The Oneida Indian Nation is relocating a cigarette factory to its reservation in central New York as part of a broad effort to keep the state from collecting taxes on cigarettes sold by Indian tribes.

Oneida officials say the Sovereign Tobacco business near Buffalo that the tribe bought for $6.6 million in 2008 will begin manufacturing cigarettes next month at its new location on Oneida territory midway between Syracuse and Utica, about 170 miles east. The move was announced a week before Sept. 1, the date the state plans to begin taxing cigarettes sold by Native American retailers to non-Indian customers.

The tribe contends that federal law pre-empts state efforts to tax products that are manufactured and sold on Indian territories.

“Since the Oneida Nation will be manufacturing its own products and selling its own products on its own reservation, it would not be covered by the statute even if the state wished to extend its reach to the Oneida Nation, which it does not appear the state is looking to do,” said Peter Carmen, chief operating officer of Oneida Nation Enterprises in Oneida.

Separately, the Seneca Indian Nation in western New York is seeking a federal order in Buffalo to stop the state from taxing cigarettes sold by Native American retailers to non-Indian customers.

Hit with financial woes, Gov. David Paterson positioned the state in January to revisit a budget issue perennially overshadowed by emotion. Previous efforts to tax reservation sales in 1992 and 1997 resulted in members of the Seneca tribe blockading state highways, setting fires and clashing with troopers.

Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook said Wednesday the governor “will continue with his stated policy of negotiation, litigation and implementation of the laws of New York when it comes to all dealings with New York’s sovereign Indian nations.”

Sovereign Tobacco produces Niagara and Bishop discount cigarette brands, which sell for around $39 a carton, a bit more than half the cost of taxed, name-brand cigarettes sold in non-Indian outlets.

The factory, at an off-reservation site in Angola, near Lake Erie, sells upward of 1.4 million cartons of cigarettes a year, distributing mostly to about 60 Native American outlets in upstate New York. It will employ at least 15 people in Oneida, the same number as in Angola.

“Some equipment already has been moved and is being put in place,” Carmen said. “There will be testing of equipment and training of employees, and we expect it to be manufacturing cigarettes by middle to late September.”

The nation already runs the Turning Stone Resort & Casino, including its five golf courses, and a dozen SavOn gas station-convenience stores and employs 4,800 people.

Tribes in New York have long claimed sovereignty from state and local laws and have refused to collect sales and excise taxes for the state on cigarettes they sell, despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1994 that states have the right to collect those taxes. Successive governors in New York have declined to enforce the tax laws.

THE World Health Organisation is trying to stop women smoking.

WHO says that while global rates of smoking among men have peaked, smoking rates among women are rising. Particularly troubling is the rising rate of smoking among teenage girls.

WHO suggests this could be a result of tobacco advertising increasingly targeting girls.

Smoking is still the single largest preventable cause of death in Australia. It kills 19,000 Australians a year and, in NSW, 17 people die each day from tobacco-related illnesses.

Cigarettes contain more than 4000 chemicals. As well as tar and nicotine, they contain carbon monoxide – the poisonous gas in car exhaust fumes – ammonia and arsenic (found in rat poison).

As a result, smokers are much more at risk of suffering a range of health problems, including cancer. More than 40 of the chemicals in tobacco smoke are known to cause cancers of the lung and mouth.

Smokers are more likely to suffer from other problems, including emphysema, heart disease and strokes and peripheral vascular disease (blocked blood vessels in arms or legs).

They are also at higher risk of contracting diseases that lead to blindness, hip fractures and painful stomach ulcers.

A good start for smokers wanting to quit is to phone the Quitline on 13 78 48, which is always open.

Callers will receive a Quit Kit, the latest information on quitting, access to counsellors and referrals to services and ongoing support.

To get inspired, see http://smoking-quit.info/

Listen to the stories and experiences of recent quitters and how quitting smoking has benefited them and their families. And show the website to your daughters.

QUIT TIPS

>Make a date to quit.

>Identify strategies to cope with high-risk situations, such as going to a party where you know friends will be smoking.

>Ask family and friends to support you.

>Reduce caffeine and alcohol intake

>Consider phoning the Quitline – 13 78 48 – or nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).

>Prescription medication.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review what has been called the first state court decision upholding the extension of a smoking ban to theatrical performances.

“We’re certainly disappointed, but not surprised,” said petitioner Chip Walton, founder of Denver’s Curious Theatre. He’s lost at every judicial level since his four-year campaign began.

Most recently, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in December that the state’s ban on smoking extended to actors onstage. It ruled that public health trumps freedom of expression. Theater companies had argued that smoke that lingers on stage is crucial to set a mood, develop character or establish a time period.

“There are very apparent misconceptions about the role of smoking vis a vis freedom of expression,” said Walton. “Smoking has become such a hot-button issue that I think people have been blinded to the very well-founded argument that we feel we have.”

The Colorado ruling pointed out that of 24 states with indoor smoking bans, 12 have exemptions, or exemptions on a case-by-case basis, for theatrical performances. Walton wonders why a practice that is commonplace in other states, including New York, can be considered criminal behavior in another.

“My hope is that our efforts may perhaps one day be seen as the opening salvo on an issue that gains attention into the future,” said Walton, “because clearly the Supreme Court isn’t ready to hear it at this point in time.”

Attorney General John Suthers, who defended the law in state courts, agreed with the high court’s decision.

“The Colorado Supreme Court’s December decision, upholding the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act in the context of theaters, was well reasoned in upholding the law,” Suthers said. “Although the Curious Theatre case would have been fascinating to argue at the U.S. Supreme Court, I am pleased that the justices have declined to hear this case.”

No other top state court had ruled on a similar issue at the time of Colorado Supreme Court decision.

The fight, thought to have the potential to affect bans in other states, drew both national attention and support from theatrical and civil-rights groups such as the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, the Dramatists Guild of America and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Walton said he hoped that despite the rejection by the federal court, his case could be an opening salvo for theaters elsewhere facing similar restrictions.

“Maybe we just started the volley in an ongoing issue that will gain some mom out of our efforts,” he said. “It takes a while to get an issue into the public consciousness.”

By John Moore and Jessica Fender
The Denver Post, 24 Mai, 2010

Britain’s three biggest cigarette makers are to challenge through the courts an impending ban on the display of tobacco products at retailers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and British American Tobacco said on Monday they are to seek a judicial review of the relevant sections of the Health Act 2009, in which the UK government is looking to impose the display ban to discourage smoking.

Imperial, which makes Lambert & Butler and Richmond cigarettes in the UK, said there is no evidence to suggest children start smoking or that adult smokers continue to smoke as a result of the display of tobacco products.

“If this misguided legislation is implemented it will simply fuel the growth in the illicit trade of tobacco and create a huge cost burden for retailers who are already under considerable pressure as a result of the difficult economic climate,” said Chief Executive Gareth Davis in a statement.

JTI, which took over Gallaher in 2007 and makes Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut cigarettes in the UK, called the regulations “unreasonable and disproportionate” and said it had no option but to start the legal process to challenge the ban.

BAT, which makes Rothmans and Pall Mall cigarettes, added there was no evidence to show the move will cut smoking rates in the UK, but argued it would damage competition and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of small businesses.

It said driving legal trade from public view will encourage illegal traders.

The Health Act 2009 requires cigarettes, cigars, pipe and roll-your own tobacco products to be hidden from view in England, Wales and Northern Ireland from October 2011 in large retailers and from October 2013 in smaller outlets.

Scotland is pushing its own banning legislation through its own parliament.

The street-front patio of the A971 bar in Tokyo’s Midtown centre confronts smokers with an odd demand: “No cigarettes outside, please smoke indoors.” Burly security guards are employed to enforce the rule, politely but firmly ushering smokers out of the brisk evening breeze and back into the bar, where their fumes swirl thick and suffocating. In a few months’ time, their job may be reversed.

The A971 owners are merely protecting their business: they cannot be seen to encourage lawbreaking. The Minato ward of Tokyo is one of the few boroughs that have banned smoking on the streets – a measure primarily designed to protect pedestrians from having their suit cuffs and handbags singed by cigarettes held at waist level on crowded pavements.

But like everywhere else in Tokyo, there is absolute freedom to smoke indoors and only grudging perception of health risks. Among developed countries, Japan is a true smokers’ paradise. The nation’s 30 million smokers are waited-on by nearly 600,000 cigarette vending machines. Health advice on packets is more friendly recommendation than doom-laden warning. The dangers of passive smoking are treated as if they have only been identified by cranky foreign science. A rich variety of public buildings – including hospitals and schools – allow smoking.

Tokyo may be the gourmet capital of the world, with more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city, but most eateries serve their prized creations through a stinking haze of tobacco combustion. Most small and medium sized companies will allow people to smoke at their desks. Meetings with executives tend to be held over imposing crystal ashtrays. Japan’s Fair Trade Commissioner is among a number of senior political figures who chain smokes through meetings but wheels a mobile extractor fan up to the table out of consideration for his guests.

But all that may be about to change. Next month, a panel of health ministry experts will present a report that seems destined to call for a ban on smoking in public places. There will be exemptions of course: restaurants and bars are already lobbying hard to be left out of the ban, for fear of losing custom. There has been much talk – chiefly from Japan Tobacco – of “smokers’ rights”. Companies may get away with creating special smoking rooms.

