Who Really Sees It?

A recent article from The Boston Globe explored tobacco signage and advertising within convenience stores and not surprisingly, found that big tobacco is up to some questionable practices.

It's a known fact that smoking rates are higher among low income neighborhoods and it's no coincidence. As the FDA takes on more and more responsibility in terms of tobacco r...

Tobacco punted from college football stadiums

It looks like Camel may have been a bit hasty in dubbing Snus “stadium friendly.” War Memorial Stadium, the part-time home of the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, is now a tobacco-free facility, and they’re not the only college football facility to make this change.

With the recent progress of indoor clean air laws, Camel is marketing Snus, a smokeless, spit-fr...

Hungry for help- what you can do to fight poverty

As a human being we have three basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing. The bare minimum of each of these is our natural human right. On any given night in the US there are between 440,000-744,313 people without a home according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, and 39% of these homeless are under the age of 18. Having this many people without these basic rights is wrong.  In...

Point-Of-Sale Ads Directly Influence Teens

In a new study conducted by Dr. Lisa Henriksen, a Stanford University School of Medicine researcher, it was found that point-of-sale advertising is the driving force behind coaxing teens to try cigarettes. Point-of-sale (P.O.S.) ads are marketing tools you see in stores that sell the advertised products; posters, lights, cardboard cut-outs, etc.

The study did make note of big toba...

Its True

Lynda Mitchell is 52 and she is dying from smoking. She lives in the U.K. and grew up in a household where smoking was the norm; her parents routinely smoked 60 cigarettes per day. It's not overly surprising that Lynda would be a prime candidate to contract Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) but what is surprising, is that Lynda has never smoked a cigarette in her life.

Regarding Butts...

These days, it seems like anything you can buy comes in two versions: regular and "green." With so many products being made using environmentally friendly items, being planet-conscious is as easy as checking the label at the store. However, that's not the case for ALL products.

As the state of Vermont celebrated Green Up Day (a statewide effort to remove litter and c...

What does 'Advanced flavor chemistry research' even mean?

The makers of Marlboro and Virginia Slims, Altria group, Inc., recently posted a job opening entitled, “Sr. Research Scientist”. The job description says, “Responsible for the design, development, and management of advanced flavor chemistry research…” What does “advanced flavor chemistry research” even mean??

The new FDA regulation bans f...

New Study: Smoking Lowers IQ

Smoking is kind of a funny thing in that everyone has heard and fully understands the risks associated with smoking but people choose to do it anyway. The general theory on why people keep smoking (other than becoming addicted) is denial. If you can convince yourself that the hazards are old news and it "couldn't happen to you" then maybe you can justify it.

Now let&...

Tobacco Cyberwar

There has been mass advancement in tobacco prevention amongst teens, from government programs and grants, social media pages, to creatively manufactured media campaigns buuuuuut…the Internet hasn’t played a huge role in tobacco prevention until the early 2000’s.

A recent study showed that though tobacco content only makes up less than 1% of social media content,...

Maneuvering Around The Ban

It always strikes me as odd just how far people are willing to go in order to smoke. On one hand, I fully understand that the addiction to nicotine is absolutely crippling and most smokers aren't strong enough to resist it but on the other hand, I want to just say "really??!!?"

Thanks to a technicality in VA legislation, certain bars in  Virginia are exempt from the...