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Grand Forks Herald: Ballot proposal would raise taxes on electronic cigarettes in North Dakota

By John Hageman

Heather Nelson is well-versed in the arguments over electronic cigarettes.

Armed with a stack of printed news clippings behind the glass counter at her Grand Forks shop, SnG Vapor, she’s adamant that the products her business sells helps smokers quit traditional cigarettes.

But Nelson worries that a proposed tax in North Dakota will harm her business and present an obstacle for those looking to stop smoking.

“I don’t think it’s fair to boost the tax on something that’s actually helping them,” she said.

But public health officials and backers of the proposed ballot measure argue the liquid nicotine used in electronic cigarettes is a tobacco product, and therefore it should be taxed as such. Moreover, they say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not identified electronic cigarettes as a smoking cessation product.

The proposal to tax vaping products is included in the ballot language put forth by Raise it for Health North Dakota, which is focused on increasing the state’s cigarette tax from 44 cents a pack to $2.20 a pack. The measure would classify liquid nicotine that’s derived from tobacco as a tobacco product and would raise the tax on it and other items from 28 percent to 56 percent of the wholesale purchase price.

Aside from the larger debate over raising taxes on traditional cigarettes, the proposal is likely to open discussion on the merits of electronic cigarettes, a relatively new product that has grown rapidly in popularity. Though it is much smaller than the traditional cigarette market, the vapor market grew by 23 percent in 2014, according to a Tax Foundation report released earlier this week, and several shops selling e-cigarettes have opened in Grand Forks in recent years.

Dr. Eric Johnson, a Grand Forks physician and chairman of the committee organizing the ballot measure, said electronic cigarettes are subject to sales tax in North Dakota but not a specific tobacco tax. He pointed out that more than 20 North Dakota cities, including Grand Forks, consider electronic cigarettes tobacco products for the purposes of preventing their sale to minors.

“It’s just kind of an example of the law not really keeping up with technology,” Johnson said. “The e-cig vape technology, they’re tobacco products by about just any medical definition.”

Looking at the data

Mike Jacobs smoked cigarettes for more than 20 years before picking up an e-cigarette last year.

“My last cigarette was Nov. 11,” he said from the other side of the counter at SnG Vapor, which is on South 18th Street just south of DeMers Avenue.

Nelson points to Jacobs as one story of how the products at her store can help people dump traditional cigarettes. She also cited the Public Health England’s statement last year that vaping is safer than smoking, though the agency stressed the products aren’t without risk, according to the Guardian.

That was echoed in the Tax Foundation’s report, which argued “vapor products have the potential to be a boon to public health by acting as a less risky alternative to traditional incinerated cigarettes.”

“Further, to the extent that smoking cessation is a stipulated goal of tobacco taxation, exposing vapor products, which many see as a promising cessation method, to such hefty tax rates as traditional tobacco would be counterproductive,” the report added.

But not everyone is convinced.

Johnson said electronic cigarettes are not FDA-approved as smoking cessation devices and there isn’t sufficient evidence that they help people quit traditional cigarettes. Indeed, a study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine in January found adult smokers who use e-cigarettes were less likely to quit smoking, according to CBS News.

“If they had data, I would recommend them just like any other stop-smoking product,” Johnson said. “Since we don’t really know whether these help or promote use, it’s very difficult as a health care provider to recommend them at this time.”

Moreover, Johnson is worried that they act as a gateway for young people to move on to other tobacco products. While the percentage of North Dakota high school students who smoke has dropped substantially over the past 20 years, roughly 20 percent of Grand Forks students use electronic vapor products, according to survey results previously provided by the Grand Forks Public Health Department.

“We’re kind of wondering, ‘Is what we’re doing in public health working or are they switching from one product to another?'” said Haley Thorson, tobacco prevention coordinator with the health department, who added they’ve “also accomplished some very successful policy initiatives in our state.”

Becoming law

Raise it for Health submitted its petition to the North Dakota Secretary of State’s office last week. Supporters will need to collect 13,452 signatures to get the measure on November’s ballot.

Minnesota became the first state to tax vapor products in 2012 by imposing a tax of 95 percent of their wholesale price, and only a handful of other states have similar policies in place, according to the Tax Foundation.

Meanwhile, at least 25 states and the District of Columbia considered legislation to tax vapor products in 2015. North Dakota was among them, but the bill ultimately failed to become law.

“We want all of those products taxed at the same rate so one addiction doesn’t cost less than the other,” said Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo, who was a sponsor of the bill last year to raise tobacco taxes and is a member of the ballot measure’s sponsoring committee. “The goal really here in this measure is to reduce the amount of people who are addicted to these products in order to keep them healthy and in order to keep our society healthy.”

But for Nelson, the tax “will put a damper” on a product she argues is helping people move away from more dangerous traditional cigarettes. She said it may prompt shops like hers to unite in opposition.