But the extraordinary step is that a ban is being discussed at all. And it is a feature, say political analysts, of the new Democratic Party of Japan government and its stated aim of overturning much of the Japanese status quo. The right to smoke anywhere and everywhere in Japan has historically been defended by the old guard of Japanese politics – the cantankerous veterans of the Liberal Democratic Party which held on to power for more than five decades. While they were in charge, there was never any chance of a ban – not least because most of them were smokers and because the government remains a 50.01 per cent shareholder of Japan Tobacco.

The DPJ, though is much younger – both as a party and in its constituent members. It has fewer historical ties to big business and, for the moment at least, can afford to set policy without seemingly caring too much about the old vested interest that once gripped Japanese politics so remorselessly. DPJ MPs are, in the main, drawn from an age-stratum of Japanese society that began to shun smoking some years ago. 82 per cent of Japanese men were smokers in the 1960s, but that has fallen to less than one third of the male population.

Many have already written off the scale of political revolution implied by the election of the DPJ last year. Policy execution has been disappointing. Clear ideas have been hard to identify. The party’s leaders have already seen their popularity falling in what pass for opinion polls in Japan. But a smoking ban, should it come about, deserves recognition that the country did take a significant step away from old Japan last autumn.

Times Online
March 3, 2010

It was a typical photo of teenage mischief, posted on MySpace last fall, featuring four cheerleaders from California High School in San Ramon at a party. The event did not happen on campus or during class hours, but when the coach saw the picture, her reaction was swift: two-week suspensions from the squad.

The girls’ crime: smoking from a hookah — not any illegal drug either, but tobacco.

“The girls admitted to smoking tobacco,” said Eileen Mantz, the school’s athletic director. “This just holds them and their parents accountable.”

Ms. Mantz said the city had begun a new antismoking effort, and San Ramon is not alone. Plans are being advanced elsewhere in the area to up the ante against tobacco by punishing those even tangentially connected with smoking, like movie studios, and in some cases singling out those previously considered victims of cigarette companies.

To be on the California High cheerleading squad, the girls had signed a code of conduct that bans use or possession of “alcohol, controlled substances, steroids” and tobacco. Such contracts are common at schools, but enforcement based on an Internet photo revealed how intense the antismoking mood has become.

Caitlin Kawaguchi, a student reporter at Cal High, broke the story for the school paper, which then grabbed headlines on a national student journalism Web site. The fact that cheerleaders smoked, Ms. Kawaguchi said, was not a sign tobacco is hip on campus. “There’s really not a lot of pressure to smoke,” she said.

Still, two weeks without pompoms is a light sentence compared with what smokers in San Francisco may soon face.

To fight secondhand fumes, San Francisco is considering a ban on smoking outside within 15 feet of building entrances and places like A.T.M. lines and cafes.

In dense neighborhoods, plentiful in a city where buildings adjoin one another, smokers would be kicked to the curb, forced to stand near traffic. Business owners would be required to enforce the new rules and shoo away smokers outside their buildings.

Dr. Mitch Katz, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, disagreed that such a policy represented a shift toward punishing smokers, and said it was not a step toward making smoking itself illegal.

“I believe in the Christian doctrine of don’t hate the smoker, hate the smoke,” Dr. Katz said.

He admitted that issuing fines would be problematic, but estimated that 90 percent of smokers would comply with the law.

Supervisor Eric Mar, sponsor of the proposal, said it was clear that attention was shifting to smokers, though he considers it tough love. “That’s exactly what it is,” Mr. Mar said.

Brian Millett, a smoker visiting San Francisco from rural Arcata, said the city’s concern about what passers-by inhaled was specious. “I don’t think it’s any more pollution than is coming out of these cars,” Mr. Millett said.

Smoking has no greater enemy than Dr. Stanton A. Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. The entrance to Dr. Glantz’s office memorializes the timeline of the campaign against one of the world’s deadliest — and preventable — killers.

Dr. Glantz led the way to hold tobacco companies accountable for profiting from smoking, and did the same with Hollywood, helping expose and end product-placement deals that promoted cigarette brands in movies. His current Smoke Free Movies campaign wants films that include smoking to receive R ratings, which might substantially hurt their box office receipts.

“That’s the whole idea,” Dr. Glantz said.

His campaign has also bought full-page ads in Variety and The Hollywood Report to try to undermine “Avatar” in its quest for Academy Awards because of smoking in the film. When asked if his crusade cost the movie a recent Producers Guild award, Dr. Glantz said, “I hope so.”

“You shouldn’t be promoting addiction and death to 7-year-olds.” he said. “The movies are the largest single reason kids start to smoke.”

But Dr. Glantz’s fiery demeanor changed when he was told about the cheerleaders’ punishment. Suddenly, he appeared skeptical. It reminded him, he said, of efforts to prevent minors from smoking by making it difficult for them to buy cigarettes.

“We’ve shown it didn’t work,” he said.

Not every fire, or desire, can be snuffed by laws.

By SCOTT JAMES, Nytimes
February 18, 2010

The World Health Organizations says smoking is considered a high risk factor in six of the eight leading causes of death worldwide. Medical experts have long preached about how smokers can quit. Now a growing number of employers in the United States are refusing to hire them. Some smokers are wondering what kind of discrimination is next.

More and more Americans who smoke are beginning to feel unliked and unwanted. Federal laws prevent them from smoking in public buildings. They are not allowed to smoke within a certain distance of those buildings.
Since the federal law was passed a decade ago, many state and local communities have followed suit.

Now a growing number of companies and hospitals will not hire smokers, or worse, will fire them if they are caught lighting up.

Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee is now giving check-ups to prospective employees. A urine test that detects nicotine means no job is offered.

Nurse Kristi Edmondson thinks her smoking habit is nobody’s business but her own. “Memorial should not dictate to us what we do in our own time, off the time clock,” she stated.

The head of the hospital’s parent company, Memorial Health Care Systems, is James Hobson. He defends the decision. “It’s relevant to creating that healthy lifestyle,” he said. “And again it’s relevant to the entire community.”

A growing number of large American companies are finding that health care costs for smokers are higher than for non-smokers.

A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that medical care and the loss of worker productivity averages about $3,000 annually for each smoker.

As a result, some companies now require smokers to pay a larger share of their health insurance than non-smokers.

While 29 of the 50 U.S. states have laws that protect the rights of smokers, 21 others do not. Weyco an insurance benefits administrator in (the state of) Michigan, began imposing random smoking tests in 2005 on its own employees.

The President of the National Workrights Institute is Lewis Maltby. “Most people think they have a right to freedom of speech. They don’t know that their freedom of speech disappears where their boss is concerned,” Maltby said.

The World Health Organization says at least five million tobacco users die every year from lung cancer, heart disease and other smoking-related causes. The WHO says if current trends continue, tobacco-related deaths will climb to at least eight million a year by 2030.
By Melinda Smith, Washington
18 February 2010

Smoking will be banned in certain public areas in Hangzhou, such as hospitals, supermarkets, bars and on buses, from March 1. People will be entitled to stop others smoking or lighting cigarettes in public places and offenders will be liable to a fine of 50 yuan (US$7.32).

The ban will operate as a result of the recently approved “The Bylaw on Smoking Control in Public Areas of Hangzhou” passed by the Standing Committee of Hangzhou Municipal People’s Congress and Standing Committee of Zhejiang Provincial People’s Congress.

The bylaw forbids not only smoking but also holding a burning cigarette, cigar or pipe.

Hangzhou’s smokers number around 2.5 million people, accounting for about 35 percent of the permanent resident population, according to Hangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The center says the trend of young people smoking is growing and 39.7 percent of adolescents suffer from passive smoking.

The strict law to forbid smoking in public areas appears to have been favorably received.

“I always hate people smoking in public places like shopping malls and supermarkets,” says 54-year-old Hangzhou resident Zhao Songying who never smokes.

The law is also supported by occasional smoker Bob Gong, an engineer working in a tobacco company. “Though it may interfere with tobacco sales, I personally think it’s understandable, and it’s good for the smokers and people around them.”

The bylaw is a revision of another smoking-ban law carried out by the city in 1995. The old law mainly banned outdoor tobacco or cigarette advertising, selling of tobacco or cigarettes on World No Tobacco Day (May 13) and smoking in major public areas of the city.

The first two provisions remain well implemented but the last was not so successful. Though people cannot smoke at train stations, airports and hospitals except in designated areas, many forget they cannot smoke in pubs, restaurants or KTVs.

The law’s poor enforcement led to inefficient supervision, and weak social awareness brought about public indifference.

Now, the Hangzhou Health Bureau has modified some provisions and been more specific on control.

Since the bureau doesn’t have enough inspectors to monitor every smoker, the bureau will empower different organizations to enforce the bylaw.

For example, transportation management will enforce the law at bus stations.

The bureau will also encourage people to stop others smoking.

Anyone who sees someone smoking in a public place can ask them to put it out. If the smoker refuses and keeps smoking, people can report them to the bureau and the smoker will be fined.

To ensure the law can be enforced from next month, the government plans to recruit 10,000 volunteers to publicize it and assist with enforcement.

Also, all social groups, public institutions and agencies are required to instruct their own personnel to control smoking.

Public areas where smoking will be banned include: medical institutions; cinemas, theaters and museums; kindergartens and schools; historical and cultural sites open to the public; taxis, buses and all public transport; elevators and underpasses; stadiums; conference rooms; parks and squares when meetings are being held.

The bylaw also specifies that designated indoor smoking areas need to be clearly defined. Otherwise the whole place will be deemed as a non-smoking area.

