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Forum editorial: Minn. tax on tobacco is a health tax

Opponents of Minnesota’s new tobacco tax seem to believe the $2.83 per pack of cigarettes tax is about only revenue and business. It’s not. It’s first and foremost about public health.
While the tax has had expected impacts on revenue and business since it went into effect July 1, its primary purpose is to discourage smoking. The tax is having the predicted results: Sales of cigarettes are down. Early evidence suggests the steep rise in the tax will generate a corresponding decline in smoking. That has been the experience of every other state that raised its cigarette tax substantially. Young smokers or potential smokers are especially sensitive to price.
Even as sales of cigarettes slipped as the tax took hold, revenue increased, as forecast. The tax is up 30 percent, after all. Some of that additional revenue will be used to fund the new Vikings stadium.
However, as fewer Minnesotans take up the habit and others quit or reduce cigarette purchases, revenue will decline. The ideal situation, of course, would be that tobacco use falls so far as to make revenue from the tax unimportant to the state’s overall financial picture.
Reacting to the decline in sales, one person at a retail store said: “It’s very bad.” No, it’s not. In the long term, fewer people smoking cigarettes is a good thing. It’s good for their health, their medical bills and the nation’s health care system.
Often characterized as “sin taxes,” taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products are in effect health taxes. There is no sin in public policy that aims to improve and protect health. The real sin is peddling a product that sickens and kills people.

Forum editorials represent the opinion of Forum management and the newspaper’s Editorial Board.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/414349/

Minnesota cigarette sales down, but tobacco revenue up

By: Mark Zdechlik, MPR News 90.3 FM, INFORUM
Cigarette sales in Minnesota have dropped since a $1.60 per pack tax increase took effect July 1, as tobacco sellers have feared.
Early Minnesota Department of Revenue numbers show cigarette stamp sales dropped more than 35 percent this July compared to July a year ago. Tobacco stamp sales for August were down 12 percent compared to the same month a year ago.
Although sales are down, because of the higher tax, the money the state collects from cigarette taxes has grown, according to the department.
“It’s very bad,” said 28-year-old Abdul Habit, who works at New Smokes in Maplewood. “It went down, like people [are] cutting back. People who used to buy a carton, now they buy five packs. People who used to buy a pack, now they just ask for single cigarette.”
Habit said his customers complain a lot about the tobacco tax increase.
“They cry a lot,” he said. “Nobody’s happy about it.”
Before cigarettes can be legally sold at shops like New Smokes, wholesalers apply tobacco stamps they buy from the state to each pack.
The stamps prove the state taxes have been paid.
The stamp machine at M. Amundson Cigar and Candy Co. in Minneapolis has not been as busy as it was before the tobacco tax increase, even though the company still sells more than $1 million in cigarettes each month.
“We’ve lost one-third of our sales,” company co-owner Ross Amundson said. “Stores that we sold to along the Wisconsin border have basically lost most of their volume and the larger cigarette stores around the cities here that we sell to, their volume in cigarettes is probably in half.”
Amundson said while cigarette sales are down sharply he’s selling more “roll-your-own” tobacco and more electronic cigarettes.
“I’m not going to just be laying people off,” he said. “We’ll figure it out somehow. We’ll bring on other products, we’ll bring on new stores — whatever we have to do to survive.”
Amundson said he’s heard cigarette sales are up dramatically in North Dakota where the state tax on a pack is just $.44 compared to Minnesota’s $2.83.
North Dakota Department of Revenue statistics show cigarette sales there were up a little more than 9 percent in August over the same month last year.
Minnesota officials predicted that increasing the cigarette tax by roughly 30 percent would lead to a roughly 30 percent reduction in cigarette consumption.
There’s no way to quantify whether that’s happening. But officials at ClearWay Minnesota, a group that offers free services to help people stop smoking, said interest in its programs is up sharply over last year.
“It’s pretty striking in terms of the number of web visits of people who are checking out Quitplan.com,” ClearWay spokesman Mike Sheldon said. “We’re talking about a 240 percent increase year-over-year. That’s a huge increase and certainly the tax is a big effect of that in making people think about quitting.”
Sheldon said he expects cold weather and New Year’s quit smoking resolutions will sustain that increased demand into the winter for ClearWay’s smoking cessation programs.
Although cigarette stamp sales to Minnesota wholesalers dropped significantly, tax revenue the state collects from cigarettes is up more than 56 percent for July and August compared to the same two months last year.
Tax collections on other-than-cigarette tobacco products such as ‘roll-your-own’ tobacco also are up.
Still, while tobacco tax receipts are up sharply, the initial numbers show tax revenue is $7 million below projections for July and August.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/413402/group/News/

