Letter: Tobacco taxes should be raised

“Hey! I have a great idea! Let’s raise a tax on something,” said no North Dakota legislator ever.

Wow! Raising a tax on anything, with North Dakota being so flush from oil money, just doesn’t make any sense at all.

And yet, taxes (or fees if you want a more politically correct term) do continue to inch up here and there.

During the 2013 legislative session, North Dakota lawmakers passed a bill that increased fees for many hunting and fishing licenses.

A tax is generally imposed to gain funds to pay for specific services or products: “It is a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers’ income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.”

As said, to raise a tax in North Dakota today just doesn’t seem to make any sense, unless it’s a tax to protect the health of our residents, prevent disease and thwart kids from starting a path of extremely unhealthy behavior.

OK, I’ve beat around the bush long enough. I have read a lot about the idea of increasing the tobacco tax in North Dakota, and I am totally in favor of such an action. Here’s why:

The tobacco tax in North Dakota is one of the lowest in the nation (we are 46th at 44 cents per pack of 20 cigarettes), the lower-than-us states include: Missouri at 17 cents; Louisiana at 36 cents; Georgia at 37 cents and Alabama at 42 cents.

Our tobacco tax hasn’t increased since 1993.

The effects of North Dakotans’ tobacco use also affects the wallets of those who don’t use tobacco. North Dakota’s annual health care costs directly caused by smoking are $326 million. The portion covered by state Medicaid is $47 million.

But the most important reason is that a higher tobacco tax encourages people to quit and discourages younger folks from starting. According to the Tobacco Free Kids organization, “tobacco tax increases are one of the most effective ways to reduce smoking and other tobacco use, especially among kids. Every 10 percent increase in cigarette prices reduces youth smoking by about seven percent and total cigarette consumption by about four percent.”

For all the work being done by public health and health advocacy organizations, raising the tobacco tax is win-win.

I think it’s about time the North Dakota legislators started having a serious talk about this rather serious idea.

http://www.westfargopioneer.com/content/letter-tobacco-taxes-should-be-raised

Ebola-fighting compound created using tobacco

Laura Ungar, USA TODAY

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Kentucky company used local tobacco to help produce an experimental serum to fight Ebola, which may help save two American aid workers stricken with the deadly disease.

David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds American Services, said Owensboro-based Kentucky BioProcessing complied with a request from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and Samaritan’s Purse this week “to provide a limited amount” of the compound, called ZMapp.

Kentucky BioProcessing, which was acquired by North Carolina-based Reynolds American Inc. in January, does contract work for many clients, including ZMapp maker Mapp Biopharmaceutical of San Diego.

Howard couldn’t confirm that the compound was used on the aid workers, and Emory officials didn’t respond by deadline to a call or email seeking confirmation. But The Associated Press, CNN and other media outlets reported that the aid workers have gotten the serum and have improved.

The fact that a Kentucky company focused on plant-based science played a part “is fantastic,” said Kenneth Palmer, a University of Louisville professor who is involved in tobacco-based research in Owensboro but not in this project. “The more that (medicines) made in plants are used, the better the acceptance. … It gives tangible evidence of how what we do can be applied to help people.”

Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pointed out that ZMapp is not a proven treatment for Ebola but said it’s a good example of the intriguing science of growing medicines in tobacco plants.

“We’d love to see tobacco used for health,” said Frieden, who was in Hazard, Ky., on Tuesday for a series of talks on health problems in Appalachia. But he added, “We don’t have proven treatments or vaccines against Ebola. … This Ebola outbreak is the biggest, worst, most complicated one that the world has ever seen.”

Howard said tobacco helps in the production of ZMapp, acting like a “photocopier” to mass-produce proteins used to make the serum. Palmer said three, single-gene antibodies are put into trays of plants at Kentucky BioProcessing and replicate the antibodies after about 10 days.

Palmer likened it to antibodies being produced in the bodies of people or animals after an infection.

“What the plants are doing is pumping out the antibodies,” Palmer said. “The plants are used to make the antibodies, and then they purify the antibodies.”

“It’s faster than more traditional methods,” Howard added. “It allows for rapid growth of proteins … on a reasonably large scale.”

At the direction of Mapp, the Kentucky company developed a precursor to ZMapp, called MB-003, which was tested in non-human primates and showed good results, published last August in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Researchers said the treatment previously had been shown to protect all the primates when it was given an hour after exposure to Ebola, and two-thirds of them when given 48 hours after exposure.

