CHP and firefighters warn cigarette litterbugs

The California Highway Patrol, environmental, and fire prevention advocates have launched a newly upgraded Cigarette Litter Hotline, "Hold on to your Butt." This is a public education campaign focused on holding accountable smokers who toss their cigarette butts out of vehicles while navigating San Diego County’s highways.
This program will empower county residents to report smokers who illegally discard their cigarettes on the roadways. Utilizing a toll-free hotline, 1-877-211-2888 (BUTT), citizens will be able to record the date, time, and place of the littering, along with the license plate number of observed cigarette litterbugs. 
Drawing from the information recorded by concerned motorists, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) Border Division will send warning letters, on CHP stationary, to tobacco litter offenders.
Worldwide, an estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are tossed out daily and are the most littered item in the United States. Butts discarded on sidewalks and streets eventually end up in storm drains, which flow into the ocean. When the butts get wet from contact with a body of water, toxins gathered by the filter are released. 
This threatens the quality of the water and many forms of aquatic life. In addition, littered cigarette butts are a fire risk and have caused significant wildfires in the past.

German Smokers Buying More Smuggled Cigarettes, Welt Reports

German smokers are buying more smuggled cigarettes as domestic ones become too expensive, Welt reported, citing a survey by the HWWI research institute.
Twenty percent of all cigarettes were smuggled or privately imported from European Union countries, the newspaper said today. Most of the smuggled cigarettes come from Ukraine and Russia, according to Welt.
The German government is losing about 4 billion euros ($5.6 billion) a year, while the cigarette industry and retailers are losing 1.2 billion euros because of smuggling and private imports, Welt said. The average price of a pack of cigarettes in Germany is 4.25 euros, compared with less than 2 euros on the black market, according to the newspaper.

Shop owner decries downtown sign policy

A longtime downtown Frederick business owner said the city's rules on signs are anti-business after he was forced to remove a banner advertising items he sells in his store.
Joe Cohen took down the sign outside his Classic Cigars and British Goodies store at 14 N. Market St.Removing the sign "doesn't help business, and they ignore the other signs when it pleases them," he said.
"I want the banner back up."
The yellow banner measuring 6 feet by 2 feet hung from the veranda outside the store advertising beer, cigarettes and wine.
Joe Adkins, the city's deputy director for planning, said the sign was a clear violation of Frederick 's Land Management Code.
Section 864 of the code outlaws temporary signs in the city's historic district.
Cohen tried to have his case heard by the Historic Preservation Commission, but because the sign violated the code, the commission would have no power to overrule it, Adkins said.
"We received complaints about it, inspectors went out and we did what we had to do," he said.
Adkins said the city acted on more than one complaint about the sign.
If the sign were to stay up, Cohen would probably be fined $25 per day.
On Friday, Cohen removed the sign that he said was vital to getting people into his store.
He moved his store farther south on Market Street last spring, but the new location has limited views of what he sells inside.
"It's clear that people from out of town need to know what you've got to sell," he said.
Cohen said he sent a presentation to City Hall showing examples of other temporary, banner signs in the historic district.
Adkins said many of his examples were real estate banners, which are exempt under the code.
Cohen said the only alternative to effectively advertise his business would require him to spend thousands of dollars to install a new veranda.
"I can't afford that," he said.

