SF judge upholds city's cigarette pack surcharge

A San Francisco judge has upheld the city's 20-cent-per-pack surcharge on cigarettes.
Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay ruled on Monday that the additional charge was a fee and not a tax and therefore did not need to be approved by voters.
Cigarette maker Philip Morris USA and some local retailers had disputed that.
The 20-cent charge was the brainchild of former Mayor Gavin Newsom, who said it was intended to cover what it cost the city to clean up discarded cigarette butts.
Philip Morris had argued that the surcharge was not reasonably related to the city's actual cleanup costs.
Philip Morris spokesman Steve Callahan said the company was disappointed with the ruling and considering its appellate options.

Smokers, sellers doubt cigarette pack scares will work

It will be more difficult to overlook anti-smoking messages on cigarette packs when jarring images including damaged lungs and a smoker with a tracheotomy incision start showing up prominently in 2012.
Mandated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the photographs and messages chosen for the campaign are sparking advance conversation.
The issue has added importance in Ohio, which has drastically reduced state funding for anti-smoking campaigns despite a smoking rate of more than 22 percent in the adult population and 40 percent among state Medicaid recipients.
Some smokers in the Dayton area, those who sell cigarettes and even those who teach and study cigarette marketing and advertising on area campuses all expressed doubt that the new scare tactics will influence the smoking rate.
“It won’t make any difference,” said Ed Alkhateeb, owner of Smokers Saver Inc. on South Smithville Road in Dayton.
“They have had those same kinds of pictures on packs in Europe and the Middle East for more than five years. I travel back and forth often. People who smoked there still smoke,” said the native Palestinian, who lives in Kettering.
A few miles south at Rich, formerly known as Smokes for Less, on Wilmington Pike in Kettering, the clerk at the cash register had the same opinion.
“People will smoke regardless,” said Chanel Rutledge, who has worked at the store for two years. “Some people who have had tracheotomies still come in to buy cigarettes now. So do people who are on oxygen. They are going to keep coming in,” the Dayton resident said.
“Pictures won’t stop them. The one thing that might is price,” Rutledge said. “If it went up to $7 a pack, that would have some impact.”
Specials at Smoker’s Saver included $5.15 for a pack of Marlboro and $5.33 for a pack of Basic. Posters near the entrance advertised Camel, with its famous animal logo, and American Spirit cigarettes, touted as “100 percent additive free.”
The American Spirit icon is an American Indian figure in a chief’s headdress smoking a long white cylinder like a peace pipe stem with a white eagle feather on the end, instead of smoke.
There were no repellent images or messages in view, a situation that will change with the FDA requirements.
“I haven’t really thought about the changes that are coming,” said Alkhateeb, who has sold tobacco products for 16 years. “I don’t think it will have much effect. Business is steady.”
The FDA’s stated mission is to increase awareness of health risks associated with smoking, to encourage smokers to quit and to “empower youth to say no to tobacco.”
The government agency chose nine photos and rejected 27, based on research into their effectiveness. Starting in September 2012, they will occupy 50 percent of the front and rear panels of each cigarette pack, along with statements about the dangers of smoking.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 46 million people or 20.6 percent of all United States adults ages 18 and older are smokers. The rate is higher among men (23.5 percent) than women (17.9 percent).
Robert Payne, 26, of Kettering, who bought a pack of Basics menthol and a pack of Winston regular at Rich, said the new images “won’t change anything for people like me who have been smoking for years. It might deter younger kids from doing it, but it might not have stopped me. I started at 16 because other kids were doing it.”
Another customer, Rex Smith of Centerville, said the new packs “may keep kids from taking up the habit, but they showed us photographs like that when I was in school and that didn’t stop me.”
He bought a week’s supply of electronic-cigarette refills because the cost is only one-third to one-fourth of regular cigarettes.
“Cigarettes cause cancer, but they are far from the only thing that’s bad for us,” he said. “Why stop there? Why not require a picture of a fat guy on every cheeseburger?”
Lisa Selvia of Kettering, a board member of the Dayton Society of Painters and Sculptors who teaches graphic design at Sinclair Community College and the Art Institute of Ohio, doesn’t smoke and said she considers herself “very anti-smoking.”
“From a graphic-design perspective, I think we’ve long been inured to the printed warnings on cigarette packs. Words are easy to ignore,” she said. “So, a change makes sense.”
Members of the marketing faculties at Wright State University and the University of Dayton cited studies that show people will turn away from images that are too graphic.
“It’s like looking at a scary movie,” said Tracy Harmon, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Dayton, who co-authored a 2011 article on the need for education about and regulation of hookah smoking.
Harmon said the FDA’s campaign “will be more effective for nonsmokers because smoking is a socially embedded behavior.”
She said one reason governments may be eliminating funding for anti-smoking messages may be that “they aren’t seeing the outcome they want to see. This is putting the onus on the tobacco companies. The government won’t be paying for the packaging.”

