Tobacco-Alternatives Market Remains Strong Despite Recent Headwinds

In recent months health regulators made significant moves to reshape the tobacco industry. Traditional cigarette companies continue to face significant FDA headwinds, while non-traditional tobacco products and smoking cessation products are facing less scrutiny. The Bedford Report examines investing opportunities in non-traditional tobacco and smoking cessation aids and provides stock research on Star Scientific, Inc.

There are many cigarette compnaies like RJ Reynolds , producer of Winston cigarettes or Altria Group , producer of Chesterfield cigarettes who would like to chnage some regulations about cigarette production.

South Beach Smoke and Electronic Cigarette Nation Offer Best E-Cig Savings

Electronic Cigarette Nation is proud to announce another savings opportunity for consumers looking to purchase South Beach Smoke e-cigs. Consumers can now save 16% off the purchase of any kit above the rock bottom price of $29.99. The sale also extends to cartridges and accessories which will be reduced by 16% of the sale price listed on the South Beach Smoke website. The coupon code from Electronic Cigarette Nation does not expire and can be used in conjunction with any deals going on at South Beach Smoke.

State stubs out all smoking ads

The laws go beyond point-of-sale restrictions in NSW and Victoria that prevent the display of tobacco products by small retailers, extending the bans to specialist shops.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the move would reduce the incentive to impulse-buy cigarettes, and cut smoking rates for young people.

Some of the most known cigarette brands are: Cosmos cigarettes and Glamour cigarettes.

"Just as there is strong evidence that the advertising, display and promotion of tobacco products encourages their up-take, restricting retail advertising and promotional material has been shown to be effective in reducing it," Ms Bligh said.

While the changes were applauded by Cancer Council Queensland as a step towards a "smoke-free" future, the National Retail Association said it would send some businesses to the wall.

Under legislation introduced yesterday, retailers are restricted to one sales area in each shop, tobacco and smoking products must be kept out of sight and any discounts are banned from display.

NRA executive director Gary Black said small businesses had a case for compensation: "These products have played a significant part in the profit of many thousands of small businesses across Australia."

CCQ chief executive Jeff Dunn said the changes would reduce smoking take-up rates for young people, who were "especially vulnerable to retail promotions and are easily influenced by marketing and cigarette packaging".

New River Falls store to sell discount tobacco products

A new store opened Monday at 703A N. Main St. that will sell tobacco products at a discount. Discount $mokes will sell five types of tobacco, and three types of tubes. The store will also offer cigarette cases, chewing tobacco, humidors and discount cigars.

The most demanded cigarettes are Davidoff cigarettes and Kent cigarettes.

The store is run by Dave Young, the store manager, and owned by Kent Burnstad. Burnstad said he wanted to have a store in the northern Wisconsin market, and Young lives in near River Falls. He and Young went store-hunting in the area, and found the store on Main Street. When they found out a liquor store was opening next door, Burnstad said that cemented his decision to open the store in that building in River Falls.

Burnstad is from Tomah. Young currently lives in Hammond, but will be moving closer to River Falls to be closer to the store.

There is some controversy surrounding this type of store, because the reason their products can be discounted is due to a loophole in tobacco tax laws. Discount $mokes customers use a machine to roll their own products, called “smokes.” Store workers can not have any part in making the smokes other than instructing the customer in the use of the machine. If they did, the customers wouldn’t be making the smokes themselves, and the taxes on the product would rise significantly.

The current tax, according to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue website, on 20 cigarettes is $2.52. Federal tax is $1.01 per pack.

Taxes on Discount $mokes’ products are less because they are made by the customer.

“Basically, we rent the machine to the guests, they rent the tobacco from us, they buy the tubes, we show them how to do it,” said Burnstad.

Customers to Discount $mokes choose the tobacco and tubes they want. An attendant shows the customer how to load the tubes and the tobacco into the machine. The customers press a button on the machine, and the machine makes the smokes in eight to 10 minutes.

Burnstad and Young have recipes for tobacco mixes that are similar to the mixes used in brand-name cigarettes and Burnstad said, less harmful because the tobacco they sell doesn’t contain the chemicals brand-name cigarettes do. Burnstad said a friend of his was a heavy smoker who switched from brand names to smokes.

“He’d get up in the morning, smoke a cigarette. He never ate breakfast. After three weeks of smoking these, he goes, ‘I can’t believe it, I can eat breakfast now,’” said Burnstad of his friend.