Cigarette litter hotline gets a makeover

An anti-littering campaign that nearly flickered out two years ago has been revived with a makeover that allows for better tracking of motorists who toss cigarettes out of their cars.
The Cigarette Litter Hotline also has expanded from San Diego County to Orange, Riverside and Imperial counties.
“Once established, this really is a model that can be rolled out regionally, statewide and even in other states,” said Ken David, a spokesman for the local chapter of the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation, which operates the program with volunteers.
The group took over the hotline in July 2008 after county officials discontinued it, said local Surfrider chairman Manase Mansur.
Cigarette butts are regarded as the most-littered item in the world and are found on beaches by the hundreds of thousands nationwide. During rainstorms like those that battered the region this week, they are swept by storm drains to the ocean, where they harm sea life. They also can cause fires if they are tossed into dry brush.
Surfrider announced its upgrades yesterday. The improvements allow the California Highway Patrol to more easily send warning letters to people who have been anonymously reported to a toll-free number. The system relies on residents spotting “litterbutts” and calling in a license plate number along with the time and place of the incident.
The new electronic reporting program developed by Surfrider replaces the time-consuming process of tracking calls with paper records and handing them to the CHP, which then issued the warnings.
“We’ll be able to have more accurate information and send out more letters than we were able to before,” said CHP officer Mary Bailey in San Diego.
CHP doesn’t issue citations to people who are reported on the hotline, but officers do hand out tickets if they see people flicking butts from cars or trucks. Penalties can include a fine up to $1,000 and eight hours of community service picking up litter. Tossed cigarettes that cause fires may lead to felony charges.
“We need the eyes of the public to identify smokers that are endangering public safety by tossing lit cigarettes from vehicles,” said Chief Gary Dominguez of CHP’s Southern California division.
The hotline started in 2004 as a cooperative effort between county health officials, the local chapter of the American Lung Association and others. It averaged about 1,100 calls a month for at least three years, in part because concerned motorists programmed the old phone number into their cell phones to make reporting easier.
“People are very passionate about this,” said Debra Kelley, a top official at the lung association office in San Diego. “I think it’s the whole concept of careless, irresponsible smokers … who think the world is their ashtray. It’s just an affront.”
The hot line closed in mid-2008. Surfrider adopted the program and quickly opened up a new line.
“Once it became apparent that there were no more government funds, our Surfrider executive committee said this is just too important of an issue and too important of a tool to let it drop,” Mansur said.
He said the county had been spending about $50,000 a year on the program but he expects Surfrider can run it for about half that cost using volunteers and the new reporting system.
The number of calls dwindled to about 700 recently while Surfrider slowed its advertising and upgraded the system. Mansur expects calls will increase now that the program is back in the public eye, and he’s looking at installing a voice transcription system that will speed processing.
Kelley thanked Surfrider for taking over the program. “We were one of the parents of the baby and we gave it up for adoption,” she said. “It’s in a happy home now.”

Cops Warn Of Counterfeit Cigarette Coupons In Pa.

Police in one northwestern Pennsylvania township say someone tried to pass a counterfeit cigarette coupon at a convenience store.
Vernon Township police say a 20-year-old man tried to use a phony coupon for $4 off a pack of Marlboro cigarettes at a Sheetz store near Meadville on Sunday.
Police say the coupons are made to appear as though they are from a company called Smartsource, which offers coupons online and in mailed circulars.
But police say the coupons are bogus and that the computerized bar codes on the coupons can not be read by cash registers.
Police haven't charged the man in Sunday's attempt, but are investigating leads that suggest the coupons were produced locally. Vernon Township is about 85 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Rise of the Part-Time Smoker

It's tough to be a hard-core chain-smoker these days.

Half of the U.S. population lives in areas where smoking is banned in workplaces, bars and restaurants.

More than 70% of Americans don't allow smoking in their homes, including about half of current smokers.Taxes have pushed the cost of smoking ever higher ($10 per pack in New York City) and the social costs—in disgusted looks and lectures from friends and family members—have escalated too.

Such inconveniences are forcing a sea change in smoking habits and upending traditional approaches to smoking cessation. For one thing, there's a growing group of intermittent and secret smokers who seem to smoke as much for psychological and emotional reasons as nicotine addiction. In addition to breaking the physical addiction, smokers who want to quit today need to understand why, when and where they smoke, and challenge some of the thinking that goes along with it, cessation experts say.

" 'Sneaking one in' has become a smoker's pastime and avocation," says Timothy Stephens, a 40-year-old Manhattan lawyer who started smoking cigarettes in high school when he played a Jet in "West Side Story." Nowadays, with a wife and baby, he doesn't smoke at home. He takes five-minute smoking breaks outside his office building ("four minutes if it's cold") and he drives to work from the suburbs instead of using public transit so he can get more smoking in.

Even though the percentage of American adults who smoke has stalled at about 20% in recent years, smokers are smoking fewer cigarettes than they used to (an average of 13 per day, down from 21 in 1980). And a growing proportion of smokers—roughly 25%—don't smoke every day. One government study found that half of American smokers either don't smoke daily or smoke fewer than six cigarettes a day.

Researchers used to think light and intermittent smoking was a transitional phase for smokers on their way to quitting or ramping up to a more serious habit. But a few recent studies suggest that it's a new, stable pattern, particularly among young, college-educated smokers. An analysis of smoking patterns during the 1990s, published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research last year, found that 18-to-29-year-olds were twice as likely as those aged 50 to 64 to be nondaily smokers. Many experts expect that pattern to continue. "Young people who have grown up with a smoke-free home, school and workplace environment may stabilize at a much lower dependence level than those without such restrictions," the researchers wrote.

