The Smokers Club, Inc.

Issue #649

The Property Rights Newsletter

February 3, 2012 - Issue #649

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
- Abraham Lincoln

Bingo: As a result of the smoking ban and taxing legislation bingo clubs up and down the UK have been closing their doors as they struggle to operate profitably. "There will be regular players who will greatly miss being able to go to their regular club and interact with people." Michael J. McFadden adds, "The UK's Bingo interests are fighting the wrong fight: they need to join with the Free Choice groups to restore the option of some places to allow smoking if they and their workers and customers wish."
MORE around the world: Bingo Halls close following bans everywhere, stopping all the charity money they used to earn. For the good of the children, bring back Bingo and let adults decide if they want a smoking hall or not.

From The Mailbag

IL: Loosen IL smoking ban restrictions? State Rep. Anthony DeLuca (D) out of Chicago has proposed new legislation that would allow casinos and bars to apply for smoking licenses.

NC: Will smoking issue burn again? It will be interesting to see how much headway Liebes and his group, the N.C. Bar, Pub and Tavern Association, make in getting the law revised. The group has hired Dean Plunkett, a Raleigh-based lobbyist who is known for his work on behalf of the N.C. Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association. Plunkett may well snag the ears of some legislators who could push revisions to the law.

OH: Smokers not eligible for jobs in some Ohio casinos. 3,200 applicants will be tested for nicotine usage, refused if found positive. Hollywood Casino Columbus General Manager Ameet Patel said applicants who test positive for nicotine will be disqualified and workers will be subject to random tests during employment. Penn National's policy will mean no tobacco use on or off the job for their 3,200 workers and Ohio's indoor smoking ban means customers will have to step outside before lighting up.

New Zealand: Smokers Urge to Lift Smoking Bans. For them, it is just like robbing away the individual liberty and they feel that smoking has become a class like religion or sex, for which they are somewhat hated. It is not a problem for them to be classified as smokers, but they should not be hated for it.

World: The Nicotine Advantage: Anti-Doping Agency Practically Endorses Smoking. The performance-enhancing effects of nicotine included increased "vigilance and cognitive function," and reduced stress and body weight. "Interestingly, nicotine also triggers a significant increase of pulse rate, blood pressure, blood sugar and epinephrine release owing to simultaneous stimulant and relaxant properties," the report said.

World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs.

Antis: What to expect:
The Cold Sharp Slap Of Reality

Join FREE - Home - Forum - Research - Please Help

The World Anti Doping Agency

WADA has received a report from its accredited laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland, that describes “alarming evidence” of nicotine use by athletes across 43 sports studied.

Issue #648

The Property Rights Newsletter

January 27, 2012 - Issue #648

"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power."
- P.J.O'Rourke

USA: See the list of all smoking bans in the United States. Country overview and details for each state. As of November 2011, 11 states have not enacted any general statewide ban on smoking in any non-government-owned spaces: Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Instead, laws in most of these states (see individual state listings below for further information) require proprietors of certain places to designate smoking and non-smoking areas and post warning signage. In Oklahoma, state law prohibits local governments from regulating smoking more strictly than the state, making it the only state without any kind of legislated smoking bans. In the other 10 states, cities and/or counties have enacted stricter smoking laws than the state, in some cases banning smoking in all enclosed workplaces. In Alabama, Indiana, and Mississippi, the state smoking law expressly allows all local governments to do so. In Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and West Virginia, a court has ruled that certain local governments have the power to do so. See the individual state listings for details.

CA: California landlords, who have long had the right to restrict pets, noise and even water beds in their units, can now prohibit smoking under a new law. The new law requires landlords to specify in their lease/rental agreements areas where smoking is prohibited on their properties.

IN: House Committee Passes Smoking Ban With Few Exemptions. If the ban does pass the House, it will go to the Senate Public Policy Committee - the same panel which overwhelmingly killed the bill last year, when health advocates insisted on a bill with no exceptions.

UK: Watch BBC - Timeshift The Smoking Years. Borja Cantera's film was a study of how quickly the universally acceptable can flip into the untolerated. Presented as the evolutionary history of the smoker, it began with the democratisation of the fag with the invention of the first cigarette-rolling machine in 1880 and closed with a hideous vista of extinguished stub-ends, smouldering gently like a post-apocalyptic landscape.

World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs.

