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States spend 2% of tobacco settlement money on cessation

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (UPI) — Fifteen years after the $246 billion tobacco legal settlements were reached most states are not spending much on tobacco cessation, U.S. researchers say.
Tobacco use is the top cause of preventable U.S. death, killing more than 400,000 Americans and costing the nation $96 billion in healthcare bills each year and most states involved in the settlements promised a significant portion of the money would be spent on programs to prevent children and teens from smoking and help smokers quit.
The report, entitled “Broken Promises to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 15 Years Later,” was released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights said the states lied.
Over the past 15 years, the states received $391 billion in tobacco-generated revenue — $116.3 billion from the tobacco settlement and $274.5 billion from tobacco taxes. However, they spent only 2.3 percent of their tobacco money, or $8.9 billion, on tobacco prevention programs, the report said.
For fiscal year 2014, the states will collect $25 billion in tobacco revenues, but will spend only 1.9 percent of it — or $481.2 million — on tobacco prevention programs. This year’s funding is a slight increase from a year ago, but it fails to restore deep cuts that have reduced tobacco prevention funding by a third since 2008.
The states currently provide just 13 percent of the tobacco prevention funding recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with only North Dakota and Alaska funding tobacco prevention programs at the CDC-recommended level.
Only four other states — Delaware, Wyoming, Hawaii and Oklahoma — provide even half the recommended funding.
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2013/12/19/States-spend-2-of-tobacco-settlement-money-on-cessation/UPI-73441387435282/#ixzz2nxbwftkL

Forum editorial: Progress in tobacco cessation

North Dakota was recognized last week as leader among states meeting national standards for funding anti-smoking programs. It’s a welcome designation. Moreover, it’s more evidence the state is doing an excellent job with the resources it has to educate about the risks of smoking and secondhand smoke and provide programs to help smokers quit.
No thanks to the Legislature.
At nearly every turn in the smoking debate during the last decade, lawmakers, particularly those in the Republican majority, have done the bidding of the smoking lobby and hospitality industry. Lobbyists worked to scuttle statewide smoking curbs, and their legislative allies fell into line, despite clear indications that a majority of North Dakotans wanted a smoking ban. Indeed, several cities, large and small, were ahead of the Legislature in imposing smoking restrictions, most of them via the ballot.
As in the cities, it took the ballot box to spank the Legislature. Two measures did what the legislators refused to do. The first in 2008 established a tobacco prevention and cessation program funded in large part by tobacco lawsuit settlement money. The second passed by a landslide in 2012 with every county voting “yes.” It made all public places 100 percent smoke free.
Despite dire predictions from fans of poisoning their customers (it’s their “right,” you know), the sky did not fall on the bar scene or the hospitality sector. Instead, smoking levels among adults are down significantly. There is more work to do among the state’s youth, and that’s where education programs are focused.
It’s good news. It’s good for the state’s long term public health, which, in turn, is a plus for everything else in North Dakota.
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Forum editorials represent the opinion of Forum management and the newspaper’s Editorial Board.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/421219/