ZMapp was never tested in humans, but even before the latest Ebola outbreak, the companies had planned later this year to begin the federal process to get the drug approved, Howard said.

Meanwhile, tobacco plants also will be used to develop a gel to prevent the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. University of Louisville researchers announced this week they will lead the international effort, which is being funded by a five-year, $14.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The gel — designed to be used during sexual intercourse by people at risk for HIV — is developed using a synthetic copy of a protein found in red algae shown to act against HIV in the lab.

Research is also underway at Louisville using tobacco plants to produce a cheaper version of the vaccine against human papillomavirus, which causes most cervical cancer.

University of Louisville President James Ramsey said all of the tobacco-based research is exciting, particularly in a state where smoking kills at the highest rate in the nation.

“It is ironic,” Ramsey said in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve been a tobacco state, and it’s been such a part of our economy, and it’s pretty amazing that they can take tobacco and potentially solve some of the biggest health problems around the world.”

Laura Ungar also reports for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/05/ebola-fighting-compound-created-using-tobacco/13642819/

The Post's View: Raising all federal tobacco taxes can stop tax avoidance

By Editorial Board, Washington Post

ENACT A LAW, and companies will find loopholes to exploit. That was the fear which drove lawmakers in 2009 to raise cigarette taxes together with taxes for roll-your-own tobacco and small cigars, both easy substitutes for cigarettes. To prevent manufacturers from shifting toward lesser-taxed alternatives, Congress equalized taxes between all three products — hiking the existing roll-your-own tobacco tax by over 24 times and small cigars by over 27 times.

These products have plunged in sales since 2009. But tobacco manufacturers, unfazed in their quest to fatten their purses, found a new loophole. Unlike these three highly taxed tobacco products, post-2009 taxes on pipe tobacco and large cigars are relatively low. All it took to shift consumers to those products was relabeling roll-your-own tobacco as pipe tobacco, and slightly adding weight to qualify small cigars as large cigars. As evidence from a recent Senate finance committee hearing shows, the popularity of pipe tobacco and large cigars have exploded.

That market shift has cost the federal government up to $3.7 billion in forgone revenue. Even worse, it’s hampered the effect of high tobacco prices on preventing teen smoking.

The first instinct might be to blame the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which has yet to sharpen definitions of many of these products. While action by the bureau could help close the loopholes, it faces a daunting task. For example, where should it draw the line between roll-your-own and pipe tobacco? In many cases, “it is difficult to establish objective physical standards for differentiating between the two products,” the bureau’s chief said in his testimony. Sometimes the difference is virtually nothing at all.

So forget rewriting definitions. The foolproof solution is for Congress to pass a law equalizing all tobacco taxes. That would raise taxes for pipe tobacco and large cigars to the same level as cigarette taxes, preventing any market shift. A bill introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) in 2013, still stuck in committee, would accomplish this task.

Better yet, Congress should hike all tobacco taxes — not just the lower ones — up to higher and equal levels. State taxes vary widely, from $4.35 per cigarette pack in New York to $0.17 per pack in Missouri, making smuggling a big problem for law enforcement. The current cigarette and small cigar federal tax is a meager $1.01 per pack of 20; a higher federal tax would diminish the effect of inconsistency between states and allow for a more uniform response.

These are two common-sense solutions to close tobacco tax loopholes. But the problem of tobacco manufacturers exploiting definitions has another dimension. The Food and Drug Administration, the other arm of the U.S. public health response, has proposed a long-awaited rule to expand its regulatory authority over “all” tobacco products. But premium cigars may be exempted from these regulations, potentially allowing manufacturers to “sweep other cigar products under its umbrella,” as the FDA has admitted before. This proposed exemption, as demonstrated by the tax avoidance case, is a disaster waiting to happen.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/raising-all-federal-tobacco-taxes-can-stop-tax-avoidance/2014/08/02/4b542a76-180d-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html

Smoking Kills (Your Organs): 6 Major Organs Damaged By Cigarette Smoke

By , Medical Daily

Coughing up heaping globs of mucous isn’t even the half of it. Neither is losing all sense of stamina, or coming home to a stale-smelling house with yellowed walls and furniture. No, the biggest consequences of smoking are, by and large, ones you will never see. These, however, tend to be the deadliest.

