WHAT IS MENTHOL?

Chemically, menthol is a monocyclic terpene alcohol. It is a naturally occurring chemical chiefly derived from the peppermint plant (Mentha piperita) or the corn mint (Mentha arvensis), but it can also be synthetically produced. The chemical structure of menthol is shown in Figure 1. Menthol can exist as
one of eight stereoisomers—molecules with identical formulas but different three‐dimensional shapes.

These isomers include menthol, isomenthol, neomenthol and neoisomenthol, each of which can exist asl, also called (‐), or d, also called (+). Each of the tereoisomers has distinct pharmacologic characteristics. The l, or (‐), isomer of menthol is the natural isomer and conveys the typical taste and sensory characteristics of menthol. The d, or (+), isomer is active but less so than l‐menthol
.
Tobacco companies use both natural and synthetic menthol in cigarettes. The natural menthol found in cigarettes (l isomer) is typically crystallized from steam‐distilled oil of the corn mint plant. Synthetic menthol (dl ‐ menthol) is racemic, meaning it contains both the d and l isomers and has different taste characteristics from natural menthol. Some cigarette manufacturers use natural menthol only; others use a mixture of natural and synthetic menthol. Natural menthol has been reported to impart greater cooling and mintness and less sharpness, perhaps due to trace chemicals in the natural extract.

Menthol is added to cigarettes in numerous ways:
(1) spraying the cut tobacco during blending;
(2)application to the pack foil;
(3) injection into the tobacco stream in the cigarette maker;
(4) injection into the filter on the filter maker;
(5) insertion of crushable capsule in the filter;
(6) placement of a menthol thread in the filter;
(7) a combination of the above (

Over time, menthol diffuses throughout the cigarette irrespective of where it was applied. Menthol cigarettes are typically blended using more flue‐cured and less burley tobacco. This is because some of the chemicals in burley tobaccos create an incompatible taste character with menthol.

Tobacco ad campaign draws criticism

A recent ad campaign suggesting people who resolve to give up smoking in the new year try a smokeless product instead has drawn criticism from anti-tobacco advocates.

The campaign in question is the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.'s first effort aimed at getting smokers to switch to Camel Snus, introduced in early 2009. Users stick the small, tobacco-filled pouches between their cheek and gum.

The ads appeared recently in wide-circulation magazines like Time, Sports Illustrated and People, as well as in some alternative weekly newspapers around the country. They suggest, but don't say directly, that the pouches are a way to help kick the smoking habit.

Under federal law, companies cannot claim that tobacco products work as smoking cessation products. All the ads also warn: "Smokeless tobacco is addictive."

The Food And Drug Administration, which regulates tobacco advertising, is reviewing the Reynolds ad campaign.

Anti-tobacco campaigners say the Reynolds ads aim to reorient smokers to smokeless snus to keep them from being lost as potential customers.

Besides nicotine and, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 28 cancer-causing agents, smokeless tobacco can have other ingredients that negatively impact a person's health.

Some experts do see advantages to smokeless tobacco over cigarettes. A 2007 report from the United Kingdom's Royal College of Physicians argues some smokeless tobacco products are less harmful than cigarettes, at least from the perspective of secondhand smoke.