Report: Cigarette sales down, tax haul up in Minn.

By: Associated Press,
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota’s tax increase on cigarettes has dampened sales since taking effect on July 1, just as tobacco sellers and anti-smoking groups predicted would happen.
Early Department of Revenue figures show a sharp drop in demand for the stamps affixed to each pack of cigarettes, Minnesota Public Radio News reported Thursday. The stamps are proof that state taxes have been paid. Wholesalers and retailers pin the dip on the extra $1.60 per pack tax, especially in border towns.
For July, stamp sales fell more than 35 percent over the same month a year ago. For August, the drop was 12 percent.
The department reports that tax collections are up by more than 56 percent anyway, though that figure slightly lags projections used when lawmakers built the tax increase into their newly enacted state budget. Tax collections on other-than-cigarette tobacco products such as ‘roll-your-own’ tobacco also are up.
Abdul Habit, who works at New Smokes in Maplewood, said customers complain regularly about the tax increase.
“It’s very bad,” Habit said. “It went down, like people (are) cutting back. People who used to buy a carton, now they buy five packs. People who used to buy a pack, now they just ask for single cigarette.”
Minnesota officials knew that demand for cigarettes within the state would fall when the tax went up. They predicted a 30 percent reduction in cigarette consumption.
Anti-smoking groups say the higher cigarette tax is having its intended effect: Getting people to consider quitting.
“It’s pretty striking in terms of the number of web visits of people who are checking out Quitplan.com,” ClearWay Minnesota spokesman Mike Sheldon said. “We’re talking about a 240 percent increase year-over-year. That’s a huge increase and certainly the tax is a big effect of that in making people think about quitting.”
Ross Amundson, co-owner of a candy and tobacco wholesaling company, said his bottom line has taken a hit, too. He thinks the tax has shifted where purchases are made.
“Stores that we sold to along the Wisconsin border have basically lost most of their volume and the larger cigarette stores around the cities here that we sell to, their volume in cigarettes is probably in half,” Amundson said.
In North Dakota, where the per pack tax is $.44 compared to Minnesota’s $2.83, cigarette sales rose by more than 9 percent in August over the same month last year, according to state statistics.
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/274244/group/homepage/