While the smokes may be less harmful than brand name cigarettes, Burnstand and Young acknowledge that smoking can still be harmful. Their machine carries the surgeon general’s warning on the dangers of smoking.

Because Discount $mokes operates in a tax law loophole, Burnstad said he and Young have to follow the rules very carefully. In addition to ensuring that the customers are the only ones manufacturing the smokes, this means that Burnstad and Young cannot give out any free samples, and have to be careful with their words. They call their products “smokes,” and they sell them in “boxes.”

Customers pay $29.99 for a box of 200 smokes. Burnstad said smaller amounts of smokes will be available soon.

Burnstad now owns three Discount $mokes stores in River Falls, Hayward, and Richland Center.

Discount $mokes is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Swedish snus and the GothiaTek standard

Some smokeless tobacco products, such as Swedish snus, are today considered to be associated with substantially fewer health hazards than cigarettes. This risk differential has contributed to the scientific debate about the possibilities of harm reduction within the tobacco area.

Although current manufacturing methods for snus build on those that were introduced more than a century ago, the low levels of unwanted substances in modern Swedish snus are largely due to improvements in production techniques and selection of raw materials in combination with several programs for quality assurance and quality control that have been successively introduced during the past 30-40 years. In the late 1990s these developments formed the basis for a voluntary quality standard for Swedish snus named GothiaTek.

In recent years the standard has been accepted by the members of the trade organization European Smokeless Tobacco Council (ESTOC) so it has now evolved into an industrial standard for all smokeless tobacco products in Europe.The initial impetus for the mentioned changes of the production was quality problems related to microbial activity and formation of ammonia and nitrite in the finished products. Other contributing factors were that snus came under the jurisdiction of the Swedish Food Act in 1971, and concerns that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s about health effects of tobacco, and the significance of agrochemical residues and other potential toxicants in food stuffs.This paper summarizes the historical development of the manufacture of Swedish snus, describes the chemical composition of modern snus, and gives the background and rationale for the GothiaTek standard, including the selection of constituents for which the standard sets limits.

The paper also discusses the potential future of this voluntary standard in relation to current discussions about tobacco harm reduction and regulatory science in tobacco control.

Biglerville a no-smoking zone for minors

In the United States, it is illegal for those under the age of 18 to purchase any tobacco products. On Tuesday night, the borough of Biglerville took that legality to the next logical step and has made it against the law for minor to use tobacco products in public.

Many teenagers smoke brands like Red&White cigarettes or Dunhill cigarettes.

Per an ordinance unanimously adopted by Biglerville’s council, anyone under 18 years old that is caught using tobacco products in public will be subject to a $100 fine.

Councilwoman Kaye Boyer, who chairs the Biglerville ordinance committee, said, “Minors aren’t supposed to have tobacco period so why should they be allowed to use it? It’s a problem we see quite often here in the borough. If you look around after high school football games on Friday nights, there are often groups of kids right there on the street using tobacco products. We had to put something on the books to try and stop this.”

The idea for the ordinance came from the Biglerville Police Department who presented it to ordinance council. Police Chief Gary Lanious said of the ordinance’s enforcement, “If we see someone who looks like a minor out in public using tobacco, we will go up and verify their age.” The community is sending a very clear message that if you are under the age of 18, use of tobacco products is not permitted and will not be tolerated.

RAPID FIRE MARKETING'S BIONIC CIGS TO SUBSTANTIALLY BENEFIT FROM FDA RULING

Rapid Fire Marketing (Pink Sheets: RFMK) announced today the new ruling by the FDA last Monday to regulate electronic cigarettes as tobacco products is a huge victory for Bionic Cigs. Being regulated as a tobacco product instead of regulation under significantly stricter rules for drug-delivery devices will make market penetration much easier for Bionic Cigs.
Electronic cigarettes such as Bionic Cigs, continue to gain popularity all across the globe. Nearly 46 million Americans smoke cigarettes. About 40 percent try to quit each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Electronic cigarettes have grown from a few thousand users in 2006, when they were first introduced to several million users in 2011. A number of makers and distributors of electronic cigarettes state that tens of thousands of new users are switching to the safer alternative every week.

Many smokers still preffer to smoke regular cigarettes as Winston cigarettes or Bond cigarettes.
Users say that electronic cigarettes address not only the nicotine addiction, but the behavioral aspects of smoking. With an electronic cigarette, the holding of the 'cigarette,' the puffing, and seeing the smoke come out is a much more satisfying experience than patches and pills. There are far fewer risks and chemicals involved with electronic cigarettes when compared to the more than 4,000 chemicals found in standard cigarettes.

