If health officials and Major League Baseball prevail, this might be the last season a professional baseball player will be on the field with a wad of tobacco in his cheek. Health officials from 15 cities — including Seattle — signed a letter last week to Bud Selig, Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner, and Michael Weiner, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, calling for a ban on players and coaches using ... Jump to full article >>

Talks that legislation enforcing plain packaging for tobacco products would bring about a black market are absolute nonsense, says a leading health expert who is welcoming the proposed changes. Professor Mike Daube, deputy chair of the National Preventative Health Taskforce said it is possible to gauge the positive impact of the proposed legislation by the commotion the tobacco industry kicks up. Tobacco giants – as well as the Australian ... Jump to full article >>

Teenagers who use tobacco in Bellefonte could be facing a hefty fine the next time they light up. Borough Council unanimously voted Monday night to approve an ordinance that makes it illegal for anyone younger than 18 to use or possess tobacco, in any form, within the borough limits. That includes cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco and any other product containing tobacco leaf. The ordinance is based on one in place in Hollidaysburg. Bellefo ... Jump to full article >>

The Tobacco Board has agreed to increase the minimum guarantee price by Rs 4 a kg to farmers of F1 Grade from the current Rs 120. This was decided after board Chairman G Kamalavardhana Rao held meetings with representatives of farmers and traders. Farmers of southern light soils in Prakasam district, who have cultivated flue-cured virginia, have been insisting on remunerative price. However, traders were offering only Rs 112.98 a kg as against R ... Jump to full article >>

British American Tobacco Plc (BATS), the maker of Lucky Strikes cigarettes, created a unit that will seek to develop nicotine products for people wanting an alternative to cigarettes as governments aim to reduce smoking. Nicoventures Ltd. plans to develop tobacco-free nicotine products, Kate Matrunola, a spokeswoman for London-based BAT, said today. The unit employs four people and will discuss with regulators what sort of products might work, s ... Jump to full article >>

By 8:30 a.m., amid the procession of sleepy-eyed office workers and addicts from the nearby methadone clinic, Lonnie Loosie plants himself in the middle of the sidewalk on Eighth Avenue in Midtown. Addressing no one in particular, he calls out his one-size-fits-all greeting: “Newports, Newports, packs and loosies.” Rarely does a minute go by without a customer stopping just long enough to pass a dollar bill to Lonnie Loosie, known to the po ... Jump to full article >>

The Assembly Taxation Committee held a hearing Tuesday on AB 333, which calls for an increase on all alcohol and tobacco products. Democratic Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce said proposed increase in sin taxes really isn’t that dramatic. “We’re talking about six cents on a bottle of wine,” said Pierce. No one would even notice that or even a 45 cent hike on high end liquor.” The state hasn’t raised taxes on tobacc ... Jump to full article >>

In his closing argument, Adam Trop reminded the jury that Allen Oliva was a pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, so there was little question that he was addicted to smoking. The addiction had to be a legal cause of Mr. Oliva’s COPD, said Mr. Trop. “Nobody smokes that much without being addicted, and nobody gets the disease without smoking that much. It’s really common sense.” For R.J. Reynolds, Jones Day’s Mark Belasic ... Jump to full article >>

While shifting the focus on ‘smokeless tobacco’, the Centre on Monday said that it would now work on improving the pictorial warnings to curb the use of tobacco. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which focused the most of the anti-tobacco campaign on the issue of smoking, for the first time, admitted that pictorial warnings were not so effective. Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Keshav Desiraju ... Jump to full article >>

The sale of smuggled cigarettes in Spain has soared since the government raised the tax rate on tobacco, a spokesman for Franco-Spanish tobacco producer Altadis said Monday. The company estimates smuggled cigarettes accounted for around six percent of Spain’s total cigarette consumption during the first three months of the year, compared to just one percent in all of 2010, the spokesman said. The problem is especially high in the southwest ... Jump to full article >>