Taiwan Children Health Study

The Taiwan Children Health Study (TCHS) has a multipurpose nationwide design, and is focused on common environmental factors such as outdoor pollutants and household ETS exposure. Communities in Taiwan were selected with the aim of maximizing the variability and minimizing the correlations of exposures to outdoor pollutants based on historic routine air monitoring data. In communities with pollution patterns of interest, neighborhoods with stable, largely middle-income populations were identified from 2004 census data.
To address community-level sources of variability, we randomly sought participating communities within existing financial constraints. School district representatives in participating communities were consulted to identify suitable schools, based on demographic stability, likely parental cooperation, and absence of local pollution sources. Our study population finally comprised middleschool children from 14 diverse communities in Taiwan. To permit cross-sectional assessment of environmental factors, we recruited 350-450 participants from each of the study communities. In each classroom targeted for participation, every student was invited to volunteer.
Classroom-level incentives were used to encourage participation. In each school, science, health, or physical education classes were targeted, excluding any special classes for gifted or learning-disabled subjects. The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board at our university hospital, and it complied with the principles outlined in the Helsinki Declaration [28]. Questionnaire of respiratory health A total of 5,804 seventh and eighth-grade children were recruited from public schools in 14 Taiwanese communities in 2007.
The questionnaire was distributed in all communities simultaneously; subjects were given the forms by project staff following their pulmonary function tests and asked to complete and return them the following day. Questionnaire responses by parents or guardians were used to categorize children’s asthma status, age at asthma diagnosis, wheeze, and history of bronchitic symptoms. Children were considered to have asthma if there was a positive answer to the question “Has a doctor ever diagnosed this child as having asthma?” Active asthma was defined as physician-diagnosed asthma with any asthma-related symptoms or illness in the previous 12 months. Serious asthma was defined as ever visit emergency rooms or ever hospitalized. Early-onset asthma was defined as age of onset for asthma before 5 years of age. Late-onset asthma was onset after 5 years of age. Wheeze was defined as any occurrence of the child’s chest sounding wheezy or whistling.
Current wheeze was defined as wheezing for 3 or more days out of the week for a month or longer in the previous year. Bronchitis status was positive if subjects had a physician-diagnosed episode in the prior 12 months. Chronic cough was defined as cough in the morning or at other times of the day that lasted for three months in a row or more during the prior 12 months. Chronic phlegm was defined by a “yes” answer to the question “Other than with colds, does this child usually seem congested in the chest or bring up phlegm?”

Defendants liability

Defendants complain that the district court failed to identify the racketeering acts that support the finding of liability. While 27 it is true the district court’s opinion provided no single, discrete list of specific racketeering acts, the comprehensive findings— detailing over one-hundred racketeering acts—are sufficient to warrant affirmance.
Defendants raise numerous challenges to the correctness of the district court’s findings that they committed racketeering acts, which we take up in Parts III and IV. In this section, however, we are concerned only with the existence of these findings, not their validity. By statutory definition, any violation of the mail or wire fraud statutes can qualify as “racketeering activity.”
To prove a violation of the mail and wire fraud statutes, the government must show a scheme or artifice to defraud and a mailing or wire transmission in furtherance thereof. “Where one scheme involves several mailings, the law is settled that each mailing constitutes a violation of the statute.”
Where, as here, the mail and wire fraud statutes serve as the predicate offenses for a RICO violation, each racketeering act must be a mailing or wire transmission made in furtherance of a “scheme or artifice to defraud.” Thus, in order to identify the racketeering acts, the district court must first have found a scheme to defraud, then concluded the alleged mailings or wire transmissions were in furtherance of such scheme.

French Cigarettes

CIGARETTES DE LA REGIE FRANCAISE (1939-1981)
France established a State Tobacco Monopoly in the seventeenth century, and like most tobacco monopolies, it inhibited development of new brands. When one thinks of French cigarettes, two brands come to mind--Gauloises and Gitanes. Gauloises were introduced in 1910, then redesigned in 1936 to feature the famous winged Gallic helmet logo. While Gitanes (Gypsies) was also launched in 1910, the classic blue design of a dancer with her tambourine, dates from 1943.

Harris Lewine, in his entertaining but slightly pre-mature 1970 book, Good-Bye to All That, describes the Gauloises family of cigarettes as the strongest of families--they're "loosely packed, forever going out!".

Tobacco money

BRISTOL, Va. – The Virginia Tobacco Commission is poised to approve spending $12 million to establish a pair of energy research centers in the region, its vice chairman said Monday.
The centers, planned for Abingdon and Wise, would study clean coal and other environmentally friendly technologies, said state Delegate Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, vice chairman of the state’s Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission.
The centers are among eight special projects and research center requests previously reviewed by commission members. Other energy research centers – costing a combined $16 million – also are expected to receive funding when the 31-member commission meets here Wednesday and Thursday, Kilgore said.
“This is something the time has come for us to do,” Kilgore said in a phone interview with the Herald Courier. “We need to look at clean energy and clean-coal technologies.”