As you inhale cigarette smoke, the 7,000 or so carcinogens begin to swirl through the caverns of your body, beginning in your esophagus and winding up in distant locations you wouldn’t give second thought to. The truth is, for all its declining popularity, smoking still emerges as the single greatest preventable cause of death in the United States. Each year, some 480,000 people die from smoking-related causes. Here are six organs that feel the effects in the meantime.

1. Your Lungs

Best to get this one out of the way early. Lung cancer, emphysema, and bronchitis are three of the most common diseases directly associated with smoking. Eighty percent of lung cancer cases are due to smoking.

Columns of harmful smoke pour into the organs, paralyzing the delicate cilia lining the inner walls and irritating them to the point where they overproduce mucous. When these cilia die, and mucous builds, respiration suffers. Once the soft healthy tissue turns hard and black, asthma and cancer tend to follow. While many of the body’s processes stabilize after someone quits smoking, damaged lung tissue can never heal.

2. Your Skin

It’s easy to forget the largest organ in your body is even an organ at all. Smoking damages the skin in more ways than one. On the one hand, you’ll notice some profound cosmetic changes, such as bags under the eyes, a toughening of the skin, wrinkles, and stretch marks — all stemming from the skin’s dying elasticity. But you should also expect major health risks to rise. Among the heavy-hitters:skin cancer, warts, psoriasis, and poorer wound healing.

We don’t think of skin as playing much more than a cosmetic role, but the largest organ in the body is the first line of defense for keeping out invading forces, like bacteria and viruses. Psoriasis, for instance, was found in 2007 to double in risk for people who smoked a pack a day for 20 years. To put it bluntly, when there’s a tear in the sheath of shrink-wrapped flesh draped over the other organs, getting sick becomes a lot easier.

3. Your Uterus

Among smoking’s long cons is its effect on reproductive health. Cigarettes significantly raise a woman’s risk for ectopic pregnancy — the maturation of an embryo outside the walls of the uterus, typically in the fallopian tubes. One 2010study suggested this was due to an overproduction of the protein PROKR1, making it harder for the fallopian tubes to contract and send the egg all the way to the womb.

In addition to ectopic pregnancies, research has found cigarette smoking to lead to more failures involving in vitro fertilization, adverse reproductive outcomes, and a lower fecundity rates overall. Women have also been having kids later in life, upping their risk even further, as it means they’ll have been smoking longer before pregnancy.

4. Your Penis

The ability to achieve and maintain an erection could suffer drastically if a man smokes. That finding has been repeated over and over throughout the decades, most compellingly in a 2011 study that found men who kicked the habit had quicker, firmer, and most durable erections than men who smoked — achieving that erection up to five times faster than smokers who relapsed.

Important to keep in mind: Nicotine, not smoking, determined men’s physical arousal. They didn’t see full return to health until after they quit nicotine patches or gum. Also, study co-author Christopher Harte, of the VA Boston Healthcare System, pointed out, a man’s success depends on his relationship with his sexual partner.

5. Your Eyes

As previously stated, expect some under-eye droopage after having smoked for a while. More than that, cigarette smoking has been found to lead to a raft of conditions related to vision loss, such as age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and dry eye syndrome.

Smoking attacks the eye from two fronts. The first is the smoke itself, which collects in front of your face as you smoke and again after you exhale. The constant exposure to the smoke can dry your eyes out and irritate them. Combine this with smoking’s effects on blood flow, which stops the optic nerve from getting enough antioxidants. As a result, scientists believe, the chemicals in cigarette smoke pollute the blood and starve the ocular organs.

6. Your Liver

The liver isn’t confined to damage from alcohol consumption. Smoking ups people’s risk for liver cancer dramatically, according to a 2011 study that found nearly half of all liver cancer cases were the result of smoking. By contrast, 21 percent were associated with hepatitis C, 16 percent from obesity, 13 percent from hepatitis B, and, all the way at the bottom, 10 percent for alcohol consumption.

The majority of liver cancer deaths are the result of hepatocellular carcinoma, a leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, among sub-Saharan African and Southeast Asian countries. Cirrhosis — when liver cells turn to scar tissue — is one of the greatest non-cancerous forms of liver damage; in the U.S. cirrhosis is often alcohol-related, which is why the conventional wisdom keeps the two so closely linked.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/smoking-kills-your-organs-6-major-organs-damaged-cigarette-smoke-295436

Tobacco tax law reportedly cost U.S. billions in revenue

By Reuters Media
WASHINGTON – A 2009 law that raised federal taxes to discourage smoking cost the U.S. government billions of dollars in lost revenue as manufacturers relabeled products and consumers shifted to cheaper pipe tobacco and large cigars, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report released on Tuesday.