Study: Methol cigarettes are a gateway product for young people and smoking

by 
Young people are heavy users of menthol cigarettes, and their popularity is undermining efforts to reduce smoking in youths.
That is the conclusion of a new University at Buffalo study that comes out as the Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to limit or ban the sale of menthol cigarettes because of rising concern that the flavoring is more likely to encourage young people to start smoking and that menthol smokers are more addicted.
Authors of the UB study say their work adds to the scientific evidence and should be reviewed by the FDA, which just pushed back the deadline for public comment on potential government regulation to Nov. 22.
The results, which were published online in the journal Tobacco Control, are based on national data from 2004 to 2010 of about 390,000 people age 12 and older. Among the conclusions:
— Menthol cigarette use was more common among 12– to 17-year-olds. Among smokers, nearly 57 percent in this age group used menthol cigarettes. By comparison, about 31 percent of older persons used mentholated cigarettes.
— Those most likely to smoke menthol cigarettes were young, female and black.
— For adolescents, the percentage who smoked non-menthol cigarettes decreased, while menthol smoking rates remained constant. For all young adults, the percentage who smoked non-menthol cigarettes also declined, while menthol smoking rates increased.
— Two brands, Camel menthol and Marlboro menthol cigarettes, experienced notable increased use among adolescent and young adult smokers, particularly non-Hispanic whites.
“Overall menthol cigarette smoking has either remained constant or increased in all the age groups we studied, while non-menthol smoking has decreased,” said Gary Giovino, lead researcher and chairman of the UB Department of Community Health and Health Behaviors.
“Our study indicates that mentholated cigarettes are a ‘starter product’ for kids,” he said. “Menthol lessens the harshness of the smoke. It sweetens the poison.”
Giovino said some young people also believe menthol cigarettes are safer because they don’t feel as harsh as non-menthol cigarettes.
Funding for the research was provided by Legacy, a non-profit organization focused on reducing tobacco use.
“Our findings support that the presence of menthol cigarettes in the marketplace has slowed progress in reducing smoking prevalence in the U.S. This is of great concern given the tremendous health effects of smoking cigarettes,” Andrea Villanti, co-author of the study, said in a statement.
She is associate director for regulatory science and policy at Legacy’s Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies.
When the government passed the Family Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in 2009, the FDA banned all flavored cigarettes except for menthol to discourage minors from purchasing the products. But the law required the federal agency to review the science behind menthol cigarettes.
A committee concluded in 2011 that removing menthol cigarettes from the market would benefit public health.
In July, the FDA released a report on current science on menthol cigarettes, and it concluded that there is little evidence to suggest that menthol cigarettes are more or less harmful than non-menthol cigarette.
However, it said menthol probably encourages young people to start smoking and leads to greater addiction than non-menthol cigarettes.
The science is clear that menthol cigarettes pose a threat to public health, and they should be banned, according to a recent statement from Thomas Glynn, director of cancer science at the American Cancer Society.
Cigarette-makers take a different stance.
The best available scientific evidence demonstrates that menthol cigarettes have the same health effects as non-menthol cigarettes, and consumers should have the right to make a personal choice to use any legal product, according to a statement by Lorillard Inc., maker of Newport menthol cigarettes.
Newport is the top-selling menthol and second-largest-selling cigarette brand overall in the United States, the company says.
http://medcitynews.com/2013/09/study-methol-cigarettes-are-a-gateway-product-for-young-people-and-smoking/#ixzz2f4Mr21ZV

