U.S. Panel Approves Regulation of Tobacco

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was passed by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The bill will allow the FDA to have higher authority over tobacco:

• Will restrict tobacco marketing to young people
• Add larger warning labels to cigarette packages
• Require FDA to police ingredients and introduction of new products

All Democrats and six Republicans voted in favor of the bill. Altria Group Inc., The American Lung Association, and President Obama, who stopped smoking last year, fully support the bill. 

But the majority of Republicans do not. They argue that the FDA will be spread too thin, and that their regulation will lead consumers to believe that tobacco is safe. 

The U.S. spent over $80 billion in 2008 on tobacco products. This could explain why one in five people in the U.S. die from tobacco related illnesses.

My Homework Assignment #7 (3/05/2009)

A guest speaker came to our class the other day. His name is  BJ and works for the Denton Record Chronicle as an on-line photographer. The Denton Record Chronicle is a small town news paper that is still in the process of upgrading its digital newspaper. Much like big city newspapers, the DRC is  trying to keep up with its audience by giving them more options on how they receive their news. One way of doing this is by offering an extensive array of their digital multimedia. Typically, news station websites have this, but because the newspaper industry is on the verge of dying, they are taking tips from its competition. Picture slides are now added to news articles. Sometimes the site will give readers a chance to post their own pictures to the site as a way of involving the community to help tell a story or show an event. They will also have video that may be tied to stories. At times, however, video and photos may not even be tied to articles, but will be placed on their own. These generally are photos and video that is is offered in such a way that journalistic words are not needed to either tell a story. In other words, the photos speak for themselves. Another thing they are doing is showing the entire roll of a photographers film, showing all of the pictures that were rejected and not used for final projects. Another thing that Denton RC has is a photo store. This is something new that is normally not on newspaper websites. Users will be able to buy ready to frame photos that were featured in the newspaper and the website. This is another source of revenue for the paper and website, but the number of photos sold is not known.