Health officials stub out 4 hookah lounges

The City Health Department of the Chennai Corporation recently ordered the closure of four hookah lounges that functioned illegally in posh Nungambakkam and brought an estimated 20 more such illegal lounges under its scanner after reports of rampant use of drugs there.

According to civic body sources, the decision to close the joints was taken on two counts -one, flouting the government ban on smoking in public places; and two, they had license only to run a restaurant, food court or coffee joints.
Food inspectors of the City Health Department have also collected samples of substances used at those four hookah lounges for detailed lab analysis.
“We deem the 25-odd hookah lounges in the city limit as illegal as the civic body never issued licenses for them per se. The licenses they obtained were meant for running either restaurants or coffee shops only,” a senior official of the Corporation told Express.

Though there was no official word on what actually led to the crackdown, it was reliably learnt that rampant use of drugs, such as marijuana and hashish, was the trigger.
According to a regular visitor to one of the hookah lounges in the city, the per hour charge is between Rs 300 and Rs 400.
Drugs are provided on the pretext of offering different flavours to enhance pleasure.
The lounges have a young clientele. College students and IT professionals, including a considerable number of girls, are regulars, sources said.

“If the samples lifted from those four lounges are found to contain drugs, their (restaurant or coffee shop) licenses would be revoked immediately under the Madras City Municipal Corporation Act -1919,” civic body sources said.

Fauzi ups offensive against smokers, big tobacco

Governor Fauzi Bowo pledged to make Jakarta a smoke-free city by taking more initiatives, including reducing the space allocated for cigarette ads across the capital.

“We can’t have an outright ban on cigarette ads, but we can and will certainly reduce the number of the ads put up by cigarette manufacturers,” Fauzi said Sunday.

He also called for greater participation from Jakarta residents in keeping a close eye on the implementation of a 2010 gubernatorial banning smoking in public spaces.

The governor made the remarks at an event to observe National Children’s Day at the National Monument Park in Central Jakarta.

The event, which was organized by NGO Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) and was titled “Jakarta My City, Free from Cigarette Smoke”, was attended by more than 1,500 children from the capital.

At a question-and-answer session, the children also told Fauzi about the widespread prevalence of smoking.

One of the children, 10-year-old Rahayu from Kampung Rawa in Johar Baru, Central Jakarta, said that teachers at her school smoked on school premises.

Fauzi told Rahayu that she and her classmates should force the teacher to quit smoking or leave
his class.

“Tell him you will cut classes and go home instead. Tell him the Jakarta governor told you to do so,”
Fauzi said.

In May last year, Fauzi signed a gubernatorial decree making it illegal to smoke inside certain buildings and workplaces in the city.

The decree was an amendment to a 2005 bylaw that allowed smoking in designated areas in buildings.

The decree bans smoking in areas including health centers, workplaces, places of worship, public transportation and areas dedicated to education and children’s activities.

Fakta chairman Azas Tigor Nainggolan said children were the most vulnerable to the dangers of smoking.

“This why we have enlisted children in our campaign against smoking,” Azas said.

He said the Jakarta administration was heading on the right track by issuing the smoking ban, a policy, which if properly enforced, could create a safe and healthy environment for children.

Fakta is a part oof the Coalition for a Smoke-Free Jakarta. Earlier this month, the Central Jakarta District Court gave the go-ahead to the coalition to defend the 2010 gubernatorial decree against a lawsuit by a group who claimed the policy discriminated against smokers.