These include in supermarkets, shopping malls, amusement parlors and Internet cafes, social organizations, and offices, halls, auditoriums and canteens of public agencies and institutions.

Any business with a non-conforming smoking area or room will be warned or liable for a fine from 500 yuan to 2,000 yuan.

A ban on smoking in restaurants and bars in eastern Switzerland could have led to fewer heart attacks since its introduction, according to a recent medical study.

These first Swiss results come after similar findings in other countries, and constitute yet another indication that cigarettes play an important role in cardiac disease.

The smoking ban was introduced in canton Graubünden in March 2008. According to the study’s authors, although there is no clear correlation between the ban and cases of acute myocardial infarction [heart attacks], these fell 22 per cent from March 2008 to February 2009 compared with 2006 and 2007.

In the two years before smoke-free legislation was introduced in Graubünden, 229 and 242 patients respectively from all over the canton were treated in Chur for acute myocardial infarction. After the ban, that number fell to 183 cases.

According to the lead author of the study, Piero Bonetti, the decrease is due mainly to fewer heart attacks among non-smokers. Passive smoking is believed to increase the risk of heart disease for this category by up to 30 per cent.

The other beneficiaries included people with a history of coronary disease and holidaymakers. Bonetti, a cardiologist in Chur, thinks this last category is influenced because people benefit quickly from being away from passive smoke.

But the study, which is published online by the Swiss Medical Weekly, does not establish direct causality between the smoking ban and heart disease. “Proving causality is impossible because there are only two ways of showing that,” admits Bonetti.

Similar studies

One solution would be to lift the smoking ban and see what happens. The other would be to study another population elsewhere with the same living conditions, but where no smoking ban has been implemented.

“There have been no similar studies in Switzerland,” Bonetti told swissinfo.ch.

“The first study to show this was carried out in Helena, Montana where a smoking ban was lifted after six months. When it was first introduced, the incidence [of acute myocardial infarction] fell and when the ban was dropped, the number of cases rose again.”

But Bonetti says that while causality cannot be proven, there is a strong case for a link between the ban and the number of heart attacks, especially given the lack of other obvious culprits.

“The strongest argument for causality is that more than ten studies worldwide have come up with similar results,” he said. “If you take all these studies together, you get an average decrease of 17 per cent in the first year after a ban is implemented.”

Other factors

The Institute of Medicine, one of the national academies in the United States, which carried out a so-called meta-analysis of these foreign studies, said this consistent data leads to the conclusion that smoking bans lead to fewer heart attacks.

But it also pointed out that other factors associated with a ban such as education, information and outreach programmes can also have an impact.

Some of those studies have also shown that the longer a ban has been in place, the higher the benefits.

Bonetti says the Graubünden study will continue, with data collection ongoing. Indications are that the first year results will be at least confirmed if not bettered.

“It’s important to show this kind of results in a Swiss context even though similar studies have been done elsewhere,” he told swissinfo.ch.

“You need local data to convince people that change is necessary.”

Scott Capper, swissinfo.ch

Could another cigarette tax hike be on the horizon? Sen. Dan Foster, D-Kanawha, would like to see one.

Foster, a physician and administrator at Charleston Area Medical Center, said he is “always pushing” for an increase, and asked the brand-new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) on Tuesday if she would support one.

Secretary Patsy Hardy, on the job for just 100 days, appeared before the Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability to give an overview of changes she’s making at DHHR.

After a pause, Hardy began to comment on how much impact her support might provide, veered off on other matters, then deferred the answer to DHHR spokesman and legislative affairs Assistant Secretary John Law.

Law said the DHHR knows that a tobacco tax is the best way to reduce cigarette use, and if the governor decides to pursue a hike, the DHHR would support it.

Foster has several times worked to increase the cigarette tax. A 2009 bill — co-sponsored by Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, and several others — to raise the tax from 55 cents on a pack of 20 cigarettes to $1.20 a pack died in committee.

Half of the money would have gone into a Governor’s Office of Health Enhancement and Lifestyle Planning Fund, the rest into the general fund.

Also in 2009, a House bill raising the tax to $1.20 and a rival House bill that included raising the tax to $1.35 failed.

In 2008, Foster, Prezioso and others sponsored a bill to raise the tax to $1.35, to provide for prevention and cessation programs and health care, which died in committee, as did a House bill that included a $1.35 tax among several other hikes.

A report by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) says, “Tobacco taxes continue to be a focus of attention for states in 2009, with dual interests: raising state revenue and achieving health public policy goals such as discouraging use of tobacco.”

After the meeting, Foster and Prezioso talked about the benefits of the tobacco tax relative to health and revenue.

In Fiscal Year 2009, according to the state tax office, the cigarette tax generated $108.9 million in revenue. Another tax, on 7 percent of the wholesale price on tobacco products other than cigarettes, generated another $6.2 million.

Prezioso, also chairman of the Health and Human Resources Committee and a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that with the expected $100 million shortfall this fiscal year, and another shortfall expected next year, the governor keeps a tobacco tax hike in mind as a stop-gap measure.

Prezioso noted that even when the tax increases and consumption shrinks, revenues still grow. There could be a point of diminishing returns, but no state has found that number yet.

Gov. Joe Manchin’s spokesman Matt Turner said the governor’s office has not had any discussions about a new proposal to increase the tobacco tax, but “we’d listen to those proposals to consider their ideas. The governor in the past has said that if it were increased, he’d like for it to go toward health care.”

Foster said he’s also interested in the health benefits. The NCSL reports that cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, and the U.S. Center for Disease Control & Prevention estimates that smoking-caused health costs total $7.18 per pack sold and consumed in the U.S.

Foster noted that every 10 percent tax increase produces a 4-5 percent decrease in tobacco usage, he said. The impact is greater among adolescents; their usage drops about 10-14 percent.

New York state increased its tobacco tax from $1.50 per pack to $2.75 per pack in 2008. Foster said New York City has seen 300,000 fewer adult smokers as a result of that hike.

At 55 cents a pack, according to the NCSL, West Virginia’s tobacco tax is among the lowest in the nation. Only eight states have lower rates: North Carolina, North Dakota, Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia, Missouri and South Carolina.

West Virginia’s 55 cent rate became effective May 1, 2003, according to the state tax office. Previously, the rate was 17 cents per pack. At the current rate of 55 cents per pack of 20, the tax on a pack containing 25 cigarettes would be 68.75 cents per pack.

Copyright (c) 2009, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

Children who are exposed to tobacco in the womb and to lead during childhood are almost eight times more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) than children with no such exposures, researchers have found.

The finding was made after researchers led by Dr. Tanya E. Froehlich, of the department of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, analyzed U.S. government data on prenatal tobacco and childhood lead exposure.

All of the data came from the 2001-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which examined a representative sample of 2,600 U.S. children aged eight to 15.

The rate of ADHD in the whole group was 8.6 per cent. But the rate of ADHD was about 17 per cent in kids whose mothers smoked during pregnancy. And the rate was about 14 per cent in kids who had the highest levels of lead in their blood.

Most startling was that among those children who had a joint exposure to lead and prenatal smoking, 28.6 per cent had ADHD, found the study, published in the journal Pediatrics.

Exposure to tobacco alone was linked to a 2.4 times greater likelihood of ADHD, while a high blood level of lead was liked to a 2.3 greater risk. Combined, the tobacco and lead exposure increased the odds of ADHD by eight times.

Even children who were in the highest third of lead levels still had levels lower than what the U.S. government considers “elevated,” the researchers noted.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers levels of 10 micrograms per deciliter “actionable,” Froehlich said. But in the study, children in the upper third had blood lead levels that were only 1.3 micrograms per deciliter or greater; children in the middle group had levels between 0.9 and 1.3 micrograms per deciliter.

It’s not clear why smoking and lead might increase the risk for ADHD, but it has been long believed that ADHD is at least in large part due to abnormalities of dopamine in the brain, and research has shown lead and smoking may alter the brain’s metabolism of dopamine.

While the authors say their study was not designed to evaluate whether smoking and lead exposures caused ADHD, they conclude: “Our findings suggest that reduction of toxicant exposures may be an important avenue for ADHD prevention.”

The researchers conclude that about 38 per cent of ADHD cases among children may be linked to prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke, while 25 per cent could be linked to lead exposure.

LONG BEACH – Figuring out a way to allow existing smoking lounges to continue in Long Beach yet prevent more from opening is easier said than done, a City Council panel learned Wednesday afternoon.

The three-member Economic Development and Finance Committee got a first look at new regulations for smoking lounges, which the council voted to legalize in February, 15 years after Long Beach’s groundbreaking ban on smoking in public places and workplaces went into effect. The full council will consider the lounge regulations next Tuesday.

The committee voted 2-1, with Councilwoman Rae Gabelich opposed, to recommend that the council approve the proposed regulations with a few changes, but was forced to stop short of implementing controls to prevent new smoking lounges from opening.

“You are old enough to make your own decisions,” Gabelich said to several cigar lounge owners who attended Wednesday’s meeting, “but I do not want any more of these anywhere in the city.”

City staff said that there is no way to restrict the number of smoking lounges in the proposed regulations, but that it may be possible through zoning regulations.

“The point that you’re making is the conundrum that we’re dealing with here,” Director of Health and Human Services Ron Arias said. “We can’t discern or discriminate.”

“The alternative is to ban these citywide,” Gabelich responded, to the applause of several anti-smoking advocates in the sparse
crowd.

