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After a weekend popping party pills and knocking back booze, 17-year-old Tony Wilson was hanging out for a smoke. He had no money but enough drugs and alcohol in his system to try to rob a Carterton dairy where he was known by the owners. 
Wilson was so intoxicated that, armed with a plastic toy gun, he botched the holdup and ended up trying to write an IOU for the cigarettes. Masterton District Court was told yesterday how the escapade unravelled. About 5.30pm on June 17, an elderly resident saw Wilson, wearing a black balaclava, hanging around outside the High St dairy at the southern end of Carterton's main road. Concerned for her safety, she told the shop's owner of the young man lingering outside. As she left, the shop owner escorted her out. Wilson at that point had removed the balaclava and was walking toward the shop owner who immediately recognised him. They exchanged a friendly greeting. About five minutes later, the doorbell sounded in the shop and Wilson who had pulled the balaclava back over his head stormed in, pointed a black plastic toy cap pistol at the shop owner and said: "Gimme the money." The owner, who figured the gun was a toy, said: "I know you. You shouldn't do this to me." So Wilson changed his demand to: "Gimme Pall Mall Filter." But the dairy owner challenged him, saying: "I'm not giving you cigarettes but I will let you tick them up." He handed Wilson a pen and paper. As Wilson began writing out the IOU a customer walked in. He ripped off the balaclava and then, as his name was called, bolted. Police picked him up soon after at the southern end the town as he attempted to hitch-hike to his parents' home in Greytown. When he sobered up, he told police that he had been drinking alcohol and taking party pills throughout the weekend and because he was craving a cigarettes, behaved stupidly. Wilson, who pleaded guilty to a charge of demanding with menaces, was discharged without conviction. The judge said the decision, in the face of strong police opposition, was based on Wilson's young age and the consequences of a conviction for a job-seeker in a small rural town. He ordered Wilson to pay $1000 to the dairy owner for emotional harm. Smoker cigarettes across England are having their final puff at work and the pub before the ban on lighting up in enclosed public places begins at 0600 BST. The move, intended to cut deaths from second-hand smoke, brings England into line with the rest of the UK. Many venues are holding farewell events for the final night of smoking cigarettes, while local authorities are preparing to enforce the ban. Anyone lighting up illegally will face a fine of up to 200. 
Regulars at the Prince of Wales pub at Hagley, Worcestershire, are having a smokers' party with free cigarettes and a tobacco-themed disco featuring only tobacco-related hits. And others are coming up with novel solutions for smokers - locals at the Miners Arms in Bristol will be offered fluorescent jackets to go outside and smoke cigarettes in safety, easily visible to cars. Landlord Gerry McLoughlin, said: "I chose these jackets because I did not want to put smokers off coming here. "On a rainy day like today they are just what you need. Rather than spending my money on a new outbuilding I thought I would do this." Celebrations But while for some the weekend means a last chance to party, for others the celebrations are only just beginning. Before the weekend, a public cigarettes execution was organised by campaign group Help - For a Life Without Tobacco. The cigarettes was given the chop amid cheers opposite the Tower of London - the place where "enemies of state" traditionally met their fate. Meanwhile some are worried that the ban will mean the demise of the traditional pub and other social haunts such as shisha cafes. And businesses failing to comply with the ban could be hit with fines of up to 1,000 if they fail to put up "no smoking cigarettes" signs. Dickie Dawes, from Dinky's Dinah on the A458 near Shrewsbury, told the BBC that his 24-hour cafe would be open when the ban comes in, and that he was preparing early to tell people to stub out their cigarettes. He said: "At that time in the morning we get quite a lot of revellers who've been out all night clubbing and of course some of them perhaps a bit worse for wear for a little drink. "So it could be pretty hard tomorrow to sort it out." The ban is designed to protect people from the effects of secondhand smoke at work, which doctors estimate kills more than 600 people a year. The government also hopes it will help smokers to quit, and discourage children from taking up the habit. Meanwhile a legal challenge to the ban has been launched at the High Court. Freedom To Choose