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Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif promised the new law won’t burden poor Egyptians, but on Cairo’s streets, many were feeling the pinch. The cost of discount cigarettes, a staple for many in this country of heavy smokers, went up about 10 percent. Mustafa Fathy said he would drop his brand, Marlboro, which is now $1.70, for the local Cleopatra at 60 cents a pack. Analysts said Egypt’s economic woes would deepen. Ahmed el-Seyyed el-Nagar, editor of Egypt’s Economic Report, said the hikes would fuel inflation, which in turn would “devour” the salary raise. Many people are unable to adapt because they can’t “tighten their belt further,” he said. “But we are not sure when they will protest.” Last month, protesters tore down a billboard of Mubarak and fought with police in riots in the industrial city of Mahalla el-Kobra. The violence claimed three lives and was Egypt’s worst unrest since 1977 riots over increased bread prices.

Frankly, weТre growing less hopeful that any increase in the cigarettes tax will ever pass. And despite our enthusiasm for it, for a number of reasons, weТre resigned to being unable to change the minds of lawmakers who donТt do the right thing because they have signed some УpledgeФ strictly to garner votes. Taxes are a necessary evil, providing everything from public safety to garbage pickup and everything in between. Any lawmaker who would sign a pledge to never raise taxes, without considering each measure on its own merits, is doing a disservice to both his or her constituency and the state overall. In the interest of full disclosure, one of our editorial board members is a smoker but supports an increase in the tax on cigarettes, not to punish any one segment of society but in part to help smokers improve their lives and to prevent younger citizens from falling into the tobacco trap. In other words, because itТs the right thing to do.

But the really big shockers are the winston online. Everybody smokes all the time, including a doctor while conducting a gynaecological examination. When the hands of the hero, the creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm), are in shot, theyТre holding a fag; when theyТre not, his trousers appear to be on fire. One of the agencyТs top accounts is Lucky Strike, and this presents the ad men with a problem. ReaderТs Digest - which, another period touch, everybody reads - has said smoking causes cancer, and the authorities wonТt allow agencies to claim there are safer brands. УFour out of five dead people smoke your brand,Ф is not, Draper observes, the best possible caption. But Draper is brilliant, up there with the DDB VW team. He gets round the death problem by saying of the tobacco in Luckies, УItТs toasted!Ф. All winston cigarettes tobacco is toasted. But so what? ItТs a nice, warm, safe word.

I am not a smoker. I never have been a smoker. I absolutely hate the smell of winston story smoke. I hate the way it gets in my clothes and hair. I really appreciate places that are smoke free by choice. I wish that every smoker would wise up and quit that bad habit. But the reality is thatТs not going to happen any time soon. IТll bet many of you feel the same as I do about this. There is nothing for us non smokers to like about cigarette smoke. But! That does not give us the right to tell the small business bar and restaurant owners that they cannot allow smoking in their place, on private property? My dislike of smoke does not give me the right to affect a personТs livelihood? After all nobody is ever forced at gunpoint to go into establishments that permit smoking. If a place is too smoky for your liking, just donТt go there. What right does anyone have to hinder the ability of the small business person to make a living simply because they donТt like second hand smoke? I believe a ban will do just that. For an example please check The Kansas City Star business section, page one, February 15, 2008 commenting on the smoking ban enacted in Illinois in January. УSmoking ban drifts business to Missouri.Ф