The Jakarta administration has issued more 700 warnings to building managers as the capital steps up the enforcement of the smoking ban.

The Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) warned building managers to abide by the regulation or face being publicly named as being in violation.

The agency could temporarily close buildings that continue to flout the regulation and eventually revoke their permits.

Indonesia is among the world’s three largest tobacco consuming nations, with studies showing that tobacco consumption grew 26 percent in the last 15 years.

Cigarettes no longer No. 1 seller in commissaries

Cheese has overtaken cigarettes as the top selling item category in military commissaries, another milestone in the long slide of tobacco sales in those venues.

By the end of April, cheese had edged out cigarettes with $106 million worth of sales in the previous 52 weeks, compared with $105 million for cigarettes, data from the Defense Commissary Agency show.

Cigarette dollar sales in commissaries dropped 12 percent overall compared with the same period in the previous year, more than the 8 percent drop in overall commercial cigarette industry sales, according to commissary officials. The number of cartons sold was down by 16 percent, compared with an 8 percent drop in carton sales industrywide.

Tobacco sales overall in the first nine months of this fiscal year also are down 12 percent compared with the same period in the previous year.

The picture is slightly different in the exchange stores. Tobacco sales in Navy exchanges are holding their own, and sales of other tobacco products, such as cigars and smokeless tobacco, have increased by 20 percent.

Navy stores sold 4.1 million units of these products in 2010, compared with 3.4 million in 2009, according to Navy Exchange Service Command spokeswoman Kristine Sturkie. Cigarette carton sales were down about 1 percent to about 10.9 million in 2010.

Tobacco sales through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service are down about 2.4 percent this year compared with the same period last year, according to AAFES spokesman Judd Anstey.

But those figures also include commissary sales on Army and Air Force bases because the exchange services act as concessionaires to commissaries, providing all their tobacco.

Traditionally, few Navy and Marine commissaries have sold cigarettes. Since tobacco sales have dropped about 12 percent in commissaries, it is unclear whether sales have actually increased in AAFES exchange stores, given the comparatively small decline in overall AAFES tobacco sales.

In contingency areas, including Iraq and Afghanistan, AAFES saw a 13 percent drop in tobacco sales in 2010, and the trend continues this year, although fewer troops were in those areas than the year before.

At press time, information was not available from Marine Corps exchange officials about their tobacco sales.

The national trend in tobacco sales has seen a decline in cigarette sales while smokeless and cigar sales have been growing, said Greg Mathe, spokesman for Altria Group Inc., which owns Philip Morris USA, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company and John Middleton.

A nationwide push to snuff out smoking, a concerted education campaign on many fronts in the military community, and tightened restrictions on smoking areas all are likely contributors to declining sales in commissaries.

For years, commissaries sold tobacco products at steep discounts, up to 76 percent below commercial retail prices. Discounts in the exchanges ranged up to 51 percent. But in 1996, defense officials directed commissaries to reduce the tobacco discount, which boosted prices to the same level charged by the exchanges.

The current policy, dating from 2000, requires commissary tobacco prices to be discounted no more than 5 percent below the most competitive commercial price in the local community.

In 1996, almost $465 million worth of tobacco products were sold in commissaries; in 2010, that figure was down to $124.5 million.

According to the Pentagon’s 2008 Survey of Health-Related Behaviors among active-duty members, 31 percent said they had smoked in the last 30 days, down from 34 percent in 2002.

In 1980, 51 percent of troops surveyed said they smoked.

Man Vomits Bag of Cigarettes in Kotzebue Jail

Alaska State Troopers say a fight in Noorvik Sunday morning produced assault charges against three people -- as well as an unexpected stash of smokes.

According to an AST dispatch, troopers in Kotzebue received reports of a disturbance in Noorvik at about 5:15 a.m. Sunday. Investigation of the incident revealed that Noorvik residents Jack Wells, 18; Thomas Nay, 28; and Johnathon Carter, 20, as well as a number of family members and friends, had been involved in a fight over stolen items.

“During the altercation a knife, a rifle, baseball bats, and snowmobile parts were used as weapons,” responding troopers wrote.