“We want to get organized and we want to be heard,” Nelson said.

http://www.grandforksherald.com/news/business/3995243-ballot-proposal-would-raise-taxes-electronic-cigarettes-north-dakota

WDAY/WDAZ: North Dakota may soon have to decide to increase taxes on tobacco products, including e-cigarettes

By WDAY / WDAZ Staff

Grand Forks, ND (WDAY/WDAZ TV) – North Dakota will have to decide on whether to increase taxes on not only tobacco products, but also e-cigs.

If passed, traditional cigarette tax will go from $0.44 a pack to $2.20.

Vaping product liquid tax would then increase from 28% to 56%.

Owners of SNG Vapor in Grand Forks say e-cigs have helped many people quit smoking traditional cigarettes.

A question that many people have is whether or not E-Cigs are considered tobacco products.

Public health officials and backers of the measure argue that liquid nicotine used in electronic cigarettes is but, users disagree saying that the two very different

“The FDA hasn’t made their deeming regulations. It’s not fair to lump us in with tobacco. Tobacco is combustion, tobacco is a leaf, it’s the grainy portion you know it’s the physical part it’s not a liquid. It’s not creating any fire it’s not creating a spark it’s not burning anything that’s bad for you and we’ve taken all the excess junk out of all of the between  4000 to 6000 chemicals in a normal cigarette and we dumbed it down to just four things,” said Heather Nelson of SNG Vapor.

Minnesota became the first state to tax vapor products in 2012 by imposing a tax of 95% of their wholesale price.

http://www.wday.com/news/3995693-north-dakota-may-soon-have-decide-increase-taxes-tobacco-products-including-e