says the change in the law contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights. AS STRICT indoor smoking bans come into force across Victoria this weekend, cigarettes giant Philip Morris has secret plans to launch Australia's first hand-held electronic smoking cigarettes device, which it claims will reduce second-hand smoke by more than 90 per cent. The controversial "Heatbar" is about the size of a mobile phone and is said to heat specially designed cigarettes without burning them. Confidential documents seen by The Age reveal Philip Morris' marketing plan for the device, which it claims will usher in a "new movement in smoking cigarettes, where art meets technology". "The heating elements inside Heatbar respond when you take a puff," the documents claim. "The specifically designed cigarettes is gently toasted and never burnt." And unlike normal cigarettes, the device is said to deliver an "aerosol which gives the consumer the flavour and aroma associated with cigarettes". Philip Morris also says the device cuts harmful substances associated with cigarettes, including carbon monoxide. It will be sold from a concept store, The New Movement Tobacconist, to open in Chapel Street, South Yarra, and to be modelled on a similar outlet in Switzerland. The move has provoked a furious response from Quit Victoria, with acting director Suzie Stillman urging the Federal Government to introduce a licensing system for all tobacco products. "Without this system, the cigarettes industry will continue to use the Australian public as laboratory rats for their latest gimmicks," Ms Stillman said. She said there was no scientific evidence to suggest that smoking cigarettes with the Heatbar was any safer. Philip Morris patented the Heatbar technology in the US in 2004 and opened a "lounge-bar" by the same name in Zurich, Switzerland, last year. The venue sells and promotes the device along with four brands of compatible cigarettes named Jag, Drift, Muse and Solano. It is believed the same four brands will be available at the company's Melbourne store. Yesterday, Philip Morris spokeswoman Nerida White would not confirm if the device would be sold in Melbourne, but said the product had been discussed with the Federal Government. "I can't speculate on what we might be doing in the future, but I can tell you that when (the store) opens it will be selling Philip Morris brands and competitors' products too," Ms White said. She said the the company, which sells more than 4 billion cigarettes a year in Australia, would gain a "first-hand insight into how retailing works" from its Chapel Street outlet, which was due to open by late July. Cancer Council Victoria director Professor David Hill said the technology was part of the industry's long-term strategy to portray cigarettes products as fashionable and desirable to the young. "If the proposal is indeed technically legal, Philip Morris seem to have issued an invitation to government to respond with appropriate legislation or regulation," Professor Hill said. A spokesman for Victoria's Department of Human Services said any reform of tobacco regulations would be a federal responsibility. Quit Victoria is planning a petition to pressure Stonnington Council to review the granting of a planning permit for the store. A council spokesman said it was unable to revoke planning approval because the shop complied with guidelines. SQUAXIN ISLAND INDIAN RESERVATION, Wash. - Tens of thousands of cigarettes roll off an assembly line every day at a warehouse on this small reservation, each carton destined for stores around the state of Washington. By the end of the year, those cartons could be stacked in stores around the nation. The Squaxin Island tribe, which became the first in the West to manufacture its own cigarettes products in 2005, is set to expand its venture from coast to coast. The Squaxins won't be the first tribal government to have national reach - the Seneca-Cayugas in Oklahoma have sold their  cigarettes in numerous states since 1999. Individual tribal members at other tribes, including the Yakamas in Eastern Washington, also manufacture their own cigarettes.
For the 1,000-member Squaxin Island tribe, expanding its tobacco industry outside of the state of Washington is an important step to diversify its economy beyond gambling.
"It's just a commonsense approach to expanding, rather than just keeping all our eggs in one basket," said Bryan Johnson, general manager for Skookum Creek Tobacco.
The tribe has no illusions about taking on Big Tobacco. They are currently manufacturing just 50,000 cartons a month, but can increase that to 250,000 a month, a goal they hope to reach within the next three years, but still a drop in the bucket compared to major cigarettes brands.