During its Thursday meeting, the commission will be asked to approve $8 million to establish the Southwest Virginia Clean Energy Research and Development Center. It would be housed in a 16,000-square-foot building to be constructed at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center on the campus of Virginia Highlands Community College in Abingdon.
The center is expected to employ about 20 by its third year, have an annual operating budget of more than $7 million and generate more than $11 million in annual economic impact, according to commission documents.
“We hope to get that project funded and help it become a reality,” said Kenneth Reynolds, a commission member and chairman of the Washington County Board of Supervisors.
“With energy costs so high, if we can be part of helping develop new sources of energy, I think it has a lot of potential.”
The commission also is expected to consider a $4 million appropriation to design, construct and open an Appalachia America Energy Research Center at the Lonesome Pine Technology Park in Wise.
That center would include nearly 25,000 square feet dedicated to clean-coal technology, converting coal to liquid fuels, mercury remediation and reducing sulfur levels.
Other energy sources, including solar power and the production of hydrogen gas, also might be studied.
NanoChemonics, a firm based in Pulaski, Va., has committed to locating at the facility and towork with universities and corporate partners in mining and energy industries, commission documents show.
The commission’s appropriation equals about half the total funding for that project and follows an earlier $1 million allocation for site development. Additional funding is expected from the Wise County Industrial Development Authority and the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority.

Other energy research centers and funding proposals the commission will consider include:

* $8.07 million to establish a sustainable energy research center in Danville.

* $7.69 million to establish a nuclear energy research center in Bedford County.

* $873,845 in additional funding for a Gretna, Va., facility that converts crops into bio-diesel fuel.

Funding requests are expected to go before the full commission at its Thursday meeting. On Wednesday, commissioners are expected to consider a recent report critical of some of its funding decisions, Kilgore said.
The blue ribbon panel’s report was critical because the commission does not have methods in place to measure the overall return on its investments.

“We’ll review the blue ribbon commission’s findings and talk about those concerns,” Kilgore said.
All meetings are open to the public and will be held at the Holiday Inn near Interstate 81’s Exit 7.

Cigarette machines may be banned

Cigarette vending machines and packets of 10 could be outlawed under government plans aimed at preventing children and young people smoking.

The plans, which include banning branding and logos, apply to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Similar plans have been unveiled in Scotland.

Smokers' lobby group Forest said there was "no evidence" to show the plans would to cut smoking in young people.

Meanwhile, a new TV advert campaign is targeting parents who smoke.

The adverts warn that children of smokers are three times more likely to take up the habit than those of non-smokers.

Under current pricing, a packet of 10 cigarettes cost about £3, compared to nearly £6 for 20.

Last week the Scottish Government announced a range of proposals to restrict tobacco sales in Scotland - including a ban in shops from displaying cigarettes in "pride of place" on their shelves.

On the latest consultation document, Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said it was vital to take away temptation from children.

"Protecting children from smoking is a government priority and taking away temptation is one way to do this," she said.

"If banning brightly coloured packets, removing cigarettes from display and removing the cheap option of a pack of 10 helps save lives, then that is what we should do, but we want to hear everyone's views first."

Hey Where Are All The Cigarettes?

Toronto - Thanks to a new law, which came into effect over the weekend, cigarettes are no longer visible to customers at stores across Ontario.

The new law requires stores to keep the packages out of view.

“This marketing tool … is a wall of temptation for smokers who have made the decision to quit,” said Joanne Di Nardo, spokeswoman for the Ontario Tobacco-Free Network. “Well-documented research and evidence shows that these retail display stands increase tobacco sales by 12 percent to 28 percent.”

When asked how it has effected sales so far, one store in Toronto told EON, “oh…people just laugh….hasn’t stopped anyone from buying their smokes.”

Other provinces are expected to implement a similiar program

Vietnam opens non-smoking week

Vietnam launches the inaugural National Non-Smoking Week today in an effort to raise awareness of the consequences of smoking and protect young people from such dangers.
During National Non-Smoking Week, all forms of advertisement, trade promotion and sponsorship by tobacco companies will be prohibited.
In addition, cigarettes retail prices and import taxes will see a hike and aban on selling cigarettes to people under 18 years of age will also go into effect.
The week will end on Saturday.
The Ministry of Health as well as the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will work with the World Health Organization to implement the week to mark World Non-Smoking Day, May 31.
The survey also showed that 56 percent of men and close to 1.8 percent of women in Vietnam smoke regular cigarettes , 31 percent of whom are young people.
The number of tobacco-related deaths in Vietnam hits 40,000 on average annually.