Long Beach has eight cigar lounges and four hookah lounges, plus another 27 tobacco and smoking paraphernalia shops, according to a city report. Council members feared that allowing smoking lounges would open the door for tobacco shops to apply for permits to become smoking lounges as well.

Councilman Gary DeLong made a motion to approve the regulations, which would include a permitting process, city inspections, separate ventilation system requirements, the prohibition of entry by anyone under 18 years old, and the prohibition of the sale of food or beverages.

However, DeLong’s motion contained several changes, including requiring that the city’s business licensing office handle permits, not the Health Department; that only separate ventilation systems be required, rather than a high-tech system proposed by city staff that would be required to vent 100 percent of the smoke from lounges; and that the smoking lounge permits, if rejected, should be able to be appealed to the council.

He also asked city staff to examine whether they can find a way to allow lounges to provide free food and drink, but staff members indicated that even if the lounges provided food, they would be considered restaurants and would be subject to food health and safety regulations under state law.

The motion was supported by Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga, who asked also that DeLong include in his motion a one-year extension of the one-year moratorium on new smoking lounges that the council implemented in March.

Gabelich opposed the motion because she said the Health Department should be involved in the lounge permitting process.

Health Department officials have publicly opposed allowing smoking lounges in Long Beach because of the detrimental health effects from tobacco use and second-hand smoke.

By Paul Eakins, paul.eakins@presstelegram.com; 562-499-1278
11/11/2009 Presstelegram

A high smoking rate within indigenous communities is adding to the life-expectancy gap between black and white Australia, the Heart Foundation lobby group says.

It has unveiled a plan to turn the situation around, including a call for specialist tobacco workers to be sent into communities.

Currently around 50 per cent of indigenous people smoke, compared with just 19 per cent of all Australians.

The foundation’s tobacco spokesman, Maurice Swanson, says much of the difference in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians is due to high rates of cardiovascular and other diseases caused by tobacco.

“The Heart Foundation is committed to helping to close the gap (on) cardiovascular health outcomes,” Mr Swanson said in a statement.

“Reducing the prevalence and uptake of smoking among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is critical to achieving this goal.”

To that end, the foundation wants governments to “provide funding and training for specialist tobacco workers, with additional funding for specialist workers to support pregnant women in their quitting attempts”.

On Monday, a Save the Children report revealed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are three times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than their non-indigenous counterparts.

Deaths were due to limited access to healthcare services and poor nutrition, housing and social conditions, the report found.

The Heart Foundation says a “culturally appropriate” advertising campaign should be launched to warn of the dangers of smoking.

Indigenous organisations should be encouraged to become smoke-free.

And all interventions should be carefully evaluated to see what works best, the foundation argues.

The Heart Foundation’s “indigenous tobacco control position statement” will be launched on Tuesday ahead of the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference in Darwin.

Last month, the federal government’s National Preventative Health Taskforce delivered its blueprint to make Australia the healthiest country in the world by 2020.

It recommended boosting tobacco tax to ensure the average price of a packet of 30 cigarettes would rise from $13.50 to $20 within three years, as a way of reducing smoking rates across the country.

© October 6, 2009 Theage

The findings that alcohol prices and advertisements affect young smokers are extremely inessential. The government needs to found policy on findings, not doctrine.

Tobacco policy at present lies on two demands: tobacco advertising and promotion are the main causes why teenagers start smoking, and young people are very delicate to the price of tobacco products.

These two claims serve the principal components of tobacco policy, namely that all forms of tobacco advertising and promotion, including tobacco displays, should be banned, and tobacco should be intensely taxed for to prevent or at least lessen minors tobacco use.

Unfortunately, neither of these demands nor policies meets the measures of evidence-based policymaking.

In evidence-based political decision, as in evidence-based clinical medicine, procedures and decisions are based on exact, absolute surveys of ‘best practice’, that is, treatments and interventions that work very hard for to reduce sickness rate and mortality.

Well-known studies have neglected to find the significantly link between tobacco advertising, consumption, and youth smoking. Actually, the two main UK government-commissioned studies on tobacco advertising and trade failed to find a causal link between advertising and young people starting to smoke.

This lack of evidence is attested by the fact that countries that have had advertising bans for a quarter century or more have not experienced statistically important declines in youth smoking. The use and influence data from 145 countries finds little evidence that the whole range of tobacco control measures, including advertising restrictions and bans, has a statistically significant influence on smoking prevalence in any country.

The government introduced harsh restrictions on tobacco advertising through legislation to ban the display of all tobacco products. Even though the Department of Health required that there is firm evidence for to show that such bans will reduce youth smoking, this is not the case.

The evidence in support of tobacco display bans, just as for tobacco advertising bans, is with difficulty thin. Almost all anti-tobacco researchers found that tobacco displays have no statistically significant effect on youth smoking.

Researchers concluded that seeing tobacco displays had no effect on youth intentions to smoke. None of the so-called evidence about tobacco displays provides urging behavioral indications that any young person started smoking after seeing tobacco displays.

Even the claim that high taxes can discourage or prevent youth smoking is not a true one. Because as it is known smoking is addictive, and if the smoking is addictive, logic dictates that smokers will be heedless to price increases.

But the claim also runs counter to what most experts say about how young people smoke. Most young smokers are experimental smokers who do not buy their cigarettes, but instead get them from friends or family, which makes them much less sensitive to high tobacco prices.

A lot of American studies have found that tax increases have a statistically inessential effect on preventing young people smoking. Last year, in a study of tobacco control policies in 27 European countries, it was found that, for adolescents, price was unrelated to smoking influence.

As Nov. 19, the deadline for the tobacco ban approaches, the intensity of debating this issue has correspondingly increased. Individuals in support and in opposition of the ban will leave ump-teen comments on the Kernel Web site and I dare say little progress will be made as far as a compromise in this dispute.

We all know smoking is bad and we all know that secondhand smoke is bad. These points have been hammered into our thick skulls since elementary school by our parents, teachers and the media. And just in case we completely zoned out in school and didn’t listen to our parents or the media, the surgeon general places some form of warning on all tobacco products informing the public that, “Smoking causes cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy.” They also warn us that, “Cigars are not a safe alternative to cigarettes,” “Cigars may cause lung cancer and heart disease,” and that smokeless tobacco “may cause mouth cancer” or “may cause gum disease and tooth loss.” Surely to God, we get the point.

However, in this country we have free choice. According to the 2007 Assessment of Kentuckians’ Health by the Institute of Medicine at UK, approximately one-fourth of our population smokes. So when UK President Lee Todd decides that he wants to place a campuswide ban on tobacco, the overwhelming majority of students, including myself, don’t smoke. It becomes very easy for this population to sit back and allow for the ban to take place because we don’t necessarily like the smell of smoke or the idea of tobacco, in general.

Minorities (whether racial, religious or otherwise) in this country have struggled since our birth as a nation and even prior to that because of this same concept. If a simple majority like the idea, often times the rights of the minority will be disregarded and/or violated.
Todd and Ellen Hahn want to ban all tobacco on campus, not just cigarettes. The argument against cigarettes is strong, as far as the dislike toward them. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to that issue: well-placed smoking sections. Unlike smoking sections in restaurants, individuals that don’t have any desire to smell the scent of cigarette smoke won’t have to and smokers will be able to safely smoke on campus.

While cigarettes are consuming the majority of the debate, the ban that also includes cigars, hookah, chewing tobacco and snuff is receiving little attention. Snuff (most commonly referred to as dip) and chewing tobacco literally affects nobody except the user. I dare say that a person walking to class has never encountered cigar smoke. Cigars will usually be lit at night for some special occasion, rarely interfering with bypassing walkers. Even so, cigars and hookah could be included in the same regulation as cigarettes and be confined in the smoking areas. I doubt there would be too much objection to this compromise.

Many have asked how the new tobacco ban would be any different than the ban that smokers shouldn’t smoke within 20 feet of the door of any building. According to Todd and Hahn, there will be a task force in charge of implementing this ban and creating a “culture of compliance.” Possible sanctions that Hahn has threatened to use to enforce this ban are disciplinary warning, disciplinary reprimand, disciplinary probation, social suspension, disciplinary suspension, disciplinary expulsion, plus others not mentioned in the Sept. 13 Kernel article, “Care for a Smoke?” Her jurisdiction expands to all UK property, including fields, parking lots and sidewalks. I am just imagining getting suspended for having some chewing tobacco in while walking through K Lot.

Please tell me that we are more independent minded than Todd’s administration is making us out to be. The choice to use tobacco is a decision that is our responsibility to make; not the administration’s. This is a matter of individual liberty trumping the convenience of Todd’s agenda. Compromises can be made to allow for smokers and non-smokers alike, as well as the remainder of the population that uses tobacco, to enjoy their personal freedom here at UK.

Jacob Sims is a political science and history junior. E-mail opinions@kykernel.com.

WAURIKA — Jefferson County Turning Point Coalition (JCTPC) is attempting to partner with the Waurika and Ryan school districts in the 24/7 Tobacco Policy program.

The 24/7 Tobacco Policy is sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Health (ODH), with the goal of school districts forbidding tobacco use on school grounds at any time. Turning Point Coalition has identified teen tobacco use as one of the primary public health problems in Jefferson County.