Center for Public Integrity: How Big Tobacco lobbies to safeguard e-cigarettes

By Nicholas Kusnetz
SACRAMENTO, Calif. ­— In the Golden State, home to healthy living, progressive politics and one of the lowest smoking rates in the nation, cigarettes can seem like a relic of the past, barred long ago from restaurants, bars and even some city parks.
And yet within the walls of California’s high-domed capitol, tobacco companies continue to wield surprising power. After a recent loss on a slate of tobacco control bills headed to the governor’s desk, they are gearing up for a bigger test looming at the ballot this fall. With money to spend, they have threatened to sabotage a planned ballot measure to raise the cigarette tax.
The battles aren’t just here. Despite the tobacco industry’s tarnished public image, it is operating a powerful and massive influence machine in statehouses from Salt Lake City to Topeka. With a playbook crafted nearly 20 years ago, the tobacco firms use direct lobbying, third-party allies and “grassroots” advocacy campaigns to spread model legislation and mobilize smokers against proposed regulations and tax hikes across the country. And they are taking up the mantle to defend a burgeoning electronic cigarette market as well.
Today, tobacco companies maintain some of the mostextensive state lobbying networks in the country, totaling hundreds of lobbyists. Altria Group Inc. and Reynolds American Inc., which control the vast majority of the American tobacco market, are among just 21 entities that had registered lobbyists in every state at one point from 2010 through 2014, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of lobbyist registrations collected by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
They’ve also given at least $63 million to state candidates, committees and ballot initiatives nationwide over the past five years.
Their chief opponents, the American Cancer Society and American Heart Association, also have similarly broad lobbying networks, but the health associations have given hardly any money to state politicians.
With such extensive reach, tobacco companies have continued to fight off the simplest means of cutting smoking rates: higher taxes. Out of 24 states to propose higher cigarette taxes last year just eight passed increases, according to a tobacco industry group. And only Nevada, with a $1-per-pack hike, raised them by more than 50 cents. Health groups say incremental tax hikes of less than $1 are much less effective at cutting smoking rates because tobacco companies can easily counteract them with rebates and discounts.
E-cigarettes are the newest front in this multi-faceted war. While the Food and Drug Administration has announced plans to regulate e-cigarettes, for now it remains up to states to impose any regulations or taxes on the emerging products. So far, e-cigarette taxes have passed in only four states, while proposals have been defeated in at least 21 others. The tobacco industry, which is increasing its share of the new market, has also won language in at least 19 states in recent years making it harder to regulate and tax e-cigarettes under existing anti-smoking laws.
David Sutton, a spokesman for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, said his firm is generally opposed to taxes on its products and becomes politically active where necessary. Reynolds declined to answer specific questions for this article, pointing instead to its website, which says the company engages in lobbying and makes lawful political contributions to protect the interests of its business.
“The tobacco companies never give up,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. “They’re like the Borg,” the indomitable alien horde of “Star Trek” lore.
‘Where tobacco bills go to die’
Nowhere has the tobacco fight been bigger, or more expensive, than in California, which has attracted at least two-thirds of tobacco companies’ state-level political donations since 2011. Public health advocates here say tobacco companies have used a potent combination of campaign contributions and behind-the-scenes lobbying to win enough friends in key places.
The strategy is most apparent on the Assembly’s Governmental Organization Committee, which oversees an odd combination of issues, including public records, state holidays, gambling, alcohol and tobacco.
Its chairman, Assembly member Adam C. Gray, a Democrat from Merced who has served on the committee since 2013, has accepted $88,100 in political contributions from Altria and Reynolds since he began campaigning for office in 2011, far more than any other member of the Legislature.
The two companies have directed some $390,000 in total to members who sat on that Assembly committee, a quarter of the money they’ve given to all legislative candidates and their committees in California over that period.
The large amount of money given to its members has prompted some to call it the “Juice Committee.” Health advocates call it “the committee where tobacco bills go to die.”
The committee has watered down or killed nearly every major tobacco bill that’s come through it in recent years, anti-smoking advocates say, including a recent attempt in July to regulate e-cigarettes.
In an unusual move, an identical e-cigarette bill and five other tobacco measures were reintroduced in a special session the following month to allow the legislation to sidestep Gray’s committee. They passed the Legislature this month, the first significant tobacco control bills to pass since the 1990s, a marked blow to the usually successful tobacco industry.
“Money has no influence on what goes on with policy. It just doesn’t,” Gray said. “Raising money to get into elected office is a component of what we have to do… And frankly, I’m a pretty aggressive fundraiser.”
Lawmakers and other Sacramento insiders point out that the direct contributions, which are subject to strict limits, are minimal compared to the money spent by independent political groups, which can raise and spend unlimited sums to support or oppose candidates as long as they do not coordinate with the candidates. Tobacco companies have given some $4.8 million to such independent political committees and parties in California since 2011, nearly three times as much as they gave directly to candidates.
