WASHINGTON, D.C. - Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s latest problem with the tobacco industry is with Internet sellers.

Blumenthal was scheduled to testify Friday before a Congressional that the U.S. Post Office should be prohibited from shipping cigarettes and other tobacco products.

“We cannot permit the United States Postal Service — an arm of the government — to deliver death and addiction to children,” he said in a release. “Laws enabling it should be ended.”
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April 23 (Bloomberg) — Philip Morris International Inc., spun off last month by Altria Group Inc., posted first-quarter profit that rose faster than analysts estimated after new varieties of Marlboro cigarettes and acquisitions spurred sales in Indonesia, Pakistan and Mexico.

The cigarette maker jumped 3.9 percent in New York trading, the biggest increase since the March 28 spinoff, after saying profit this year will exceed its forecasts.

Net income advanced 29 percent to $1.87 billion, or 89 cents a share, the company said today in a statement. Sales rose 18 percent to $15.6 billion, boosted by the dollar’s declines.
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Tens of thousands of ill Florida smokers and families of those who died are lining up for a share of a $600 million fund created by major tobacco companies as part of a 14-year-old lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers.

In his latest crusade against teenage smoking, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is butting heads with Stamford-based UST Inc.
Blumenthal wants Congress to add tobacco to the list of items banned from mail delivery, a step he claims would effectively block Internet sales of cigarettes to minors and those seeking to evade paying state taxes.

UST, the world’s leading producer of moist smokeless tobacco products, is lobbying against such a ban. The holding company and its public affairs arm reported spending $650,000 in the first quarter of 2008 on lobbying Congress, according to a quarterly report recently filed with the U.S. Senate.
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It may sound like an oxymoron…a fire safe cigarette. But they are real and they are law in two states in our area. That means every pack sold is labeled FSC or fire safe cigarettes. The cigarettes are made to go out on their own and the new law has plenty of people fired up.

At cigarette stores across Kentucky, three letters are igniting quite the controversy. “I don’t really care for them. They don’t taste the same anymore,” says Danny Scott. His cigarettes taste different because they are FSC. It’s not a brand, but rather a brand new rule in Kentucky that all cigarettes sold be fire safe.
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Last month, New York law enforcement authorities announced the arrest of Queens resident Rafea al-Nablisi for smuggling 12,000 cartons of cigarettes a week. It was not the first such arrest, and thanks to New York’s latest cigarette tax hike, it will not be the last.

On April 23, less than two weeks after Mr. Nablisi’s arrest was made public, Gov. David Paterson signed into law a $1.25 per-pack tax hike on top of the state’s $1.50 per-pack tax. That’s in addition to New York City’s own $1.50 per-pack tax. Come July 1, New York City’s smokers will be paying on average $9 a pack for legal cigarettes.
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COLUMBUS — Ohio is hoping to recover more than $2 million by going after smokers who bought cheap cigarettes online.
The state is sending out 5,500 bills to folks who’ve bought their smokes from web sites hoping to avoid paying taxes.
Ohio law requires cigarettes to be purchased face-to-face. Technically, that makes the web sales illegal.
Internet sites are cutting into sales at discount tobacco stores. Owners did warn customers this was coming.
Federal law makes vendors who sell cigarettes from state to state report those sales. That’s where the state got information for this crackdown.

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) — An Indian reservation smoke shop owner convicted of being a major supplier of black market cigarettes also has been found guilty of a weapons charge.

The same jury had acquitted Rodney Morrison, 41, last week of nine counts that he waged a campaign of arson and murder to protect his multimillion dollar business.

The jurors returned to court on Monday to confirm that Morrison had a prior felony conviction which made it illegal for him to possess a handgun. He was arrested in 1991 in a negligent homicide and a felony drug offense case, prosecutors said.
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HONOLULU (AP) _ Only fire-safe cigarettes will be sold in Hawaii beginning next year under a new law passed by the Legislature.

Fire-safe cigarettes are less likely to start house fires by self-extinguishing if they’re left unattended.

Lawmakers say these cigarettes are rolled with a kind of paper that’s less likely to ignite homes and take lives. Between 700 and 900 people nationwide are killed in house fires started by cigarettes.
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The sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products at drug stores would be illegal in San Francisco if an ordinance introduced this week by Mayor Gavin Newsom wins approval.

The proposed law is designed to curb tobacco sales at stores where pharmacists work, but would not apply to big box businesses such as Costco or to grocery stores. The ordinance is just one of a series of measures supported by the mayor intended to promote healthy living among San Francisco residents, said Newsom spokeswoman Giselle Barry.
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