Tobacco.org

• ARMSTRONG: The Tobacco Wars, Continued  

But a campaign funded by tobacco companies is spending millions on ads to mislead Californians about this life-saving initiative. Why? Prop 29 will add $1 to the cost of every pack of cigarettes sold in California, a state that currently ranks 33rd in the nation on the tobacco tax scale. So great is the power of the lobbyists and so deep are the campaign coffers that every bill or ballot initiative seeking to raise the cost of tobacco has been defeated since the last successful hike in 1988. Even though only 12 percent of Californians smoke. . . .

I also support Prop 29 because I resent the tobacco industry’s ability to influence public policy in their favor – to the detriment of Californians and their state economy – over and over again. . . .

we believe that California voters will see through the tobacco industry interference being doled out in 30-second increments on their televisions day and night between now and June 5th.

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MAYER: Need your YES vote on deceptive Proposition 29 

City alderman accused of tossing lit cigarette 

Rapid City alderman Jordan Mason was ordered to pay $66 last week after he was ticketed by police for throwing a lit cigarette out of his car window in late March, when fire conditions were extreme throughout the Black Hills.

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• A call to arms for a class war, from the top down 

Two months before he was nominated for the Supreme Court, Lewis F. Powell Jr. penned a confidential memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calling for an aggressive counterattack by business against the progressive ideology that had gripped the nation.

Lewis F. Powell's 1971 memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce --- "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" -- may or may not have been the first shot fired in the nation's late-20th-century right-wing revolution. But from the document's title to its ominous conclusion -- "Business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late" -- it was a literal call to the political arms that have subsequently driven the nation's devolution from democracy to oligarchy. . . .

In a brief introduction to the document itself, the Primary Sources website declares, "The memo is credited with inspiring the founding of many conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute."

In an October 2011 speech at Public Citizens' 40th anniversary gala in New York City, journalist Bill Moyers pinpointed its submission as the moment today's ruling oligarchy began taking form. An excerpt titled "How Wall Street Occupied America" was published in the Nov. 2, 2011, issue of The Nation.

"The rise of the money power in our time goes back 40 years," he said. "We can pinpoint the date. On Aug. 23, 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell -- a board member of the death-dealing tobacco giant Philip Morris and a future justice of the Supreme Court -- released a confidential memorandum for his friends at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We look back on it now as a call to arms for class war waged from the top down." . . .

Schmitt credited the Alliance for Justice's 1993 report "Justice for Sale" with reviving interest in the Powell Memo. He termed the report "a superb and still-relevant analysis of the use of corporate and right-wing foundation funds to reshape the legal academy, to introduce judges to 'law and economics' dogma, to promote tort reform and to build right-wing public-interest law firms." . . .

Still, Schmitt said, the Powell Memo has been "routinely invoked as the blueprint for virtually all of the conservative intellectual infrastructure built in the 1970s and 1980s - 'a memo that changed the course of history,' in the words of one analysis of the anti-environmental movement, 'the attack memo that changed America,' in another account." "The memo is credited with inspiring the founding of many conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute."

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• New York City Council Introduces Bill Mandating Smoking-Policy Disclosure  

A New York City bill requiring that landlords, including co-op boards and condo associations, disclose their anti-smoking policies to residents and prospective renters and buyers was introduced at an April 18 City Council meeting and forwarded to the Committee on Housing and Buildings for discussion.

The bill, Intro. 0833-2012, was not placed on the committee's agenda either for its meeting yesterday (April 30) nor its meeting tomorrow (May 2). Committee chairperson Erik Martin Dilan (D-Brooklyn) is the bill's chief sponsor, with five Council co-sponsors, all by request of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"There are no hearings scheduled as of yet," his spokesperson told Habitat. "Usually there's some consultation between the chair of a committee and the speaker's office," he said, referring City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. "He does have some concerns about the bill that probably will be addressed in the coming months."

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A look at 2 challenges to Michigan smoking ban 

Smokeless Tobacco Study Weighed By Kansas Lawmakers In R.J. Reynolds-Backed Resolution 

• Cigar politics for Staten Island State Sen. Andrew Lanza 

State Sen. Andrew Lanza's credibility on future anti-tobacco legislation might be up in smoke after a good-government group revealed the Staten Island Republican spent $3,830 in campaign cash over three years on cigars for friends, supporters and constituents, giving renewed credence to that old-time image of cigar-chomping Albany pols in smoked-filled rooms.