“We provide contributions to candidates and elected officials who, in their work legislatively are at work on issues that have an impact on our business,” said Sutton, the Altria spokesman.
Altria and Reynolds have also spent some $5.4 million on lobbying in California since 2011. By comparison, the health groups that supported stronger tobacco regulation have spent some $2.7 million over the same period, though they lobby on many other issues as well.
“There’s a reason people spend money on that,” said Gary Winuk, who served for six years as the state’s lobbying and campaign finance enforcement officer before leaving for private practice last year. Winuk began his career working for a lawmaker on the Governmental Organization Committee decades ago, and said it was the behind-the-scenes maneuvering and power plays he saw there that made him want to work for the state ethics agency.
Preserving tobacco’s role
In 1999, R.J. Reynolds, now a division of Reynolds American, produced a memo describing a strategy to “preserve the company’s role and participation in U.S. commerce.” The document, archived at the University of California, San Francisco, included the company’s state lobbying objectives, chief among which was a plan to hire lobbyists in “as many states as possible,” as the company’s first “line of defense.”
Next was a commitment to make “appropriate political contributions and support key trade groups and allies,” adding, “there is an old saying in politics. ‘Money talks and bullshit walks’… It is especially true when dealing with tobacco issues.”
The third component of the lobbying strategy was to “execute grassroots mobilization of trade groups, smokers and other allies.”
Nearly two decades later, the company is still using the same roadmap. And smoking continues to be the leading cause of preventable deaths, killing nearly half a million Americans every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Reynolds and Altria employed a team of more than 450 state lobbyists in 2014, together retaining representatives everywhere but Nevada, according to an analysis of state records and data collected by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. They’ve also continued to work through trade organizations and advocacy groups.
When Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback proposed an increase of $1.50 per pack for traditional cigarettes last year to help fill a budget gap, Reynolds hired David Kensinger, who had served as the Republican governor’s chief of staff until leaving to work as a lobbyist in 2012. Weeks earlier, Kensinger was among a select group of insiders who received advance copies of Brownback’s proposed budget, which included the tax hike, before lawmakers did, according to The Wichita Eagle. Both Kensinger and Reynolds declined to comment on what happened.
Reynolds reported buying more than 350 meals for public officials and giving e-cigarettes to four House members in Kansas last year, according to state lobbying records, while Altria spent $283,000 on advertising and other outreach.
Meanwhile, a group called Citizens for Tobacco Rights, an advocacy campaign run by Altria, blasted emails to its members, in one instance urging them to fight the tax by posting messages on the Facebook pages of their lawmakers. It’s a standard tactic of the group, which claimed to have generated more than 33,000 phone calls and 52,000 emails and letters to legislators in 2014.
Lawmakers eventually approved a tax increase of only 50 cents, a third of the original proposal. Kansas continues to struggle with a $46 million budget deficit this fiscal year.
Protecting a smokeless future
Reynolds, too, has its own “grassroots” advocacy campaign, called Transform Tobacco.  And as the name suggests, a new product is increasingly drawing the company’s focus.
The e-cigarette was invented in 2003 in China and started appearing in this country not long after. It’s gained an enthusiastic community of users, and by 2013 some 20 million adult Americans reported trying e-cigarettes, which vaporize a liquid such as propylene glycol mixed with flavorings and usually nicotine, the key addictive chemical in cigarettes that is generally derived from tobacco.
E-cigarettes come in a huge range of varieties. One major brand charges about $10 for a disposable sleek black pen-like device that lasts about as long as two packs of cigarettes. But many “vapers” use so-called mods or tanks, bulkier refillable devices that can cost anywhere from $30 to well over $100. Users then buy separate vials of “e-juice,” with names like Cinnamon Crumble and Unicorn Milk, which typically sell for about $20 per 30-milliliter vial.
Sales of e-cigarettes reached $3.3 billion last year, according to Wells Fargo Securities, and may surpass those of traditional cigarettes within a decade. While tobacco companies still control less than half of this market, they’ve begun buying up or starting their own e-cigarette brands in recent years, rapidly increasing their share.
Reynolds, a leader in the e-cigarette market, has promoted model legislation that says explicitly that e-cigarettes are not tobacco products. The Center for Public Integrity obtained a template copy of the model language that was circulated at one of dozens of youth tobacco prevention “dialogues” that Reynolds has held around the country in recent years for local health officials and advocates. The company offered to pay as much as $1,000, plus lodging, to those who attended, according to invitations the Center obtained.
So far, such model language has passed in at least 19 states, written into laws banning sales to minors. At least 11 of those passed laws that pull nearly verbatim from the Reynolds template, while at least eight others have enacted similar language that health groups say was promoted by Lorillard Tobacco, which Reynolds bought last year.

