Smoking

http://www.ryomag.com/?p=431

Clearing The Air: Smoking bans have a new powerful foe………labor unions

This time the special interest funded smoking ban activists (Nicoderm
marketing department) may have met their match.

Smoking Ban at Caterpillar Fires up Unions (story link)

Two unions have filed unfair labor practice charges against

One has to wonder. My neighborhood is filled with smoke from fireworks. I think this year is worse than before and has even made it into our house. Will the smoke nazis stand up and protect us innocents from secondhand fireworks smoke, which unlike smoking is actually illegal?

Ohio Senator Bill Seitz will be on Eye on Toledo tonight to talk about the pro business smoking amendment - SB 346. It will be mosh pit Friday and you can call with what you want to hear or what concerns you. Call in at 419-240-1370 or 1-866-321-1370. Senator Seitz is one of my favorite Senators in the General Assembly.

BOSTON - A Massachusetts study suggests that restaurant smoking bans may play a big role in persuading teens not to become smokers. Youths who lived in towns with strict bans were 40 percent less likely to become regular smokers than those in communities with no bans or weak ones, the researchers reported in the May issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

ST CHARLES — There will be no indoor smoking at a large convention for pipe smokers in Illinois.

A new Illinois law bans smoking in public places. That's taken some of the steam out of this weekend's Chicagoland International Pipe & Tobacciana Show in St. Charles.

COLUMBUS — The Ohio House wants to shut down agency that has sued the state to keep its anti-smoking program going. more from the AP story and link to Blade's Sunday story on cost to enforce the ban

I'll be blowing smoke rings soon -- VERY SOON.

39 Whirlpool workers suspended over smoking lies

A Whirlpool Corp. factory in Evansville, Indiana, has suspended 39 workers who signed insurance paperwork claiming they don't use tobacco and then were seen smoking or chewing tobacco on company property. Now, some could be fired for lying, company spokeswoman Debby Castrale said.

New York City residents are growing obese at a rate nearly three times that of other Americans, prompting some who cited a link between weight gain and smoking cessation to question whether the city's crackdown on smoking may have had an unexpected result.

NORTH ROYALTON, Ohio -- Some people in North Royalton are fuming over a proposed ban on outdoor smoking.

The proposed law would make it illegal to smoke in parks, fields, parking lots and outdoor seating areas.

Council members said the outdoor ban is in response to complaints about people smoking around children during youth sports games.

PARIS (AFP) - A ban on smoking in American bars has caused the number of accidents from drunken driving to surge, researchers have discovered.

US jurisdictions with a smoking ban have seen, on average, a nearly 12-percent rise in the number of drink-related accidents at the wheel, they say in a study released on Wednesday.

"Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation."

It has come to this. I believe it's time to stock up on ammunition, all of manking has gone completely mad.
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http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/ate/sexandrelationships/femalesexproblems/200...

I found this, not my words - but it sounded interesting.

Doesn't it seem a bit odd that the economy dived with smoking bans and tax hikes as they spread. The mortgage crunch (loan problem) is actually at 30% of the mortgage problems (per a news report here).

Minnesota bars are once again allowing smoking by calling themselves theaters. A quirk of the Minnesota smoking ban is that it allows actors on stage to smoke. Hey, presto! We're all actors on the stage of life, right? As the immortal bard said, all the world's a stage, and we are all players upon this earth.

Kansas' attempts to reverse smoking ban. If they win, it will become Case Law for other states to follow.

Here's a little something a bar owner has put together to help in their fight against a smoking ban in
Kansas. This man is not new to smoking ban fights (or other states bans) & he's done his homework. His (and his lawyers) contact information is at
the end.

NEW COURT ARGUMENTS:

I demand a re-vote on Issue 5 - Discrepancy in Votes. I'm not surprised at all by what this person found. She's waiting for a reply from her letter asking for an explanation. She has only searched two counties in Ohio so far - but if the results are even remotely similar to these countys, then it remains to be seen whether the "voters have spoken' about the state wide smoking ban in Ohio.

I have to wonder WHY? I assume they smoke for the same reasons non-gays smoke (only perhaps more so, since they deal with intolerance more than most do) - stress, calming effect, pleasure, etc. To spend a crazy amount of money on something like this for to get obvious results is aburd. One big step would be to be more tolerant & understanding of gays.

http://tinyurl.com/2wxo5c

For some reason Ann Coulter came to mind. I looked at a few pictures of the Right's pin-up girl, and saw that she smokes. I began to get some images in my prurient mind, and realized that she is a good image for the Right: a smoking ashtray. Out of date, and not much pleasure. Good to the last puff?

http://tinyurl. com/ynnvv6

Man 'killed by anti smoking drug'
By Lucy Thornton 21/01/2008

A grieving wife claims her husband killed himself after taking a new
anti-smoking drug.

Dad-of-two Wayne Marshall, 36, was found hanging shortly after
finishing a 13-week course of Champix.

Wife Emma, 28, said: "He went downhill so quickly. He stopped going

Secondhand Smoke Damages Lungs, MRIs Show

Here's a novel way to resolve the office conflict between smokers and non-smokers: fire
the non-smokers. Companies do it to smokers. Is turn-about fair play?

The recent raid of Platinum Showgirls by three undercover police officers and a health department inspector, then by "a half dozen uniformed police officers", is a shocking waste of Toledo's stretched police resources. What was the purpose of the raid? Drugs, guns, white slavery, felony crime? No, they were there to bust smokers!

http://www.thedailyworld.com/articles/2007/12/21/local_news/02news.txt

This shit is also going on in Michigan and Illinois, I've been told.

AP - LONDON — The newest member of Led Zeppelin was given the honor of kicking off the band's reunion Monday night, pounding out the beat before the surviving founders joined in on a near-perfect "Good Times Bad Times."
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071210/ART10/712...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071128/D8T6DUO80.html

"NEW YORK (AP) - The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., which has been under intense pressure from anti-smoking groups and members of Congress over print ads for its cigarettes, said Tuesday it would not advertise its brands in newspapers or consumer magazines next year...."