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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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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Forget Cigarettes Ban Asbestos

One of the greatest public secrets is that cigarettes and tobacco do not cause the majority of cases of lung cancer. Rather it is asbestos which kills more folks with its own unique forms of cancer and from lung cancer.

Canada produces the largest amount of asbestos in the world, and our government would rather oppose its elimination, while putting stupid warning labels on cigarette packages.

The WHO lays the blame for the majority of the cancer deaths from occupational risk factors, squarely on the wide use of carcinogenic substances such as blue asbestos, 2-naphthylamine and benzene 20 to 30 years ago.

The WHO warns that if the current unregulated use of carcinogens continues a significant increase in occupational cancer can be expected in the coming decades.

We are in the midst of a global epidemic of asbestos-related disease unfolding primarily in industrialized countries. The International Labor Organization (ILO) states that over 2 million workers die each year of occupational causes. 75 percent of these preventable deaths are due to work-related disease, and the rest to trauma. Ten percent of these fatalities occur among children where child labor is practiced. Cancer represents the largest component of occupational disease mortality. The single largest contributor to this workrelated cancer epidemic is without question "the magic mineral" — asbestos.

Needless deaths due to workplace cancer

Everyday 200,000 people around the world die from cancer related to their workplace, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Tragically, many workers are dying needlessly as the risks of occupational cancer are avoidable.

Common work-related cancers like lung cancer, mesothelioma and leukaemia are caused by exposure to carcinogens (cancer causing agents) in the working environment. Second-hand tobacco smoke, asbestos and benzene (an organic solvent) are the most common workplace carcinogen pollutants.

More than 125 million people around the world are exposed to asbestos at work and 90,000 people die each year from asbestos-related disease. Benzene is widely used by workers in many industries, such as chemical and diamond industries. Thousands die from leukaemia each year as a result of exposure to this organic solvent. Every 10th lung cancer death is closely related to the workplace.

WHO argue that the largest number of deaths are in workplaces that do not meet health and safety requirements and those that do not prevent carcinogens polluting the air.

Dr Maria Neira, WHO director of public health, argues "The tragedy of occupational cancer resulting from asbestos, benzene and other carcinogens is that it takes so long for science to be translated into protective action." She goes on to say "In the interests of protecting our health, we must adopt an approach rooted in primary prevention, that is to make workplaces free from carcinogenic risks."

CANCER KILLS 9/11 COP, 46

A retired NYPD detective who worked for the elite Emergency Service Unit died early yesterday of pancreatic and lung cancer believed to be related to his work at Ground Zero.

Retired Detective Robert Williamson, 45, died at his Orange County home with family around him, said Detectives Endowment Association head Michael Palladino.

"Unfortunately, I knew this day was going to come for a long time," Palladino said. "We are just now starting to see the long-term health affects of 9/11 on first responders."

Williamson was the third NYPD cop to succumb to cancers believed related to their post-9/11 service.

SEE:

Day of Mourning

In Canada Work Kills

Tories Promote Lung Cancer

Prove It

Make Up Your Mind

June Pointer RIP

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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.

See:

Rememberance or Revisionism

Kenney is A Funny Guy

Christy Moore - Viva La Quince Brigada

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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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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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