Pennsylvania and Michigan, the only states that do not prohibit sales to minors, have two bills pending with similar language.
Although Reynolds’ model language asserts that e-cigarettes are not tobacco products, the company’s own website describes its VUSE e-cigarette as exactly that.
The most immediate effect of the bills is to protect e-cigarettes from existing tobacco control programs and taxes. E-cigarette proponents say the alternate definitions are warranted because the products do not burn tobacco. But health groups warn that the definitions pushed by the industry will harm the public.
“You build this infrastructure for regulating e-cigarettes on a faulty promise that they’re somehow a healthy product,” said Timothy Gibbs, a lobbyist for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network in California and a chief shepherd of the tobacco control bills there. “While the scientific consensus is that they may be safer than traditional cigarettes, that doesn’t mean they’re safe.”
It seems likely that “vaping” is less harmful than smoking. The question is by how much. The Centers for Disease Control says e-cigarettes “generally emit lower levels of dangerous toxins” than cigarettes, but can also release carcinogenic compounds and heavy metals. The agency says that e-cigarettes could provide a public health benefit if they lead smokers to quit. But it suggests that isn’t happening — about three-quarters of e-cigarette users also smoke cigarettes — and the products may be harmful if they prolong smokers’ addiction.

State Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat who sponsored the recently approved California bill that defines e-cigarettes as tobacco products, said their popularity among youth — some 2.4 million middle and high school students were using e-cigarettes nationally in 2014 — means the devices present a new health crisis. He likens today’s fight to what happened with smoking in the mid-20th century, when tobacco companies began a decades-long campaign to discredit the emerging science showing the lethal and addictive qualities of cigarettes.
“They knew 50 years ago what they were doing,” Leno said. “And they’re doing it again today.”
Reynolds declined to answer questions about the model legislation or the dialogues, pointing instead to a company webpage that explains its “transforming tobacco” initiative, which promotes youth prevention programs and argues that smoke-free products, including e-cigarettes, can reduce “the death and disease caused by cigarettes.” Health advocates say the company has insidiously used this campaign in its efforts to win legislation protecting e-cigarettes from harsher regulation.
Altria declined to answer whether it has lobbied in favor of the language.
Vapers fight back
In California, the full weight of state government has gotten behind a campaign to rein in e-cigarette use. Last year, the state public health department warned of the dangers of the product and recommended strict regulations, launching a website and ad campaign called Still Blowing Smoke. This month, with passage of Leno’s bill, the Legislature took a big step in that direction.
Yet the state has met formidable resistance not just from the tobacco industry but also from a fledgling industry of smaller e-cigarette manufacturers and retailers backed by a passionate movement of vapers. Mobilized around the country, these e-cig aficionados have protested in Salt Lake, circulated petitions in Washington state and flown to the nation’s capital to push their position with congressional leaders.
Within hours of the launch of the state’s Still Blowing Smoke campaign last March, for example, another website called NOT Blowing Smoke popped up, using a similar font and logo but blasting the department for peddling misinformation.
Stefan Didak, a 44-year-old software engineer and co-president of the Northern California chapter of the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, a vaping industry group, had learned that the health department was planning the campaign and spent 36 hours holed up in his home office, a dark room with an array of 12 monitors, 14 computers and a plastic rack holding dozens of e-cigarettes. In a savvy guerrilla tactic, he beat the department to registering social media accounts, so the Still Blowing Smoke Facebook page and Twitter handle lead to content by NOT Blowing Smoke.
“Yeah, that was fun,” Didak said from his split-level home in Oakley, a city on the eastern edge of the Bay Area. Didak, dressed all in black, wore a NOT Blowing Smoke T-shirt and held a black mod e-cigarette, the type preferred by hard-core vapers. The blinds were drawn and the air held the faint sweet odor emitted by his mod, which he sucked on periodically, blowing out thick clouds of “ripe strawberry shortcake” flavored vapor.
SFATA Executive Director Cynthia Cabrera says her group was not affiliated with the counter-campaign. The association hired lobbyists in Sacramento to oppose Leno’s bill and has urged Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, to issue a veto.
Didak said that bill would drive small vape shops and liquids manufacturers out of the state — or out of business — by applying the various licensure and regulatory requirements that apply to tobacco. As someone who quit cigarettes thanks to vaping, he said that restricting the industry would harm public health.
Didak and other vapers stress that they are not “big tobacco” and that SFATA does not receive money from tobacco companies. “We don’t regard them as part of us,” Didak said.
In coming months, however, they’ll be on the same side.
A bold threat
Whether Brown signs Leno’s e-cigarette bill, part of the package of six tobacco measures the Legislature passed this month, an expensive fight looms in California’s freewheeling ballot initiative process.
A coalition of health and labor groups, with support from liberal billionaire Tom Steyer, is currently gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would hike the state’s cigarette tax by $2 and levy an equivalent tax on e-cigarettes. At 87 cents, California’s current tax is well below the national average.
Yet that effort may be in jeopardy.
This month, a lobbyist for Altria sent a bold threat in an email first published by The Sacramento Bee: the company plans to try to repeal some of the tobacco bills it had opposed by putting them before voters in a referendum on this fall’s ballot. In a calculating political move, it also threatened to corner the all-important ballot measure market of professional signature gatherers by paying top dollar. That could price out the health groups from their cigarette tax campaign and imperil all other measures trying to make the ballot, including an extension of a key tax increase known as Proposition 30.
“When we hit the street with referendum paying $10 per signature, Prop 30 is dead as well as $2 a pack tax,” warned Altria lobbyist George Miller IV, son of the former Democratic California congressman. “We will have every signature gatherer on an exclusive. Just letting you know so you can’t say you were not warned.”
The health groups say they could be forced to either up their own prices, which are now about $4 per signature, or rally volunteers instead.
“We’re appalled but not surprised,” said Gibbs, the Cancer Society lobbyist, adding that tobacco companies have a history of particularly ruthless tactics. “They seem to be throwing a fit.”
Miller did not respond to requests for comment. Sutton, Altria’s spokesman, called Miller’s message “simply a friendly heads-up email between long-time colleagues.”
No matter whether Altria follows through on its threat, the coming months are sure to see many millions of dollars spent on all sides. Health groups have already raised $4 million for their campaign. During two previous attempts to raise cigarette taxes at the ballot, in 2006 and 2012, Reynolds and Altria spent more than $113 million and defeated both measures.
This story was co-published with Vice.
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/03/25/19468/how-big-tobacco-lobbies-safeguard-e-cigarettes

AP: Ohio’s infant mortality panel recommends tobacco tax hike

ANN SANNER, Associated Press

COLUMBUS – Ohio lawmakers should increase the tobacco tax, raise the tobacco-buying age to 21 and ban the sale of crib bumpers, according to a state panel tasked with addressing infant mortality.

The recommendations are among dozens in a report by the Ohio Commission on Infant Mortality released Tuesday.

Ohio’s infant mortality rate has been among the worst in the nation. Infant mortality is measured as deaths of live-born babies before their first birthdays. The three leading causes in Ohio are pre-term births, sleep-related deaths and birth defects.

The state’s overall infant mortality rate was 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births, according the most recent data from 2014. And the rate for black babies was roughly three times that of whites.

Lawmakers created the commission last year to take an inventory of state programs that seek to combat infant mortality. Its recommendations come as the state has been working with hospitals, community groups, local health departments and others in nine urban areas with high rates of infant deaths. Such partnerships seek to address issues high-risk groups face, such as access to food, health care, transportation and social supports.

State Sen. Shannon Jones, a Springboro Republican who co-chaired the commission, said Ohio’s infant mortality problem disproportionately affects low-income black families in urban neighborhoods that have “largely been left behind as the economy has grown.”