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Wells was arrested on three counts of third-degree assault, while Nay and Carter were each arrested on one count of third-degree assault and four counts of fourth-degree assault. All three were taken to Kotzebue Regional Jail for remand pending arraignment.

After being remanded, Carter became ill and vomited up a small bag containing two cigarettes, which he had swallowed in anticipation of being arrested by troopers. Carter received an additional charge of promoting contraband.

Troopers are continuing to investigate the disturbance and stolen items, and say additional suspects are likely to be charged.

Lorillard recalls some cigarette packs

Cigarette maker Lorillard Inc. is recalling some packs of the non-menthol version of its Newport brand because the tobacco inside may contain small pieces of plastic.
The nation's third-largest tobacco company announced the recall late Tuesday upon discovering the foreign substance and receiving guidance from the Food and Drug Administration.

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The Greensboro, N.C., company said that at this point, no plastic has been found in any of the cigarettes. But if burned, the plastic may create respiratory discomfort or irritation.
It was unclear how many packs were affected but the company said the cigarettes were made over two days in late June.
No other products are affected, including Newport menthol cigarettes and other brands.

Mothers-to-be smoking for smaller babies

Even though most women now understand there is “overwhelming evidence” that smoking during pregnancy is harmful to the developing child, they continue to do so, said Professor Nick Macklon of Southampton University.
He told the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Stockholm: “It is important that people who believe that a smaller baby means an easier birth take into account the increased risk of complicated deliveries in smokers, as well as the risk of disease later in life which goes with low birth weight.”
"Smoking during pregnancy is not just bad for the mother and baby, but for the adult it ill grow into."
He and a team at the university’s department of obstetrics and gynaecology have now produced what he called the first “hard evidence” that women who stopped smoking upon discovery they were pregnant, could protect their unborn children from harm.
The study looked at over 50,000 pregnancies in the Southampton area, analysing the birth weight of the babies and comparing this to self-reported smoking behaviour.
Those who continued to smoke through pregnancy had lower weight babies.
The more women smoked the lighter their babies were: those who smoked more than 10 a day had babies weighing some 11oz (300g) less than the average birth weight from a non-smoking mother, of about 7lb 10oz (3.45kg).
However, those who ceased smoking at about the time they conceived were just as likely to give birth to a normal weight baby as those who had never smoked.
He said: “We can now give couples hard evidence that making the effort to stop smoking in the periconceptional will be beneficial for their baby.
“Stopping smoking can ameliorate these detrimental effects.”
This could help change behaviour among smoking mothers, which he said had hardly changed in Britain over the last decade.
Prof Macklon explained that smoking during pregnancy “affects the transportation of nutrients, especially oxygen, across the placenta”.
It was also “reasonable to assume” that some of the 4,000 or so toxins in cigarettes were harmful to foetuses.

Byram weighs smoking limits

Customers at Reed Pierce's Sportsman's Grill often enjoy a cigarette with their drink and burger.

But if Byram joins the list of Mississippi cities that make public buildings smoke-free, "we're going to have to adjust to it, and try and make it work," said Ronnie Pierce, who co-owns the popular Siwell Road restaurant.

Byram is exploring a no-smoking ordinance that was introduced to residents during a 7 p.m. public hearing Thursday at Byram City Hall.

The proposed ordinance could mirror a number of metro-area communities, said City Clerk Angela Richburg. Such an ordinance could "say there is no smoking in public areas and at government property, within 25 feet of the doors," she said. "It's pretty standard to Clinton, Flowood and some of the other areas."

Mayor Nick Tremonte said the city wants to hear from all concerned. "We'll try to put together one that's right down the middle," he told about 30 people at the hearing. City leaders will hold a second public hearing after putting together a draft ordinance, he said.

Both smokers and non-smokers let aldermen know their positions.

"I'm a smoker. I smoke in my business," said resident Adrienne Hamby. "There are places in Byram where I'd like to have a cigarette and a drink.

"No offense, but I don't think you guys should take the vote on this. It should be up to the business' discretion."

Others were just as impassioned. "You'd better think long and hard about what you're standing up for," said Roany McClellan, who watched his mother, a smoker, succumb to cancer. "I've had 40-plus years of second-hand smoke. I could be the next one diagnosed."