Smokers bypass new tax increase by rolling own cigarettes

Article by:  PAUL LEVY , Star Tribune
Minnesota smokers have found a way to beat the state’s new cigarette tax. They’re rolling their own.
Tobacco sales have slumped since the nation’s sixth-highest cigarette tax raised the price of a pack of cigarettes in Minnesota by $1.60 in July. But Twin Cities tobacco-shop owners say many customers are buying tobacco by the pouch — purchasing enough to roll at least two cartons’ worth of cigarettes for a fraction of the price.
The pouch tobacco is intended for cigarette rolling but is taxed differently because its wider cut classifies it as pipe tobacco, said Rich Lewis, owner of Lewis Pipe and Tobacco in downtown Minneapolis. A 1-pound pouch of rolling tobacco costs $23. Two cartons of cigarettes (20 packs) cost nearly $160, with the state excise tax now at $2.83 per pack.
“Most of my people are switching to roll your own,” said Yamen Haidari, general manager of Discount Tobacco in Fridley. “People tell me they’re getting two-and-a-half cartons’ worth of cigarettes for a little more than $20.”
A customer at the Tobacco Town shop in Anoka said she usually buys cigarettes by the carton. This week, she bought a pound of loose tobacco and two packs of cigarettes.
At Infinity Smokes in downtown Minneapolis, owner Tariq Hamouda said that he has seen an increase in loose tobacco sales and that “in neighborhoods and in the suburbs, they’re selling a lot more tobacco by the pound since the price of a pack went up to $8.”
The opening stems from a 2009 federal tax increase on cigarettes and cigarette tobacco that did not apply to pipe tobacco. “Any type of loose-leaf tobacco that was considered for cigarettes was relabeled as pipe tobacco, because it would not be covered under the federal increase,” said Mike Sheldon, a spokesman for Clearway Minnesota, an independent nonprofit that attempts to reduce tobacco use and secondhand smoke through research and collaboration. “There are taxes on other tobacco products, besides cigarettes, but they’re different.”
In Minnesota, the tax on loose tobacco is substantial — 95 percent of the wholesale price — but that still is generally less expensive than traditional cigarettes.
The Minnesota Department of Revenue has yet to determine whether the new taxes have sparked an increase in loose-tobacco sales, said department spokesman Ryan Brown. But Gary Foss, a clerk at Tobacco Outlet Depot in Minneapolis, says there’s no question. “We’re selling more pouches and e-cigarettes. It’s gotten very competitive.”
Tobacco sales, in general, were down last month in Minnesota. Lewis says his sales fell 75 percent when the tax initially took effect. Sales have rallied since, but not to the point they were before the tax increase, Lewis and other local store owners said.
It is too soon to say what the ultimate effect of the new cigarette tax will be on smoking in Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Management and Budget Department, which monitors the taxes collected on tobacco.
Dips in cigarette-related revenue are expected the first few months after a tax, said department spokesman John Pollard. August tobacco tax revenue was lower than expected, Pollard said.
Health-related, or perhaps cost-related, concerns over tobacco seemed to grow as sales dropped. The number of calls to Clearway Minnesota’s quit line increased 256 percent in the first week of July (compared to the same week in 2012). Online inquiries into quitting jumped 289 percent that week, Sheldon said.
There is also concern over the growing popularity of e-cigarettes. A recent survey showed one in five young people have used e-cigarettes the past 30 days, Sheldon said.
Some smokers are getting cigarettes out of state. Lewis says a customer in his 70s told him his sister ships him cartons of cigarettes from Missouri, where the excise tax is only 17 cents per pack, compared to Minnesota’s $2.83.
The only states with higher cigarette excise taxes than Minnesota are New York (the nation’s highest, at $4.35), Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Hawaii. Washington, D.C., has an excise tax of $2.86 per pack. In New York City, which has additional cigarette taxes, a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes costs $14.50.
States surrounding Minnesota all have lower cigarette excise taxes, but Twin Cities smokers are not likely to flock to Wisconsin, where the cost is just 31 cents less per pack.
The most dramatic difference is in North Dakota, where the excise tax per pack is only 44 cents, or $2.39 less than in Minnesota.
“Why would anyone ever buy cigarettes in Moorhead?” Lewis asked.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/223778101.html?page=1&c=y

Education secretary pushes for higher cigarette tax to extend early childhood education to another 1.1 million kids