FDA’s anti-smoking campaign to target teens

By 

Early next year, half a century after the U.S. surgeon general first proclaimed the deadly effects of smoking, the Food and Drug Administration will launch a public health campaign unlike any the federal government has ever attempted.
Slick, data-driven and well-funded, the effort could cost up to $600 million over the next five years, all of it paid for by the tobacco industry under a 2009 law.
It will feature carefully crafted anti-smoking messages targeting specific types of teenagers, from rural kids who watch “Duck Dynasty” and drive pickups to gay and lesbian teens who prefer the nightclub scene.
In contracting with top-flight advertising firms, conducting intense demographic research and micro-targeting subsets of the 12-to-17-year-old crowd, the FDA is hoping to take a page from the marketing playbook of corporate America.
“It’s the federal government going to ad firms of the quality and ability that the tobacco industry has always used,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a national advocacy group. “They’re ensuring that the media designed to educate and reach at-risk young people is of the same quality that the tobacco industry has used to attract them.”
The federal government can scarcely compete with the tobacco industry, whichspent more than $8 billion on advertising and promotions during 2011, according to the most recent data available from the Federal Trade Commission.
But Mitch Zeller, head of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said he hopes that in undertaking the first federally funded anti-smoking campaign aimed exclusively at young people, the government can put a dent in the number of teenagers who smoke their first cigarette each day — now roughly 3,300, with an estimated 700 to 800 becoming addicted.
“Once they become regular smokers or regular tobacco users, then it’s the progression to addiction, disease and premature death,” Zeller said. “We have a responsibility . . . to reduce the death and disease toll from tobacco use. That includes educating kids about the harms of tobacco use in an effective way, in a way that will reach them.”
Previous government-backed anti-smoking initiatives have not been on this scale. Some individual states have run campaigns designed to discourage youth smoking — efforts largely financed by a 1998 settlement under which tobacco companies paid states billions of dollars to settle Medicaid claims for tobacco-related health-care costs.
Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the first federally funded national anti-smoking campaign, but that was geared toward getting existing smokers to stop, not toward teen prevention.
For the new campaign, the FDA is turning to people such as Jeff Jordan, 29. The agency has given him $152 million and a mission: Find a way to cut through the cluttered modern media landscape and persuade teenagers to steer clear of tobacco. And not just any teenagers, but those particularly at risk for becoming smokers, such as Hispanics, Asian Americans, African Americans, gays and lesbians.
Jordan’s San Diego-based firm, Rescue Social Change Group, has spent years developing anti-smoking campaigns that target slivers of youth culture, from teens in Northern Virginia’s alternative rock scene to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens in Las Vegas. He said he believes that to have any chance of reaching those and other at-risk populations, the government must break free of generic messages aimed at reaching all teens.
“If half the population likes blue, and the other half likes yellow, a government agency will make their campaign green,” Jordan told an audience in Finland in 2012. “But they need to realize that being everything to everyone doesn’t work in marketing. They need to segment their audience and tailor their campaigns to be effective.”
The FDA has committed $300 million to the anti-smoking ad blitz in 2014 and 2015, with the possibility of doubling that in coming years. While a chunk of the money will initially be used to target teens who have never smoked or are intermittent tobacco users, most will be aimed at young people with higher risks of becoming addicted to tobacco.
Kathy Crosby, an FDA official and advertising industry veteran overseeing the campaigns, said the agency hopes to replicate the ways in which corporate America focuses on certain demographic groups, including notoriously hard-to-reach teenagers.
“Brands are masters at understanding the marketplace, understanding the dynamics of the marketplace and carving out a way to reach their target audiences,” Crosby said. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Neither the FDA nor the firms it has hired have offered specifics about the campaigns, saying they are a work in progress. But Jordan said the first and most important step is researching which teens to target, then crafting messages that ring true to that group.
“No public health effort before has truly fit into a youth culture, the way they see their culture,” said Jordan, whose small firm has doubled in size to nearly 60 employees and opened a Washington office since starting to work on the FDA project. “The most important part is to be authentic and credible. . . . If we can make a campaign that’s specifically designed for a group, that looks like them, sounds like them, identified with them, we can help them see that people like them are deciding smoking is unhealthy.”
He calls the approach “creating bull’s-eyes” at the fringes of youth culture. “If it actually works,” he said, “we’re talking about reducing [smoking] rates among the groups that are most resistant to a generally targeted message.”
Previous anti-smoking campaigns created by the various firms hired by the FDA offer hints about what to expect. The ads tend to be more edgy than people might expect from a government-backed campaign and often feature young people talking in blunt terms to peers about the consequences of tobacco use.
The firms involved also are adept at getting messages out in ways beyond traditional television and radio advertising, such as creating specialized Web sites and blogs, using Twitter and Facebook, hosting events at bars and staging concerts headlined by bands popular among target audiences.
Better World Advertising, a firm that the FDA has hired to target Native American teens, created a campaign in New York to encourage doctors to talk more with patients about the risks of tobacco, and another in California reminding parents of the dangers of secondhand smoke. The slogan for the latter: “When you smoke, they smoke.”
Another firm working with the FDA, Draftfcb, recently helped the government revamp the image of Smokey Bear.
Zeller, the FDA’s top tobacco official, knows a thing or two about the potential benefits of an aggressive anti-smoking campaign. In the early 2000s, he spent time as an executive at the nonprofit American Legacy Foundation, where he oversaw the “Truth Campaign.”
Funded by a massive tobacco-industry settlement in 1998, the campaign was characterized by in-your-face ads meant to educate teens about the tobacco industry’s misleading marketing practices.
“I know how to do this, and I know what works,” Zeller said in an interview with The Washington Post earlier this year. “And what works is, get really smart people from the outside, do it under contract, do the right research, develop the right messages, have a laser beam focus on who your target is and then buy your media correctly. And then spend money. Because it’s a dose response. Once you’ve done those first three or four things, the more you invest, the more impact you will have.”
Studies have concluded that the “truth” campaign had a tangible effect, discouraging some young people from starting to smoke and prompting others to think twice about their habit.
Another recent study estimated that 1.6 million Americans tried to quit smoking after last year’s CDC campaign, which featured stark images and pleas from adult ex-smokers suffering from a variety of ailments, including amputated limbs and throat cancer.
Whatever shape the FDA’s anti-smoking ads take, Jordan said he’s encouraged to see the government trying to reach teenagers in new and creative ways, in part by taking a chance on firms like his, which aren’t exactly mainstream.
“From the perspective of a federal agency, we’re by no means a quiet company,” he said. “Our work is risque and really in your face, and it’s meant to really cause change. I’m thankful they were willing to take the risk.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fdas-anti-smoking-campaign-to-target-teens/2013/12/09/5b24030a-4d73-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html

