Tobacco.org

No Smoking Ban at Bluesfest Right Now  

Taylor Momsen sits on her tourbus puffing away on a cigarette 

'Stunning' nude shot of Madonna smoking expected to fetch £5,000 at auction  

An 'absolutely stunning' photograph of Madonna posing naked on a bed while smoking a cigarette has emerged for sale.

The black and white shot, taken in 1990, shows the singer reclining on a bed with her breasts exposed and just a white sheet covering her bottom half.

Madonna, who has bleached blonde hair and dark eye make-up in the picture, is seen holding a cigarette to her pouting lips, adopting a sexy, sultry pose.

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Levon Helm, Drummer in the Band, Dies at 71 

Levon Helm, who helped forge a deep-rooted American music as the drummer and singer for the Band, , died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71 and lived in Woodstock, N.Y.

His death, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was from complications of cancer, said a spokeswoman for Vanguard Records, for which he had recorded several albums. . . .

Mr. Helm, a heavy smoker, contracted throat cancer in the late 1990s, and for months he could not speak above a whisper. A tumor was removed from his vocal cords, and he underwent 28 radiation treatments. Medical bills threatened him with the loss of his home. Partly to raise money, in 2004 he began putting on concerts, called Midnight Rambles, at his barn: leisurely house parties with unannounced guest stars, featuring a band of his own that delved into old and new Americana as well as the Band catalog.

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Cheryl Cole Quitting Smoking To Save Her Voice  

Cheryl Cole’s battle to quit ciggies  

Assi smoking Shisha with wife  

• Madonna video undoing of New York’s anti-tobacco education?  

Yet, Madonna’s new music video, Girl Gone Wild, most likely will strike New York’s students as just a little sexier than their high school Health Education teacher displaying photos of blackened lungs at the front of the classroom.

The video, uploaded to YouTube on the official Madonna channel March 21 was a preview of her new album M.D.M.A. that was released today.

In the overtly erotic video, a leather-clad Madonna deeply inhales from a cigarette and slowly releases a cloud of smoke. The image of smoke flowing from her mouth is repeated several times in the four minute video.

The video was flagged by YouTube as containing content that may be inappropriate for children and requires viewers to confirm they are of majority age although there is nothing preventing children from clicking through to the video.

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• Madonna's Underage Daughter Lourdes Caught Smoking!  

Madonna in Girl Gone Wild: Bondage, cigarettes and gay kisses  

Smoking: Madonna showcases this damaging habit in the teaser for her new video to single Girl Gone Wild . . .

It's not a good look on her, and neither is the cigarette hanging out of her mouth

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Efya's Cigarette Smoking Saga: Akosua Agyapong Adviced To First Talk To Her Sister 

Musician cum dancer Akosua Agyapong has come under public flak for hopping from one radio station to another insisting that she will stop afro-eclectic singer Efya from smoking.

Efya recently confirmed her cigarette smoking status to the Ghanaian media and Akosua Agyapong shortly after, also went public that she would stop Efya from smoking because the latter was her 'small girl'. Interestingly, when the issue was raised on Peace FM's Entertainment Review last Saturday and Akosua was put on the spot, it came to light that she and Efya were not that close and had actually met only twice. Akosua after going public on Efya's smoking issue, said she was yet to speak to Efya over the matter and did not even have her contact number, let alone book an appointment with her.

Persons who called in criticized Akosua for the way she went about the sensitive issue, insisting she should have handled it on the quiet if indeed she meant well for Efya. Social network sites including facebook and twitter have since then become a platform for discussing the issue as some called on Akosua to first talk to her sister, Stephanie Benson, to dress more 'decently' and act as a role model before advising Efya to quit smoking.

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• Akosua Agyepong vows to let Efya quit smoking 

Legendary songstress and dancer Akosua Agyepong has taken a swipe at musician Efya's smoking habits vowing to let her quit smoking to save her image and that of her career.

Akosua Agyepong was speaking on XFM after Efya disclosed in an interview with Hitz Entertainment News that contrary to speculations, she does not do drugs but only smokes cigarette.

In that interview Efya said, "I don't know why people say I do drugs, nobody out there who has said that I do drugs has ever seen me do it. I can swear now and tell you that because I don't do drugs. I smoke cigarettes, I do that you see me doing it when I'm out it's my thing but nobody can judge me on that but the thing is I don't do drugs."

But Akosua, who was not impressed with Efya's comments, vowed that, "If Efya says she doesn't take in drugs but she smokes, then she has a bone to pick with her because she is my small girl and I really have to stop her because for 22 years, nobody can tell me that Akosua I have even seen you drink, let alone smoke."

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• Singer Feng Fei-fei's death puts spotlight on lung cancer 

The link between lung cancer and non-smokers has come under the spotlight with the recent death of renowned Taiwanese singer Fong Fei-fei.

The 58-year-old died from the disease last month but according to Mr Ken Lim, the director of Hype Records which organised her last concert in Singapore in 2010, the singer led a healthy lifestyle and 'did not smoke'.

Research in recent years has shown that abstinence from smoking is no immunity from lung cancer.

In the United States, non-smokers make up an estimated 10 per cent or 17,000 of all lung cancer cases each year. In Singapore, non-smokers constitute 30 per cent of the total lung cancer cases each year, said Dr Daniel Tan, associate consultant at the Department of Medical Oncology at the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS).

According to statistics from the National Registry of Diseases office, 6,119 people were diagnosed with lung cancer from 2006 to 2010.

Doctors used to attribute non-smokers getting the disease to passive smoking or exposure to cooking fumes, said Dr Tan.

But researchers later discovered an association of a specific genetic mutation with lung cancer in non-smokers.

'It now seems that in addition to environmental factors, mutations in a gene called the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) play a significant role in the development of lung cancer,' he said.

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Singer Feng Fei-fei's death puts spotlight on lung cancer ($$) 

The link between lung cancer and non-smokers has come under the spotlight with the recent death of renowned Taiwanese singer Fong Fei-fei.

The 58-year-old died from the disease last month but according to Mr Ken Lim, the director of Hype Records which organised her last concert in Singapore in 2010, the singer led a healthy lifestyle and 'did not smoke'.

Research in recent years has shown that abstinence from smoking is no immunity from lung cancer.

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Tobacco Capitalism: Growers, Migrant Workers, and the Changing Face of a Global Industry 

Tobacco Capitalism tells the story of the people who live and work on U.S. tobacco farms at a time when the global tobacco industry is undergoing profound changes. Against the backdrop of the antitobacco movement, the globalization and industrialization of agriculture, and intense debates over immigration, Peter Benson draws on years of field research to examine the moral and financial struggles of growers, the difficult conditions that affect Mexican migrant workers, and the complex politics of citizenship and economic decline in communities dependent on this most harmful commodity.

Benson tracks the development of tobacco farming since the plantation slavery period and the formation of a powerful tobacco industry presence in North Carolina. In recent decades, tobacco companies that sent farms into crisis by aggressively switching to cheaper foreign leaf have coached growers to blame the state, public health, and aggrieved racial minorities for financial hardship and feelings of vilification. Economic globalization has exacerbated social and racial tensions in North Carolina, but the corporations that benefit have rarely been considered a key cause of harm and instability, and have now adopted social-responsibility platforms to elide liability for smoking disease. Parsing the nuances of history, power, and politics in rural America, Benson explores the cultural and ethical ambiguities of tobacco farming and offers concrete recommendations for the tobacco-control movement in the United States and worldwide.

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