By Milan Simonich, Texas-New Mexico Newspapers
SANTA FE — U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan rode a brightly painted bus into New Mexico on Monday, then gave a gloomy overview of state schools.
New Mexico begins each school year with about 30,000 students in ninth grade. But only about 20,000 of them graduate from high school in four years, Duncan said during a town hall meeting.
He said the problems of failing students and dropouts begin long before high school. That is why the Obama administration wants to spend more than $75 billion to expand prekindergarten education, Duncan told a room jammed with more than 150 supporters of the idea.
Under President Obama’s plan, much of the money to expand early childhood education would come from a federal tax increase of 94 cents a pack on cigarettes. States that wanted to tap into the national account would voluntarily join the program and then contribute a portion of the cost for expanding early childhood education.
In New Mexico, about 17,000 kids are without access to pre-kindergarten programs. Including them would be the key building block for success in school at every level, Duncan said.
“This is the best investment we could make in our babies,” he said.
Duncan called this “an uphill battle so far,” but said it should have bipartisan support.
He said the initiative would double the number of kids in pre-kindergarten programs nationally, from 1.1 million to 2.2 million.
The pre-kindergarten education proposal is the main reason that Duncan and his staff are on their back-to-school bus tour of New Mexico, El Paso, Arizona and Southern California. Their campaign for more early childhood education funding is called Strong Start, Bright Future.
Rick Geraci, New Mexico Military Institute commandant of cadets, joined Duncan in publicly backing the initiative.
Geraci said improving early childhood education would improve national security. As it stands, he said, many young people who want to join a branch of the military are denied because they are poorly educated.
He said extra emphasis on early childhood education would keep more kids out of jail and enable them to serve their country in the military.
Milan Simonich, Santa Fe Bureau chief of Texas-New Mexico Newspapers, can be reached at 505-820-6898.

E-cigarettes as good as patches in helping smokers quit

Maggie Fox,  NBC News
Electronic cigarettes work about as well as nicotine patches in helping smokers kick the habit, researchers report. And e-cigarettes helped people smoke fewer cigarettes overall, even if they didn’t quit completely.
The study is the first major piece of research to show that the products, which deliver a nicotine mist using a cigarette-shaped pipe, can actually benefit smokers.
The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal, are not quite enough to make public health experts embrace e-cigarettes, which are not yet regulated and which are growing in popularity. But it’s enough to make them look more closely at whether there may be some benefit to them.
“You’re trading one addiction for another addiction,” Dr. Cheryl Healton, president and CEO of the anti-tobacco Legacy Foundation, told NBC News. “(But) it may be that for some people, this will be a better way to quit, and there may be people who’ve tried other things and haven’t been able to quit who will quit with this.”
For the study, Chris Bullen of the University of Auckland in New Zealand and colleagues recruited 657 smokers who wanted to quit. They divided them into three groups, to get either 13 weeks’ supply of e-cigarettes, nicotine patches or placebo e-cigarettes that contained no nicotine.
After six months, 5.7 percent of the volunteers had managed to completely quit smoking. It was slightly more in the e-cigarette group, but not in a way that was statistically significant, Bullen reported.
It’s very difficult to quit smoking, but the e-cigarettes also appeared to have helped people cut back on real tobacco. Bullen’s team found that 57 percent of volunteers given real e-cigarettes were smoking half as many cigarettes a day as before, compared to 41 percent of those who got patches.
“While our results don’t show any clear-cut differences between e-cigarettes and patches in terms of quit success after six months, it certainly seems that e-cigarettes were more effective in helping smokers who didn’t quit to cut down,” Bullen said in a statement.
“It’s also interesting that the people who took part in our study seemed to be much more enthusiastic about e-cigarettes than patches, as evidenced by the far greater proportion of people in both of the e-cigarette groups who said they’d recommend them to family or friends, compared to patches.”
Healton said that was a provocative finding. “It does also suggest consumer acceptability of the product is higher,” she said.
U.S. health officials are very concerned about the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration released a report on Thursdayshowing a doubling in the number of high school students who have tried them, to 10 percent.
More than 21 percent of adults have tried them at least once, but the CDC says they are addictive and may themselves be dangerous.
“We don’t know much about them,” says Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC Office on Smoking and Health. But he says they could potentially be useful if tobacco companies would stop making products like cigarettes and make e-cigarettes instead – and if those e-cigarettes did indeed turn out to be less harmful than conventional cigarettes.
“Our nirvana is a world where nobody is dying from death and disease caused by tobacco,” McAfee told NBC News. “If you have a product that doesn’t kill people, that is where the money should be going, that is where the promotion, the marketing should be going.”
They are pricey – an e-cigarette product ranges from $10 to $120, depending on how many charges it provides. And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of brands. FDA says some appear to contain carcinogens, and there is some evidence that nicotine is not only addictive, but may itself damage health.
“They could have inherent dangers that are greater than using something like gum or the patch,” Healton said.
CDC says tobacco is the leading preventable cause of dis­ease, dis­ability, and death in the United States, killing 443,000 people a year.
Public health experts are desperate for ways to help people quit smoking, but it is hard. The American Cancer Society says only 4 percent to 7 percent of people manage to quit on any single given try. Drugs such as Chantix or Zyban can raise this rate to 25 percent.
There’s also counseling, nicotine gum and patches, hypnosis and acupuncture, and companies are working on anti-nicotine vaccines.
Erika Edwards contributed to this report.