The GAO estimated $2.6 billion to $3.7 billion in lost revenue from April 2009 to February 2014 as manufacturers exploited loopholes in the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act which raised taxes for smoking-tobacco products.

“Each of the three tobacco manufacturers that agreed to speak with us explained that their companies switched from selling higher-taxed roll-your-own tobacco to lower-taxed pipe tobacco to stay competitive,” the congressional watchdog agency said in the report, which was the focus of a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

At the hearing, Liggett Vector Brands LLC Chief Executive Ronald Bernstein urged lawmakers to take action against abuses by manufacturers.

He held up two seemingly identical, but differently labeled non-Liggett bags of tobacco. Showing a third sample, he pointed out that a label saying “all-natural pipe tobacco” covered up a statement that the bag “makes approximately 500 cigarettes.”

“Everyone knows this is cigarette tobacco,” Bernstein said. “The manufacturer knows. The consumer knows. And I know. I know because I tried smoking it in a pipe and it was not a pleasant experience.”

Some manufacturers also add a few ounces of tobacco to small cigars so they qualify as the larger product. Others even mix in clay or kitty litter to increase the weight, Michael Tynan, policy officer at the Oregon Public Health Division, told the hearing.

The GAO said the tobacco market shifted accordingly. Yearly sales of pipe tobacco rose more than eight-fold from fiscal 2008 to 2013, while sales of roll-your-own tobacco declined almost six-fold.

Over the same period, large cigar sales doubled, while small cigar sales dropped to just 700 million from 5.7 billion.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, who convened the hearing, criticized the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which is responsible for collecting tobacco taxes and cracking down on evasion, for “footdragging.”

In recent years, the agency has pushed to apply “advanced investigative techniques to uncover illicit trade and fraudulent activity,” including deploying about 125 auditors and investigators, the TTB wrote in its Senatetestimony.

Responding to a push to better differentiate between roll-your-own and pipe tobacco, the agency published an “advanced notice of proposed rule making” in 2010 and 2011. But no rule had yet been issued, the GAO wrote.

In 2015, the TTB will issue a proposed regulation cracking down on the illegal activities, TTB Administrator John Manfreda said on Tuesday.

But Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said it was not enough. He said the problem reminded him of “the old marquee at the movie house that says: ‘Coming soon,’ and it never gets there.”

http://www.inforum.com/content/tobacco-tax-law-reportedly-cost-us-billions-revenue

Taxes on cigarettes help reduce number of smokers

By Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
The Hill
Science and experience have demonstrated conclusively that cigarette tax increases are highly effective at reducing smoking, especially among kids. Thus, the conclusions in a Gallup poll The Hill recently wrote about (“High cigarette prices aren’t stopping smokers,” July 18) are inconsistent with what happens in the real world every time cigarette taxes are increased.

The most recent surgeon general’s report on tobacco concludes that “raising prices on cigarettes is one of the most effective tobacco control interventions.” The report called for additional cigarette tax increases “to prevent youth from starting smoking and encouraging smokers to quit.” The Congressional Budget Office has also reviewed the evidence and concluded that an increase in the federal cigarette tax would significantly reduce the number of adult smokers.

In the year after a 62-cent increase in the federal cigarette tax in 2009, cigarette sales declined by a historic 11.1 percent. Adult and youth smoking rates also declined. “This single legislative act — increasing the price of cigarettes — is projected to have reduced the number of middle and high school students who smoke by over 220,000 and the number using smokeless tobacco products by over 135,000,” the surgeon general’s report noted.

Even the poll The Hill wrote about reported that more than a quarter of adult smokers surveyed said they smoked less due to tax increases. As there are 42 million smokers in the United States, this translates into millions of smokers whose behavior is affected by cigarette tax increases. And this survey of current smokers would not have included former smokers who have already quit due to increased tobacco taxes.
Tobacco tax increases don’t have to cause every smoker or even a majority of smokers to quit or cut back in order to have a big impact on public health. As the scientific evidence and even the new Gallup poll show, such tax increases will impact the behavior of large numbers of smokers, saving many from a premature death.
From Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Washington, D.C.