During the group’s August meeting, Jefferson County Health Department RN Autumn James said she and Brandie O’Connor, from the Oklahoma Turning Point Coalition, were to meet with Waurika Superintendent Roxie Terry to discuss bringing the district into compliance with the state-wide 24/7 Tobacco Policy program.

“Brandie has talked with Mr. Terry, and he advised they already have a similar policy in effect (at Waurika Public Schools),” James said. “However, some of the wording needed to be changed slightly to be in compliance with a 24/7 policy.”

She said the state health department has agreed to contribute to covering the cost of signs that would be installed on school property, should any county schools choose to participate in the program.

JCTPC Chair Fran Bergeron said she had spoke with administrators in the Ryan school district, but they were not interested in joining the state-wide program at this time.

“(Ryan administrators) said they didn’t have anyone to enforce the policy and didn’t think community members were ready,” Bergeron noted, adding that Ryan officials felt there was a need for more public awareness of the 24/7 program.

Coalition members discussed having the media play a role once one of the county’s school districts adopts the 24/7 Tobacco Policy

Coalition member Anna Duran, from the Oklahoma Department of Health, said the state Turning Point Coalition was initiating a Certified Health Business program, which would recognize businesses, both profit and non-profit, which are working to improve the state’s health status by providing health and wellness opportunities for their employees.

Businesses that participate will be recognized at a luncheon hosted by the ODH. Business owners wishing information on the program and an application to participate can go to the Web site www.okturningpoint.org.

Duran also said plans are being made for JCTPC to partner with the Jefferson County OSU Cooperative Extension Office to offer a baby-sitting seminar and training in mid-October. It would be open to students from 12 to 16 years of age, who could become certified baby-sitters by participating in the training.

During the meeting, it was also noted that JCTPC wants to schedule a child car seat check and distribution in December, and Penny Gardner, from Women’s Haven of Stephens and Jefferson counties, noted that October is Domestic Violence Month. She said a recognition program is being planned for Jefferson and Stephens counties.

Copyright © September 09, 2009 Waurikademocrat

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., – Reynolds American Inc. (NYSE: RAI) has been recognized as a leader in corporate sustainability for the second consecutive year by being awarded membership in the 2009-2010 Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index (DJSI North American), effective Sept. 21, 2009. RAI is the only U.S. tobacco company and one of only 146 North American companies on the index.

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Sustainability indexes are used by many investment portfolio managers when making investment decisions. To learn more about RAI’s sustainability initiatives, and to view the company’s Corporate Responsibility Report, visit www.ReynoldsAmerican.com.

Web Disclosure

Starting Jan. 1, 2010, RAI’s Web site, www.ReynoldsAmerican.com, will be the primary source of publicly disclosed news about RAI and its operating companies. In this way, RAI will comply with its disclosure obligations under SEC Regulation FD. Those wishing to stay on top of company news can sign up for e-mail alerts by going to Shareholder Tools in the Web site’s Investors Section.

Reynolds American Inc. (NYSE: RAI) is the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Conwood Company, LLC and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, Inc.

* R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is the second-largest U.S. tobacco company. The company’s brands include five of the 10 best-selling cigarettes in the United States: Camel, Pall Mall, Kool, Winston and Doral.
* Conwood Company, LLC is the nation’s second-largest manufacturer of smokeless tobacco products. Its leading brands are Kodiak, Grizzly and Levi Garrett. Conwood also sells and distributes a variety of tobacco products manufactured by Lane, Limited, including Winchester and Captain Black little cigars, and Bugler roll-your-own tobacco.
* Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, Inc. manufactures Natural American Spirit cigarettes and other additive-free tobacco products, and manages and markets other super-premium brands.

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The “kahvehane” — the traditional Turkish teahouse where whiskered men have smoked, drunk tea and played cards, backgammon and dominos for centuries — has seen better days.

If it was not enough that the worst economic crisis in the past 60 years has ravaged the country’s employment and consumption figures and driven down kahvehanes’ customer base by up to 50 percent, the smoking ban, which came into full effect last month, has caused an estimated loss of an additional 20 percent of customers. Even Ramadan, a period when the kahvehanes have historically experienced an explosion in business, does not seem to be providing any respite to the plummeting business.

The situation of kahvehane owners has deteriorated so badly in the aftermath of the smoking ban that they have threatened political action ranging from sit-ins to strikes or even hunger strikes if the government does not address their concerns.

Kahvehane owners are worried that if the government does not take action and loosen the rigidity of its present smoking ban, half of the over 100,000 kahvehanes across the country will be squeezed out of business, causing the ranks of the unemployed to swell by hundreds of thousands.

Kahvehanes have, since time immemorial, been the sanctuary of retired and unemployed Turkish men wishing to escape the stresses of everyday life. It’s therefore somewhat ironic that during this time of unprecedented unemployment — which now stands at 13.6 percent — these teahouses are not brimming with unemployed men whose numbers are expanding on an hourly basis. Instead, business is worse than ever.

İsa Güven, president of the Ankara Chamber of Coffeehouse Proprietors (AKO), told Sunday’s Zaman that business was down by upwards of 50 percent as a result of the crisis. The smoking ban, he said, has taken an additional 20 percent bite out of the industry. He said that it was hard to untangle the effects of the smoking ban from the effects of the crisis.

Estimates vary, but according to some, about 70 percent of Turkey’s adult male population smokes. In kahvehanes, those that Sunday’s Zaman spoke with said that almost 100 percent of the customer base smokes. “Our potential customers are smokers,” said Murat Ağaoğlu, president of the 100,000-strong Turkish Teahouses and Canteens Federation (TKKBF).

“Given these circumstances, no one can come to a kahvehane where there is a smoking ban,” he said.

He did not feel that the option of putting a few tables outside for men to smoke at, as has been the suggestion of many, was a particularly viable option. “If you put tables outside, the neighbors complain. Who wants to see a couple of tables crowded with a bunch of men playing cards and smoking below their apartment?”

But if the government does not take immediate action to improve the situation, Güven said, upwards of 50 percent of kahvehanes face the risk of closing their doors permanently, which would lead to a startling jump in unemployment. Ağaoğlu said that in addition to the 100,000 kahvehanes registered with the TKKBF, an additional 100,000 kahvehanes are not registered with the TKKBF, and when these are factored into the equation, the number of people “earning their bread” from the kahvehane business could amount to well over a million.

Business never been worse

“Very, very, very, very bad,” is how Muharem Öz, an employee at Altınyol teahouse in Osmanbey described the situation when asked by Sunday’s Zaman how his business was holding up in the wake of the crisis and smoking ban. Standing in the doorway of a completely empty kahvehane with a lit cigarette in his hand (the cigarette was outside the door), he said that in all of his many years in the business, things had never been worse. Next to him were two older men squatting on the sidewalk of the mainly residential street, puffing on cigarettes and nodding their heads in agreement.

Business was so bad, Öz claimed, that he was not even able to determine whether or not the smoking ban had contributed to a further drop in business. “It doesn’t matter,” he said when asked about the effects of the smoking ban. “There are no customers to drive away.”

According to him, Ramadan, a time when kahvehanes are traditionally smoke-filled dens overflowing with tea-drinking card players who stay there till the wee hours of the morning, has provided no relief: Business is down to alarming levels. “People just don’t have any money to come,” he said. This year, he said, Ramadan was less busy than even the worst of normal times of past years.

Mehmet Celik, a worker at an equally empty kahvehane in Beşiktas, reiterated much of Öz’s complaints, saying that Ramadan would not bring any respite to plummeting sales figures doubly hit by the crisis and the smoking ban. He said that one of his co-workers — there are only two people working in the shop — had been laid off at the beginning of the month. Unlike Öz, he said that the smoking ban had chipped away considerably at his kahvehane’s client base. “All of our clients smoke,” he said, “and now they stay home.” He was not very optimistic that once summer subsided and the cold and rain of the winter set in, business would pick up.

When asked what could be done to resolve the situation, he said: “Nothing. Kismet.There’s a crisis.”

Aren’t kahvehane owners citizens, too?

Not all are as fatalistic about the situation, however. Güven was one of 120 kahvehane chamber presidents who came together to help organize the massive Ankara rally last week in which an estimated 10,000 kahvehane owners from around the country came together to protest government actions. Their motto: “Aş, İş, Ekmek” (Food, Work, Bread).

He said they had presented a petition to the government asking for immediate action. He proposed the creation of smoking and non-smoking sections, separated by a partition with an air filter, or smoking and non-smoking kahvehanes.

If no actions are taken, kahvehane owners and workers have threatened to launch a one-week strike. Some have gone so far as to threaten hunger strikes.

“I am calling on political parties, through the newspapers, to discuss this matter in depth with us,” Güven told Sunday’s Zaman. “I want to remind everyone of what Prime Minister Erdoğan said: ‘The demands of our citizens are holy.’ Well I ask [Mr. Erdoğan]: Aren’t kahvehane owners citizens of Turkey as well? Kahvehane owners’ right to making a living is being taken away.”

He planned on making a political campaign out of the matter. “The way to the Parliament goes through the kahvehane,” he declared.

Ağaoğlu voiced similar concerns but was more sensitive to the governing party, which he praised for many of its other initiatives. “Of course, smoking is unhealthy — we respect many decisions by the government, and banning smoking is one of them. The only problem is that people in this sector are put in an unfair position by the imposition of a blanket indoor smoking ban.”

Ağaoğlu, who is also president of the Antalya Kahve Association, recounted a story of one downtrodden Antalya kahvehane owner who came to him in tears last week, saying that he was planning on turning his kahvehane to a kitchenware store. It’s unlikely that the other 50,000 kahvehanes at risk of bankruptcy will have this option.

