New Delhi: The Supreme Court today ordered a ban on the sale of tobacco products like gutkha and pan masala in plastic pouches from March 2011, while asking the government to conduct a survey on the ill effects of these products within eight weeks. A bench of justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly also asked the manufacturers to explore and decide by March next year on the alternative material for packaging them. The bench issued the directions ... Jump to full article >>

A Bronson, Florida (Levy County) jury today awarded $8 million in compensatory damages and another $72 million in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for its role in the lung cancer death of James Kayce Horner. Mr. Horner, who started smoking at the age of 17 in 1934 (decades before warning labels appeared on cigarette packages), smoked for over 60 years before dying of lung cancer on March 11, 1996, at the age of 78. The jury ... Jump to full article >>

The Annual Tobacco Sales Reporting Form is now available from the South Dakota Department of Revenue and Regulation for qualified business establishments that want to allow smoking on their premises. With the recent voter passage of Referred Law 12, licensed establishments meeting the requirements of SDCL 34-46-18 as a “cigar bar” must annually report the amount of revenue generated from sales of cigars as a percentage of annual gross income ... Jump to full article >>

HELSINKI — Finland has banned selling or giving cigarettes to people under the age of 18 as part of extensive legislation that aims to make the Nordic country smoke-free by 2040. The new law says that anyone caught providing youth with tobacco products faces fines and a maximum six-month sentence. It came into force on Friday. The legislation also allows housing associations to ban smoking near children’s play areas and on apartment balc ... Jump to full article >>

Mississippi high school student Michael Henderson appreciates the fact that he can go to school and not feel pressure from his classmates to use tobacco products. “I am 100 percent behind the ‘no tobacco products on school campuses’ rule because there is less chance of peer pressure,” said Henderson. School is about learning, and students shouldn’t have to worry about being pressured to try tobacco products while th ... Jump to full article >>

The law and justice are on the side of Gov. David A. Paterson’s plan to start collecting state taxes on tobacco products sold by the state’s Native American nations. That doesn’t mean the governor won’t have to be very careful in the way he follows through with that pledge. Paterson said last week that he had been warned by his own State Police that “violence and death” could be the result of any effort to go against the Seneca and O ... Jump to full article >>

Minnesota’s tobacco laws are strengthened to reduce youth access to tobacco products under a bill signed into law this week. The measure, known as the Tobacco Modernization and Compliance Act of 2010, authored by Senator Scott Dibble and Representative Jim Davnie, both DFL-Minneapolis, closes loopholes in current state law that allows many new tobacco products to skirt or avoid the taxation and regulation currently applied to cigarettes. & ... Jump to full article >>

Nicotine pellets — flavored with cinnamon or mint — resemble candy and may result in accidental nicotine poisoning in children, U.S. researchers said. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. produces dissolvable Camel Orbs, which promotional literature says contains 1 milligram of nicotine per pellet as well as Camel Strips, which contain 0.6 mg of nicotine per strip and Sticks, which contain 3.1 mg of nicotine per strip. The products, sold as tob ... Jump to full article >>

Kadima MK Yoel Hasson tabled a private member’s bill on Monday that, if passed, would be the world’s first law barring the sale of tobacco products containing addictive substances such as nicotine, or other substances, such as menthol and ammonia, that make nicotine more addictive, The Jerusalem Post has learned. If tobacco were not addictive, the smoking rate would quickly decline (from the present 23 percent). People already addicted to ni ... Jump to full article >>

Recently Japan Tobacco Inc. (JT) and the state were successful in their defense against a damages suit in which three people had sought ¥10 million each for health problems — cancer and pulmonary emphysema — allegedly caused by smoking. Still, the Jan. 20 Yokohama District Court ruling, which the plaintiffs appealed Feb. 1, includes points that JT and the government should seriously consider. The ruling covered the period from 1947 to 1993, ... Jump to full article >>