Alderwoman Theresa Marble said she hasn't made up her mind on the ordinance, but empathizes with those who try but fail to quit the smoking habit.

"Long story short, I watched my daddy die of emphysema," Marble said. "It was very cruel. It broke my heart.

"Whatever decision we make, we need to make it for the benefit of the community, and not for a select few. Personally, I'd like to see cigarettes banned from the face of the earth."

Pierce said his restaurant has a patio area where patrons smoke. If an ordinance prohibited smoking a certain distance from a door or wall, he said, it would cause a problem.

If the city were to adopt an ordinance, Richburg said, it would allow leaders to apply for grant funding from entities that require cities to be smoke-free.

"By no means have we dug down and decided anything. Our aldermen didn't want to do a lot of work on this until they speak to the public and get their feelings on the issue," Richburg said.

Dozens of cities statewide are smoke-free, including Jackson, Flora, Brandon, Flowood, Clinton, Ridgeland, Madison and Pearl in the metro area.

Mike Blaine, owner and manager of the Swinging Bridge Fish House on Holiday Lane behind Capitol Body Shop, said his restaurant prohibits smoking inside.

But patrons often smoke on the restaurant's wrap-around porch, he said. "When it's outside, it ain't got nothing to do with the inside," he said.

Said Pierce: "It's definitely going to be upsetting to my customers, but we have good enough food, service, and a good, all-around establishment that I think we can keep them. They may quit me for a while, but at some point, they'll come back."

Smoking bans on the rise but more needed: WHO

Anti-smoking measures have become so widespread that they now affect some 3.8 billion people -- just over half the world's population, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
But the WHO called for more action, warning that tobacco use could kill a billion people or more over the course of the 21st century "unless urgent action is taken."
"If current trends continue, by 2030 tobacco will kill more than eight million people worldwide each year, with 80 percent of these premature deaths among people living in low- and middle-income countries," it added.
The WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic was launched in Uruguay as the health body sought to highlight the country's legislation against smoking that now faces a lawsuit by tobacco giant Philip Morris.
"The tobacco epidemic continues to expand because of ongoing tobacco industry marketing, population growth in countries where tobacco use is increasing, and the extreme addictiveness of tobacco that makes it difficult for people to stop smoking once they start," said Ala Alwan, WHO assistant director-general for noncommunicable diseases and mental health.
He noted that tobacco remains the biggest cause of preventable death worldwide, killing nearly six million people and costing hundreds of billions of dollars in economic damage each year.
Health warnings on cigarette packs protect more than a billion people in 19 countries, almost double the figures over the past two years, according to the report.
It said graphic ads were more effective than those only containing text, especially in countries with low literacy rates, and recommended that images be changed periodically to ensure they have an impact.
The size of the warning also has an effect, and the WHO noted that Uruguay had the largest images on cigarette packs, covering 80 percent of the surface, followed by Mexico (65 percent) and Mauritius (also 65 percent).
In Canada, the first country to introduce large health warnings on cigarette packs in 2001, three out of 10 former smokers said they were motivated to quit by the labels while a quarter said they helped them quit, according to the report.
Similar trends were also noted in Australia, Brazil, Singapore and Thailand.
Tobacco advertising and sponsorship, a favorite target of critics, saw comprehensive bans passed in Chad, Colombia and Syria between 2008 and 2010. And nearly 28 percent of the world's population -- 1.9 billion people in 23 countries -- are now exposed to national anti-smoking campaigns.
Some 425 million people in 19 countries -- six percent of the world's population -- are now "now fully protected against tobacco industry marketing tactics," 80 million more than in 2008, according to the WHO report.
"The number of people now protected by tobacco control measures is growing at a remarkable pace," said Alwan.
He attributed the progress to the growing impact of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Entered into force in February 2005, the treaty has 168 signatories and 174 parties.
While 101 countries ban tobacco print, television or radio advertising, both direct or indirect, the WHO considers the number to still be insufficient, noting that 74 countries (38 percent) have no or minimal restrictions on advertising.

