Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Cheap Smokes



Lot's of folks get upset when gas prices go up. Amongst those of us who smoke we are always looking for a deal just like them folks buying gas.

And thanks to the competition to get our bucks the oligopolies that are Big Tobacco are willing to provide us with cheaper and cheaper smokes. as the State taxes and taxes them, while the Anti-Smoking lobby fumes and fusses over ways to stop us smoking.

For you smokers in Alberta, and this applies in other areas of Canada as well, here are two cheap brands.

The new kid on the block this month is John Player Standard; Blue and Silver, they have eliminated the term 'light' (due to a court ruling saying it was deceptive advertising which it is since the light brands had MORE nictone than the standard) . Which retails in some parts of Alberta for $62 a carton, GST included,whether in 20's or 25's.

The next cheapest is my favorite union label brand, Canadian. It carries the union bug for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco workers & Grain Millers union. Which is $64 a carton 20's or 25's, GST included.

So while other brands for sell for anywhere from $7.50-$9 a pack before GST, these are selling for just over $6 a pack. That's like the price from a decade ago!

And the reason for these cheap brands? Why competition. The very nature of the market and capitalism.

Press release: 22 per cent of cigarettes smoked in Canada are illegal
Hot trail leads to cigarettes -ON
Sun, March 4, 2007
By JOE MATYAS, SUN MEDIA
The search for cheap smokes in the area includes smuggling and contraband
Every three weeks or so, Rita and her spouse take a half-hour drive from London to a local First Nations community to buy cheap cigarettes.
In Rita's house, every penny counts. With a modest family income, $70 for a carton of brand-name cigarettes is a steep price to pay for "one of the simple pleasures of life." On the reserve, Rita can buy 200 no-name, untaxed, machine-rolled cigarettes with filter tips in a plastic bag for about $8.


In Edmonton cigarettes still retail in bars, lounges and cigarette machines for price c$10-$12 a pack, despite a wide variety of cheaper brands being available. That' a 100% mark up! Why doesn't Jim Flaherty say something about that, eh?
After all tobacco is a domestic product and industry in Canada.

In 2001, the total revenue from tobacco exports to the USA and the E.E.C combined is over $140 million (140, 535, 000). In other words, Canada sells far more tobacco domestically than is exported abroad. Three large tobacco companies dominate the cigarette market in Canada: Imperial Tobacco Canada Limited, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Incorporated, and JTI-Macdonald Corporation. In 1999-2000, their combined net sales was approximately $3 billion. Imperial is the largest, followed by RBH and then JTI-Macdonald. Health Canada’s Tobacco Control Programme has compiled cigarette sales data for 2001-2002 on the three major cigarette companies for each province and the total for Canada. For the year ending December 2002, the “big three” combined sales was $3.2 billion


Oh right of all the horrors of capitalism, smoking is the worst.


SEE:

Casablanca R Rated

Anti-Smoking Hypocrites

Punishing the Victim

Forget Cigarettes Ban Asbestos


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Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Big Tobacco


While I defend a persons choice to smoke, I recognize it is a health problem and an addiction, and that the corporate cartels behind it are of course making a killing off of killing.

But so are the corporations that make weapons and weapons systems.And funny thing like Big Tobacco they use bribery, illegal trading practices, smuggling etc.



"Diamond (reference services, Louisiana State U.) describes the world (literally) of US Big Tobacco and Nicotiana tobacum from 1990 to 2004 as it expanded into new world markets in Asia, Eastern Europe and Russia, often with the assistance of the US government, and kept the more mature US market puffing along. The topics for his annotated bibliography include economic aspects such as advertising and marketing (including philanthropy and sponsorship of arts and sporting events), distribution channels (including duty-free, illegal trade, and the market of prisons and jails), and political aspects (such as the various relationships of the industry with politicians, lobbyists, litigators and the State of California). Topics of the statistical tables include cash receipts, exports and advertising expenditures (page numbers would be recommended in this section) and other appendices include company profiles, court cases and tobacco websites."



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Thursday, August 02, 2007

Ban Laser Printers

Why not. Cigarettes are blamed for cancer and have been banned from public places.

Laser printers could pose health risk: study

One of the printers released so much dust that it as at a rate comparable to emissions from cigarette smoking.


As I have pointed out before, there are more chemical contaminants in our environment that could account for cancer than just smoking.



SEE:

In Canada Work Kills

Forget Cigarettes Ban Asbestos


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Saturday, May 12, 2007

Casablanca R Rated

For smoking. There goes the classics, like the full smoking Casablanca.

