Every now and then, the FDA needs a good kick in the balls and today, a federal judge did just that, when he ruled that the government may be going too far by requiring tobacco brands to plaster gross-looking images all over their products. Read more »
Over 100 Native Americans demonstrated at City Hall on Monday to protest General Bloomberg’s channeling of John Wayne while discussing an ongoing tobacco tax dispute between New York City’s coiffeurs and the state’s Indian reservations. Read more »
Earlier this summer, Albany hiked up the tax on tobacco, making cigarettes in NYC more expensive than drugs, but so far it’s not panning out revenue wise. The amount of cigarette tax stamps sold by the state has drastically decreased as the nicotine addicted travel to Indian reservations and places like Pennsylvania to cop. |NYP|
Truth is, if you smoke cigarettes, but still don’t how unhealthy they are, you kind of deserve to die, so I’m glad that the big tobacco companies are suing NYC for requiring stores that sell cigarettes to post those horrid, anti-smoking, body part posters. All consumers shouldn’t be visually punished for someone else’s bad habit. Anyhow, until the matter is settled in court, the city won’t be enforcing their oppressive mandate. |NY1|
British American Tobacco (BTI), the second largest cigarette maker in the world, has been extending their spindly claws of death towards the art world, scraping up $18.5 million for some paintings at Sotheby’s auction the other day. Not as scary as smokey poison peddlers sponsoring elementary schools in China, but still creepy.
Tangent image: lalitkala
Although the local media in Colorado Springs will likely be disappointed, since nothing exciting happens there, this swastika stenciled graffiti on a sidewalk accompanied by the words “No Smoking” isn’t a “hate crime,” far from it actually. ABC affiliate, KRDO, wasn’t so convinced and hit the streets for answers looking for explanations, but maybe they should have considered investigating current events instead. With the FDA recently acquiring fascist-like powers to regulate tobacco—that could lead to really edgy packaging—and early anti-smoking propaganda campaigns by the Nazis, it’s both culturally relevant and historically accurate.
Just when you thought the Disney Store, the new Toys R Us mega store, or MTV’s TRL studio wasn’t enough to make Times Square soft as baby shit, here comes another contender, Nicorette, NYC’s first public tobacco rehab clinic.
More info via AdAge
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