In Lanza's case, he said the stogies were doled out as freebies to $250-a-head donors at his annual golf outing fund-raisers at the Richmond County Country Club.

But at least he shopped local: Lanza dropped the big bucks at Carmine's Cigars, Dongan Hills.

The New York Public Interest Research Group found Lanza and other lawmakers statewide have spent $44,919 on tobacco-related products like cigars since 2008.

Lanza defended the practice, telling the Advance that as the son of a cop and homemaker, he didn't have the personal wealth to throw around during campaign season and needed to look for different ways to raise money and thank supporters. . . .

"There is a difference from inhaling a pack or more of cigarettes a day to a couple of cigars a year," said Lanza.

Still, Lanza said he intends to continue to advocate against smoking -- like he did in 2010 when he said he was in favor of banning smoking in cars if there were passengers younger than 14.

"At golf outings," said Lanza, "we're all adults."

Fellow Republican lawmaker Assemblyman Lou Tobacco, who crusades against smoking, side-stepped a question about Lanza's cigar politics.

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Vote on cigarette tax delayed  

The San Luis Obispo County Health Commission has postponed a decision on whether to endorse a June ballot measure that would increase cigarette taxes until it receives more information.

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• Smokeless Tobacco Study Weighed By Kansas Lawmakers In R.J. Reynolds-Backed Resolution 

Kansas lawmakers are considering a resolution that would require state health officials to conduct a study about the health effects of smokeless tobacco, potentially allowing the state to market smokeless tobacco as a healthier alternative to cigarette smoking.

The Federal and State Affairs Committee of Kansas' House of Representatives has been debating a measure that would require the state's Department of Health and Environment to conduct a study of the health effects of using smokeless tobacco -- commonly known as chewing tobacco -- to determine if it is safer than cigarette smoking.

One goal of the resolution is for the state health department to ultimately make a recommendation to the legislature as to whether Kansas should promote smokeless tobacco over cigarette smoking. The Kansas proposal follows the passage of recent similar resolutions in Nebraska, Indiana and Kentucky -- all backed by R.J. Reynolds.

Richard J. Smith, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, confirmed that his company has been encouraging the state-based studies. Such studies are in keeping with the company's "tobacco harm reduction" strategy, he told HuffPost. R.J. Reynolds has found scientific evidence showing that chewing tobacco does not pose the same health risks as cigarette smoking, he said.

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Smokers could be paying $1 more per pack  

• State lawmakers use cigars to lure in funds 

State lawmakers still love a good cigar — especially when it helps them raise money.

Legislators and other candidates for state offices have spent more than $44,919 on cigars and other-tobacco-related items since 2008, according to a study of campaign records provided to the Daily News by the New York Public Interest Research Group.

The cigars were often used as gifts for fat-cat donors at cash bashes.

“The practice of politicians and donors meeting in smoke-filled rooms is apparently alive and well in New York,” said NYPIRG’s Bill Mahoney.

Republicans were easily the biggest cigar spenders, with more than a half-dozen GOP candidates and campaign organizations spending $500 or more on tobacco-related products.

The tobacco aficionados included Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island), who spent more than $3,830 at Carmine’s Cigars on Staten Island during the past three years.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau County) spent $1,333 at Habana Premium Cigars in Albany. And the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, which Skelos controls, spent more than $6,000 at the same shop.

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Senator Who Sought Indian Tobacco-Tax Gets 7 Years on Corruption Charges 

A former state senator who relentlessly attacked the Seneca Nation of Indians and other indigenous communities for selling tax-free cigarettes on Indian reservations has been sentenced to seven years in prisons on corruption charges.

Carl Kruger, an influential state senator from Brooklyn, was sentenced by a federal court judge in New York on April 26, the New York Times reported. Kruger resigned his office in disgrace after pleading guilty last December to corruption charges, including bribery schemes in which he accepted nearly half a million dollars in exchange for taking official action as a senator.

The former state senator reached notoriety in Indian country in New York in 2010 for inserting himself into the judicial process over the state’s controversial plan to force American Indian businesses to collect state taxes on cigarettes they sell on sovereign Indian land to non-Indian customers. . . .

None of the media reports on Kruger’s sentencing mention whether the former senator will be required to pay taxes on the roughly half-a-million dollars in bribes that he accepted.

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Letter: Don't believe tobacco companies  

Cigarette tax hike could go to voters