Local smokers save money by rolling own cigarettes

As people in Southwest Florida keep tight budgets, smokers are finding ways to keep buying cigarettes, but at half the cost. Last month, "Roll Your Own" in Lehigh Acres opened, and stores just like it are gaining a big following.
Just like it sounds, customers roll their own cigarettes with the help of a machine and because they're essentially the "manufacturers," they save big money.
The recession wasn't enough to make these smokers snuff their cigarettes. "I was just kind of in shock about the price because a carton of cigarettes is $50 easy," first-time customer Tracy Barroso said.
Rather than buying pre-manufactured cigarettes, people like Barroso are heading to local cigarette rolling stores, like "Roll Your Own." A carton there costs $24.99, compared to the regular price of $50.
"Oh I like it," Barroso said. "It saves me $25 bucks. Ten minutes worth of work and I'm done."

Of course companies like Philip Morris , producer of Marlboro cigarettes and Reynolds , producer of Camel cigarettes would not agree with this because their profit would be smaller.
It doesn't take long for it to go from tobacco to cigarettes. First, you fill a pitcher with the type of tobacco you want. Then, you go to a filling station and load the filters and tubes, dump the tobacco, and in a few minutes, you have finished cigarettes.
"The community loves it," Co-owner David Casman said. "They think it's a good concept, it saves them a lot of money, and every day it get busier."
Casman said they get around 50 customers a day, and that number is growing. "They're manufacturing in here and there's no shipping of the cigarettes, taxes are less because the people are making their own cigarettes," Casman said.
Every station does display a Surgeon General's warning on the dangers of smoking, and only those 18 and older are allowed inside.
"I think it's great, you get the help the community, you get to help people in the local area and it doesn't have any chemicals. even though you smoke, it's better for you," first-time customer Jordan Eagle said.
Each of those high-speed air compression machines cost about $30,000. It takes them less than 10 minutes to roll 200 cigarettes.

Montana First Nation asks Back for Seized Cigarette Consignment

It was last week on the 7th of January, when the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission (ALGC), along with the Hobbema RCMP seized 75,000 cartons of cigarettes from the Montana First Nation. It was stated by the two that the sale of cigarettes was not marked properly in Alberta and was in violation of the Tobacco Tax Act of Alberta.

According to the information available, seized products were valued around $3-million in tax revenue. The operation was carried out in Quonset, Montana First Nation.

However, in response to the seizure, Chady Moustarah, the legal representative of Carolyn Buffalo, the Chief of Montana First Nation said that the consignment was not illegal, as the place where the operation took place did not fall under the provincial government. Moustarah has said that the area was under the federal government and the products were going to be sold in reserves.

Moustarah further informed that the authorities stated, the holders of the cigarettes did not have an appropriate license and that they were not eligible to hold so many cigarettes and that is why they seized them. It was also informed that Montana First Nation did not have to abide by the provincial tax act.

Malaika Arora-Khan will not endorse paan masala anymore

After successfully ensuring Sanjay Dutt stops endorsing tobacco products, the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) in KEM Hospital has now converted another Bollywood celebrity.

It had sent Arbaaz Khan and his wife Malaika a letter, requesting her to stop endorsing Chaini Kaini, a paan masala product. “We had sent a letter to Malaika two days ago. If she did not respond in seven days, we had planned to conduct a silent protest outside her house. We are glad she called us within two days,” said Dr Ravikant Singh, president of Doctors for You.

He added, “Gutkha works on surrogate advertisements. When a person goes to buy paan masala, he gets gutkha packets instead. This has been happening for a long time and we are fighting to stop such surrogate advertisements. Children are the major victims of this.”

Arbaaz Khan also promised doctors that no one from the family would endorse any tobacco or paan masala product. The family will also join the medical fraternity in the ‘Tobacco Free School’ campaign.

Doctors for You had also written to the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport, asking it not to telecast advertisements for Chaini Kaini in its buses. Sanjay Potnis, BEST chairman, said,

“Since Chaini Kaini is not a tobacco product, we are not going to withdraw it from our buses. We don’t see any harm in promoting paan masala products.”

Two-Cent Chewing Tobacco Causing Oral Cancer Epidemic Among Indian Kids

A cheap chewing tobacco product in India, popular among children and young people, has made India the world's leader in oral cancer - and the product's spread may pose a worldwide health risk.

Indian entrepreneurs transformed paan, a 400-year-old tobacco product rolled in betel leaves, into "gutka," a blend of tobacco, areca nut, and spicy fragrances sold for two cents on street corners across the country. Sales are expected to increase from $4.6 billion in 2004 to twice that amount in 2014.

Paan and gutka are both addictive because of tobacco and areca nut, which the World Health Organization (WHO) says is the fourth-most popular psychoactive ingredient in the world, after alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco. Other ingredients in gutka include additional known carcinogens such as chromium, nickel, arsenic, and tobacco-related nitrosamines, the WHO reported in 2008.