Read more: http://thehill.com/opinion/letters/213571-taxes-on-cigarettes-help-reduce-number-of-smokers#ixzz38sdK91IE
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

Report: Smoking bans, cigarette taxes linked to lower suicide rates

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah mental health and public health officials say a new report that links stronger anti-smoking initiatives to lower suicide rates suggests an added benefit of states’ prevention and cessation efforts.

The report, published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, found that public health interventions, such as raising cigarette taxes and imposing indoor smoking bans, could reduce risk of suicide by as much as 15 percent.

Janae Duncan, coordinator of the Utah Health Department’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, said Utah’s Indoor Clean Air Act “is really strong.”

While the state’s rate of adult smoking of 10.6 percent is the lowest in the nation, Utah’s tobacco taxes are relatively low at $1.70 per pack of cigarettes, Duncan said. Utah’s rate is higher than the national average but well below the rates of some East Coast states such as New York, which imposes a tax of $4.35 per pack.

“The study said each dollar increase in cigarette taxes was associated with a 10 percent decrease in (the relative risk of) suicide,” she said. “Even though we have a low tobacco use rate, it may be a good reason to look at raising our excise tax for tobacco.”

Other Utah officials say the report lends credence to mental health and substance abuse treatment practices that encourage wellness across the spectrum.

The state’s 2013 Recovery Plus initiative, for instance, required all publicly funded substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities to be tobacco free by March 2013.

“When we first started talking about doing this, there was a lot of talk such as, ‘You can’t expect someone with substance abuse or mental illness to also give that up. It’s too much on a person.’ They found that’s not the case. It actually helps with their recovery,” said Teresa Brechlin, coordinator in the Utah Department of Health’sViolence and Injury Prevention Program.

Kim Myers, suicide prevention coordinator with the Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, said Utah officials have long observed that clients in publicly funded substance abuse and mental health facilities smoke at substantially higher rates than the general population.

The authors of the report noted that clinical and general studies have likewise documented elevated rates of smoking among people with anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug dependence, and schizophrenia, among other diagnoses.

“However, it is also possible that smoking is not merely a marker for psychiatric disorders, but rather directly increases the risk for such disorders, which in turn increases the risk for suicide,” the study’s authors wrote.

Myers said the study raises the question whether nicotine itself raises suicide risk.

“How do we use that information on a population level, but also on an individual level, to reduce someone’s risk, especially when it comes to people who have some of those other risks such as serious mental illness or substance use disorders?” she asked.

The study also determined that smokers’ risk for suicide is two to four times greater than nonsmokers.

Duncan said more research is needed to understand how the link applies to Utah. Utah’s suicide rate has been consistently higher than the national rate for the past decade, according to state health department statistics, while smoking rates are very low.

“The study doesn’t give those clear answers. I think what it does do, it helps us see we should be looking at whole health, and it’s important to look at it across the board, not just issue by issue, but how all these things are tying together,” Duncan said.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=157&sid=30887197

Florida jury awards $23.6 billion verdict in big tobacco lawsuit

By Jacob Passy, NBC News

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company must pay $23.6 billion to the estate of a man who died of lung cancer in what may be the largest verdict for a single plaintiff in Florida state history, according to attorneys.

A state jury awarded the punitive damages Friday to the estate of Michael Johnson Sr., who died in 1996 from lung cancer after years of smoking cigarettes, attorney Christopher Chestnut told NBC News. Johnson’s estate previously won a $17 million verdict as compensation for his family’s loss.

“This jury sent a message and gave 23.6 billion reasons why you can’t lie to consumers,” said Chestnut, who along with attorney Willie Gary represent 400 cases in Florida against big tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds.

The Johnson case stems from a class-action lawsuit involving Miami Beach pediatrician Howard Engle, who sued the tobacco companies for misleading the public and government as to the dangers of smoking. He was awarded $145 billion in a landmark verdict in July 2000 — the largest punitive damage ever awarded in U.S. history at the time.

It was overturned in 2003 after an appeals court ruled that it shouldn’t have gone forward as a class-action suit. J. Jeffery Raborn, vice president and assistant general counsel for R.J. Reynolds, said the latest verdict of $23.6 billion was “far beyond the realm of reasonableness and fairness.” Raborn said the company plans to file post-trial motions to appeal the decision and verdict.

