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by gilster
on Fri Apr 06, 2007 8:54 am |
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http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/193067-blumenthal-praises-proposed-little-cigar-regulations
4/4/2007
Blumenthal praises proposed "little cigar" regulations
by John O'Brien
HARTFORD, Conn. - Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is pleased with recently proposed federal rule changes that would prohibit cigarette manufacturers from calling their product "little cigars."
He calls such labeling "dangerous and disingenuous."
"If it looks, smokes and tastes like a cigarette, it's a cigarette, delivering addiction, illness and early death to its users," Blumenthal added.
Connecticut is one of 40 states celebrating the proposal. They were joined by the District of Columbia in a March 26 letter that urged federal officials to adopt the regulations proposed by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax an Trade Bureau.
Blumenthal feels that labeling cigarettes as "little cigars" helps the manufacturer avoid taxes, advertising bans and warning labels.
He also said the manufacturers can evade payments under the national tobacco settlement that he helped orchestrate in the 1990s. That settlement will cost tobacco companies $246 billion, while providing $14 billion to trial lawyers who negotiated it on behalf of the states.
"These regulations -- setting specific rules for wrapping paper, tobacco, filters and packaging -- will stop tobacco companies from exploiting legal loopholes to falsely market cigarettes as little cigars," Blumenthal said.
"Misleading consumers threatens public health and hard-won cuts in tobacco use, and robs states and the federal government of millions of dollars in taxes. I urge officials to tighten the proposed rules by requiring manufacturers to prove their products are cigars and establishing tougher standards for cigar content. The rules should ban packaging cigars to look like cigarettes."
Other states joining in the letter were: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. |
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gilster
Smoking Lobby Sponsor
Joined: Apr 19, 2006
Posts: 1212
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by smokem
on Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:02 am |
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| This is something they've been slow to get around to. It's been in the wind for a while. In some states these little cigars, cigarette-size, are much cheaper than cigarettes. I smoke them a lot myself for that reason although I prefer real cigarettes. The little cigars do not taste like cigarettes. Even the mildest ones have more than a touch of cigar flavor. So I moderate inhalation. You know, before the MSA, I had switched down to the very lowest tar cigarettes on the market. I also switched to menthol since otherwise they tasted like plug nothing: you know, virtually no smoke comes out of the things. It hardly qualified as smoking at all but I enjoy the old ritual. Now I smoke mega-tar little cigars or unfiltered hand-rolled cigarettes because of the MSA. I suppose the little cigars will soon treble in price where I buy but I've been expecting that for some time. If you watch from the bushes you can always tell where Anti's next goose step will take her. Tobacco is a weed anybody can grow just about anywhere including in a flowerpot with a lamp in your closet. I've never paid high prices for tobacco because tobacco is cheap and there is always "another way" to get it cheap. It alternately amuses me or pisses me off that Anti has turned me from a near quitter into a hard-core smoker -- I smoke the same number of cigs whether they have 1 mg tar and 0.05 mg nicotine or 40 mg tar and 3 mg nicotine -- but I'll gladly cough my guts out before I ever "Heil" to the bastards. |
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smokem
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Posts: 146
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