The Slippery Slope After Tobacco

THE ANTI-TOBACCO RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
1. Choose an industry.
2. Regulate the industry.
3. Tax the industry.
4. Sue the industry.
When one source of money dries up, return to Step 1 and repeat.
By S. Phillipe

NY After Big Alcohol: Bloomberg forced to reverse decision to close New York liquor stores after bitter criticism by small businesses. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's warning of last call on drinks was just a test his office said Wednesday, just hours after news of his health-motivated plan broke. While he claims his health drive has improved New Yorkers' quality of life, critics deride his approach as a "nanny state" doctrine which infringes personal liberty. These plans would have made it harder for people to buy alcohol, both legally and illicitly - but could also reduce people's desire to do so, if the crackdown on advertising is successful.

Join FREE - Home - Forum - Research - Please Help

Issue #647

The Property Rights Newsletter

January 20, 2012 - Issue #647

"As a man is said to have a right to his property,
he may be equally said to have a property in his rights."
- James Madison

NY Schools spy on fat kids. Big Brother is joining the battle of the bulge. A group of Long Island students will soon be wearing controversial electronic monitors that allow school officials to track their physical activity around the clock. The athletics chair for the Bay Shore schools ordered 10 Polar Active monitors, at $90 a pop, for use starting this spring. The wristwatchlike devices count heartbeats, detect motion and even track students sleeping habits in a bid to combat obesity. The information is displayed on a color-coded screen and gets transmitted to a password-protected Web site that students and educators can access. The devices are already in use in school districts in St. Louis and South Orange, NJ and have raised privacy concerns among some parents and observers.

From The Mailbag

DC: Condo residents take neighbors to court over secondhand smoke. If your home is your castle, you should be able to do anything legal you want in it, including lighting up a cigarette, right? The issue pits neighbor against neighbor, has taken over homeowner association agendas and has caused a major legal debate over public health and individual rights of homeowners. Federal incentives have led cities from Austin to Boston to prohibit smoking in public housing.

OH: Pam Parker radio interview on The Josh Tolley Show. Smoking Bans: Killing our jobs, our health, and our freedom.

RI: Providence Bans Sales Of Flavored Tobaccos. Mayor Angel Taveras signed ordinances recently passed by the City Council that ban the sale of tobacco in flavors such as strawberry, chocolate and blueberry. The orders also prohibit pricing strategies like "buy one, get one free."

Ireland: Doctor Nolan pleads for smokers. I have never smoked, but as a retired hospital doctor I am horrified by the primitive savagery of the HSE's new edict forbidding smoking anywhere within the boundaries of a hospital in the Republic. Lepers in the dark ages received greater care and more love than our enlightened age allows to the poor, old, ill smoker.

North Wales: Loudspeaker alarms used to stub out hospital smoking. Smokers who light up outside three hospitals in north Wales will trigger an alarm and loudspeaker message telling them to stop. The warnings have been installed at the main entrances and maternity units of Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor, Glan Clwyd in Bodelwyddan and Wrexham Maelor. Even lighting a match will set-off the bilingual message

UK: Stony Stratford council throws out smoking ban proposal. Stuart Moore, the Acting Chair of UKIP in Milton Keynes, who led the campaign against the ban, said: "The defeat is resounding, everybody voted against it, it should be done and dusted, forgotten, because this council have a lot of other things of pressing priority that they have to do for the local community."

World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs.

Join FREE - Home - Forum - Research - Please Help

DC Condos

Condo residents take neighbors to court over secondhand smoke.

RI Providence

City Bans Sales Of Flavored Tobaccos...

North Wales Hospitals

Loudspeaker alarms...

NY Schools spy on fat kids

Monitors raise privacy fear...

