Tobacco

Letter writer Gilbert Ross implies that there is no comparison between eating pizza and smoking ("Eating a slice a pizza is not the same as smoking a cigarette," May 10). As a physician, I disagree. Both tobacco and processed meats increase risk for cancer, heart disease and premature death. In fact, processed meat and other unhealthful foods kill more Americans annually than does tobacco. But this isn't just my opinion. A large body of research supports the link between processed meat and poor health.

As Gov.Martin O'Malleysigns into law the revenue measure passed during the recent special session, most of the attention will be on the income tax changes in the bill. Also in the new law will be an historic and life-saving increase in our state's tax on little cigars and smokeless tobacco. Thanks to several increases in our cigarette tax over the past decade, we have dramatically reduced cigarette smoking in Maryland, especially among teens, saving tens of thousands of lives. But, because we did not increase the tax on little cigars and smokeless tobacco during this time, youth use of some of these deadly products actually increased, according to a study done by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The tobacco companies are trying hard to portray themselves as persecuted by fanatics. In fact they are proving to be their own worst enemies. For all the millions they spend on advertising and high-powered public relations, their claims their product is just a pleasant relaxant, with no known ill effects, is pretty well demolished. The Food and Drug Administration is slowly moving toward regulating nicotine as a drug. It's about time.Long past time, judging from the records of some tobacco companies.

In July, Joe Zuccaro will celebrate one year of living in a condo in a historic Fells Point tobacco warehouse that he refers to as "a Renaissance bachelor's pad with a million-dollar view. " "I have always wanted to live in Baltimore," said the Montgomery County native. "I wanted to be somewhere neat and right on the water. " The renovated warehouse, like several in and around Baltimore's harbor, is in many ways a monument to Baltimore's great industrial past. Located on Henderson's Wharf, the brick building was constructed well over a century ago by the Baltimore &Ohio Railroad for storage of tobacco bound for Europe.

WASHINGTON -- If you click your way through cable TV land, you're bound to run across a World War II movie in which a soldier, dying for a smoke, smokes while he's dying.In such scenes, somebody nice, like William Bendix in "Wake Island," has been mauled by enemy fire and isn't going to make it. His last words to his squad are punctuated by puffs on a cigarette being held for him by a buddy.You have to wonder what President Clinton might be thinking when he watches such episodes.Can Mr. Clinton possibly see a link between smoking in wartime in years gone by and his rejuvenated war on the tobacco companies?

WAYSONS CORNER -- Martin Zehner picked up the card that carried the tobacco company's offer for his harvest. He took a hard look, then carefully folded the card in half and stuck it back in the 235-pound stack of tobacco."

Health Secretary Louis Sullivan has asked fans to stay away from athletic events sponsored by tobacco companies, such as Virginia Slims tennis or Winston Cup auto racing.1) Should tobacco companies be prohibited from sponsoring sports events?2) Would you not attend a sports event because it was sponsored by a tobacco company?To register your opinion, call SUNDIAL at 783-1800 (or 268-7736 in Anne Arundel County) today through midnight Sunday. After you hear the greeting, you'll be asked to punch in a four-digit code on your touch-tone phone.

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How An Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization, by Iain Gately. Grove Press, 400 pages. $25. Even nonsmokers will appreciate novelist Iain Gately's lively and engaging account of how the world -- most of which never knew about, much less consumed, tobacco until the mid 16th century -- came, so to speak, to need the weed. It is an astounding story. When you consider that originally, the plant was indigenous to South America alone, and only made its way across the globe relatively late in the history of human civilization, first as booty, then as bounty from the New World, it seems all the more amazing that it now so thoroughly suffuses almost every culture and nation on the planet.

With fierce criticism from public health officials ringing in their ears, negotiators for a comprehensive tobacco settlement reconvened in New York yesterday to iron out details on several thorny provisions, including the regulation of nicotine and the future liability of tobacco companies.Despite opposition to the deal, aired in a meeting of physicians and anti-smoking activists in Chicago Wednesday, the negotiators are determined to grind out a "term sheet" within the next 10 days that spells out details of the pact.

At age 100, Fader's Tobacconist is showing absolutely no signs of kicking the habit.Drop by 107 E. Baltimore St. and ask for Barking Dog, St. Bruno, Navy Flake, Condor, Three Nuns or Baby's Bottom.The salesman, dressed in a well-ironed shirt and a tie, will comply and perhaps suggest you might try some Calvert, Westview, Melvin's Madness or Cave Man's Delight.Be it a Connecticut cigar or snuff from Oslo, Fader's probably stocks it. Baltimore's oldest retail purveyor of the weed has more tobacco variants than there are no-smoking signs in Columbia.