Why state wants fire-safe cigarettes

Relaxation gives way to sleep and the cigarettes falls, not onto the person but onto the bed.
Jerry Lojka, fire marshal for the Midwest City Fire Department, has investigated this and other fatal scenarios in the last six or seven years where a person died as because of a fire caused by an unattended cigarette.
That's why he coordinated support for legislation requiring the sale of fire-safe cigarettes .
These cigarettes are designed to stop burning at one of several bands if the cigarette is left unattended.
House Bill 3341, authored by Rep. Mike Thompson, R-Oklahoma City, passed unanimously in the Senate and the House and has been signed by Gov. Brad Henry.
Retailers will be required to sell only "fire-safe” cigarettes, or cigarettes that contain the bands that automatically extinguish a cigarette that is left unattended.

Other states have passed laws yet to go into effect. Oklahoma is the 18th state having passed such a law that is yet to take effect.
"We will see it save lives, there's no doubt about it,” Lojka said.
The rest of the scenario
A cigarette on the bed unchecked for 10 to 12 minutes can create "enough heat that it will allow it to smolder,” Lojka said.
"And this process can take two hours or more for it to go from smoldering to a full-blown fire,” he adds.
If the smoke detector doesn't go off, or if it doesn't wake the person, a great deal of smoke is generated before the flames erupt.
What are the bands expected to do?
Tobacco companies have to put a band 15 mm from the lighted end of the cigarette and another band 10 mm from the labeled end of the cigarette.
"So what happens is if somebody lights up and they take a couple of drags,” he said. But if they fall asleep, "Five to seven minutes later it reaches that second band and the cigarette goes out,” he said.
Lojka hopes with the new cigarettes, the scenario will change to something like this: A person goes to bed, falls asleep, the cigarette falls onto the bed and one of the bands causes the cigarette to stop burning.

Global factors see AP tobacco auction prices at all-time high

BANGALORE: Prices of FCV (Flue-Cured Virginia) tobacco in the ongoing auctions in Andhra Pradesh have touched all-time high. At the end of May 8, the 76th day of the AP auction conducted by the Tobacco Board, 111.33 million kg (mkg) had been sold for an average per kg price of Rs 78.44, almost 63% higher than the average of Rs 47.59 realised from the sale of 110.85 mkg in the corresponding period of last year’s auction.
Industry sources say the steep spurt in prices is because of a global supply constraint following factors like withdrawal of Chinese cigarettes from the export market because of stock adjustments to meet rising domestic demand. All of this has seen auction prices for high grades from AP’s NLS (Northern Light Soil) region crossing the per kg price of Rs 100 for the first time ever.
Prices for NLS high grades are ruling in the range of Rs 105 to Rs 118 per kg. With 111 mkg being auctioned out of this year’s AP crop of 170 mkg, farmers expect the brisk pace of sales to continue and the auction to be completed by the middle of June.

Fire-Safe Cigarettes Will Prevent Fires

HONOLULU -- The Honolulu Fire Department said it is already looking forward to next year, when a new law kicks in aimed to making cigarettes less likely to start fires.
KITV's Shayne Enright reported that a home in Kapolei was destroyed last year by a cigarette thrown in the trash.
One person was injured and a family was left without a home.
The HFD said it hopes to avoid incidences like that when the new law is enacted.
"Actually, what we want to do is put ourselves out of business if we can prevent a fire. Not only do we help the community, but we also help the responders," said HFD Chief Kenneth Silva.
The new cigarettes have bands of paper that have a higher density, and if a cigarette is left unattended, it will self-extinguish, Enright said.
Lawmakers said cigarette manufactures support the safety measure, and smokers shouldn't expect to pay higher costs, they said.
"When the fires came through, it shut down our only highway that we have, stranding tons of visitors and residents who couldn't get to the airport," said Rep. Angus McKelvey. "The thing grew out of control so fast, and a lot of it could have been prevented."
A large brushfire last year in Lahaina prompted Maui officials to take action.
Some smokers said fire-safe cigarettes will prevent fires from starting.
"Normally I try to avoid smoking in the bedroom and places like that, and you try to keep an eye on it. It could be potential danger -- you never know what happens," smoker Bart Van Kerkhove.
The special cigarettes show up on store shelves in September 2009, Enright said.