Issue #646

The Property Rights Newsletter January 13, 2012 - Issue #646 From the desk of the Director of The Blatantly Obvious: Ban water vapor?! That must include tea, coffee, boiling water, soup, most hot foods, right? Note that no one wants to ban an alternative nicotine delivery system. That would cost Big Pharm money.
ALERT SC: North Myrtle Beach has decided to include E-cigs in their ordinance - heads up to smokers and vapers to protest the upcoming vote, scheduled for January 23rd. People might not be able to distinguish an e-cigarette from a real cigarette in certain situations, which is why the city council has decided to include e-cigarettes in its non-smoking ordinance. "There’s a psychological impact of it," City Councilman Bob Cavanaugh said. "For example, if you’re in a theater and look around and see 10 people with it, it looks like they are smoking. There’s an influence on other people, especially at night when an e-cigarette looks like a cigarette." Cavanaugh said Monday that the council has done an "outstanding" job with the ordinance, but he would like to see whether businesses would make that choice to go smoke free on their own instead of there being a government mandate. "I think that a vast majority of them would make the decision to be smoke free on their own," he said. "I feel uncomfortable doing a mandate on a social issue. I think there should be a mandate to have a sign that says smoking or non-smoking. For one year, let’s try it. If it doesn’t work, we can put in all mandates." Read: Product Reviews. It is your choice to "smoke" anywhere and at any time you want, with no consideration of any smoking bans. This is legal (WATER) vapor, not banned smoke. Take a few puffs and keep from getting a withdrawal headache in any workplace, a hospital, restaurant, bar, airplane, store, church... anywhere! "Nicotine Delivery Systems" have no bans, Big Pharm wants you to buy their patches and gums. Don't give them your money when you can smoke and get the nicotine you want from someone else. Read: More articles about Electronic Cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes on airplanes, KY E-cigarettes, Electronic Cigarettes and the FDA, USA Big Pharm only wants you to use THEIR quit smoking products, Electric cigarette beats pub smoking ban, Turkey E-cig, UK Meets the e-cig, and more. Read: Antis: What to expect, The Cold Sharp Slap Of Reality. World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs.

Join FREE - Home - Events - Forum - Videos - Please Help - ©

Issue #645

The Property Rights Newsletter

January 6, 2012 - Issue #645

"On a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority, trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions which, in republics, have, more frequently than any other."
- James Madison

Formal request for: Future CDC Study on Economic Impact of Smoke-Free Policies on Bars and Restaurants. By Buckeye Liquor Permit Holders Association. This is an outrage! Our organization has watched as members and friends have depleted their lifelong savings to keep their doors open to their bars, bowling alleys, etc. after Ohio's draconian smoking ban. Some of these small business owners have sold their businesses at a loss while others have lost not only their bars but their homes through bankruptcy. To read that the CDC and CDC Foundation are complicit in covering up these facts is sickening. How is RTI International going to reach any other conclusion than what the CDC has already announced? Now that they know what the CDC expects the finding to be, all they have to do is search until they find numbers they can use to meet the CDC's expectations. We expect a full investigation.

From Toxic T-Shirts To Twizzler TV! By Michael J. McFadden. Remember "product placement?" Now we're not just talking about the long tolerated brainwashing of children on Saturday mornings, we're talking about the blatant and often completely out-of-place scripting involving major characters in series like "Fringe" and "Warehouse 13" suddenly offering each other Twizzlers or having prominent bright red/orange Twizzler goodie boxes on office desks in scenes where almost everything else is sort of a bland beige. How much does Twizzler-Caused Obesity cost our Gross National Product? Just how deadly IS Third Hand Twizzler Juice when it's passed on from Evil Candy Chompers to innocent loved ones through fingertips or stains on clothing?

From The Mailbag

CA: S.B. COUNTY: Hospital smoking ban defeated. The ban would have applied to all sidewalk, streets, parking lots, open spaces and cars on the campus. Supervisor Gary Obit said it was going too far to tell smokers they couldn’t smoke in their own automobiles parked at the hospital.

MD: Premium Cigar Group Girds for Maryland Tax Increase Battle. “Maryland voters are sick of increased taxes disguised to obscure government over-spending and they are tired of being told what to do and how to behave. We must stand against higher taxes, bigger and more wasteful government, and the infantilization of America by the ‘people who think they know better’,” said Bill Spann, CEO of the IPCPR.

USA: Please sign the petition: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Needs to compensate people & businesses harmed by special interest lobbying. Hundreds of thousands of people in the hospitality industry lose jobs and homes as a result.

India: More Ban Damage and lives lost because of smoking bans. Smokers turned off detectors at AMRI hospital. 93 persons suffocated to death in the blaze.

Turkey: Turkish Air Force Bombs Cigarette Smugglers! Airstrike on Turkey-Iraq border kills 35 people. "A group of villagers were coming from northern Iraq across the border after 9:30 p.m. Their path was blocked by soldiers and then four planes bombed them," said the official, Yunus Urek of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party.

World: Smokers Blogs. Watch instant postings to your favorite blogs.