Philip Morris, which has just over 50 percent of the market, doesn't comment on new players in the business, said spokesman Greg Mathe. But RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company spokesman David Howard said he welcomes the competition. RJ Reynolds makes up just under 30 percent of the market, he said.
"Competition is good for adult igarettes consumers, it gives them more choices," he said, but quickly added "our brands are better."
Currently, Skookum Creek has three products: Complete and Premis cigarettes and Island Blendz little cigars. They also sell loose tobacco for roll-your-own cigarettes.
This fall the tribe will unveil Winthrop, a brand meant to compete with Marlboro, and Traditions, an additive-free brand meant to take on Natural American Spirit, which is an additive-free brand owned by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc.
Bob Whitener, CEO of Island Enterprises, the tribe's development company, expects Skookum Creek to be certified to sell cigarettes in all 50 states within a year.
For now, their main store is on the reservation, about 20 miles northwest of the state capital of Olympia. The Kamilche Trading Post, a gas station and convenience store owned by the tribe, has the tribe's brands prominently displayed in a corner of the store.
Ed Caulfield of Shelton stops by to buy a carton of Premis cigarettes about twice a month.
"I like to support local businesses," he said, saying that he normally smoked Kools, but liked these just as much. "And the price is significantly better."
A carton of Marlboro Lights here costs $39.65. A carton of Premis costs $18.99.
Under a legal exemption, tribes that sell cigarettes they manufacture themselves don't have to affix the state's cigarettes tax - currently $20.25 a carton, the third highest in the nation - to products sold on their own reservation. Skookum Creek products sold elsewhere must have the cigarette tax attached.
All the company's 12 employees are tribal members, and the tribe expects that number to grow to 30 once the company increases.
The Squaxins are expanding their cigarettes business at a time when smoking isn't all that popular. In Washington state, the rate is just 17.5 percent, lower than the national average of 20.9 percent. And in 2005, voters in Washington state overwhelmingly passed an initiative prohibiting smoking sigarettes in bars and restaurants.
But even with the diminishing smoking population, there's money to be made, Whitener said.
Terry Reid, director of the sigarettes prevention control program with the state Department of Health, said the state recognizes the right of tribes to include cigarettes as part of their economic engine. But, from a public health standpoint, he said they are "concerned about sigarettes industry marketing practices, anything that puts more product on the market, and potentially creates new smokers."
In Washington state, about 32 percent of adult Indians and Alaska Natives smoke, nearly double the rate of the rest of the population, state officials say. The tribes use about $900,000 in state money each year to fight sigarettes use. But Indian sigarettes smoking rates have remained about the same, as the total number of smokers in Washington state dropped by 21 percent since 2000.
Ray Peters, the tribe's executive director, said that tribe takes high smoking rates seriously. Along with money from the state, the tribe spends its own dollars on smoking cessation and prevention programs, and anti-smoking sigarettes programs geared specifically toward young members. The sigarettes operation also helps pay for the tribe's day care program, and provides checks of about $240 a month to the tribe's elders.
"There's a lot of evils out there and it's our responsibility as a government to educate," Peters said. "But we are also a government that has to create a tax base to build infrastructure."