Light smokers are still putting their health at risk, however. "People shouldn't fool themselves that just a couple of cigarettes won't kill you," says Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who helped bring smoking rates in New York City down to 15% from 21% when he was the city's health commissioner from 2002 until last year. "The bad news here is that really good studies show that just a very small number—three, for example—drastically increases the likelihood of heart attack and stroke."

Why keep smoking at all, then?

Some experts blame the addictive power of nicotine, even at low levels, that leaves some smokers struggling to kick the habit. But others note that some intermittent smokers can go for days without a fix, particularly if they are accustomed to smoking only in certain circumstances. And some may be using nicotine patches, gum or lozenges to help quell their cravings. A study of 6,500 smokers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, published in the journal Addiction last year, found that one-third of those who used nicotine-replacement products were not using them to quit, but to abstain temporarily or cut down."While we haven't got the full picture, what's clear is that there are multiple types of smokers that we need to better understand," says Saul Shiffman, a professor of psychology and pharmaceutical science at the University of Pittsburgh. As part of his research, Dr. Shiffman is equipping 200 daily and 200 nondaily smokers with personal-digital assistants to record their cravings, triggers and motivations.

For most smokers, the desire to smoke is a complex mix of physical addiction, behavioral conditioning and psychological factors, says Daniel F. Seidman, director of Smoking Cessation Services at Columbia University Medical Center and author of a new book, "Smoke-Free in 30 Days." He notes that smoking just a few cigarettes a day can be even harder to give up than a heavier habit, since each one carries more reward. "I think it's a trap—you're never learning other ways to cope."

Here are some of the most common smoking triggers, and suggestions for counteracting them.

• Social Smoking: Lighting up a cigarette may be taboo in many social circles now. But in others, the negative image only adds to its allure. Smoking at parties, in bars that still permit it, on the golf course or in private gatherings can be a way for some people to belong—an image tobacco ads long cultivated.

Some work environments also are known for heavy smoking habits. "Smoking is a huge part of the food industry. When the diners leave, that's when the party starts for the workers," says Jack Taconni, who owns a gourmet store and catering business in Scarsdale, N.Y., and recalls joining in many after-hours smokes until he quit with the help of a smoking-cessation drug three years ago.

Tips: If smoking is a part of your social circle, try enlisting your friends to quit with you and get together in places where smoking is strictly prohibited. Be wary of alcohol, which often goes hand in hand with smoking and weakens inhibitions. If you need the look and feel of a cigarette to fit in, try using a nicotine oral inhaler (a prescription device that looks like a plastic cigarette and contains a replaceable plug of nicotine). But you may need to avoid heavy-smoking friends until you've broken the habit.

• Secret Smoking: Another group of smokers is desperately hiding their habit—from children, spouses, friends, parents and coworkers—because it's not part of the image they want to project. They often smoke alone, and feel the urge whenever they think they won't get caught.

"Smoking was a contradiction to everything else about me," says Karin, who was a closet smoker for years. "I worked out religiously, maintained a healthy diet, rarely drank alcohol, and worked in health-care public relations, of all things." But all the time and energy plotting her next cigarette created more stress than the cigarettes relieved, she says. And getting serious about her boyfriend, who didn't know she smoked, provided the final incentive to quit, she says.

Tips: Spend as much time as possible with the people you're hiding your habit from, and try to imagine how hard it would be explain a smoking-related illness to them.

• Stress Smoking: "If you ask people why they smoke, the most common answer you'll hear is to relieve stress," another notion promoted by tobacco ads for years, says Dr. Seidman. "But if you ask people how smoking really helps them cope with the challenges in their life, most of them can't tell you. It's just buying you a minute of distraction."

Tip: Recognize that the burst of focus and concentration smoking seems to give you may just be relief from nicotine withdrawal. Using a nicotine patch or gum can help alleviate the urge, says Dr. Seidman. In the meantime, you can work on devising some other means of focusing.

• Emotional Smoking: Some smokers smoke to stifle unpleasant emotions such as anger or frustration. But using cigarettes to manage anger backfires in the long run, Dr. Seidman says. "If you automatically walk around the block and smoke, you never face the issue and fix it," he says. Smokers who do this need to develop what he calls "emotional confidence" to "get comfortable in their own skin."

