Free tickets!
August 19, 2008
Did I get your attention?
Good. The Bowie Baysox are offering a promotion next Wednesday, August 27, where you can watch the likes of baseball players Matt Wieters and Brad Bergeson for free.
In order to ensure Marylanders are aware of the dangers of secondhand smoke, the Baysox club is partnering with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to offer a free night at the yard.
All you have to do to enter for free is print out and sign a smoke-free pledge. The signed pledge can be redeemed for two adult general admission tickets.
Interestingly, the promotion comes a night after Belly Buster Tuesday where any lower reserve ticket gets you a free foot-long hot dog, popcorn and peanuts.
And after reading Liz Farmer’s minor league baseball article on Friday and seeing this audio slideshow, who wouldn’t want to go to a minor league game for free?
RICHARD SIMON, Multimedia Reporter
Sphere: Related ContentCigar, tobacco products under fire in legislature
February 27, 2008
My colleague, Ben Mook, is referring to HB 1558 as The Blunt Bill. It would “forbid the sale or distribution of a cigarette or cigar [or component part of a cigarette or cigar] that contains a specified constituent.”
Such as the individually-wrapped vanilla and cherry flavored cigars at the convenience store counter. The ones that teenagers - and others - are cutting open to stuff marijuana inside, providing themselves with a cover for illegal drug use.
At least, that’s the deviant behavior we figure the bills are aiming to curtail. Similar legislation in Philadelphia was passed by the City Council in December 2006 and signed into law a month later, only to be overturned by a Philadelphia judge in March 2007.
And Philadelphia’s not the only city to take a stand against blunts. According to a report from the Chicago Sun-Times, the Windy City aimed to ban flavored cigar wrappers that were being used “to obscure the sight and smell of marijuana wrapped inside.”
Outlawing blunts isn’t the only way that Maryland is snuffing out the tobacco industry - at least, that’s what Steve
Castro, co-owner of Davidus Cigars Ltd., says. He’s taken issue with SB 513 and HB1095, which would increase the tax on other tobacco products (OTP) to 25 percent of the wholesale price (it is currently 15 percent).
“The proposed increase … will crush the premium cigar business in Maryland and the businesses of dozens of tobacconists throughout the state,” he said. “Premium cigars, unlike cigarettes, are highly sensitive to price increases because they are more a choice than a habit. They are adult products that make ordinary moments special and special moments extraordinary.”
Davidus is headquartered in Monrovia with six tobacco stores throughout the state in Howard, Montgomery and Frederick counties.
JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor
Sphere: Related ContentSnuff: More dangerous than smoking?
August 24, 2007
It’s a toss-up which is more distasteful — blowing cigarette smoke in the faces of your friends and loved ones or spitting tobacco juice profusely in their presence.
But a new study has found one might be more dangerous for you than the other.
A report published this month by the American Association for Cancer Research has some frightening findings for users of the smokeless tobacco known as snuff, a powdered variation of chewing tobacco tucked just behind the lip.
The study at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center found that snuff delivers to its user even higher levels of cancer-causing chemicals than cigarettes.
Compared to smokers, the snuff users in the study were receiving more of the carcinogenic molecules known as nitrosamines, known to cause lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, cancer of the nose and liver.
Westminster construction worker John Schneehagen, 45, learned first-hand the dangers of smokeless tobacco.
Several years ago, after two decades of using smokeless tobacco, Schneehagen noticed a bump on his tongue. He elected to ignore it for a few years.
By the time he encountered Dr. John Saunders Jr., a surgeon at Greater Baltimore Medical Center and medical director of Greater Baltimore Head & Neck Associates, Schneehagen required surgery to remove the tumor on his tongue and the lymph nodes in his neck where the cancer had spread.
Schneehagen, who has been cancer free for 2.5 years, describes himself as “lucky.” “The worst thing that happened was I lost part of my tongue, but I’ve gotten used to that,” he said in a news release from GBMC.
More than 55,000 Americans will be diagnosed with head and neck cancer this year, and the disease will kill 13,000, according to the American Academy of Otolarygology — Head and Neck Surgery.
Do you or people you know use smokeless tobacco? How dangerous do you think it is? Should it be regulated more stringently? Tell us what you think.
-KAREN BUCKELEW, Daily Record Business Writer
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