April 14th, 2013
Independent. ie
State losing hundreds of millions in revenue as gangs go door to door selling smuggled goods
CIGARETTE-smuggling continues to soar in Ireland, with new Department of Finance figures showing that tobacco excise tax receipts are falling dramatically short of targets, even though taxes have increased and the number of people smoking has remained constant at 29 per cent of the population. What Fianna Fail TD Niall Collins called “Premiership-style criminality” is behind the latest upsurge in smuggling, which is costing the state hundreds of millions in lost revenue.
April 7th, 2013
Huffington Post
The Food and Drug Administration is moving at a snail’s pace when it comes to exercising its relatively new authority to regulate tobacco products. But playing out right now in statehouses around the country is a different form of tobacco regulation; and it is happening at
lighting-fast pace.
Regarding federal FDA regulation, the lack of any major moves is, in many ways,a good thing. It indicates that the agency’s leaders understand the complexity of the issue, the need to evaluate the science and the risk of unintended consequences of knee-jerk regulations.
March 24th, 2013
The Economist
No smoke. Why the fire?
SOME inventions are so simple, you have to wonder why no one has come up with them before. One such is the electronic cigarette. Smoking tobacco is the most dangerous voluntary activity in the world. More than 5m people die every year of the consequences. That is one death in ten. People smoke because they value the pleasure they get from nicotine in tobacco over the long-term certainty that their health will be damaged. So it seems rational to welcome a device that separates the dangerous part of smoking (the tar, carbon monoxide and smoke released by the process of combustion) from the nicotine. And that is what an e-cigarette does. It uses electricity from a small battery to vaporise a nicotine-containing solution, so that the user can breathe it in.
March 17th, 2013
Standard-Examiner
Steven Black
Editor,
I have never smoked a cigarette or anything similar, but I do not condemn or condone those who do. I have a son who now uses e-cigarettes instead of smoking, and I am very grateful that although they may not be perfect, they are definitely not nearly as harmful as cigarettes.
There was a hearing last week in the State Legislature on the bill to regulate and tax these products. When asked for studies or documentation to defend his position, Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, could not produce any. When asked if these were even tobacco products, no one could answer that question either.