Tip: Assertiveness-training, which is part of many smoking-cessation programs, can be very helpful for emotion-driven smokers. So can making a conscious effort to stand and face whatever emotion is threatening to engulf you. "Let the feeling pass without smoking, and you'll find over time that you can cope with it better than you imagined," Dr. Seidman says in his book.

A substantial number of smokers have more serious emotional issues. A Harvard Medical School study in 2000 estimated that 44% of all U.S. cigarettes are smoked by people with a diagnosable mental illness, including depression, anxiety, alcoholism and schizophrenia.

Some depressed people think that smoking alleviates their symptoms. But Dr. Seidman argues that depression feeds on smoking instead, and exaggerates nicotine withdrawal symptoms.

Addressing the depression through psychotherapy, medication or both may substantially ease the urge to smoke. Some antidepressants do double duty—bupropion, for example, is marketed as Wellbutrin for depression and Zyban as a quit-smoking aid.

• Smoking Without Thinking: Some smokers have probably never asked themselves why they smoke—and might be surprised if they did. "I have absolutely no idea—I think it's a mental reward," says Phil Hodges, 46, an office worker in Washington, D.C., who has his first cigarette of the day with his morning coffee, then several more at work and another at the gym, often standing outside in his shorts and T-shirt. "I get laughed at," he says.

Tip: Just monitoring your habits and that thoughts that go with him can go a long way toward understanding breaking a behavioral addiction, Noting why and when you smoke is also a key part of the American Legacy Foundation's quit-smoking program at BecomeAnEx.org. The idea, says the group's president, Cheryl Healton, is to "help people stop and think at key moments, 'What the heck am I doing?' "

• Worried-About-Weight Smoking:.Many smokers keep smoking—or go back after they've quit—to suppress their appetite. Often they justify the health risks in the belief that being overweight is unhealthy too. And smoking takes a toll on appearance in other ways—including staining teeth, aging skin and leaching calcium from bones.

Tip: There's some evidence that quitters who use nicotine replacements gain only about half as much weight as those who don't. Substituting water for cigarettes or fattening food, and exercising more, can also help cut cravings and instill healthier habits

• Scared to Stop: One of the biggest reasons people don't quit smoking is the fear they won't be able to cope with life without cigarettes, Dr. Seidman says. But many who hold that view have never tried to stop. When circumstances force them to, they often find it isn't as difficult as they expected.

Nestor Herrera, who started smoking as a boy in his native Cuba in the 1950s, never thought he could break the habit until he was diagnosed with emphysema and was told he didn't have long to live.

Using a nicotine inhaler, and enrolling in Columbia's stop-smoking clinic, made it easier than he expected, he says, and he has stayed off cigarettes for three years. "People who know me very well don't believe that I did it," says Mr. Herrera, 63, who no longer needs his oxygen tank to breathe.

Tip: One technique Dr. Seidman recommends on the path to quitting is "smoking by the clock"—smoking your usual number of cigarettes each day, but according to a rigid schedule, to separate it from your usual smoking triggers. Demonstrating to yourself that you can resist those urges will reassure you that you can exert control over your habits.

There are plenty of other tips for quitting—including throwing out all your cigarettes, matches and ashtrays to make it as inconvenient as possible, and finding a buddy to share the experience.

But learning to live without cigarettes may be even harder than quitting itself. That's why the more you can understand your own behavior, and find other means for coping, the more successful you'll be in the long run.