“This regulation has finished the ‘kahvehane culture’,” said Güven, who noted that it is a culture that dated back to Ottoman times. “This old culture is now disappearing.” It remains to be seen whether Turkish wives, whose husbands have suddenly started spending a lot more time at home with their families, will be bidding the kahvehane culture good riddance or praying for the kahvehane culture to come back.


Copyright © 30 August, 2009 Todayszaman

Chewing tobacco at sporting events, particularly baseball, is one habit that has been around for decades, and some kids today still engage in this practice. In order to try and prevent anyone from taking it up, a new campaign aims to discourage this behavior and promote dental health.

Oral Health America launched a slogan competition in conjunction with its National Spit Campaign, and the winner was a 12-year-old girl who came up with the phrase “chew on this. . .tobacco steals your health.”

The organization aims to discourage the habit by reminding kids, teens and even adults of the dangers of chewing tobacco. The American Dental Association (ADA) agrees, advising that this practice can lead to oral cancer and periodontal disease.

In addition, chewing tobacco is addictive and a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control revealed that 8 percent of high school students had done this in the past 20 days.

If adults begin to notice red or white sores in the mouth, it is a good idea to head in for a dental checkup to rule out oral cancer.

For more information on discount dental plans call 1-888-632-5353

© 2009 Brafton Inc.

A policy of prohibiting smoking in the premises of an NHS trust, which had the consequence of a ban on smoking for those detained in a high security psychiatric hospital, did not violate the patients’ human rights and was lawful.

Similarly a temporary rather than a permanent exemption for mental health units from legislation prohibiting smoking in premises to which the public had access was lawful.

The Court of Appeal so held by a majority, Lord Justice Keene dissenting, when dismissing appeals against the dismissal by the Queen’s Bench Divisional Court (The Times May 28, 2008; [2009] PTSR 219) of the claims of:

(i) E, substituted for G, against Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust for judicial review and under section 7 of the Human Rights Act 1998 of the trust’s policy prohibiting smoking at Rampton where he was detained, and

(ii) N against the Secretary of State for Health, inter alia, for judicial review and under section 7, on the ground that it was incompatible with the rights of detained mental patients under the European Convention on Human Rights the temporary rather than permanent exemption by regulation 10(3) of the Smoke Free (Exemption and Vehicles) Regulations (SI 2007 No 765) from the requirement of the Health Act 2006 that all premises used by the public be smoke-free by July 1, 2007.

Mr Paul Bowen and Mr Azeem Suterwalla for E and N; Mr David Lock and Ms Nageena Khalique for the NHS Trust; Mr Jonathan Swift and Ms Karen Steyn for the secretary of state; Ms Helen Mountfield, by written submissions, for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS and LORD JUSTICE MOSES said that Rampton was one of three high security psychiatric hospitals in England and Wales, the other two being Broadmoor and Ashworth. The court assumed that similar policies were followed in all three hospitals.

It was common ground that Rampton was a place of work and had to be smoke-free under the Health Act 2006 unless exempted by regulations.

The claimants complained that it was discriminatory and unlawful for regulation 10(3) of the 2007 Regulations to provide only for a temporary exemption for mental health units, especially by contrast with prisons where the exemption granted by regulation 5 was unlimited in time.

The claimants’ case was that the smoking ban introduced at Rampton as a consequence both of the trust’s policy and of the 2007 Regulations was a breach of their rights under article 8 of the Human Rights Convention, whether taken alone or together with article 14. The challenge was to the combined effect of the policy and the regulations. The regulations only prohibited smoking within enclosed spaces, thus permitting smoking to continue in outside spaces. The trust’s policy banned smoking both inside and out, subject to very limited exceptions.

The basis for the ban on smoking inside was that the regulations banned smoking inside. The basis for the ban outside was that security reasons prevented the trust from being able to permit patients to smoke outside.

The first question was whether article 8 conferred a right on patients detained in Rampton to smoke without arbitrary interference.

The claimants argued that article 8.1 protected a person from interference by the state with that which he chose to do within the privacy of his own home. If that was right, they contended that their life, detained in a hospital like Rampton, could be equated to life at home.

The difficulty with that proposition arose from the need to challenge the view that article 8 did not protect everything a person chose to do at home, coupled with the lack of binding authority on the point.

The freedom protected by article 8 was not the same as the freedom to do whatever a person chose to do, even in a private space: see Baroness Hale of Richmond in R (Countryside Alliance) v Attorney-General (The Times November 29, 2007; [2008] 1 AC 791, paragraphs 111 to 116).

The Countryside Alliance case, however, was not concerned with a solitary activity carried out within the privacy of a person’s home. It could not therefore be deployed as authority on the question whether the right to do anything a person chose to do within the home was protected from arbitrary interference.

The case was, however, of importance to the approach to adopt. The majority, following the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, demonstrated that the question whether article 8 afforded protection to pursuit of the activity in question required consideration of a combination of factors.

The issue as to the scope of article 8 could not therefore be answered by considering simply whether smoking was an activity integral to a person’s identity, or was an aspect of social interaction or whether Rampton was to be regarded as a patient’s home within the meaning of article 8. Rather, a conclusion could only be reached by consideration of all those factors.

Rampton was the claimants’ home, but it was not the same as a private home and the distinction was significant. It was a public institution, operated as a hospital under section 4 of the 2006 Act.

For safety and security reasons supervision was intense. It was a public, not a private place, even though a patient’s private life had not been and should not be eroded completely.

It was in that context that the nature of the activity had to be considered. How could a court determine whether smoking was an important element of the personal sphere protected by article 8 or a crucial part of private life?

The concept of personal autonomy, which the Strasbourg court adopted in Pretty v United Kingdom ((2002) 35 EHRR 1) was wide enough to incorporate a right to choose to smoke. That was the approach of Lord Justice Keene.

Their Lordships, however, considered that what was important was freedom from interference by the state. That freedom was already significantly constricted within the confines of a secure hospital. There was no basis for distinguishing the loss of freedom in such an institution to choose what to eat or drink and the ban on smoking.

Article 8 applied to closed institutions, but to a far more limited extent than it would to activities in a person’s home. The less the claimant could rely upon the nature of the place in which the activity was pursued, the more he had to rely upon the proximity of the activity to his personal identity or moral and physical integrity.

Difficult as it was to judge the importance of smoking to the integrity of a person’s identity, it was not sufficiently close to qualify as an activity deserving the protection of article 8.

Article 8 did not protect a right to smoke at Rampton. The prohibition did not, in such an institution, have a sufficiently adverse effect on a patient’s physical or metal integrity. The appeals under article 8 failed.

If article 8.1 standing alone was not engaged, the right to smoke could not come within the ambit or scope of article 8 for the purposes of article 14.

Had article 8 been engaged, the NHS trust and the secretary of state had succeeded in justifying the ban within article 8.2.

Lord Justice Keene delivered a dissenting judgment.

Solicitors: Cartwright King, Nottingham, and Scott-Moncrieff Harbour & Sinclair; Mills & Reeve LLP, Birmingham; Solicitor, Department of Health; Ms Glynis Craig, Manchester.
Copyright © 2009 Timesonline

Tobacco small-scale farmers should benefit from the US$60 million facility that was availed by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to finance tobacco production this season, Tobacco Industries and Marketing Board chief executive Dr Andrew Matibiri has said.

The bank announced that it was finalising a US$60 million credit line scheme to boost flue-cured tobacco production ahead of the next season at the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association congress recently held in Harare.

In an interview, Dr Matibiri said small-scale tobacco growers were in dire need of funding since they faced financial problems every season.

He, however said he was still in the dark as to where the funds were and how they were going to be disbursed.

“I am not sure how the funds are going to benefit the industry, whether they are going to be channelled to contractors or small-scale producers,” said Dr Matibiri.

Dr Matibiri felt the announcement was done prematurely before the formal modalities on how the funds were going to be disbursed were put in place.

“We will seek clarification from the Ministry of Finance and we can influence those controlling the facility on how best farmers can benefit from the funds,” Dr Matibiri said.

“We should not forget that tobacco is among the top foreign currency earners and therefore requires special attention.”

Tobacco growers, most of them small-scale, have expressed concern on why the facility was unveiled to an association instead of the TIMB.

The loan is expected to help farmers boost production to meet the targeted output of 75 million kilogrammes this year, up from 42 million kilogrammes last year.

However, there are fears that the funds may be channelled towards commercial banks that usually do not lend funds to small-scale farmers. Commercial banks require collateral from farmers, which most small-scale farmers do not have.

Moreover, these financial institutions do not recognise the 99-year lease documents as collateral, making it difficult for farmers to access loans.

Afreximbank is a multilateral financial institution whose main objective is to facilitate, promote and expand intra- and extra-African trade.

Tobacco production had been on the downfall over the past few years due to viability problems and shortages of inputs such as fertilizers and chemicals.

However, the situation is expected to improve following the introduction of the 100 percent foreign currency retention scheme by the Government.

The Government said it would continue to mobilise resources to finance increased production.