Letter writer Gilbert Ross implies that there is no comparison between eating pizza and smoking ("Eating a slice a pizza is not the same as smoking a cigarette," May 10). As a physician, I disagree. Both tobacco and processed meats increase risk for cancer, heart disease and premature death. In fact, processed meat and other unhealthful foods kill more Americans annually than does tobacco. But this isn't just my opinion. A large body of research supports the link between processed meat and poor health.

A special session of the legislature is definitely needed to prevent the disastrous "doomsday budget" from taking effect - but it is also needed to enact the life-saving tobacco tax increase, which like the proposed income tax increase failed to gain final General Assembly approval by midnight on April 9. The House and Senate revenue conferees had agreed that the tax on little cigars should be increased from its very low present rate of 15 percent...

Health advocate Vinny DeMarco was thrilled and delighted this week when the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee approved the most important part of his proposal to increase taxes  on tobacco products  other that cigarettes as part its budget package. Now the irrepressible DeMarco wants the rest. The Senate committee agreed to raise the price on small cigars -- a type of tobacco products that has been increasingly appealing to young people as cigarette  taxes have been increased -- from 15 percent to 70 percent.

Your recent editorial claims that "raising tobacco prices has proven to be an effective way to stop people from picking up the habit" ("The 'other' tobacco tax," Jan. 19). However, the surest, most effective path to slashing the number of new smokers would be to raise the legal tobacco age to 21, thereby imposing three more years of maturity before allowing young people to purchase tobacco legally. For wide acceptability of a 21-year legal limit, the following elements are necessary: First, the change would have a one-year lead time and then rise in three one-year intervals (thus not "trapping" a previously-legal, 18-to-20-year-old tobacco user into sudden illegality)

I was dismayed by the letter written by Brad Rodu minimizing the devastating health consequences caused by using smokeless tobacco products ("All tobacco is not equally harmful," Jan. 24). Dr. Rodu is a dentist and scientist at the James Graham Brown Cancer Center. He receives funding from the tobacco industry and promotes the false virtues of chewing tobacco, snuff and other smokeless tobacco products. A quick Google search reveals he has been carrying the tobacco industry's water for more than 20 years now. Contrary to Dr. Rodu's statements, regular use of smokeless tobacco products can lead to the presence of oral cancer within an alarmingly swift five years.

In response to the recent letter defending smokeless tobacco use ("All tobacco products are not equally harmful," Jan. 24), the risk of tobacco trumps all others. Fifty cigarettes a day increases the risk of end-stage lung disease and lung cancer 150-fold. This is orders of magnitude worse than other modifiable risk factors like weight, aerobic capacity blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose level. Even if smokeless tobacco is responsible for only 2 percent of tobacco deaths, we cannot accept thousands of deaths instead of over 450,000 deaths a year in America.

A TV commercial airing in the Baltimore area features a young father concerned that the proposed $1 per-package increase in the tax on cigarettes in Maryland would cause him economic hardship, making it difficult for him to provide for his children.This ad shows how the tobacco companies will use any method -- no matter how deceptive -- to hold on to their profits.It's disturbing to see how Big Tobacco feigns concern for the poor when it has targeted this same group for years by placing billboards glamorizing smoking in inner-city neighborhoods, giving free sports equipment to youth leagues there and passing out free cigarettes to get residents addicted.

A pack of five apple-flavored Black & Mild little cigars costs slightly less than a pack of cigarettes. Next month, it will cost a lot less. That's because while Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Maryland General Assembly chose to raise the tax on a pack of cigarettes by one dollar during this fall's special session, they neglected to raise taxes for any other form of tobacco. It's a glaring omission that needs to be corrected as soon as possible. Cigars, pipe tobacco, snuff and the like raise many of the same health concerns that cigarettes do. A little cigar, for instance, is inhaled just like a cigarette (an unfiltered one, at that)

Over the past decade, Maryland has gradually raised its tax on cigarettes to the current $2 per pack, and the results have been striking. Fewer people smoke cigarettes today than before the tax was implemented, and that's particularly true among high school students. Yet even as lawmakers acted boldly to reduce cigarette use, they foolishly left alone other forms of tobacco, chiefly snuff, chewing tobacco and cigars. So while cigarettes and what's known as "OTP" or Other Tobacco Products were taxed at comparable levels in 1999 (36 cents per pack for cigarettes and 15 percent of wholesale prices for OTP)

Contrary to Vincent DeMarco's claims, minors have access to tobacco products because youth and retailers are breaking the law ("Cigar tax increase would reduce teen use," Jan. 4). Increasing taxes is not the answer; enforcing the law is. Higher taxes will cause additional economic hardship to Maryland's small business owners in the midst of the worst economy in 30 years. If these businesses close, the unemployed will potentially seek public assistance. This one-two economic gut punch will only exacerbate Maryland's fiscal challenges.