“Tobacco” on The Daily Caller

Recently, Alan, a friend on my Facebook fan page for my book, The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State, asked me: “…what’s your take on the report from the surgeon general, Thursday, that only one cigarette kills millions of people and causes global warming and makes kittens cry?” Well, my take on that is this: what the new, portly surgeon general, Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, reported, if not as Alan described it, is also absurd, and she thinks people will believe it because she is, after all, a doctor and a government official. Her absurd report is this: even only brief exposure to secondhand smoke causes really bad health problems. (more)

— “It is unlikely that House Republicans will take the vote to repeal the health care law, shrug their shoulders when it doesn’t reach the Senate, and move on,” writes The Daily Caller’s Chris Moody. “We aren’t going to just check the box off and say that we had one vote and we’re going to move on to other topics,” Rep. Michele Bachmann said Tuesday. Rep. Steve King echoed Bachmann’s sentiments, saying, “This is going to be a debate that goes on not just today and tomorrow and next week. It’s going to go on for the next year or two. It’s probably going to go on until we elect a president that will sign a final repeal of Obamacare. So this is an ongoing debate.” The GOP will fight, just like the Spartans fought at Thermopylae, until they are all dead of old age/exasperation, or until Americans return both the legislative branch and the executive branch to the second worst party in the country. In the meantime, House Republicans will build their own health care bill, starting with the key accomplishment of Obamacare: “A measure to restrict insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions.” (more)

Here’s a word of advice to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators deciding this week whether or not to ban menthol cigarettes: Cool it. If the FDA sows this wind, I fear we will reap the whirlwind. (more)

(MADRID) — The tapas bar — the noisy and bustling Spanish success story that combined delicious morsels with good wine and, often, an ever-present cigarette — is now smoke-free. So are restaurants, discos, casinos, airports and even some outdoor spaces. (more)

As we begin a new year, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) would first like to try and slay the demons and hobgoblins of the past year. We do this each New Year’s Eve by making a list of the top unfounded health scares of the outgoing year. These bouts of hysteria are prompted by many different things. But what they have in common is that there’s no scientific evidence to back up the alarms being sounded. (more)

Let’s all thank Surgeon General Regina Benjamin for demonstrating beyond all doubt last week that “nannyism” is more dangerous than smoking. (more)

In a groundbreaking decision, a Suffolk Superior Court jury yesterday found a tobacco company liable for the death of a Roxbury woman who said that, at age 9, she received free samples of Newport cigarettes in a targeted marketing campaign. (more)

WASHINGTON — More U.S. teens may be smoking marijuana than cigarettes but fewer are binge-drinking, federal health officials said Tuesday. (more)

Even brief exposure to tobacco smoke causes immediate harm to the body, damaging cells and inflaming tissue in ways that can lead to serious illness and death, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s new report on tobacco, the first such report in four years. (more)

WASHINGTON — An appeals court is saying the Food and Drug Administration cannot stop imports of electronic cigarettes. (more)

VIRGINIA BEACH — Police in Virginia Beach are trying to identify a man suspected of stealing more than $300 worth of cigarettes from a convenience store. (more)

Recently, it was announced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that the Food and Drug Administration, which now regulates tobacco, will require all cigarette packages to carry scary warning labels depicting the evils of tobacco use, complete with gruesome photos of a cancerous lung, a man smoking a cigarette through a tracheotomy tube, and a corpse. (more)

Second-hand smoke globally kills more than 600,000 people each year, accounting for 1% of all deaths worldwide, according to a new study. (more)

This month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed a new strategy to combat smoking by inundating smokers with graphic images depicting the repercussions of smoking on cigarette packaging. (more)

It’s going to be harder to feel “alive with pleasure” with a photo of an emaciated man, dying of cancer, staring back at you from your cigarette package. (more)

In the first major change to cigarette packaging in a quarter-century, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it will require graphic warning labels that cover half a package’s front and rear and the top 20% of all cigarette ads. (more)

Now that the midterm elections are over, the political climate should begin to be more business-friendly than it has been in recent years because, beginning in January, there will be many new Republican governors and state legislators who should be more favorably disposed to individual rights and freedom than their Democrat predecessors were.  Among the states that will have new Republican governors are Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wisconsin, all of which have draconian indoor smoking bans.  These bans should be either repealed or revised, especially concerning bars, restaurants, and hotel rooms. (more)

The chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health asked the heads of the World Series teams on Monday to ban the use of chewing tobacco on the field and in the dugout during this year’s World Series, which begins Wednesday (more)

Three men posing as agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives kicked their way into a home in Whistler, killed a 31-year-old man and held four others at gunpoint early Wednesday, Prichard police said. (more)

Katherine Heigl is in trouble with the P.C. police. A week after telling David Letterman how she managed to quit smoking by switching to e-cigarettes, the “Life as We Know It” actress is drawing not praise but condemnation from moralistic public health types. (more)