The rates of tobacco smoking among teenagers are still higher than those of adults, explained researchers.
In general, children and teens are easier targets for the Tobacco Industry. They’re often influenced by TV, movies, advertising, and by what their friends do and say. They don’t realize what a struggle it can be to quit, and having cancer, emphysema, blindness, or impotence may not seem like real concerns. Children and teens don’t think much about future health outcomes.
For example, Czech children are among the youths that smoke the highest number of cigarettes in the world.
Statistics show that nearly one quarter of 15-year-old Czech girls (23 percent) smoke regularly, which is the second highest number in the world, with the neighboring Austria being the worst. And among 15-year old Czech boys one fifth (20 percent) smoke regularly. The situation is worse only in Austria, Finland and Hungary.
But in Sweden and the United States, the number of smokers among children is three times lower than in the Czech Republic, the survey showed.
Zdenek Dienstbier, head of the Cancer League organization, said: “The Czechs have figured in top positions in similar surveys for a long time. This is a result of the general atmosphere in society that still does not consider smoking among youths a serious problem”.
According to Dienstbier, neither the regulation of tobacco advertising nor other restrictive measures would markedly ameliorate the situation.
The OECD survey also focused on children and alcohol.
One-fifth of Czech girls and one-fourth of boys admitted that they were drunk a few times, which is more or less the average result in the 35 developed countries included in the survey.
Research showed also that teen tobacco users are more likely to use alcohol and illegal drugs than are non-users. Cigarette smokers are also more likely to get into fights, carry weapons, attempt suicide, suffer from mental health problems such as depression, and engage in high-risk sexual behaviors.

If you’re looking for happily ever after, Australian researchers have a suggestion: Find a partner who shares your smoking habits.

Researchers at Australian National University studied 2,482 married or cohabiting heterosexual couples over a seven-year period to pinpoint what the relationships that were still going strong had over ones that fizzled.

So what predicts romantic longevity? Age, for one.

Couples in which the man was one year younger or up to three years older than the woman had less than half the separation risk of couples where the man was nine or more years older. Couples in which the man was two or more years younger than his partner also showed a higher risk of splitting up.

The study released this week – called “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” – also found that relationships in which the man was at least 25 at the time the couple got together were more likely to last. So were ones where both partners shared a desire to have children – or shared a desire not to.

Money, too, plays a role: Couples with low household incomes were more likely to split than those with moderate or high incomes. Men who were unemployed had less stable relationships, as did men whose parents had separated.

A nicotine habit can have a profound impact. Relationships in which one partner smoked and the other didn’t saw their risk of separation shoot to more than 75 percent of those in which neither partner smoked.

The study found, however, that religion, education levels and alcohol consumption had no effect on marital stability.

The researchers used data from the “Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey,” conducted by the government from 2001 to 2007.

Supporters of Iowa’s indoor smoking ban are crediting the year-old law for decreasing the number of Iowans who smoke.

At a news conference Wednesday, they pointed to a survey from the Iowa Department of Public Health that indicates 14 percent of state residents smoke. That’s down from 19 percent two years ago and 41 percent in the 1960s.

Despite complaints from some business owners about the law, which bans smoking in bars, restaurants and most work places, Rep. Janet Petersen says the Legislature shouldn’t change the law. The Des Moines Democrat called for waiting another year or two before considering any changes.

Besides the smoking ban, the Iowa Legislature in 2007 also increased the state’s tax on cigarettes by $1 a pack.

In keeping with its commitment to improve the overall health of the community, Henrico Doctors’ Hospital recently announced its intention to adopt a tobacco-free policy for its campuses. This policy will include all three Henrico Doctors’ Hospital campuses, Forest, Parham and Retreat and will encompass physicians, employees, patients, visitors, vendors and volunteers. While the interior of all of these facilities have been smoke-free for some time, the new policy will expand to include the exterior grounds and all tobacco products.

“We believe that we have a mandate to provide the healthiest environment possible for our patients, staff and community as a whole,” said Pat Farrell, CEO of Henrico Doctors’ Hospital. “This policy change aids in our continuing mission to improve the health status of our community. We appreciate the support of our staff, physicians, patients and community health advocates as we make this transition.”

There are currently several designated smoking areas on both campuses, but beginning this week, signage will be posted noting the new policy to take effect November 19, 2009, in conjunction with the Great American Smoke Out. While employees who smoke will not be required to quite tobacco use, many services are available for those who may choose to take advantage of this opportunity to do so. The pharmacies located at the Forest and Parham campuses will provide an employee discount of 20% on all smoking cessation products and free support groups and classes are available to employees.

“The American Lung Association of the Atlantic Coast applauds Henrico Doctors’ Hospital’s decision to make its campuses smoke free”, says Melina Davis-Martin, President and CEO. “Smoking kills more people each year than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murder and suicides combined – killing more than 9,000 Virginians each year. The decision sends a clear message to the community that Henrico Doctors’ Hospital makes the health of their staff and patients a priority.”

“We applaud Henrico Doctors’ Hospital for making their campuses smoke-free. Secondhand smoke is a serious health hazard. Even the Surgeon General has stated that there is no risk-free level of exposure,” said Cathleen Grzesiek, Director of Governmental Relations for the American Heart Association and Co-Chair of Virginians for a Healthy Future. “Henrico Doctors’ Hospital has taken a great step towards protecting the health of their workers, patients and members of their community.”
Copyright © 2009 Wtvr

David Goerlitz has never found it easy to bite his lip. For seven years, he was the face of Winston cigarettes, appearing in 42 advertisements and on billboards all over the world.

‘I happened to have been the rugged type that RJ Reynolds wanted for this particular “Search and Rescue” campaign. [And it] apparently worked because we moved Winston from number four to number two in sales. The problem I had was that when I admitted to my kids and everybody else I talked to that it was my job to get kids to smoke, the more pissed off I became at myself.’

In 1988, at the age of 39, Goerlitz’s growing unease at working for the tobacco industry boiled over into open dissent. He publicly denounced his employer RJ Reynolds for marketing cigarettes at children and joined America’s emerging anti-smoking movement.

The ‘Winston man’ had one particular tale to tell that quickly went global. On the set of a photo shoot, Goerlitz, then a heavy smoker, discovered that none of the tobacco executives present was a smoker. He asked one of them why that was and was told: ‘We reserve that right for the poor, the young, the black and the stupid.’ (See the YouTube clip below.)

On television, Goerlitz’s later straight-talking criticisms of the tobacco industry helped turn public opinion against it. In court, his revelations helped seal a $246billion settlement between the industry and the US government – a deal that explicitly ‘prohibits direct or indirect targeting of youth in advertising’.

When that settlement was signed in 1998, it was supposed to represent a fresh start in the campaign against smoking. Instead, says Goerlitz, it led to the anti-smoking movement becoming ‘criminal and corrupt’. Out of loyalty to the anti-smoking cause, he has held his tongue for 10 years in the hope that the movement could reform itself. No more. Now, he tells me, he feels ‘kind of like the guy who built the atom bomb and then regretted it later. I helped create this monster.’

That ‘monster’, the vast and influential anti-smoking lobby, was a much smaller entity when Goerlitz got involved with it in the late 1980s. With the tobacco industry maintaining its wall of silence, it was rare for former employees to give away industry secrets and Goerlitz was welcomed with open arms by health groups looking for ammunition to use against Big Tobacco.

‘No one had ever come out against the tobacco companies before from the inside… So here I was, saying that the tobacco companies do indeed target kids, which is what made me the golden boy for the newly forming anti-tobacco movement.

‘I was on television with Peter Jennings and Sam Donaldson and Dan Rather and I became ABC Person of the Week. I was just all over the place and it was getting the tobacco industry upset.’

On a mission to make amends, Goerlitz hit the road and told his story at a Philadelphia high school. It marked the start of his new life as a public speaker that has taken him to 49 states and seven countries. In total, Goerlitz estimates that six million kids have seen him deliver his message in the past two decades, either in person or on screen.

‘In the first year and a half, I couldn’t get anyone to pay my gas. I was so passionate about trying to undo the damage. When you admit you’ve done something wrong, it’s pretty hard not to feel guilty about it.

‘But I never intended to become an anti-smoking zealot; that has never been a part of who I am. I’m just livid at the fact that now I’m guilty by association because of the people in the anti-smoking movement who are so vindictive and hateful.’

Goerlitz’s empathy with smokers is one reason why he finds himself out of line with a movement that has become preoccupied with ‘denormalising’ smoking to the point where it is denormalising human beings. Groups like Action on Smoking on Health (USA) have called for smokers to be banned from fostering children and has suggested businesses should not employ smokers. Goerlitz has no time for ASH’s founder John Banzhaf (‘a Michael Moore wannabe’), nor does he have time for those who vilify smokers.

Goerlitz believes smokers and non-smokers can get along just fine with a little give-and-take and common sense. ‘There’s none of that in the tobacco control movement, and there hasn’t been for the last 10 or 12 years that I’m aware of. In every other [tobacco control] programme, smokers are offended, they’re harassed, they’re treated like lepers and second-class citizens and child abusers.’

Incredibly, since he has not smoked for over 20 years, Goerlitz has recently felt the prejudice against smokers first-hand. Every December for seven years, he toured schools in the eastern US state of Maryland. In the eighth year, he was not invited. The reason? The state of Maryland no longer uses ‘former addicts’ in their tobacco programmes.

Goerlitz is forthright on the ‘junk science’ behind the increasingly outlandish claims made about second-hand smoke. The threat of passive smoking has been the key to far-reaching smoking bans around the world during Goerlitz’s time in the tobacco control movement. Today, these bans are being extended to the outdoors and, in parts of California, into people’s own homes. I ask him how dangerous he thinks second-hand smoke really is.

