Va. official pitches mandatory anti-smoking classes

A Fairfax County supervisor wants to know whether county employees who smoke can be forced to take classes to help them quit, reports HamptonRoads.com.

The Washington Post reports that Gerald Hyland, a Democrat, first made the suggestion at a board meeting last month. A county spokeswoman says the county's attorneys are looking into the question.

Hyland's father smoked and died of lung cancer at age 50. He says it's "time to get serious" about reducing the number of smokers in the county workforce.

About 10 years ago, Hyland proposed cutting smokers from the county's payroll. In recent years, some employers have adopted policies against hiring smokers, who often have to pay higher health-insurance premiums.

Several supervisors say they don't agree with the idea of mandatory smoking-cessation classes.

Dominican Republic Requests WTO Panel Over Australia’s Plain Packaging Law

 Late last week, the Dominican Republic requested the establishment of a panel under the dispute settlement procedures of the World Trade Organization (WTO) challenging Australia’s plain packaging measures for tobacco products.

Starting Dec. 1, Australia will mandate that all tobacco products be sold in plain packaging. Packaging will be a standardized drab brown color, with the brand and variant name in a standardized font and place, banning all logos or other design features. This move will prevent tobacco products from using their well-known trademarks and geographical indications, the republic stated in a press release.

These unprecedented measures will undermine the Dominican Republic's tobacco industry, in particular its premium cigar sector. By prescribing standardized plain packaging, the tobacco market will be driven towards commoditization, with declining prices, and increasing — rather than falling — consumption and illicit trade.

In June, the Ukraine and Honduras diplomats filed trade disputes with the World Trade Organizations protesting the Australian plain packaging law, informs NACS Online.

Washington State Cigarettes Nearly 40% Contraband

A soon-to-be published study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan reveals 36% of all cigarettes consumed in Washington are contraband, KREM.com reports.

"The bottom line here is that many governments are making tobacco products as valuable as illicit narcotics," said Mackinac's Michael LaFaive.

Contraband cigarettes for Washingtonians are any that do not pay the state’s $3.02 per pack tax. In 2010, Washington State increased its cigarette tax by a dollar a pack to the fourth highest state tax in the nation.
The Washington Department of Revenue’s Mike Gowrylow said his department will soon release its own contraband cigarette data, and he expects the number of contraband cigarettes to be about one in three.
“(That’s) substantial, to go from one in four contraband cigarettes (the figure prior to the 2010 tax hike) to one in three,” Gowrylow said.

By Washington State’s last estimate in 2011, 94 million packs of cigarettes were consumed in the state, a tax loss of $284 million for the state.

Officials have said it’s difficult to quantify how much of the smuggling is from criminal organizations and how much is “casual smuggling” — from people who purchase their cigarettes out of the state, where the tax is cheaper, reports NACS Online.

Hooked on Hookah

A hookah is a water pipe that contains a smoke chamber, bowl, and a hose or hoses.

Sweetened tobacco is mixed with fresh fruit and heated. Its smoke passes through water and is drawn through the rubber hoses to mouthpieces, where it is inhaled.

"I like it. It's a lot smoother than cigarettes, and it tastes a lot better,'' said Chris Sedwick, 20, of Erie, an Edinboro University of Pennsylvania student who recently attended his first hookah session with friends.

Sedwick estimates he has smoked an average of one pack of cigarettes daily for the past year and a half. He wants to quit smoking cigarettes.

For more than an hour, he puffed on white-grape-flavored tobacco.

"It's smoother, and it tastes really good,'' he said. "I like putting my tongue where the smoke comes through and tasting it. It's a lot smoother and less harsh on your lungs.''

A quality hookah water pipe costs about $300, Mustafa said. Most of the 150 hookah pipes -- each about 2 feet to 3 feet in height -- in his stock range in price from $250 to $300, he said.

The sweetened tobacco comes in more than 40 flavors, including apple, blueberry, grape, strawberry kiwi, mint and lemon mint.

The smoking mixture is usually 40 percent tobacco and 60 percent fruit. The tobacco is mixed with fruit and is packaged that way.