This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/florida-jury-awards-236-billion-verdict-big-tobacco-lawsuit

Smoking may increase suicide risk, study says

By MONTE MORIN, Los Angeles Times

It’s well known that cigarettes are bad for your health, but does smoking make you more likely to kill yourself too?

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, authors argued that smoking and suicide may be more closely related than previously thought.

The researchers analyzed suicide rates in states that aggressively implemented anti-smoking policies from 1990 to 2004 and compared them to suicide rates in states that had more relaxed policies.

Those states that imposed cigarette excise taxes and smoke-free air regulations had lower adjusted suicide rates than did states with fewer anti-smoking initiatives, authors wrote.
“There does seem to be a substantial reduction in the risk for suicide after these policies are implemented,” said lead study author Richard Grucza, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“For every dollar in excise taxes there was actually a 10% decrease in the relative risk for suicide,” Grucza told Washington University BioMed Radio. “The smoke-free air policies were also very strongly associated with reduced suicide risk.”

Study authors said that states with lower taxes on cigarettes and more lax policies on public smoking had suicide rates that were up to 6% greater than the national average.

This is not the first study to document a correlation between cigarette smoking and suicide, but it is among the first to suggest smoking and nicotine may be specific factors.

Up until now, researchers believed smoking coincided with suicide because people with psychiatric problems or substance abuse problems were more likely to smoke as well as to commit suicide.
“Markedly elevated rates of smoking are found among people with anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug dependence, schizophrenia and other diagnoses, in both clinical and general studies,” authors wrote. “However, it is also possible that smoking is not merely a marker for psychiatric disorders, but rather directly increases the risk for such disorders, which in turn increases the risk for suicide.”

Grucza said that the imposition of anti-smoking rules presented the researchers with a naturally occurring experiment. However, the authors did note that there were limitations on their research.

In particular, they said that since they considered state-imposed anti-smoking efforts only, their research would not account for local-level policies aimed at smoking behavior.

“While further studies may be required to establish a compelling weight of evidence, this study provides strong epidemiological support in its favor of the proposition that smoking is a casual risk factor for suicide,” authors wrote.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-smoking-suicide-20140716-story.html

PLAYERS MAY CONSIDER TOBACCO BAN DISCUSSION IN '16

By RONALD BLUM, Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Major League Baseball players say they may consider whether to discuss a possible ban on chewing tobacco when they negotiate their next labor contract in two years. For now, they hope individuals decide on their own to stop dipping.

Players’ union head Tony Clark said Monday that several of his members have quit cold turkey following the death of Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn on June 16 from oral cancer.

While the use of smokeless tobacco was banned for players with minor league contacts in 1993, it is permitted for players with major league deals. The labor agreement covering 2012-16 says players may not carry tobacco packages and tins in their back pockets when fans are permitted in ballparks, and they may not use tobacco during pregame and postgame interviews and at team functions.

“I think what we have been doing thus far has been a positive, and although I’m not going to offer you a bargaining proposal today on chewing tobacco, we could have that conversation,” Clark said Tuesday before the All-Star game.

“Then we will see where the guys are and continue the education and their appreciation for or against, or what the many considerations that need to be made in the area even look like, and we’ll have that conversation with Major League Baseball,” he said.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who plans to retire in January, promised “it will be a subject that they’ll discuss at the next collective bargaining” but acknowledged “I understand that individuals have the right to make their own decisions.”

Gwynn, 54 at his death, attributed his cancer to years of chewing tobacco.

“We believe that the numbers suggest that the usage has declined significantly, declined in the minor leagues, declined in the majors,” Clark said during a question-and-answer session with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. “Our hope is that we continue to educate guys on that the damage that dipping can do, that they will continue to decide not to dip and chew.”

Clark, a former All-Star first baseman who never dipped, said Gwynn’s death “really smacks you between the eyes, and it’s unfortunate sometimes, that an event like that brings that decision instead of that decision being made beforehand.”

No change is planned during the current labor contract.

“We give the players the opportunity to make the decision that they’re going to make against the backdrop of it being legal,” Clark said. “We don’t condone it. They know we don’t condone it. … So at the end of the day, yes, we will continue to educate guys, and yes, the players will continue to have a decision that they make in that area.”

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/players-may-consider-tobacco-ban-discussion-16