‘I believe that there’s some harm for someone who’s susceptible or genetically predisposed to some conditions. But I think the numbers are made up. The 52,000 [annual US deaths from second-hand smoke] that everybody talks about – the numbers jump all over the place. I’ve never heard a consistent number in my 15 years of talking about it. Y’know, it’s 40,000, then it’s 52,000, then it’s 55,000…’

The number certainly never goes down: no matter how many people quit and no matter how many smoking bans are introduced, the number of people dying from passive smoking never decreases. When Goerlitz started asking questions within the tobacco control movement, he was appalled by the reaction: ‘How dare I ask them? They’re professionals. How dare! That’s what pisses me off… and that’s what I’ve been seeing in tobacco control for the last 10, 12 years. They’ve got something to hide.’

In an increasingly dogmatic movement, Goerlitz remains a pragmatist, trying to steer a middle road. Whatever his misgivings about the ‘junk science’, he believes that children should be protected from second-hand smoke, by law if need be.

‘I think that people should use common sense, but we know that people don’t. I would like to see all public places where kids and pregnant women will go to eat a meal or watch a movie or wait in a lobby, without having to breathe someone else’s smoke.’

What about the right to smoke in a bar? ‘Absolutely they should have the right to smoke in a bar! Abso-fricking-lutely. Only because children don’t generally hang out in a bar. Bars should be a place where a smoker should be able to go to have a drink, have a pint, have a six-pack or whatever, and smoke his or her cigarettes.

‘Treat people with dignity and respect. Once you turn on them and try to dehumanise them and make them feel like lepers you’ve got yourself a war. And unfortunately, with a war there has to be participation and all you’re hearing in this tobacco war are these loud-mouthed anti-smoking zealots, the wackos, the grab-bag full of nuts that are there. And you have the extremists on the pro-smoking side.

‘Prohibition has never worked. We’ve seen it. We’ve tried it. It doesn’t work. Let’s try something new, and that is common sense. Higher taxes don’t work. Prohibition doesn’t work. Telling the truth does, in a way that brings people together rather than separating them.’

To this end, Goerlitz plans to set up his own tobacco control programme for kids on YouTube. He will continue to tour schools, but is cutting the cord with the mainstream tobacco control movement.

Finally, I ask a question that would have seemed absurd 20 years ago. Who is more honest, the tobacco companies or the anti-smoking movement? ‘There’s not much of a difference, but I would say the tobacco companies.’ It’s an extraordinary answer from a man who has spent two decades attacking Big Tobacco. ‘Because the tobacco industry has been caught. The anti-tobacco movement hasn’t been caught yet’, he says.
© Copyright: Spiked-online

While tobacco use is an ongoing health hazard for the entire population, its consequences for people with developmental or intellectual disabilities can be especially severe. And the medical community often tends to overlook the tobacco-related burdens these people face. An extensive review of published research on this topic appears in the June edition of the journal Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

“This is too important an issue to ignore,” said Dr. Marc L. Steinberg, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the article’s lead author. “Health care professionals often do not ask these individuals about tobacco use or exposure.”

Steinberg and his co-authors report that they were able to identify several negative implications of tobacco use that are unique to this population group:

• People with developmental or intellectual disabilities are three times more likely to live in poverty, making them more susceptible to financial distress from tobacco use.
• Tobacco use may decrease the effectiveness of some medications commonly prescribed to this population group.
• Ironically, many of these individuals became addicted to tobacco at the hands of the very institutions that are meant to help them. In the past, hospitals and facilities treating vulnerable populations have even given cigarettes as good behavior ‘rewards’ to mentally ill patients and to those with developmental or intellectual disabilities.
• On the rare occasions when individuals in this population gain access to tobacco treatment programs, they still may “fall through the cracks” because they have difficulty understanding the health information presented to them.

“Like any other patients, this population should be offered resources for quitting if they smoke and offered protection from environmental tobacco smoke if they do not,” said Steinberg.

UMDNJ is the nation’s largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,700 students attending the state’s three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health, on five campuses. Annually, there are more than two million patient visits to UMDNJ facilities and faculty at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/ Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a statewide mental health and addiction services network.

Copyright 2009 Newswise

Smoking-related illnesses claim more American lives than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide and illegal drugs combined, and Pacific University’s College of Health Professions Campus in Hillsboro is doing their part to change this statistic.
The dangers of smoking are common knowledge, as anti-smoking advertisements are beginning to replace those that used to promote it. But it is easy to let that information go in one ear and out the other, and the Health Professions Campus is going one step further to encourage quitting by going tobacco free.
On May 1, the Health Professions Campus instituted a tobacco-free policy which prohibits the use of any tobacco products in and around the campus. This policy not only applies to students and Pacific University employees, but also to patients, visitors, and Virginia Garcia employees.
The CHP Campus Tobacco-Free Committee says that they are not asking students and employees of the Health Professions Campus and Virginia Garcia to quit tobacco, but are only encouraging them to refrain from using tobacco products while at work or school. In order to assist with those who are refraining from or quitting tobacco, they are prepared to offer free counseling and educational programs. As some may experience extreme withdrawals, they may also prescribe medications to coincide with the other programs offered.
Since patients and visitors will also be required to follow the new policy, support services will be available to them while they are on campus.
A “Wellness Table” was set up in the lobby of the building the week prior to the implementation of the new policy in order to educate the campus community of the new policy, as well as information on healthy living and tips on how to refrain from tobacco use.

Copyright Media

In early 2009, we held a dialogue session with stakeholders including regulators, enforcement agencies and representatives from the public health community, to establish if our current approach to tackling illicit trade is appropriate and addresses external stakeholder expectations. Feedback was positive, encouraging us to continue engaging with governments and regulators, particularly when we can provide them with useful and robust data. Training of enforcement agencies was felt to be another area where we provide valuable support that could be further expanded.
It was felt that a collaborative approach among the stakeholders involved, including representatives from other industries, would be most effective at tackling illicit trade. Dialogue participants stated that some stakeholders’ perceptions of past industry complicity in the illicit trade of tobacco products might make some people reluctant to work with the industry. They encouraged us to address these perceptions by continuing to be active opponents of illicit trade.
However, concern was expressed that some tobacco companies did not do all they could to prevent over-supply of tobacco products to markets. We believe that ‘Know your Customer’ guidelines address this effectively for our operations. Stakeholders also highlighted the role of technology and machinery in tackling illicit trade. It was felt that we should keep our processes as ‘high-tech’ as possible to make counterfeiting difficult and that we should continue to destroy our old machinery to prevent it being used by counterfeiters.

If you’ve paid attention over the past week, you’ve seen that the level of hyperbolic rhetoric in regard to Senate Bill 2063 (Initiated Measure 3 — smoking cessation) is rising faster than the rivers of North Dakota of late.

Citizens must remember that every dollar a state spends on another layer of government or committee, when the job could be done by one that already exists, is a dollar that does not get to someone truly in need.

To be clear, we have never been against SB 2063, the implementation of Centers for Disease Control standards or the level of funding. We’ve opposed only the wasteful provisions of the bill, namely spending money on an executive committee to oversee a control advisory committee that would work with the State Health Department.

When we tried to amend out these clauses, we ran up against a wall of uncompromising legislators who seemed more concerned about installing another layer of management than protecting the health of the citizens of North Dakota.

It’s easier to pass bad legislation which may be popular but poorly thought out than to stand up for what is right. We could simply pass SB 2063, hold a press conference and point to a pile of money we blindly gave a new government office (with little oversight), applauding ourselves while ignoring the fact a great deal of money was being tossed away on office space and unneeded employees.

The right thing to do in the case of SB 2063 was to stop a good but flawed bill and fix the problem.

The amendments as proposed would have spent the same amount as stated in SB 2063 but in a more responsible manner. By removing the executive committee and putting the money in the hands of our fully functioning State Health Department, we shift $500,000 from administration to people with real smoking problems, while leaving the Control Advisory Committee in place for direction and oversight.

Beyond the waste of SB 2063, there are a few other important issues. The bill would have let the executive committee transfer money from the Water Development Trust Fund. This places funding for the Red River Water Supply and Northwest Area Water Supply projects in jeopardy, along with the completion of the Southwest Pipeline Authority and many other water projects at a time when water issues clearly are crucial for the state.

It also could leave gaping holes in the budgets of the Community Health Trust Fund. This is a money stream for great health-related programs such as Women’s Way, heart disease and stroke programs, the colorectal cancer pilot project, EMS training grants and others.

The amendments we support will protect these important projects and programs while maintaining the integrity of SB 2063.

As sworn officeholders, we are charged with reviewing, debating and amending proposed legislation so it best serves the people of this state. North Dakota’s initiated measure system is an important one, but so is the legislative process. The legislature is a check on executive power, a check on judicial power and also a check on the power of initiated measure.

North Dakotans have elected representatives to make sure that bad legislation is not slipped passed the voter. We understand that we have to deal with the health costs of smoking. What we object to is the “all or nothing” mentality our opponents maintain and the smoke screen tactics used to cloud the issue and push a poorly conceived, wasteful, bureaucratic solution to a problem which can be handled by our well-qualified health department.

The authors are Republican representatives in the North Dakota House. Pollert, of Carrington, represents District 9. Nelson, of Rugby, represents District 7. Kreidt, of New Salem, represents District 33. House Majority Leader Carlson, of Fargo, represents District 41.

Source: Grandforksherald