RazeWV

Make sure you check out the winners of the TAC elections by heading to the "About" page! These winners were decided at Raze On 2006.  click here for full article>>>

Raze On 2006 was a success. We were able to come together in a statwide effort to fight big tobacco. Take your fight out to your communities, and share the truth.  click here for full article>>>

Parkersburg - By PAMELA BRUST, Senior Staff WriterParkersburg News and Sentinel PARKERSBURG — Nearly 100 youth from anti-tobacco groups in West Virginia and Ohio joined forces Wednesday at City Park to spread the word that 1,200 lives are lost daily in the U.S. to tobacco and secondhand smoke-related diseases.To demonstrate their point, the middle school and high school-aged youth who belong to RAZE in West Virginia and Stand in ohio laid out 1,200 pairs of shoes, provided through the Parkersburg Salvation Army,...  click here for full article>>>

Charleston - By Charles ShumakerWINFIELD — At one point during Thursday’s public forum regarding Putnam County’s indoor smoking regulations, Hurricane resident Wes Reed asked smokers or those who support smoking indoors to raise their hands.No one in the audience of just over 50 people moved a muscle.Just over an hour’s worth of anti-smoking statistics and pleas made up the Putnam County Health Department’s forum. The comments along with several petitions and statistic-filled sheets will be submitted to the county’s...  click here for full article>>>

Keyser - By submission to the Cumberland Times-NewsSunday, March 19, 2006 11:57 AM ESTKEYSER - Local 4-H teen leaders are providing educational programs on the dangers of second-hand smoke. Mineral County 4-H Teen Leader's have been involved with tobacco prevention education for the past seven years.During a planning meeting this past fall they decided that a new focus would be on sharing with the community the health risks associated with breathing second-hand smoke.Over the years 4-H teen leaders have taught a...  click here for full article>>>

San Francisco - The first complete review of research on the link between teenagers viewing on-screen smoking and then taking up smoking themselves finds that one leads to the other. The review concludes that eliminating scenes of smoking in new youth-rated films should substantially reduce smoking initiation in the adolescent years, when the vast majority of smokers start. "The weight of dozens of studies, after controlling for all other known influences, shows the more smoking that kids see on screen, the more likely...  click here for full article>>>

Japan (11.28.05) - About 620,000 cigarette vending machines will be replaced with new models equipped with integrated-circuit (IC) card sensors that will prevent minors from buying cigarettes in Japan.  The current vending machines, which have long been blamed for fostering underage smoking, will be replaced by the end of 2008. According to officials of the Tobacco Institute of Japan, the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association, and another cigarette-related entity, smokers will not be able to buy cigarettes...  click here for full article>>>

Charleston, WV - W.Va. spends $5.9M on prevention; CDC recommends spending more than $14M West Virginia has made progress with its tobacco settlement money, but with more funds, many more people could be helped, said Bruce Adkins, director of the Division of Tobacco Prevention for the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health. So far, the state has instituted a youth prevention program that very well could be associated with the 32 percent decrease in youth smoking since it started, he said. It also has a quit line for...  click here for full article>>>

China - By:  Amanda Stone  October 10, 2005 Ai Ai, a female chimpanzee at a safari park in northwestern China, finally managed to kick her 16-year smoking habit. The 27-year-old-chimp originally started smoking years ago by picking up butts from the tourists shortly after her mate died in 1989. She became a chain smoker in 1997 when her daughter was moved to another zoo and a second mate passed away.  Ai Ai was up to seven or eight cigarettes a day before the zookeepers...  click here for full article>>>

California - Council Bans Smoking on Beach, Walkway By: Mary Brownfield The Carmel Pine Cone, from www.tobacco.org     October 7, 2005 Lighting up a smoke on Carmel Beach or puffing on a stogie while strolling the Scenic Road pathway should join the city’s long list of banned behaviors, the council decided Tuesday. “It’s time to send a message: ‘Keep your butts off our beach,’” councilman Gerard Rose said shortly before the vote. “Cigarette,” Mayor Sue McCloud clarified. But the proposed...  click here for full article>>>

Cigarettes are dangerous for your health in more ways than you can imagine.  They are the leading cause of fatal fires in the United States, accounting for about 25% of all fire deaths.  Cigarette fires kill approximately 1,000 Americans and injure another 4,000 each year.  More than one-third of these injuries and deaths are of innocent children and adults who don’t even smoke.   In a recent study the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) found that while the overall...  click here for full article>>>

The American Heart Association supports legislation that seeks to restrict or prohibit tobacco advertising, promotion and marketing to young people, minorities or women. The American Heart Association also works in partnership with the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids on this important issue. How does the tobacco industry target youth? The tobacco industry has long targeted young people with its cigarette advertising and promotional campaigns.  One of the most memorable, the now-defunct “Joe...  click here for full article>>>

By:  Megan Rauscher September 22, 2005 According to the study in the journal Tobacco Control, smoking just one to four cigarettes per day nearly triples the risk of dying from heart disease or lung cancer. There is widespread belief among the lay public that "a few cigarettes per day cannot harm me," Dr. Kjell Bjartveit of the National Health Screening Service in Oslo, Norway told Reuters Health. Bjartveit and colleagues tracked the health and death rates of close to 43,000 men and...  click here for full article>>>