Smokers hit with hefty fines for dropping cigarettes in Huddersfield

SMOKERS have been fined hundreds of pounds fordropping cigarette butts in Huddersfield town centre.
Eight smokers received hefty fines at Huddersfield Magistrates Court after they failed to cough up the cash for fixed penalty notices they received last summer.
The smokers were caught throwing cigarette ends onto the ground in New Street, Cross Church Street, Queen Street and King Street by Kirklees Council civil enforcement officers.
If they had paid the fixed fine issued at the time it would have cost just £75.
But six of the eight were left counting the cost of their expensive habit with fines of more than £550.
The highest fine was given to Simon Morgan of Ashenhurst Road, Newsome, who was spotted dropping a cigarette on New Street.
Morgan was left with a £626 bill to the court after he failed to enter any plea or respond to the court summons.
He was fined £175 for the littering offence and ordered to pay £436 court costs plus the £15 victim surcharge.Eight others were fined between £290 and £603 depending on whether they pleaded guilty to the offence or not.
Magistrates rewarded people who pleaded guilty by reducing their fines to £75.
They were also not made to pay the full court costs.
The only person to appear in court, Thomas Warrilow, of Oxley Road, Sheepridge, received the lowest fine of £290.
The other six are; Laura Folan of Broadlands Road, Meltham: Michael Shanks, of Sycamore Avenue, Golcar: Calvin Davies of Oxford House on Swan Lane, Lockwood: Harun Drake of Birch Road, Birkby: Jangeer Hussain of Tithefields, Fenay Bridge: and Shona Astin of Broadlands Road, Meltham.
The highest fine for dropping a fag end in Huddersfield so far went to Lee Hallas in March last year.
Hallas, of Briarlyn Road, Birchencliffe was slapped with a £1,015 court bill for throwing a cigarette butt out of his car window in Milnsbridge.
If he had paid the fine issued at the time it would have cost him just £60.

CES: Even the E-Cigarettes Go Green

he idea of environmentally friendly technology is a common theme at CES, but Krave takes it to a new level with its so-called electronic cigarettes.Promising a “greener environment for both you and the non-smoking community,” Krave’s e-cigarettes are tobacco-free and instead contain a battery-powered nicotine cartridge in the white part of the cigarette. When a smoker inhales, a sensor inside the cigarette is activated, and the cartridge releases water vapor that looks like smoke but is mainly nicotine, water and a little of the food additive propylene glycol.
“There is no longer a need for anyone to breathe the unwanted, dangerous, second-hand smoke produced by traditional tobacco cigarettes,” Krave’s Web site says. 
rave’s parent company, Smoke Fifty-One, warns that its cigarettes are “not a smoking cessation product.” A starter kit containing one battery and four nicotine cartridges costs $30, though Smoke Fifty-One says that one cartridge will “last you through your evening.”

Support offered to quit tobacco

For anyone who would like to stop using tobacco products or who has recently quit and could use some support, Riverside Shore Memo-rial Hospital has monthly meetings that can help.
These informal, no-pressure meetings are led by Sharon Varricchio, a respiratory therapist with extensive knowledge of both the physical and psychological effects of smoking. She will be joined at each session by an ex-smoker who will provide a personal account of how "it can be done!" There will be practical advice on quitting methods and a rundown on various medications and other aids available.

Creeks to vote on tobacco compact with state

The Muscogee (Creek) National Council will vote tonight on whether to adopt a tobacco compact with the state, though Principal Chief A.D. Ellis says he has doubts about the measure's passage.
The tribe is one of the last holdouts in signing a compact with the state, the only other tribe being the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe, which is undergoing a change in government but is likely to sign on once the change is complete, said State Treasurer Scott Meacham.
In the past, the Creek and other tribes' smoke shops funneled low-tax cigarettes reserved for the state's border areas into stores outside those border areas, but an arbitration panel that decided the matter between the Cherokee Nation, which had a compact, and the state ruled that moving the cigarettes out of those areas was a violation of the agreement.
After the supply of cheap name-brand cigarettes dried up, the Creek Nation set up its own wholesale company that received and distributed cigarettes sold through tribes in other parts of the country. Those cigarettes do not have state tax stamps on them, and this year two shipments of un-stamped tobacco were seized by the Oklahoma Tax Commission going from the tribe's wholesale company to tribal smoke shops. The state has also brought a suit in federal court against some members of the tribe who operate the wholesale company and some of the smoke shops.
The state does not have jurisdiction on tribal land that the smoke shops and wholesale warehouse in Okmulgee sit on, since it is trust land.
The name-brand cigarettes sold at the tribe's smoke shops now 
mostly bear uncompacted stamps, which have a higher tax rate than compacted stamps, with no money rebated back to the Creeks.
The tribe has rejected several compacts presented by the state in the past, and Ellis said he does not like everything the compact he is presenting, but that it is time to sign one.
"We've got to bring this to an end," Ellis said.
The full compact will likely be released tomorrow, according to a tribal spokesperson, but Ellis said the compact is very similar to that of other tribes, and would require the Creeks to shutter their wholesale operation.
The council will vote on whether to allow Ellis to enter into the compact at a 6:30 p.m. meeting today in Okmulgee.