Smoking reduces need for joint replacement

A study from the University of Adelaide has found men who smoke are less likely to need hip and knee replacements as they get older.

The surprising findings are published in the international journal Arthritis and Rheumatism.

While smoking is linked to many health problems, including lung cancer and heart disease, the study found long-term male smokers were less vulnerable to osteoarthritis.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide studied the health records of 11,000 men aged between 65 and 83.

They found men who had smoked for more than 48 years were 51 per cent less likely to have total joint replacements such as hip or knee than men who had never smoked.

Principal investigator Professor Philip Ryan and PhD student George Mnatzaganian said the findings do not endorse smoking as it is linked to a range of serious diseases which cause premature death.

"This study shows that further research is needed to understand why smoking appears to offer protection against osteoarthritis," Professor Ryan said.

"Other studies have drawn links between smoking and increases in cartilage volume, and more work needs to be done in this area."

The researchers found men who were overweight and very active - especially those in the 70-74 age groups - were also more likely to require hip and knee replacements.

According to the scientists, this is not the only study to demonstrate a link between smoking and decreased risk of osteoarthritis.

But it is the first to report a strong, inverse relationship between how long the patient smoked and risk of total joint replacement.

Knee and hip replacements are among the most common elective surgeries performed in Australia.

"Despite these findings, the fact remains that any possible beneficial effect of smoking on osteoarthritis is far outweighed by other health risks," Professor Ryan said.

Obesity Fills In for Smoking as Major Killer

Obesity is a central factor in mortality among women who have never smoked, especially those in lower social classes, researchers reported.

Class differences in who smokes have been shown to increase social inequalities in all-cause mortality, according to Carole Hart, PhD, of the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland, and colleagues.

But in a long-running cohort study among women who had never smoked, obesity stepped up to the plate as a cause of inequalities in mortality, Hart and colleagues reported online in BMJ.

The finding comes from a large cohort study started in the 1970s in the neighboring Scottish towns of Paisley and Renfrew, which enrolled more than 15,400 people ages 45 through 64 at the time.

As might be expected, people who had never smoked had much better survival rates than smokers, regardless of their social position, and women who had never smoked had the best survival rates in the cohort, Hart and colleagues reported.

But after 28 years of follow-up, they noted, age-adjusted survival rates for women who had never smoked were 65% in the highest occupational class and 56% for those in the lowest, suggesting some other factors were creating social inequalities in the risk of death.

To clarify the issue, they analyzed outcomes for 3,613 women who had never smoked, stratifying them by occupation and by body mass index.

Occupationally, the women were placed into four groups – professionals and managers, nonmanual skilled occupations such as office workers, manual skilled occupations such as bricklayers, and semi- and unskilled workers.

Those in lower occupational groups, the researchers found, were shorter and had poorer lung function, higher systolic blood pressure, and a higher body mass index than women in higher classes. All the trends were significant at P<0.001, they reported.

Overall, 43% of the women were overweight, 14% were moderately obese, and 5% severely obese, Hart and colleagues reported, and obesity rates were higher in lower occupational classes.

As well, overweight and obesity was much higher – regardless of social class – among the nonsmokers than among the women in the full cohort who smoked.

For instance, among the professionals and managers, 40.3% of never-smokers were overweight, compared with 29% among the smokers in the same occupational group.

The finding suggests a masking effect of smoking, the researchers noted.

Over the 28 years of follow-up, Hart and colleagues reported, 1,796 of the 3,613 never-smokers died, with 51% of deaths due to cardiovascular disease and 27% owing to cancer (table 3).

Overall, 39% of the professionals and managers died, as well as 47% of the nonmanual skilled workers, 56% of manual skilled workers, and 54% of the semi- and unskilled workers.

Walker won't repeal smoking ban

Nearly one year since Wisconsin went smoke free, Governor Scott Walker reversed policy and announced he wants the state to stay that way.

The workplace smoking ban took effect July 5, 2010.

Despite the governor's backing, it's still drawing mixed reaction.

"Being non-smoking is a great thing," Corey Bringman with Sabre Lanes, bowling alley said. "You get kids involved, you obviously don't have to worry about your health as much here at work, to me that's the best thing."

