Tobacco Tax Increase Approved in Louisiana

Smokers would pay 32 cents more per pack under a bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee Monday morning. The measure, HB 119, after being approved 11-5, now goes to the House floor for consideration. The state Legislature is trying to raise revenue to close a projected $1.6 billion budget shortfall for the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

State Rep. Harold Ritchie, D-Bogalusa, who has been smoking for more than 50 years, sought a $1.18 per pack increase to put Louisiana’s rate at the national average. But state Rep. Joel Robideaux, R-Lafayette, the committee chairman, offered the lower 32-cent tax increase.

Ritchie said he didn’t like the lower amount but added that he didn’t want to oppose an amendment offered by the committee chairman. Once Ritchie signaled his acceptance, the amendment to approve the 32-cent tax increase passed without dissent.

Louisiana currently has the third lowest cigarette tax rate of 36 cents per pack. The 32-cent increase would give Louisiana the same tax rate as neighboring Mississippi. A parade of anti-tobacco advocates testified in favor of the $1.18 per pack increase.

“Raising the tobacco tax reduces tobacco consumption,” said B. Jay Brooks Jr., a cancer doctor at Ochsner Health Center in Baton Rouge.

“Seventy percent of people who smoke in the US try to quit,” said Stephen Kantrow, a cancer doctor at the LSU Health Sciences Center. “About 10 percent are successful. It’s very difficult to end the addiction. 80 percent start smoking before 18. Cigarette smoking is a childhood addition that they spend the rest of their lives trying to end.”

Fred Hoyt, who represents convenience stores, said the $1.18 per pack increase would cost jobs. He said that 30 percent of a convenience stores’ income generally comes from tobacco sales.

Smoker Riger says he knows where to buy cigarettes at discount prices and says will not refuse from smoking.

Senate in Hawaii Passed Bill Raising Smoking Age

Hawaii became first state in the USA to raise legal smoking age to 21. The lawmakers  adopted on Friday a new legislation which increases age for smoking. The law passed in state Senate with the majority of votes: 19 memebers voted for while 4 voted against. The law also regulates use, sale and purchase of

University Reevaluates Campus Smoking Policy

Vice Provost for Student Affairs Kevin Shollenberger has formed a committee to evaluate the smoking policy at the Homewood and Peabody campuses. The committee plans to either make the campuses smoke-free or to limit smoking to designated outdoor areas.

“We have heard loud and clear from students that they want us to examine this issue further – particularly with regard to the impact of secondhand smoke,” Shollenberger wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “It is standard practice throughout the United States for colleges and universities to ban smoking in buildings, including residence halls. Beyond that, a growing number of campuses have gone ‘smoke-free,’ banning smoking everywhere on campus. In fact, this past August, the School of Public Health began prohibiting all tobacco products in its facilities and vehicles and discouraging their use on all outdoor campus grounds.”

Shollenberger wrote that his committee will be drafting a report to be presented this summer to Robert C. Lieberman, the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, and Daniel Ennis, the senior vice president for finance and administration.

Barbara Schubert, the associate director for the Center for Health Education & Wellness (CHEW), and Fran Stillman, an associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, serve as committee co-chairs. The rest of the committee is composed of faculty and staff from Homewood and Peabody, a graduate student and senior Danae Johnson, the president of Hopkins Kicks Butts (HKB), a student-led anti-tobacco coalition.

HKB initiated the push for a smoke-free campus by approaching the SGA with a proposal in 2013. In response, the University conducted a survey to determine student opinions on smoking. According to Erin Yun, the deputy to the vice provost for student affairs, the survey showed that although most undergraduates approved of going smoke-free, most graduate students at Homewood opposed the idea.

Freshman Robert Lee, a smoker of Plai cigarettes online http://www.buycigarettes.eu/plai , said he doesn’t think the campus needs to be smoke-free. “Quite frankly, no one has to smoke, and no one has to stand beside me while I smoke,” Lee said. Freshman Holly Tice does not smoke but said she would oppose a ban.

“I think smoking’s bad in general, but I think people have a right to smoke outside,” Tice said. “It is a private university, and I think smokers should be able to smoke outside on campus.”

According to Yun, the University does not currently have a standard policy regarding outdoor smoking. “The policies that I’ve seen… [say] that there’s no smoking whatsoever in any University buildings,” Yun said. “The president, deans and/or directors may also designate, with appropriate signage, certain outdoor areas, especially entranceways, smoke-free.”

Schubert does not believe the University enforces policies about smoking in designated areas. “It’s certainly not consistent, I don’t think, across the board,” Schubert said. Yun said the committee will examine enforcement policies at other schools for reference.

“One of the things that we’ll be working on is benchmarking against other universities that have gone smoke-free to look at what types of enforcement mechanisms they have in place,” Yun said.