National Report: North Dakota Ranks 1st in Protecting Kids from Tobacco

Washington, DC – Fifteen years after the 1998 state tobacco settlement, North Dakota ranks 1st in the nation in funding programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit, according to a national report released today by a coalition of public health organizations.
North Dakota currently spends $9.5 million a year on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, which meets the funding level recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  North Dakota is one of only two states, along with Alaska, that currently fund tobacco prevention programs at CDC-recommended levels.
Other key findings for North Dakota include:
•        North Dakota this year will collect $64.3 million in revenue from the 1998 tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes and will spend just 14.8 percent of it on tobacco prevention programs.
•        The tobacco companies spend $27.9 million a year to market their products in North Dakota. This is 3 times what the state spends on tobacco prevention.
The annual report on states’ funding of tobacco prevention programs, titled “A Broken Promise to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 15 Years Later,” was released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.
A 2008 voter-approved ballot initiative requires North Dakota to fund a tobacco prevention and cessation program at the CDC-recommended level.  In just two years, from 2009 to 2011, North Dakota reduced smoking among high school students by 13.5 percent (from 22.4 percent to 19.4 percent who smoke).
North Dakota made further progress in 2012 when voters overwhelmingly approved a comprehensive smoke-free law that applies to all workplaces, including restaurants and bars.  Health advocates are urging North Dakota leaders to also increase the state’s cigarette tax, which at just 44 cents per pack ranks 46th in the nation and is well below the state average of $1.53 per pack.
“We applaud North Dakota for its strong commitment to preventing kids from smoking, helping smokers quit and protecting all its citizens from harmful secondhand smoke,” said Matthew L. Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “North Dakota is making a smart investment in tobacco prevention that will save lives and save money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs. To further reduce tobacco use, North Dakota’s leaders should also increase the tobacco tax.”
In North Dakota, 19.4 percent of high school students smoke, and 400 more kids become regular smokers each year. Tobacco annually claims 800 lives and costs the state $247 million in health care bills.
Nationally, the report finds that most states are failing to adequately fund tobacco prevention and cessation programs. Key national findings of the report include:
•        The states this year will collect $25 billion from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend just 1.9 percent of it – $481.2 million – on tobacco prevention programs. This means the states are spending less than two cents of every dollar in tobacco revenue to fight tobacco use.
•        States are falling woefully short of the CDC’s recommended funding levels for tobacco prevention programs. Altogether, the states have budgeted just 13 percent of the $3.7 billion the CDC recommends.
There is more evidence than ever before that tobacco prevention and cessation programs work to reduce smoking, save lives and save money. Florida, which has a well-funded, sustained tobacco prevention program, reduced its high school smoking rate to just 8.6 percent in 2013, far below the national rate. One study found that during the first 10 years of its tobacco prevention program, Washington state saved more than $5 in tobacco-related hospitalization costs for every $1 spent on the program.
Tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing more than 400,000 people and costing $96 billion in health care bills each year. Nationally, about 18 percent of adults and 18.1 percent of high school students smoke.
More information, including the full report and state-specific information, can be obtained at www.tobaccofreekids.org/reports/settlements.
 