The bowling alley says it didn't see a drop in business with the change, so it welcomes the still contentious ban. Plus, the lack of smoke leaves its facilities cleaner.

"Parents are a lot more apt to bring their kids in," Bringman added.

Walker says it's stories like that, that have him re-thinking the ban.

In a Thursday statement, he said, "although I did not support the original smoking ban, after listening to people across the state it is clear to me that it works, therefore I will not support a repeal."

During his campaign, Walker opposed the ban.

"I don't think the government should be involved in telling small businesses what they should or shouldn't do," he said in July, 2010.

Employees at Kaukauna's Lazy Dog are disappointed Walker changed his mind.

"It's hurting our business, yes, yes, it is and people have their rights so I feel they should be able to smoke if they want to," waitress Peggy Vancamp said.

She says the bar just installed a covered outdoor smoking area to recapture that business, but it's been tough, especially at the lunch hour.

While it's clear opinions on the ban remain mixed, compliance hasn't been an issue.

According to the Department of Health Services, just one percent of businesses have been reported for violations.

Recent polls, suggest support for the ban have gradually increased.

The American Cancer society says 75 percent of Wisconsinites now back the ban.

As a non-smoker, Vancamp sees both sides.

"To myself, I'm glad it's out, but I know a lot of people don't like it," she said.

Though Walker reacted to the ban on Thursday, the law was passed under former Governor Jim Doyle.

At the time, Democrats controlled both the Senate and the Assembly.

P-Noy whipping boy for anti-smoking advocates

President Aquino has become a poster boy for anti-smoking advocates here.
The anti-smoking campaigners, mostly students from Negros Oriental State University and the Foundation University, paraded around the city on Wednesday to mark the end of World No Tobacco Month while holding tarpaulins that bore a photo of the President holding a cigarette.
The caption read, “What Pnoy can’t do, we can do. Stop Smoking.”
Dr. Aparicio Mequi, dean of the Foundation University graduate school, said the message of the day was to tell everyone, without exception, even President Aquino, that smoking is not good for one’s health.
“If US President Obama, who was a smoker, quit smoking when he became President, we should likewise remind President Aquino to stop smoking and in the process protect his health as well as the vote of those people who put him into the highest level of leadership in our country,” Mequi said.
The President, who has been on the receiving end of a lot of unsolicited advice against smoking, had told reporters that he would not yet quit smoking but he promised not to smoke in public.
Last month, the participants in the Tobacco Control Summit 2011 organized by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance Philippines (FCAP) and the Philippine College of Chest Physicians were in calling on Mr. Aquino to stop smoking and lead the Philippines to become a tobacco-free country.

Mizoram Launches 'No Smoking' Campaign

Concerned with the high incidence of cancer and tobacco related diseases, the Mizoram government has launched a programme to become a "smoking-free" state.

"No person henceforth would be allowed to smoke in open places or in front of a non-smoker. Smoking had already banned in the premises of government offices, educational institutions and health centres across Mizoram," Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla said late Saturday after launching the "Smoke Free Mizoram" programme.

According to state government records, Mizoram topped the country eight years ago in the consumption of tobacco.

The chief minister's wife Lal Riliani, president of the Mizoram chapter of the Indian Society of Tobacco Health, said that more than 50 percent of cancer cases among Mizos were caused by tobacco.

"The state government is giving its all out support to the anti-tobacco organisations and activists to strictly enforce the Control of Tobacco Products Act (CTPA) in the state," Lal Riliani said.

"Few activists had started an anti-tobacco campaign in Mizoram around 20 years back. During those days, the anti-tobacco activists were laughed upon and people used to mock them. Now, their tireless efforts have begun producing positive results," she added.

Mizos are traditionally heavy smokers of different types of tobacco. The latest survey, conducted in 2009, revealed that 55 percent of the state's population were smokers.

"The survey revealed that as much as 73.1 percent of the smokers wanted to quit smoking as they felt that smoking is the cause of many diseases, including cancer," said Jane R. Ralte, state nodal officer-cum-project officer of Mizoram State Tobacco Control Society (MSTCS).

At least 84.2 percent people admitted that their expenditure on tobacco use was a financial burden, the survey said.