“Birth outcomes simply cannot improve unless we address these adverse conditions and underlying inequities found in the places where many of these families live,” Jones said in releasing the commission’s report at a Statehouse press conference.

The report includes policy recommendations for state lawmakers, state agencies, infant mortality collaborative organizations and state grantees.

The commission did not call for a specific tobacco tax increase, though Jones said she plans to include the idea in legislation she and Democratic Sen. Charleta Tavares of Columbus are expected to introduce.

Other recommendations from the commission include:

— Publishing statewide infant mortality data each quarter.

— Requiring cultural competency training for health care providers.

— Permitting pharmacists to administer the hormone progesterone and contraceptive injections of Depo-Provera.

— Specifying pregnancy as a priority in emergency shelter and housing tax credit programs.

— Placing pregnant women in family homeless shelters rather than single adult shelters.

Online:

Ohio Commission on Infant Mortality: http://1.usa.gov/1LEtZbZ

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/22/ohios-infant-mortality-panel-recommends-tobacco-tax-hike/82140650/

Dr. Eric Johnson: Tobacco tax will deter young people from using products

By Dr. Eric Johnson, Grand Forks – Jamestown Sun

As a Grand Forks physician and chairman of the recently announced efforts to initiate a ballot measure to increase North Dakota’s tobacco taxes, it’s important the public be given the facts right off the bat.

First, North Dakota’s tobacco taxes have not been increased since 1993, ranking us 47th in the nation for cigarette tax rates. If passed, this measure would bring North Dakota’s cigarette tax from 44 cents per pack to $2.20 per pack, just slightly above the average of $2.08 per pack of our neighboring states.

Second, it will treat the liquid nicotine drug (smoked via electronic cigarettes) and those who sell it exactly the same as all other tobacco products.

Third, it will dedicate current revenues exactly where they currently are: to the state’s general fund and back to North Dakota’s cities. New revenues generated from the increase will be split evening between a fund created to support the unmet needs of North Dakota’s veterans and a fund to support health programs associated with chronic disease treatment, county health programs and the mental health and addiction crisis facing our state.

Luckily, North Dakota already fully funds a tobacco prevention program utilizing a small portion of the money won by the state of North Dakota when it sued tobacco companies in 1998 for lying to the public and to Congress about the deadly impacts of tobacco. No moneys from this measure will go toward these efforts.

These are the facts. Seventy-five percent of adult tobacco users started before the age of 18. Significant tobacco tax increases are proven as the most effective way to keep young people from ever starting tobacco. That’s an effort we can all support.

http://www.jamestownsun.com/letters/3990656-tobacco-tax-will-deter-young-people-using-products

Bismarck Tribune: Coalition pushes tobacco tax measure

By NICK SMITH, Bismarck Tribune

Photo by Tom Stromme, Bismarck Tribune

Photo by Tom Stromme, Bismarck Tribune


Members of a coalition seeking an increase in the state’s tobacco tax say their proposed increase would reduce smoking rates as well as state health care costs among other benefits.
“That’s the missing leg of the three-legged stool,” Eric Johnson, a Grand Forks physician and head of the measure’s sponsoring committee, Raise It for Health North Dakota.
Two-thirds of North Dakota voters in 2012 approved a ballot measure making public places smoke-free. In 2008, nearly 54 percent of voters approved the creation of a state tobacco prevention and control program.
Other states that have raised the tax have seen decreases in smoking, according to Johnson, adding that the measure will help beef up the state’s tobacco prevention efforts.
“This is a tax nobody has to pay. It’s a product that creates death,” Johnson said.
Kristie Wolff, with the American Lung Association in North Dakota, said the measure would increase the tobacco tax for cigarettes in North Dakota from 44 cents per pack to $2.20. Taxes on liquid nicotine products would be increased from 28 percent of the wholesale purchase price to 56 percent.
The national average tax on a pack of cigarettes is $1.61.
New tax revenues created through the measure, estimated at about $100 million per biennium, would be split between health-related programs in the state’s Community Health Trust Fund as well as a newly created Veterans Tobacco Tax Trust Fund.
“We’re confident that North Dakota voters will respond positively yet again,” Wolff said.
Only Georgia, Missouri and Virginia have lower tobacco taxes than North Dakota. The tobacco tax in North Dakota hasn’t been raised since 1993.
Being a statutory initiative, 13,452 legitimate signatures will be required at least 120 days before the election. The deadline for turning in signatures for the Nov. 8 election is July 11.
Several unsuccessful attempts have been legislatively in the year since the last tax increase.
Wolff said the increase would bring North Dakota in line with the surrounding states in the tax per pack of cigarettes. The tax in Minnesota is $3 per pack, in Montana it’s $1.70 and in South Dakota it’s $1.53.
“We based it on polling we’ve done,” Wolff told reporters when asked how the group came to the $1.76 per pack increase being proposed.
According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the tax increase could result in a 20 percent drop in youth smoking, preventing about 5,800 youths from becoming adult smokers, Johnson said.
North Dakota Retail Association president Mike Rud said the group he leads will need to review the measure language and watch to see if it gets the necessary signatures for a vote. The group opposed both 2015 bills.
Rud said on first glance the proposed increase is substantial, adding that taxing cigarettes would negatively impact lower-income smokers.
“Taxing a group that can least afford it? It’s a bit troublesome to us,” said Rud, clarifying that tobacco products aren’t illegal and retailers sell them to meet demand among legal buyers.
“There’s got to be a limit to how involved we get with these things,” Rud said.
For more information on ballot petitions being circulated, visit sos.nd.gov.
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/coalition-pushes-tobacco-tax-measure/article_ecf65fc0-d7ee-5458-9407-3088d50a3aed.html

