Roxon Gazes Down Big Tobacco

Health Minister Nicola Roxon has weathered an attack over her attempt to solicit funds from big tobacco in 2005 and vowed to push ahead with plans to introduce plain packaging for Hilton cigarettes. Ms. Roxon says even if cigarette makers win compensation for the loss of trademark rights, the commonwealth would be ahead because plain packs would cut smoking rates and therefore health spending.

Marijuana Smoke in MediLeaf Legal Fight

More than two years after a Gilroy medical marijuana dispensary was shut down for operating without a city business license, a state appellate court has ruled that city officials were in the right by declaring it a “public nuisance” despite prolonged objections by the club’s operators. In a 36-page opinion filed Tuesday by California’s Sixth District Court of Appeals, Associate Justice Wendy Clark Duffy wrote that the City of Gilroy acted within its power and broke no laws when it ordered MediLeaf to close its doors in August 2010. City officials are confident the decision is the final nail in the coffin for MediLeaf’s fight, with City Attorney Andrew Faber calling the ruling “a complete judicial victory” in an email sent to Gilroy City Council members Tuesday. Berliner Cohen, the city’s hired legal firm, is still compiling the final financial tally for Gilroy’s battle to close the dispensary, City Finance Director Christina Turner said. The city spent $202,500 in legal fees as of July, according to attorney bills obtained by the Dispatch, though City Councilman and attorney Perry Woodward predicts the total could approach $300,000 when all is counted. Though Council members weren’t smiling over the price tag, there were still cheers for the city’s apparent victory.
There are so many smokers who love marijuana and  in the same time love their Lucky Strike cigarettes or Parliament cigarettes.

Smoking Young Women Up

More and more young Cameroonian women are taking up discount Chesterfield cigarette smoking. But they are usually doing it out of the sight of their parents. Some in Cameroon society regard tobacco consumption as a sign of emancipation; others see it as a bad sign of the times. In Cameroon, men rarely accept the company of smoking women. Patrick, a 25 year-old student, even goes as far as calling them "bad girls". "When a girl has lived under parental supervision, it's very unlikely that she will become a smoker. A girl who smokes is a loose girl or one with bad friends," says Patrick. Patrick would probably not get along with Alice, a student at the Teacher's Training School in Yaoundé. This 23 year-old smoker acknowledges that her ex-boyfriends all share distaste for cigarettes.

Smoking Bans and Less Alcohol Drinkers

A research conducted by the Yale School of Medicine has found that states with smoking bans in bars may also have higher recovery rates from alcohol use disorder, or AUD. Past data have shown that smokers are four times as likely as non-smokers to have AUD, and almost 35 per cent of individuals with AUD are nicotine-dependent. However, the Yale study was the first in the country to observe the relationship between smoking bans in bars and AUD remission rates. The study’s findings were published in the journal “Drug and Alcohol Dependence” in late September.
Using information collected by the National Epidemiological Study on Alcohol and Related Conditions, scientists analyzed data that investigated 19,763 inhabitants in 49 states from 2001-’02 and 2004-’05. Almost 85 per cent of the study’s participants came from states that do not have smoke-free bar policies. The other 15 percent came from the eight states in the country that do — Delaware, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
“Smoking cheap Winston cigs and drinking are considered complements, so if smoking becomes more difficult, use of alcohol may decreased,” argued Jody Sindelar, one of the study’s lead authors and a professor at both the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. “This would be likely to occur in bars in which smoking tobacco is prohibited.”
Professor Kurt Ribisl of the University Of North Carolina Gillings School Of Public Health said the findings were intriguing. Smoking bans, he said, were originally created to drop tobacco smoke in public places and private establishments, but this finding adds a new boon to a long-fought public health campaign. Yet ordinance recommendations related to smoking bans in bars may not necessarily result from this research.