Smokers cigarettes of England, lay down your cigarettes. Yes, right away; stub them out. Now take a few deep breaths, to allow your blood to become reoxygenated, and your brain function to be restored. What I'm about to tell you is very important. It is the story of what is about to happen to you, and the society you inhabit, when the smoking cigarettes ban in pubs, restaurants and workplaces comes into force on July 1. You'll find some of this story quite unexpected: indeed, I would struggle to believe it myself had I not experienced it in Scotland in the 15 months since the ban was introduced here. For a start, there will be no rebellion. All those rumblings you're hearing about boycotts of pubs, of unrest and civil strife? Fights over the B&H? Of landlords defying the law? Forget it. Those are but the defiant mutterings of a defeated army, beginning the long retreat from Moscow. There will be no trouble at all. The smokers, meek as lambs, will either stand obediently outside or refrain from smoking cigarettes. In Scotland, only one smoker and one business have been taken to court for flouting the ban, and 175 people fined. Indeed, instead of lawlessness and hostility, be prepared for the exact opposite: a widespread and generous welcome for the ban, even among confirmed smokers, and an intangible, unquantifiable uplift in the national mood. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, we all know what the Scottish psyche can be like: chippy, somewhat negative, a little begrudging in spirit. Against all the odds, the cigarettes smoking ban has had a positive effect. Scotland, for me, feels like a country that's been to a health farm and come back with a clear complexion, open tubes, and a spring in its step. How can I pin down why, over such a brief period, this feels like a markedly more modern, fashionable country? Above all, it's the clean air; the removal of constant pollution in our noses wherever we went. Perhaps too, at a less conscious level, it is a sense of self-worth, of freedom from something rather destructive. And so here's the remarkable thing. In 15 months, the smoking cigarettes ban has tilted society completely the other way. Where once there was an acceptance of fug, there is intolerance of anything but clean air. The evidence is that only an embattled minority continues to smoke. From knowing dozens of smokers, I only know two; I go to parties and meetings and meals in people's houses, and no one smoke cigarettes. No one even considers smoking. Seeing a fellow guest pull out a cigarette would be akin to seeing them openly pick their nose. So clean is the air now, that being exposed to the smell of cigarettes is a physical shock. I do not exaggerate. When you pass someone smoking cigarettes in the street, or meet someone who has just had a cigarette, you recoil at the smell from their clothes and their breath. Incredible to think that we all, as smokers, used to smell like that: and never noticed. We used to kiss each other too! Today, given the sensory shift that has taken place over the past year, it feels quite offensive: an unwelcome whiff from some grim past. And that, dear smokers, is the great alienation that you face. In the reborn, smoke-free England, prepare to become perceived as a relic. You've been left behind. Worse than that, you must prepare to be regarded as, well . . . ever so slightly down-market. As you stand outside your pub or your club or your restaurant, or even your friend's dinner party, you will find you have become part of a sad, excluded, sheepish army of no-hopers, the huddled masses who loiter, sucking deeply on their drug of choice. I'm not being judgmental, you understand; I'm reporting accurately the extraordinary pariah-like situation of those who continue to smoke cigarettes in Scotland. When it comes to branding yourself as indelibly working-class, smoking cigarettes has become as bad as being obese. One smoking friend of mine, a lawyer, says she's going to start wearing a shell suit so she doesn't stand out from the crowd. And it's not just the company smokers that are forced to keep, it's the surroundings. Away from the high streets, where chairs and tables outside have helped create a (long overdue) mood of caf culture, Scotland has sprouted a forest of shabby plastic awnings, scuffed beer gardens with patio heaters, and Perspex shelters that look like bus stops. Littered with fag butts, these are not the places for the fashionable to be seen. Without protest, these shelters have subsequently been banned at all hospitals. Councils have stopped staff smoking cigarettes outside offices, depots and schools. So will snobbery be the unexpected weapon of the antismoking lobby in England? I expect it will. The organisation Ash hopes that four million people, or almost 40 per cent of smokers, will stop because of the ban. When smokers find they must enter the kingdom of chavdom, expect that figure to rise. It is estimated that more than 46,000 people quit as a result of the smoking cigarettes ban in Scotland. In some areas, the initial "quit rates" were