Valley News Live: Coalition wants to raise North Dakota tobacco tax

By: Natalie Parsons
FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) It has been proposed in the state of North Dakota to raise the tax on tobacco products.
If it passes, you will see it on your ballot this November.
Supporters already started collecting some of the required 13,000 plus signatures.
North Dakota has not increased its tobacco tax since 1993 and now the Raise It For Health North Dakota coalition thinks it’s time.
The proposed tobacco tax will increase the tax on cigarettes from $0.44 per pack up to $2.20 per pack.
Scott Platfers says, “Going to have to pay more if I want to continue but I’m hoping that it might deter me too because it’s something I’ve been wanting to quit for a long time.”
The ultimate goal for this tobacco tax increase is to hopefully decrease youth smoking by 20 percent and prevent 5800 youth from ever starting.
The Fargo smoker says, “It’s not going to prevent all of them but I think it’s going to get some of them and every little bit helps.”
The coalition has already started getting signatures on this initiated measure.
The petition needs exactly 13,452 signatures in order appear on the November 8th ballot.
Platfers says, “It’s a double edged sword. It’ll effect me but as long as it would help somebody? Yeah, I would sign it.”
The proposed tobacco tax is estimated to bring in over $100-million new revenue to North Dakota with plans to go towards many health care services.
http://www.valleynewslive.com/home/headlines/Coalition-to-raise-North-Dakota-tobacco-tax-372303722.html

Forum News Service: Proposed ND ballot measure would boost tax on cigarettes by $1.76 a pack

By Mike Nowatzki / Forum News Service
A group frustrated with the North Dakota Legislature’s repeated refusal to raise tobacco taxes will attempt to put the issue to voters in November, announcing a ballot initiative Wednesday that would hike the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1.76.
Backers will need to gather 13,452 signatures by July 11 to place the initiated measure on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Dr. Eric Johnson, a Grand Forks physician and chairman of the measure’s 30-member sponsoring committee, estimated the higher tax would reduce youth smoking by 20 percent, preventing 5,800 youths from ever starting smoking.
He noted North Dakota voters approved a tobacco use prevention and control program in 2008 and passed a smoke-free workplace law in 2012, calling the higher tax “kind of the missing leg of the three-legged stool.”
“We do know that it reduces usage, and that saves money for everybody,” he said.
Supporters estimate the tax increase would generate more than $100 million every two years. Half of the money would be dedicated to a new trust fund to support services and programs for military veterans, while the rest would go into a community health trust fund.

Poll results as of 9:30 am on March 17, 2016

Poll results as of 9:30 am on March 17, 2016


North Dakota’s current tax of 44 cents on a pack of cigarettes ranks 47th lowest among states and hasn’t been increased since 1993, despite several attempts in the Legislature, including two bills defeated last year after strong pushback from retailers and distributors.
If approved by voters, the proposed new tax of $2.20 per pack would be lower than Minnesota’s $3-per-pack tax but higher than Montana’s $1.70 and South Dakota’s $1.53. The national average is $1.61 per pack.
The measure is being pushed by the Raise it for Health Coalition, which consists of 10 groups: the North Dakota Medical Association, American Lung Association in North Dakota, North Dakota Veterans Coordinating Council, Tobacco Free North Dakota, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, North Dakota Nurses Association, North Dakota Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, March of Dimes, North Dakota Association of Counties and the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch.
 