The same year, nearly 70,000 cases of mouth cancer were reported in India; in comparison, 23,000 cases of mouth cancers were reported in the United States.

We all know that ral cancer can be caused by smoking cigarettes for many years. Many people smoke cigarette brands like Camel cigarettes or Davidoff cigarettes , but they should know when to stop.

Gutka is frequently sold near schools. "I have seen many children who started chewing gutka when they were 8 or 10 years old and got cancer in their teens," said Pankaj Chaturvedi, a surgeon at Tata Memorial Hospital, the largest cancer treatment center in Asia.

Gutka powder smells spicy and has a gravel-like consistency. As a result, it abrades the lining of the mouth, which speeds up the effects of nicotine and cancerous chemicals, said Dhirendra Sinha in New Dehli, who works for the WHO as a technical officer for tobacco control.

Areca nut causes muscles in the mouth to thicken and become less flexible, leading to oral submucous fibrosis, a pre-cancerous condition that India's Ministry for Health and Family Affairs and the WHO reported in 2004 had become an "epidemic mainly among the youth." According to Bloomberg News, "[p]atients who previously could grab a sizable chunk of an apple in a single bite are able to open their mouth to just about the size of a grape."

Experts are concerned that gutka and its effects may become more than a regional health threat. Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver wrote in a commentary published last year that, "The practice of areca nut chewing and the presence of oral precancerous lesions are spreading from South Asia to the Western countries, with the potential of becoming a major public health issue."

As smoking bans have spread, tobacco companies like Philip Morris International Inc., Altria Group Inc., and British American Tobacco Plc have turned to smokeless tobacco products and report rising sales worldwide.

Chewing tobacco maker agrees to $5M settlement

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — The maker of Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco has agreed to pay $5 million to the family of a man who died of mouth cancer in what is believed to be the first wrongful-death settlement won from a chewing tobacco company.

A legal expert said the case could open the door for more lawsuits against makers of chewing tobacco, an industry that drew fewer legal battles during the 1990s than cigarette manufacturers.

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. will pay the award to the family of Bobby Hill of Canton, N.C., who began chewing tobacco at 13. He died in 2003 at 42.

Attorney Antonio Ponvert III, who represented Hill's relatives, told The Associated Press about the agreement Tuesday. Regulatory documents confirmed the deal.

Steven Callahan, a spokesman for Altria, which acquired U.S. Smokeless Tobacco last year, said the company admitted no liability and does not make any health claims about its products.

Ponvert and Mark Gottlieb, director of the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University in Boston, both said the Hill family settlement is the first case of its kind.

Gottlieb predicted more lawsuits targeting smokeless tobacco would follow, calling the settlement "a wake-up call" to plaintiffs' attorneys "that there are a lot of victims of smokeless tobacco use out there, and it's possible these cases can be successful."

Smokeless tobacco companies managed to fend off most previous lawsuits. In the past, lawyers focused more on cigarette makers because of stronger evidence to back up their claims, even though smokeless tobacco is harmful as well, Gottlieb said.

"So this is an unusual instance and runs counter to what had been the sort of the playbook for tobacco litigation," Gottlieb said. The settlement shows that "perhaps there is a new strategy afoot in terms of dealing with some of these types of cases."

But, Gottlieb added, Altria may have simply concluded it was cheaper to settle than risk a larger award at trial.

Callahan said the case involved unique circumstances because it was a settlement offer made before Altria acquired the company.

"And we have no intention of settling cases like this in the future," he said.

Ponvert said his case was bolstered by previously undisclosed letters from the 1980s that the company sent to minors thanking them for their business and offering free samples. The company even sent a can opener to one child to help open the chewing tobacco, he said.

"It was just this unbelievable trail of incredibly damning documents," Ponvert said.

The family's case also was stronger because Hill was a longtime user of chewing tobacco who did not drink or smoke cigarettes, factors tobacco companies point to as causing the cancer, Ponvert said.

Hill's wife, Kelly, filed the lawsuit in 2005 after her husband died of cancer of the tongue, Ponvert said.

Through her attorney, she declined to comment.

Hill had multiple surgeries to remove his tongue. Mouth cancer victims typically lose parts of their mouth, either through surgery or because the tissue wastes away.

"It's a really sad and a really gruesome way to die," Ponvert said.

For many years, smokeless tobacco has carried warning labels. Rules that took effect in June require larger labels listing the risks of chewing tobacco, including cancer, gum disease and tooth loss, and stating that smokeless tobacco is not a safe alternative to cigarettes.

The Altria spokesman said the company supported legislation enacted last year that allowed the FDA to regulate tobacco and required the larger warning labels.

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco was headquartered in Greenwich before being acquired by Altria, which is also the parent of Phillip Morris USA, the nation's largest cigarette maker.