California Failed to Adopt Anti-Tobacco Laws

On their latest regular session, officials in California failed to adopt a package of anti-tobacco laws that aimed to restrict use of e-cigarettes, increase legal smoking age to 21 and raise the tobacco tax by $2 each pack. Officials told that there is no chance that this law will be voted till the end of

Tobacco tax initiative proposed for California

Stepping up pressure on the California Legislature to raise the tobacco tax, a coalition of health groups said Monday it will begin circulating petitions to put an initiative on the November 2016 ballot to hike the levy on cigarettes.

Two proposed initiative summaries, one including electronic cigarettes, were filed Monday with the state Attorney General’s Office, which provides a title and summary to be used on the petitions. The filing is by the group Save Lives California Coalition, which includes the American Heart Assn., American Lung Assn. in California, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the California Medical Assn., SEIU California, the California Dental Assn., Tobacco Free Kids and Health Access California.

The groups will decide later which of the two alternatives to put on the ballot.

Like the legislation, the initiatives would raise the tobacco tax by $2 per pack of cigarettes to raise $1.5 billion annually for smoking prevention and smoking-related medical costs now borne by taxpayers through Medi-Cal, the state's healthcare program for the poor.

One version is for combustible cigarettes and the other would also extend the tax to include electronic cigarettes if the state follows through with a current proposal to label them as tobacco products.

The legislation raising the tax needs a two-thirds vote to win legislative approval, which means the Democratic majority would need to secure some Republican votes.

“California doctors know that prevention is the best medicine when it comes to tobacco-related diseases,” said Luther F. Cobb, a physician and president of the California Medical Assn. “With the California Healthcare, Research and Prevention Tobacco Tax Act of 2016, California voters can restore our state’s leadership in research, cures and access to healthcare.”

Voters narrowly rejected a $1 tax increase on the 2012 ballot after tobacco interests spent $47.7 million to defeat the measure.

David Sutton, a spokesman for tobacco giant Altria, said "if the proposed increase went into effect, California’s cigarette tax would be significantly higher than all the surrounding states, which would likely fuel illicit trade and create a budget hole that would need to be filled with higher or additional taxes on Californians."

Michael Roth, a spokesman for the health coalition, said it is prepared to raise tens of millions of dollars to campaign for an initiative, but that it does not mean the group is giving up on the possibility of legislative approval of SB 591 by Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento).

“It is still our top priority to work that bill as we are keeping all of our options open,” Roth said.

However, smokers do not get disappointed, because they will buy a carton of cigarettes online.

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."

California to Raise Tobacco Buying Age to 21

California State Capitol wants to adopt a number of statewide anti-smoking laws. Four years ago former state Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger folded his cigar smoking tent on grounds of Capitol and now the sate makes a new step towards reduction of tobacco use. At the beginning, there will be adopted a bill increasing a legal smoking

Research on tobacco usage at San Jose leads to campus change

Change is coming to San Jose State University's campus, with President Mohammad Qayoumi issuing a directive Nov. 20 to make San Jose State a smoke- and tobacco-free place by Aug. 1, 2015. There are many smokers in the university who oppose the ban. All of them choose cheapest cigarettes http://www.cigarettestrade.com/buy/blood

This directive was based on research and a survey that Milpitas High School class of 2009 graduate Isra Ahmad worked on as part of Campuses Organized & United for Good Health, or COUGH, at San Jose State while she was a student. The research involved asking students, staff and administration about their attitudes toward smoking and whether they would support a smoke-free campus. She said 65 percent of the 2,300 participants favored a campus without smoke.

In January 2013, shortly after graduating as a health science major, Ahmad was named one of four youth activism fellows for Legacy, a national nonprofit dedicated to reducing tobacco usage among youth and helping smokers quit.

Since then she has been working to gauge student, staff and faculty opinion and awareness of new and emerging tobacco product usage on campus. Between April and June 2014 she returned to San Jose State and worked with COUGH to question students and staff using paper and online surveys.

The data collected from 1,160 individuals on the campus of 23,881 undergraduates indicated that hookah, a waterpipe used to pass charcoal-heated air through a tobacco mixture and a water-filled chamber, and electronic cigarettes, are growing in popularity.

Of those polled, 9.85 percent said they smoked cigarettes; 6.33 percent smoked small cigars/cigarillos; 8.79 percent said they smoked hookah (water pipe, shisha); and 10.73 percent said they smoked e-cigarettes.

About 40.72 percent of respondents said they used tobacco products because they are experimenting; 36.49 percent said they used it for flavor; 33.76 used it as a stress reliever; 11.10 percent used it because of peer pressure; and 3.95 percent used it because of family influence.

Calaveras County to Eliminate Tobacco Smoke from Apartments

In an attempt to protect its residents from secondhand smoke, Calaveras Multiunit Housing Workgroup in the state of California said it wants to make its apartments smoke-free. Last week, on September 10, they presented a 12-minute video called “Share Walls, Not Smoke” which features interviews with an apartment owner and several residents. The Workgroup includes

Pleasant Hill to Expand Smoking Ban

In 2013, Michael Harris, the Council Member of Pleasant Hill proposed to prohibit smoking in the downtown shopping district, but the proposal did not gain any support. So the ban was not adopted. Harris considers it was not a perfect moment to come with such a proposal as City Council had on its agenda the

Residents Want to be Protected from Secondhand Smoke

Tuolumne County Public Health Department along with Calaveras Public Health Services revealed the results of a new survey which demonstrated that the majority of residents in multi-housing units do support the reduction of exposure to secondhand smoke. 59% of Tuolumne County and 64% of Calaveras County residents favored smoking bans in outdoor common areas of