 

Bismarck Tribune: Group proposes to raise tax on tobacco

NICK SMITH, Bismarck Tribune

A coalition seeking to reduce tobacco use in North Dakota will unveil a proposed ballot measure Wednesday, which would raise the state’s tobacco tax — one of the lowest in the nation.
The group, Raise it for Health North Dakota, will make its announcement in Memorial Hall inside the state Capitol on Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for the group said details of the proposed measure wouldn’t be disclosed until the announcement.
As of January, data from the tobacco prevention group Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids showed that North Dakota’s tobacco taxes are at 44 cents per pack. Only Georgia, Missouri and Virginia are lower. The tobacco tax in North Dakota hasn’t been raised since 1993.
Two bills proposing tobacco tax increases in the 2015 session failed.
House Bill 1421 would have raised the state’s cigarette tax to $1.54 per pack. It would also have raised the excise tax on other tobacco products from 28 percent of the wholesale purchase price to 43.5 percent. House lawmakers killed it by a 34-56 vote.
Senate Bill 2322 would have raised the cigarette tax in the state to $2 per pack; it failed in the Senate by a 17-30 vote.
Last session, health care officials supported the bills while retail groups opposed it. Several legislative attempts to raise the tax have failed since 1993.
Opponents of the 2015 bills used 2012 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to argue tobacco use isn’t a major problem in North Dakota. The data showed that North Dakota in 2012 ranked 37th in adult smoking and 49th in smokeless tobacco use. Among youth smokers, North Dakota ranked 34th among 44 states reporting data.
North Dakota voters in November 2012 approved a ballot measure making public places smoke-free. Two-thirds of voters supported the measure.
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/group-proposes-to-raise-tax-on-tobacco/article_4bd0f2cc-48bf-5e23-9008-be55a0db7268.html

InForum: Mentally ill more likely to smoke, die from tobacco-related illness

The mentally ill and those battling substance abuse are much more likely than others to smoke, and suffer higher illness and death rates as a result.
The American Lung Association in North Dakota is launching an effort to target smoking cessation programs at those who are mentally ill or dealing with addictions.
Tobacco control advocates also are working with mental health professionals to take a more aggressive approach to help those with behavioral health problems quit smoking.
“We have seen a decline in all populations except those with mental illness or substance abuse,” said Reba Mathern-Jacobson, director of tobacco control for the American Lung Association in North Dakota, referring to the drop in smoking among most groups.
As a result, those with mental illnesses and addictions can die decades earlier than the general population, and smoking is a major contributor to sickness and early death, according to statistics cited by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration:
• About half of people with behavioral health disorders smoke, compared to 23 percent of the general population.
• People with mental illnesses and addictions smoke half of all cigarettes made, and are only half as likely as other smokers to quit.
• Smoking-related illnesses cause half of all deaths among people with behavioral health disorders.
“Folks are dying a lot sooner than they need to,” said Carlotta McCleary, executive director of Mental Health America in North Dakota, an advocacy group. The issue is starting to draw more attention, she said, and collaborations are forming to address the problem.
“People who are alcoholic die from tobacco-related diseases more than they do from alcohol-related diseases,” Mathern-Jacobson said.
Those with mental illness or substance abuse problems find it more difficult to quit smoking for a variety of reasons.
Nicotine’s mood-altering effects put people with mental illness at greater risk for cigarette use and nicotine addiction. Also, people with mental illness are more likely to face stressful lives, have lower incomes and lack access to health care, making quitting more difficult.
“People might be self-medicating, that kind of thing,” by using nicotine, McCleary said.
Another problem is what tobacco control advocates view as a lackadaisical attitude among some mental health professionals.
“It’s been seen as a lesser of evils,” Mathern-Jacobson said. “Now that population is bearing the brunt of it.”
Mental health professionals are significantly more likely to smoke than other health professionals, surveys show, which might suggest a culture that is more tolerant of tobacco, she said.
It’s worth noting that nicotine dependence is listed as a behavioral disorder in the diagnostic manual used by mental health clinicians, Mathern-Jacobson said. “Nicotine is a drug, let’s treat it like one.”
Melissa Markegard, a tobacco control coordinator with Fargo Cass Public Health, said she believes mental health clinicians are increasingly more likely to take nicotine addiction seriously.
“A lot of times, smoking is a trigger for other substances, especially alcohol,” she said. “It’s kind of like you can’t do one without the other.”
More integration of behavioral health and general health care would help to combat smoking among the mentally ill and those battling addictions, McCleary said.
“It’s not just OK to focus on behavioral health alone,” or on physical health in isolation, she said. There is a growing movement in health care to do more to combine the two, McCleary added, but said much more integration is needed.
The American Lung Association in North Dakota is bringing in an expert to help train behavioral health professionals including psychiatrists, counselors, nurses, social workers and other treatment providers who serve people with mental illness or substance abuse disorders.
The training sessions will be June 21-22 in Fargo and will feature Dr. Jill Williams, an addiction psychiatrist from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Details still are pending. Anyone interested can contact Mathern-Jacobson atreba.mathern-jacobson@lung.org or by calling 701-354-9719.
http://www.inforum.com/news/3986011-mentally-ill-more-likely-smoke-die-tobacco-related-illness