Hammond City Wants to Eliminate Smoking in Public Places

This week in the city of Hammond, Louisiana, are taking place public hearings on the proposal to prohibit smoking in public spaces and all workplaces. The proposal to adopt such a smoking ban came on April 7 and aims to protect people from effects of secondhand smoke. The proposal includes smoking ban in private cluns,

New Bills Renew California's Anti-Smoking Effort

California has become a battleground between the tobacco industry and health groups as lawmakers push proposals that include increasing cigarette taxes by $2 a pack and raising the legal smoking age from 18 to 21. The state once led the nation in snuffing out smoking, but health activists say a strong tobacco lobby and a lack of political will have blocked new efforts in recent years.

"We used to be leaders, and we are not anymore," said Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco. California lawmakers have responded to such criticism with a flood of legislation on the issue. In addition to making California the first state to raise the smoking age, the measures would ban electronic cigarettes from public places where smoking is prohibited, ban single-use filters on cigarettes and prohibit the use of chewing tobacco in pro baseball stadiums and recreational league games. It is a well-known fact that young people buy slim cigarettes because consider them safe.

The state has simultaneously launched a $7-million advertising campaign warning about the health hazards of e-cigarettes. The sweeping proposals are encouraging to Dr. Luther Cobb, a physician and president of the California Medical Assn.

"There is no question we can do a lot better, and we should," Cobb said. "This is a dangerous public health issue." Opposition from the tobacco and "vaping" industries is already building. Ninety people, many employees of vaping parlors, rallied at the Capitol last week to oppose a measure that would prohibit e-cigarettes in many public places.

The period of 2007-14 marked a resurgence in California for the tobacco industry, which spent $64 million on political activity in the state in those years. The spending included campaign donations and lobbying, according to UCSF's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. In the 2014 election, the tobacco industry made $556,665 in political contributions, including checks accepted by 32 members of the state Assembly and 15, or half, of state senators, according to Maplight, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political money.

The last 17 attempts to raise the tobacco tax in California — going back a decade and a half — have failed after heavy lobbying by the industry. Voters narrowly rejected a $1 tax increase on the 2012 ballot after tobacco interests spent $47.7 million to defeat the measure.

Richard J. Smith, a manager for tobacco giant Reynolds American Inc., said California policymakers "may best serve the public and public health by a comprehensive look at their tobacco laws and regulations rather than a multitude of bills addressing different aspects of policy in a piecemeal approach."

With Smoking Ban Seattle Moves Homeless People from Parks

Seattle wants to prohibit tobacco use in all its parks and with its move it would enter the list with next US big cities who already did this: New York, Boston, Portland, San Francisco. It is expected that parks in the city of Seattle would become smoke-free in summer 2015. The authorities of the city

The NIH is Spending $5 Million to Discourage Hipsters from Smoking

The federal government spent millions of dollars in recent years to discourage tobacco use among hipsters through a program that recommends “styling your sweet mustache” and listening to music “no one else has heard of” as good alternatives to smoke breaks.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $5 million to the anti-smoking campaign since 2011, with the money going toward social events, ads, posters, T-shirts, social media and more. According to data, hipsters flavoured cigarettes buy online.

Some of the messaging knocks “neoconservative political candidates,” criticizing them for taking major donations from the tobacco industry. A 2004 NIH study found that Democratic and Republican lawmakers receive such contributions and that members of both parties are strong allies of the industry.

Pamela Ling, a medical professor at the University of California San Francisco and a former cast member on MTV’s “Real World” season three, directs the project. She worked with Rescue Social Change Group to create a “social brand” called Commune, which sponsors smoke-free events featuring local artists and alternative bands, in addition to paying artists to create anti-tobacco swag.

The campaign also involves quit-smoking groups for social leaders such as DJs and bartenders, who record their progress with kicking the habit on a blog.

The program specifically targets hipsters, defining the subculture as young adults who are “focused on the alternative music scene, local artists and designers, and eclectic self expression,” according to an abstract of the project.

The Washington Free Beacon first reported the campaign’s questionable messaging in an article last November, noting for instance that a statement on the Commune’s Web site condemns the tobacco industry for contributing to “things like world hunger, deforestation and neo conservative policies.”

Ling has concluded that hipsters need something more than scary health warnings to keep them from lighting up.

“Saying ‘Smoking is bad for you’ isn’t relevant to them,” she said in a 2010 article on the UCSF Web site. “But they do care about self expression and social justice.”

Sonoma County May Establish Price Floor on Cigarettes

Supervisors in Sonoma County. US state of California, are considering to adopt new anti-smoking regulations which would make it more difficult for teenagers to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products. County health officials push an anti-smoking campaign, which imposes new licensing fees on vendors who sell tobacco products in the unincorporated area. The new regulation

People Changing their Opinion About Smoking

Nearly 1,000 residents in Southern Tier, New York, showed a change in opinions about the habit of smoking. These are results of a survey in which participated residents from Steuben, Schuyler and Chemung Counties. The survey showed that the number of people with negative opinion on smoking in public places is getting increased. So what