North Dakota No. 1 in protecting kids from tobacco

By: Helmut Schmidt, INFORUM
WASHINGTON – North Dakota is ranked first in the nation in funding programs to prevent kids from smoking and to help smokers quit, according to a report released Monday by a coalition of public health organizations.
The state will spend $9.5 million in fiscal year 2014 on tobacco prevention and cessation programs. That’s 102.3 percent of the amount recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Alaska is ranked second, spending $10.1 million, or 94.8 percent of the CDC-recommended amount.
“I think this is something that our state should be hugely proud of,” said Holly Scott, tobacco prevention coordinator for Fargo Cass Public Health.
The high school smoking rate was in the 40 percent range in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Scott said.
By 2011, the percentage of high school students smoking had dropped to 19.4 percent. It was even lower in the Fargo area at 13.1 percent, Scott said.
“That’s enormous in terms of the amount of progress made,” she said.
Other states spending at least half of CDC’s recommended level are:

  • No. 3 Delaware, $8.3 million, 59.9 percent.
  • No. 4 Wyoming, $5.1 million, 56.7 percent.
  • No. 5 Hawaii, $7.9 million, 51.7 percent.
  • No. 6 Oklahoma, $22.7 million, 50.5 percent.

Minnesota is 12th in the nation, spending $21.3 million a year, or 36.4 percent of the funds recommended by CDC.
South Dakota follows at 13th, spending $4 million, or 35.4 percent of the CDC-recommended level.
“Right now we know that here in Minnesota, tobacco use is still a problem,” said Keely Ihry, the Partnership for Health tobacco coordinator for Clay County Public Health.
Ihry oversees the program for Clay, Wilkin, Becker and Otter Tail counties.
Ihry said among high school seniors in Clay County, 32 percent of males and 21 percent of females use tobacco.
In Becker County, 38 percent of males and 24 percent of females use tobacco.
In Wilkin County, 50 percent of males and 13 percent of females use tobacco. And in Otter Tail County, 46 percent of males and 26 percent of females use tobacco.
In North Dakota, a 2008 voter-approved initiative requires the state to fund its tobacco prevention and cessation program at the CDC-recommended level.
North Dakota’s program has seen success. From 2009 to 2011, the state reduced smoking among high school students from 22.4 percent to 19.4 percent.
In 2012, North Dakota voters also overwhelmingly approved a smoke-free law that applies to all workplaces, including restaurants and bars.
The annual report on states’ funding of tobacco prevention programs, titled “A Broken Promise to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 15 Years Later,” was released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.
The states will collect $25 billion this year from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend just 1.9 percent of it – $481.2 million – on tobacco prevention programs. This means the states are spending less than 2 cents of every dollar in tobacco revenue to fight tobacco use, the report said.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/420703/group/News/

