncover how the commercial exploitation of these products hooked the rest of the world on an appetite for a good time. |
Friday, February 01, 2013
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The Property Rights Newsletter February 1, 2013 - Issue #698 "Study the past if you would divine the future"- Confucius |
Godber - an admirer of Hitler? The Americans started whooping with joy when the figures for cancer sufferers were released - but the celebrations were short lived as the truth dawned upon the anti tobacco mobsters. You see folks, yet again they rushed in to proclaim that smoking bans work, only to find that they were actually making no difference whatsoever apart from making people more miserable generally!
Scammon: By Tom Oyler. It was an idyllic spring morning in Scammon, KS. The little white church on the East side of town shown brightly. The sunlight streaming through its stained glass windows riddled the chapel with a rainbow of colors. The old hardwood pews were polished. The coffin in the vestibule looked magnificent. There was no one in the chapel and no body in the coffin. That was 27 years ago. The day the studies say I died. People blithely accept and believe studies. Not one study in my lifetime has proven to be true, not one. PETITION: Sign to - Prevent the FDA from regulating or banning the sale and use of electronic cigarettes, accessories and associated liquids. The FDA should NOT propose or approve any regulation that would deny cigarette smokers legal or affordable access to less hazardous smokefree alternatives. U.S. experts debate penalties for smokers, the obese. Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die? Critics also contend that tobacco- and calorie-control measures place a disproportionately heavy burden on poor people. That's because they: Smoke more than the rich, and have higher obesity rates. So let's return to the original question: Why provoke a backlash? If 1 in 5 U.S. adults smoke, and 1 in 3 are obese, why not just get off their backs and let them go on with their (probably shortened) lives? MO: St. Joseph Coalition forms to oppose smoking ban. Bob Meeks is spearheading the coalition. It's not the first time he's organized the group to fight the city on different issues, but he said this fight is particularly outrageous. "This is something that really stirred me up the most," he said. "Basically, because if you keep the count that I see overseas, there's been over 60,000 people that have lost their lives and come back in body bags for two words: freedom and choice. I don't think that this council, nor any legislatures, should slap them in the face and say we're going to take your rights away to do business." UK: Freedom2Choose exists to challenge the unfounded assertions of the anti-tobacco industry and its disproportionate influence on government. We campaign within the law against the denormalisation of tobacco users. We also highlight the harm that intrusive lifestyle legislation and policies do to our social, economic, and political life, and to genuine medical and scientific research. World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs. |
 Have your say at the Club Forum! |