Smoking is now associated on the “Silver Screen” right up there with violence, language, nudity and drug abuse in ranking criteria. The MPAA brass are quoted saying “ There is a broad awareness of smoking as a unique public health concern due to nicotine’s highly addictive nature and no parent want their child to take up the habit.”

Apparently studies prove depictions of smoking in the movies have made children more likely to try cigarettes. The Attorneys General in 32 States have publicly called on the MPAA to put “R” ratings on movies containing scenes involving smoking.


The irony is that Casablanca is an anti-fascist movie, and of course anti-smoking laws are the moralist equivalent of fascism, since they are appeals to a prohibitionist state.

Meanwhile, we also learn about Rick’s life before he came to
Casablanca.
He grew up during the Prohibition years, when
selling alcohol was illegal in America. Powerful gangsters ruled
New York at this time, bringing alcohol in from outside the country
and supplying it to clubs. The young Rick is given a job by one of
these gangsters, Solly Horowitz. Solly likes Rick and makes him
manager of the Tootsie-Wootsie, a gambling and drinking club.
But trouble breaks out between rival gangsters. Rick’s boss is
killed. Rick has to get away fast. He and Sam, his pianist from the
Tootsie-Wootsie, escape to Europe.

However, if we look beyond the nostalgia and the sentimental theme of lost love and redemption, we see that Casablanca actually presents a complex and intricate political and social commentary on the early days of World War II. The product of a decade when studios were routinely producing “a movie a week,” Casablanca surpasses its humble origins as “just another Warner Brothers’ picture” by exploiting wartime patriotism and the traditional “American values” of freedom, liberty, and equality to shape audiences’ perception of the war. In the most basic sense, Casablanca was an anti-fascist propaganda vehicle which was designed to support U.S. participation in the Allied Forces’ struggle for global justice and democracy at a time when most Americans believed that U.S. foreign policy should have promoted isolationism and neutrality.

With the coming of the Second World War, for which the civil war was a rehearsal, things changed. In the 1943 Ealing Studio tributes to the army in the Western Desert, Nine Men, and to the firefighters of the London blitz, The Bells Go Down, heroic figures are identified as veterans of the International Brigades.

That same year in Hollywood, Paramount filmed Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, the greatest novel about the war, and Warner Brothers allowed Rick Blaine in Casablanca to include on his CV his services to the Loyalist cause.


Richard "Rick" Blaine - Played by Humphrey Bogart The owner of Rick's Café Americain and the film's protagonist. When we first meet Rick, he is a jaded bar owner in Casablanca who wears a dour expression as he drinks and plays chess alone. He constantly proclaims his freedom from all bonds, be they political or personal. After Ilsa enters the picture, he undergoes a considerable change. In a flashback, we see Rick in Paris. He is in love with Ilsa and visibly happy, and he is devastated when she doesn't show up at the train station. Rick never turns back into the lighthearted lover he was in Paris, but he does overcome his cynicism and apathy to become a self-sacrificing idealist, committed to helping the Allied cause in World War II.

Rick Blaine is a worldly American who has a hidden past. He was on the losing side during the Spanish Civil War. He moved to Paris before WW II and was a gun runner smuggling guns into Ethiopia. General Strasser, (the representative of the Vichy Government of France), heard the rumors and came to question Rick. Rick tells him that he is an alcoholic and doesn’t know a thing about the visas. He says he does not belong to either side of the combatants in WW II because he has had enough of wars and he is ’neutral’.


The capitaine tells Rick that while many exit visits are sold at Café Americain he knows that Rick has never sold them and that is why he is permitted to stay open. Rick replies that he thought it was because he lets him win at roulette. The capitaine tells Rick that Victor Lazlo, a famous resistance leader from Czechoslovakia who has escaped three times from the Nazis, will be arriving shortly but that he will not be permitted to leave Casablanca. Rick suggests a 20,000-franc bet on whether Lazlo will get out of Casablanca, but the capitaine agrees only to a 10,000-franc bet, stating that he is "only a poor corrupt official." The capitaine also tells Rick that Lazlo is travelling with a very beautiful woman and tells Rick that he suspects that "under that cynical shell" Rick is a sentimentalist as he is familiar with Rick's having supplied guns to Ethiopia when that country was invaded by Italy in 1935 and with his fighting the Loyalist government the next year in the Spanish Civil War.
I guess I take inspiration from this heroic failure, in the battle against the anti-smoking statists.