Great American Smokeout an Opportunity for Congress to Decrease National Tobacco Burden by Increasing the Federal Cigarette Tax

Statement from John R. Seffrin, PhD, CEO of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) 
WASHINGTON, D.C. – November 21, 2013 – “Today is the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout, a day that smokers are encouraged to make a plan to quit their deadly habit and lawmakers are urged to support proven tobacco control policies that save lives. The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) is urging members of Congress to support a proposal that would increase the federal cigarette tax by 94 cents and prevent 626,000 children from smoking-related death. S. 826, originally co-sponsored by Sens. Blumenthal, Harkin and Durbin, would also raise taxes on other tobacco products. ACS CAN estimates that the proposed cigarette tax increase would prevent 1.7 million children from becoming addicted smokers.
“Raising the price of tobacco products is one of the most effective approaches to encourage people to quit and prevent kids from picking up the deadly habit in the first place. Research has consistently shown that every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes reduces youth smoking by 6.5 percent and overall cigarette consumption by about 4 percent.
“The benefits of an increase in the federal tobacco tax are not just limited to children. Congress can reduce the number of adult smokers by nearly 2.6 million over 10 years by passing a 94-cent cigarette tax increase. Furthermore, this proposal comes at a time when there is a lot of discussion about how to reduce health care costs. ACS CAN estimates show that a 94-cent increase would save the country more than $63 billion in long-term health care costs from fewer youth and adult smokers, in addition to generating more than $78 billion in new revenue.
“January will mark the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Surgeon General’s report that scientifically linked smoking to disease and death. The smoking rate has been cut in half in the ensuing decades, but more than 443,000 Americans will still die from smoking-related diseases this year. Tobacco use remains the nation’s most preventable cause of death.  Increasing the federal tobacco tax will save lives, save money and prevent numerous tobacco-related diseases. There has never been a better time for Congress to become heroes in the fight against tobacco use by helping to protect kids from lifelong addictions.”
ACS CAN debuted a new advertising campaign in Washington, D.C., this month that challenges Congress to become heroes and save lives by increasing the federal tobacco tax. Click here to view the ad: ht.ly/qivrQ.
ACS CAN, the nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society, supports evidence-based policy and legislative solutions designed to eliminate cancer as a major health problem. ACS CAN works to encourage elected officials and candidates to make cancer a top national priority. ACS CAN gives ordinary people extraordinary power to fight cancer with the training and tools they need to make their voices heard. For more information, visit www.acscan.org.

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5 Year Anniversary of ND's Comprehensive Program

Today marks the 5-year anniversary of the passage of Initiated Measure #3, which, when passed with 54% of the vote on the General Election ballot on November 4, 2008, created a statewide comprehensive tobacco prevention and control program.
As one of only two states in the country to fully fund a comprehensive tobacco prevention program at CDC recommended levels, North Dakota – whose program is funded strictly through the Master Settlement Agreement – should be proud of the importance we have placed on doing all we can to reduce the deaths and diseases of our fellow North Dakotans caused by tobacco use.
Thanks to support from the general public, great strides have been made in the area of tobacco prevention and control.  Most recently, in November 2012, their voices were heard when another initiated measure earned 67% of the vote at the polls, receiving a majority vote in every county and legislative district in the state, passing the nation’s strongest statewide smokefree law.
Since 2008, it has become increasingly clear that North Dakotans believe an effective and worthy use for a portion of the monies settled with the tobacco industry in the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998 should be dedicated to tobacco prevention efforts through a comprehensive program.  In a poll commissioned by TFND and conducted by Keating Research, Inc, in February 2013, public support for maintaining and continuing to fund the comprehensive tobacco prevention and control program had grown to 89%.
TFND congratulates North Dakota voters for making this commitment five years ago, commends them for strengthening their support to that commitment, and challenges the state’s elected officials to reinforce this commitment in the future.