"Bionic Cigs will benefit in a big way given the FDA ruling. It will free our company and industry from the constraints of being classified as drug delivery which is accompanied by substantial regulation and red tape," said a company spokesperson. "Our sales at Bionic Cigs continue to increase and we are going to launch an aggressive new marketing program this week. We expect to achieve, as the objective, substantially more sales in the coming months," the spokesperson concluded.

Safe Harbor:

From time to time, the Company may issue news releases that contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the safe harbor created by those sections. This material may contain statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. For those statements, the Company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statement provisions contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and any amendments thereto. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, goals, assumptions, or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." "Forward-looking statements" are based upon expectations, estimates and projections at the time the statements are made that involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated.

Vermont Senate rejects $1-a-pack tax hike

Vermont lawmakers have snuffed out a proposed $1-a-pack boost in the state tax on cigarettes.

After giving preliminary approval Thursday to a state budget that relies partly on revenue from it, the Vermont Senate voted 16-14 to defeat the tax, which supporters say would have raised $9 million annually.

Critics said boosting the tax by that much would send cigarette smokers to New Hampshire to buy and would stop the flow of New Yorkers who go to Vermont to buy cigarettes.

The taxes have been raised to almost every cigarette brand but for those who like Virginia cigarettes or Marlboro Gold cigarettes it is getting more expensive.

Currently, the Vermont state tax on a pack of cigarettes is $2.24.

SMOKIN': CLASSIC CIGARETTE COMMERCIALS collected on DVD

BY JAMES PLATH

I grew up thinking the Marlboro Man from Marlboro cigarettes was the original cool dude, and as late as "The Beverly Hillbillies" TV shows were being sponsored by tobacco companies. When I worked construction the summer after I graduated from college I saw just how ingrained smoking had become in American culture. The guys took a smoke break, and when I sat down with them, sans cigarette, the boss said, "Jimmy, what are you doing?" "Break," I said. "SMOKE break," he said. "Get back to work." So I took up smoking.

For people who remember those years, "Smokin': Classic Cigarette Commercials" will feel nostalgic in a pollute-your-lungs sort of way. And for those too young to remember? It's a fascinating look at how big business infiltrated TV in a big way, and then was shut out completely by the government. Too bad legislators don't do the same thing with all political advertising.

"Smokin'" comes out on DVD on May 17. Here's the description from S'More Entertainment:

Rabid fans of AMC´s "Mad Men" will appreciate the upcoming "Smokin': Classic Cigarette Commercials," a historical perspective on the burgeoning tobacco industry and its foray into popular culture via television advertising.
The first known advertisement in the USA was for the snuff and tobacco products of P. Lorillard and Company and was placed in the New York daily paper in 1789. Local and regional newspapers were used because of the small-scale production and transportation of these goods. The first real brand name to become known on a bigger scale in the USA was "Bull Durham" which emerged in 1868, with the advertising placing the emphasis on how easy it was "to roll your own".

By the last quarter of the 19th century, magazines and newspapers were featuring the colorful artwork adorning cigarette packaging and advertising was significantly helped by the distribution of free or subsidized branded cigarettes to troops during World War I and World War II.

It wasn´t long before cigarette advertising inculcated popular culture via television. In the early days of television, sponsors wanted popular TV characters to interact with their products. That was especially true of cigarette manufacturers. One of the most famous television jingles of the era came from an advertisement for Winston cigarettes. The slogan "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!" proved to be catchy, and is still quoted today. When used to introduce "Gunsmoke," two gun shots were heard in the middle of the jingle just when listeners were expecting to hear the word "cigarette." Other popular slogans from the 1960s were "Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!," which was used to advertise Tareyton cigarettes, and "I'd Walk a Mile for a Camel."

Synopsis:
Before tobacco companies were banned from television advertising, they marketed cigarettes to adults, minorities, teens, and even children. Marlboro was for he-men—burly cowboys that drove cattle, hunted wild boar, and were admired by hen-pecked husbands. Newport´s jingle and images showed you how to "fit in," and be smooth, like their taste. Lucky Strike played up a more innocent side, having a teenage girl sing their praises, and use remarks like "Golly!"

This fun collection of television cigarette commercials dates from the ´50s through ´60s (they were officially banned on January 1, 1971). It charts how shrewd advertising agencies understood our American culture, and used that knowledge to make smoking cigarettes appear to be cool, hip, and even safe.