Japan Tobacco to buy UK e-cigarette brand E-Lites

With summer in full swing, smokers may wonder whether they can light up during certain outdoor events.  According to the recently passed ordinance, smoking is only banned in enclosed places. Debra Bradley, health director, said there is no provision that prohibits smoking in public parks.  “It’s just enclosed places,” she said. 

Those who do choose to smoke in parks, however, still need to stay at least five feet away from doors, windows and air intake systems.  St. Joseph voters in April passed a clean air ordinance that banned smoking in all indoor places of employment, except for the St. Jo Frontier Casino gaming floor. It garnered nearly 53 percent of the votes. 

Ms. Bradley said some citizens may be confused that the title of Section 17-327 —”Application of article to City-Owned Facilities and Property” —does not specifically clarify indoor or enclosed property.  “The meat of the paragraph is what is the law,” she said.  It reads: “All enclosed areas, including buildings and vehicles owned, leased or operated by the City of St. Joseph shall be subject to the provisions of this article.”  So events like tonight’s Parties on the Parkway at the Southwest Parkway or this weekend’s Coleman Hawkins Jazz Festival at Felix Street Square will still be smoking areas.

 However, there is a provision in the ordinance (Sec. 17-334) that allows for any “owner, operator, manager, or other person in control” of an outdoor area to declare it a nonsmoking zone.  “If the people who are running the program want to make it a nonsmoking event, they could,” Ms. Bradley said. “If they chose to be nonsmoking, they don’t have to have a sign.”

‘Mental illness more potent killer than heavy smoking’

“We found that many mental health diagnoses are associated with a drop in life expectancy as great as that associated with smoking 20 or more cigarettes a day,” said Seena Fazel from Oxford University.
The researchers looked for the best systematic reviews of clinical studies which reported mortality risk for a whole range of diagnoses – mental health problems, substance and alcohol abuse, dementia, autistic spectrum disorders, learning disability and childhood behavioural disorders.
They repeated searches for studies and reviews reporting life expectancy and risk of dying by suicide, and compared the results to the best data for heavy smoking.
The average reduction in life expectancy in people with bipolar disorder was between 9-20 years, it is 10-20 years for schizophrenia, between 9-24 years for drug and alcohol abuse, and around 7-11 years for recurrent depression.
The loss of years among heavy smokers was 8-10 years, they found.
“High-risk behaviours are common in psychiatric patients, especially drug and alcohol abuse, and they are more likely to die by suicide,” Fazel said.
“The stigma surrounding mental health may mean people aren’t treated as well for physical health problems when they do see a doctor,” he added.

American Tobacco Company

American Tobacco Company, American industrial conglomerate that was once the world’s largest cigarette maker.
The history of the American Tobacco Company traces to the post-Civil War period in North Carolina, when a Confederate veteran, Washington Duke, began trading in tobacco. In 1874 he and his sons, Benjamin N. Duke and James Buchanan Duke, built a factory and in 1878 formed the firm of W. Duke, Sons & Co., one of the first tobacco companies to introduce cigarette-manufacturing machines.
Entering the “cigarette war,” the Dukes eventually established the American Tobacco Company in 1890, with James as president. Through mergers and purchases, the Duke brothers eventually acquired corporate control of virtually the entire American tobacco industry—some 150 factories in all. In 1911, however, after five years of litigation, a U.S. Court of Appeals judged this tobacco trust in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and ordered it dissolved. The main manufacturers to emerge, in addition to American, were R.J. Reynolds, Liggett & Myers, and Lorillard.
In 1916 American introduced its most popular cigarette brand, Lucky Strike, and in 1939 it introduced one of the first king-size cigarettes, Pall Mall (an old name reapplied to a new cigarette). The sales of these two brands made American Tobacco the most successful cigarette manufacturer of the 1940s. The company failed to establish equally strong brands of filter cigarettes in the 1950s, however, and by the 1970s it had slipped to a minor position among U.S. tobacco makers. With further diversification and dilution in the later decades of the 20th century, the company—which had been renamed American Brands in 1969—took on a different identity, and by the end of the century it had become known as Fortune Brands, formally departing from the tobacco industry.

15 Facts About The Cigarette Industry That Will Blow Your Mind

Though cigarette consumption is no where near as prevalent as it was in the last century, the tobacco industry is still raking in massive money. It made $614 billion in 2009.
Cigarette consumption in the U.S. may be in decline, but according to Citi this has simply forced tobacco companies like Phillip Morris to find other markets, mostly in emerging countries like Indonesia and the Philippines.
China too is a booming market for cigarette consumption, with its size quadrupling since the 1970s.