Tobacco Marketing Costs Exceed Those of Prevention Efforts

By Marisa DeCandido – email
There’s been a statewide effort over the past several years to cut down on tobacco use in North Dakota. And state lawmakers now know exactly how much those prevention programs are costing.
It’s not easy for smokers in North Dakota to find a place to light up, and state lawmakers now know just how much it costs to keep it that way.
The Center for Tobacco Prevention and Control Policy says it spends about fifty-five dollars on each North Dakota Tobacco user. That money goes towards programs that help users break the habit.
“A great portion of the program is focused on preventing young people, youth and young adults, from ever using tobacco so we don’t have to spend as much on cessation, or getting them to quit later in life,” says Prom
And Prom says youth smoking rates have gone down in the last year. Even though the tobacco industry spends about one-hundred and ninety five dollars a year marketing to North Dakotans.
“It’s odd that we have a situation today where we have an industry, the tobacco industry, who promote a product that when used as intended kills. There’s really nothing normal about that. So we want to change that to where not using tobacco is the norm,” says Jeanne Prom, North Dakota Tobacco Prevention.
Prom presented these numbers on the same day that New York City proposed a law that would change the tobacco buying age from eighteen to twenty-one. But North Dakotans don’t thing that will happen here.
“North Dakota, at this time, we need to focus on our taxes and raising that, and that is going to make the biggest impact for stopping our youth from starting and helping others to quit,” says Kim Schneider, American Lung Association.
That’s because the tobacco tax here is only forty-four cents, one of the lowest in the country.
“We’ve spent a lot of time in the past year just educating again on the smoke-free law and on the tobacco tax. It’s a big issue in North Dakota,” says Schneider.
Tobacco prevention groups in the state say raising the tax is the next step towards fighting tobacco use.
For more information on how much smoking costs North Dakotans, visit breathend.com.
http://www.kumv.com/story/23842127/tobacco-marketing-costs-exceed-those-of-prevention-efforts

Lawmakers updated on efforts to fight tobacco use

By Nick Smith
BISMARCK, N.D. _ A statewide effort to fight tobacco use is spending about $55.60 on each North Dakota adult who uses tobacco products, the director of the agency behind that effort says.
State lawmakers got an update Wednesday from Jeanne Prom, the executive director of the North Dakota Center for Prevention and Control Policy, on how much her agency spends.
With an average annual budget of about $10.7 million, it amounts to $55.59 spent on each adult tobacco user in the state, or $14.57 per capita, Prom told lawmakers. But she said that is much less than the tobacco industry spends on marketing.
“It takes a lot more to market it (tobacco),” Prom said.
In North Dakota, it cost approximately $40 per capita in 2009-11 — the most recent available estimate — for the tobacco industry to market its products, Prom said. She called it a positive sign that combating tobacco use is cheaper than marketing it.
The tobacco prevention center, using an annual state Health Department survey, estimated the state’s adult tobacco-using population at 192,105.
Krista Fremming, Tobacco Prevention and Control Program director for the state Health Department, said the department had expanded its advertising efforts for the NDQuits program this past June and July, something that had not been done in years past. The advertising campaign cost approximately $467,000.
The NDQuits program pushes to keep people from starting to smoke and helping people quit, using online sources, counselors and other services.
Fremming said the program served 341 people in July, up from 255 in June. But she said the program has not seen an increase in the number of people who use or want to quit e-cigarettes, possibly because people mistakenly think they are safe.
“There has been a lot of activity over the past couple of years … regarding e-cigarettes being used as a cessation aid,” Fremming said. “The truth is, we just don’t know if they’re safe.”
Fremming added that e-cigarettes are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for that purpose. She said a large number of NDQuits members who reported e-cigarette use also smoke traditional cigarettes.
“A large portion of the upcoming NDQuits media campaign will focus on reaching smokeless and dual tobacco users,” Fremming said.
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/lawmakers-updated-on-efforts-to-fight-tobacco-use/article_7275a6e4-41ac-11e3-b615-0019bb2963f4.html