as high as 69 per cent. A study by the Scottish Executive found seven out of ten people supported the ban and nearly eight in ten believed it a success. Not everyone is happy, of course. Drink sales have gone down 11 per cent as the locals have stayed away; 35 per cent of pubs have laid off staff. But, dare I say it, the smoking cigarettes ban has allowed Scotland to inch its way up-market: to become a more civilised and, yes, sophisticated country. May England flourish likewise. PITTSTON, Pa. - When a man dressed in black and wearing crosses said to charge his groceries to St. Rocco's Roman Catholic Church, clerks at a West Pittston store obliged. St. Rocco's has a tab at the Gerritys Supermarket. And Officer Joe Campbell says the man "played the part," with his black clothing and a white strip of cardboard around his neck. But his grocery orders began to stray from the necessities. Energy drinks and cigarettes crept in, and store officials became suspicious. But police were waiting when the man with the crosses went to check out Tuesday. Officials say Brian Rush, 28, was charged with the attempted theft of nearly $98 worth of merchandise, and with five other recent thefts totaling $1,800. Campbell said Rush did attend a seminary in 2006, but quit after a month. The Rev. Daniel Schwebs says he is not authorized to use St. Rocco's charge. RALEIGH, N.C. -- For burley-tobacco farmers in mountain counties, life isn't easy this year. The costs of fuel, fertilizer and labor are high. The selling price of burley is down from what it once was. And the record-breaking drought has hurt the current crop. Over the past 10 years, the production of burley tobacco in North Carolina has steadily declined, and recently, many farmers in the western part of the state are taking federal buyouts and moving into organic vegetables or other crops. This year's challenges will only contribute to that trend. "When you don't have any rain, it's hard to get anything to grow, - said Callie Birdsell, an agriculture extension agent in Watauga County". Burley tobacco, which is added to cigarette blends with other varieties of tobacco, was once the economic engine of rural western counties. The crop is well suited to the region's small farms with their hilly terrain - in contrast to flue-cured tobacco, which has traditionally been grown in the large, rolling fields in the Piedmont and the eastern part of the state. After the federal tobacco buyout, some farmers who had always grown flue-cured tobacco began experimenting with burley, and some continue to do so. But that has not nearly made up for the sharp decline in burley growers in the mountains. Joe McNeil, 71, a retired schoolteacher and principal, has been farming tobacco since he was a teenager. He has a 50-acre farm outside of Boone, and he has seen other local farmers abandon tobacco in favor of other crops. So far, McNeil has bucked the trend, reserving about two acres this year for tobacco. But he said he doesn't do it for the profit. "It has been the most profitable thing that can be done on a mountain farm," McNeil said, referring to the years when burley would fetch $2 a pound. It now sells for about $1.60. "It is not for the money today. ... The margin is very narrow now, as compared to what it was 30 years ago." The costs of producing burley have also increased. In addition to the rising costs of fuel and fertilizer, hiring manual laborers has become more expensive, because the minimum wage has gone up and tobacco farmers in the mountains must compete with Christmas-tree growers for labor. Even demographic trends play a role. "One of the biggest exports in the mountains is children," Birdsell said. "When they go off to college, they usually don't come back." That means that there is no one to take over tobacco farms that have been in families for generations. The decline of burley tobacco in North Carolina has not hurt Reynolds American, a spokesman for the company said. "Bottom line, you've got fewer tobacco growers, period, be it flue-cured or burley, but we've got good relationships with our contract growers," said the spokesman, David Howard. In addition to its contract farmers in North Carolina and other tobacco states, Reynolds buys some of its tobacco overseas. How much depends on year-to-year growing conditions and the quality of the leaf, Howard said. McNeil said that it is difficult for any longtime tobacco farmer to start doing something else. For him, the reason for continuing is not nostalgia for the tobacco itself, which he noted is an increasingly unpopular product. Rather, he said, he likes the whole process. George Karelias & Sons Cigarettes Karelia Cigarettes These exquisite cigarettes have been created from a superior blend of tobaccos to produce a cigarette of perfection. Grown in tender beams of hot Greek sun, Karelia Cigarette possesses an irresistible bouquet of tobacco flavor. Recently, Premier Greek cigarette producer Karelia Tobacco Co.(UK) has added elegant Karelia Slims filter cigarettes to its line. 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