Cigarette Butts to be Recycled in Easton

Cigarette butts on the grounds in the cities and towns creates additional problems for  street cleaners. The Easton Ambassadors in Pennsylvania state launched a program which aims to keep sidewalks clean from cigarette butts and at the same time it will turn those butts into the money for local budget. The Easton Ambassadors placed a

Pascagoula City Wants a Smoking Ban in its Parks

Pascagoula city, Jackson County, Mississippi, is considering to pass an ordinance which prohibits smoking in its parks. In 2013 the city already banned tobacco use on workplaces, restaurants and indoor public places. Now local authorities want to make recreationa zones smoke-free. Soon lighting cigarettes up at Beach Park in Pascagoula city may be illegal and

Minneapolis City Council Restricts Flavored Tobacco Sales

Flavored cigars will no longer be sold in many Minneapolis stores starting in January.

The City Council voted Friday to ban flavored tobacco products at convenience stores, according to the Star Tribune

The federal government banned flavored cigarettes in 2009, but other tobacco products are still sold with fruit and candy flavors.

Council Member Elizabeth Glidden called the ban a "major policy change" that will have a significant effect on young people in the city. She said it is up to cities to fill in the gaps left from federal action aimed at curbing youth smoking.

"It seems like a challenge that we as local communities need to take action to address," she told the crowd at Friday's meeting. "You have come to us with proposals on how to make that happen."

Currently, cigars sold in flavors like grape, strawberry and chocolate can be sold at more than 300 locations. Starting in January that drops to fewer than two dozen adult-only tobacco shops.

The vote followed several weeks of debate between anti-tobacco advocates who argued that flavored products were designed to attract young smokers and shop owners who fear a significant hit to their businesses.

The measure passed on Friday also set minimum prices for both flavored and unflavored cigars at $2.60.

Minneapolis Passed Ban on Sale of Flavoured Tobacco

The City Council in Minneapolis passed new restrictions on sale of flavored tobacco products in order to prevent young people from tobacco use. The talk is about little cigars, hookah, smokeless tobacco. Sale of flavored tobacco products will be banned anywhere except specialty tobacco shops, where those product should be sold only to those over

The WHO Urges Countries to Increase Tobacco Tax

In is latest report the WHO concludes that few countires in the world use high tobacco taxes to discourage people from smoking or help them quit. The organization says that at least 75% of a pack of cigarettes should be tax. The report is called “The Global Tobacco Epidemic 2015″ and United Nations health agency

Plan to Enlarge Health Warning Labels

Tobacco Control Inspectors carrying out their duties. The government is making plans to enlarge warning signs on cigarette packaging in a bid to reduce the number of smokers.

Hong Kong’s tobacco industry was up in arms on Monday against a plan by the health authorities to enlarge health warning labels, saying it would not help lower the smoking rate and goes against the interests of tobacco companies.

Major industry players called on the government to withdraw the proposed measures.

The Food and Health Bureau submitted new tobacco control proposals to the Legislative Council (LegCo) in May, calling for the size of graphic health warnings on tobacco products to be enlarged from 50 percent of the two largest surfaces of cigarette packets to 85 percent.

Such a move, it said, would help lower the city’s smoking prevalence rate.

The Coalition on Tobacco Affairs (CTA) - made up of 90 percent of the city’s tobacco business associations - argued that the plan would not help reduce the number of smokers, based on a study it had commissioned earlier.

After studying statistics from the Census and Statistics Department, Kevin Tsui, an associate professor at the Department of Economics of Clemson University, found that the pre-existing trend of smoking rates did not change after health warning labels had been made bigger.

He had studied the change in the number of daily smokers in Hong Kong since 1982. Three rounds of health warning label enlargement were ordered by the government in 1994, 2000 and 2007, none of which led to a drop in the local smoking rate.

Compared with other places that have not imposed warning labels, no significant difference can be seen.

Tsui compared smoking prevalence data in Hong Kong with that of the United States where no warnings are required on the front or back of Marlboro cigarette packets. He found the smoking prevalence trends were almost parallel as percentages in both places had been lowered by only 2 to 3 percent in the past 15 years.

Owing to the promotion and education work conducted by the authorities since the 1980s, all Hong Kong residents are fully aware of the negative impact smoking has on health, the CTA saying that a bigger health warning won’t help further lower the smoking rate.

According to the latest statistics released in May, Hong Kong’s smoking rate now stands at 10.7 percent - 13 percent lower than in 1982.

Mississippi Awarded for Anti-Smoking Efforts

According to data obtained in 2014, Mississippi occupies the first place in the list of American states which adopted comprehensive municipal smoke-free ordinances. This made Americans for Nonsmokers Rights name Mississippi winner in  Smoke-free Challenge. Thus the state received an award due to its anti-smoking efforts. Totally14 cities in the state of Mississippi adopted in

Americans Buy Flavoured Cigarettes Online

New study made in the USA reveals that though flavoured cigarettes were banned by FDA in 2009 in the country, today remain very popular among smokers and they buy them online. One of authors of the study is Jon-Patrick Allem, a postdoctoral fellow with the university’s Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science. The study was funded