Heroic failure describes a person or group failing to accomplish their goal, but somehow gaining the moral upper hand or becoming ennobled in the attempt.

The film Casablanca mentions two heroic failures to develop the Humphrey Bogart character Rick Blaine.

"Oh, laugh if you will, but I happen to know your record. Let me point out just two items. In 1935 you ran guns to Ethiopia. In 1936, you fought in Spain on the Loyalist side.[1]

The first reference is to the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. In September 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia. Ethiopia lost, but opponents of colonialism and fascism supported their cause. The second reference describes the Spanish Civil War in which rebels led by Francisco Franco gained control of the country. "The Loyalist side" refers to supporters of the losing republic. Thus Rick has fought for the causes of freedom and democracy and earned an admirable (although losing) record.


And so inspired by the great classic of anti-fascism and anti-prohibition we say here's looking at ya kid.

We have much to learn from the characters of Casablanca: in the final scene the airport is dark, the drone of the airplane fills the air and fearless, they venture out into the fog. Into the unexpected.


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See:

Rememberance or Revisionism

Kenney is A Funny Guy

Christy Moore - Viva La Quince Brigada

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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Anti-Smoking Hypocrites


An excellent summation of the philosophical and political morality of anti-smoking legislators;

Going into a privately-owned restaurant where smokers voluntarily associate and then complaining about the smoke makes as much sense as going to a rock concert and then complaining that they won’t turn off the loud music.



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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Punishing the Victim

Scary, because instead of increasing royalties from the Oil Sands to offset tax losses from regular hydrocarbon production, or eliminating health care fees or making post secondary educational institutions tuition free, or actually dealing with indoor air quality, pollution and Green House Gases we get this;

Hancock Pushing Hard for Smoking Ban In Alberta

The recent $5 per pack immediate tax increase in the April 19 Alberta Budget is the first step in an effort towards a province wide tobacco reduction strategy and is just part of the new Alberta Minister of Health and Wellness, Dave Hancock’s strategic efforts to promote wellness.

In addition to a tax increase, a proposal is being drafted by Hancock for a province-wide legislated ban on smoking in public places and work places. Further provisions will include a ban tobacco sales in pharmacies and to regulate so-called powerwall displays of tobacco products. Tax increases are as rare as hen's teeth in Alberta so this tobacco tax augers well for the political potential of a legislated ban of smoking in public and work places.
This public policy initiative is not new to Alberta. It has been tried 4 times before but never made it through the political policy development process. But with new leadership and the fact it is garnering significant public support, it may have a chance this time.

See:

Smokers and Smokestack Industries


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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Smokers and Smokestack Industries



While opposing any form of carbon tax on Greenhouse Gases the Stelmach government in Alberta increases taxes on smokers.

The lone tax increase: Tobacco

Taxes for smokers not smoke stack industries is their motto.

The Ed Stelmach government's first Alberta provincial budget hikes spending by 10%, but has few new initiatives to show for it.Average Albertans will get modest tax relief of about $50 a year, but smokers were hit with a 63-cents-a-pack hike in cigarette taxes as of midnight Thursday, making tobacco taxes in Alberta the highest in Canada.



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Thursday, February 08, 2007

Tories Promote Lung Cancer


The most common form of cancer associated with smoking is lung cancer. And women suffer from lung cancer more than men.

And women and girls smoke more than men and boys.

Remember this;
Oda insists her government will instead fund organizations and programs she says more directly affect women.

I guess that explains why the Tories gave a half million they saved from cuts to the Status of Women to Big Tobacco.

After all cigarette smoking directly affects women.

And they could say they were promoting women in politics;

Sources said the break -- worth about $500,000 -- is aimed at the constituency of Immigration Minister Diane Finley, who is thought to be in some danger of losing the next election.

Yes, I know I could have said this was classic pork barrel politics but Olaf said it so much better.

And the Tories are once again on message;

"It's an issue of tax fairness," said Dan Miles, communications director for Mr. Flaherty.

We all know what that means.

See

Smoking

Health

Feminism

Status of Women

Bev Oda

Tory Cuts


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Saturday, February 03, 2007

Helium For Health


It helps you you with smokers cough and you get to sound like Donald Duck

Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have discovered that by combining helium with 40 per cent oxygen allowed patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to increase their exercise capacity by an average of 245 per cent. COPD is a disease of the lungs caused by smoking and includes the conditions of emphysema and chronic bronchitis.



See

Smoking



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