New Study Provides More Evidence for FDA to Ban Menthol Cigarettes

Statement of Matthew L. Myers
President, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
WASHINGTON, DC – Menthol cigarettes are much more likely to be used by youth and young adult smokers than older smokers and are undermining efforts to reduce smoking in the United States, according to a new study published today in the journal Tobacco Control.  The study also found that menthol smoking rates have increased among young adults and remained constant among youth and older adults, while non-menthol smoking has decreased among all three groups.
These findings indicate that “the presence of menthol cigarettes in the marketplace is slowing progress in the reduction of population smoking prevalence,” the study concludes.
This study adds to the powerful scientific evidence that menthol cigarettes have a profound adverse impact on public health in the United States, resulting in more smoking and more death and disease from tobacco use.  It underscores why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must act quickly to ban menthol cigarettes.
In July, the FDA began a regulatory process by inviting public comment to inform its decisions regarding menthol cigarettes.  There is more than adequate scientific evidence for the FDA to quickly develop a formal rule banning menthol cigarettes.
The new study adds to the evidence contained in the FDA’s 153-page report on the health impact of menthol cigarettes released in July.  That report found that menthol cigarettes lead to 1) increased smoking initiation among youth and young adults; 2) greater addiction; and 3) decreased success in quitting smoking. “These findings, combined with the evidence indicating that menthol’s cooling and anesthetic properties can reduce the harshness of cigarette smoke and the evidence indicating that menthol cigarettes are marketed as a smoother alternative to nonmenthol cigarettes, make it likely that menthol cigarettes pose a public health risk above that seen with nonmenthol cigarettes,” the FDA’s report concluded.
The FDA’s report independently affirmed the findings of the agency’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, which in March 2011 issued a report that concluded, “Removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States.”
The new study estimated menthol and non-menthol cigarette use during 2004-2010 using data from the federal government’s annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health.  Its key findings include:
·         Among cigarette smokers, menthol cigarette use was more common among 12-17 year olds (56.7 percent) and 18-25 years olds (45 percent) than among older age groups.
·         From 2004 to 2010, menthol smoking rates increased among young adults and remained constant among youth.  In contrast, smoking rates for non-menthol cigarettes decreased for both age groups.
·         Use of Camel menthol and Marlboro menthol cigarettes increased during the study period, especially among youth and young adults.
The study was led by Gary Giovino, PhD, professor and chair of the University at Buffalo Department of Community Health and Health Behaviors.  It was funded by Legacy, (http://www.legacyforhealth.org/), a leading public health non-profit whose primary mission is to reduce tobacco use.
Tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States, killing more than 400,000 people and costing $96 billion in health care bills each year.  The new study makes it even more clear that banning menthol cigarettes is a critical step in reducing tobacco’s devastating toll on our nation.
The University at Buffalo – State University of New York press release on the study can be read at http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2013/08/033.html.
 

Providence vs. Big Tobacco

By , Mayor of Providence, RI

In January of 2012, I was pleased to sign two local ordinances designed to limit the ability of the tobacco industry to harm Providence’s young people. Together, these laws banned the sale of flavored tobacco products in the City of Providence, as well as sales involving the redemption of coupons and multi-pack discounts that are designed to circumvent state pricing restrictions.
Tobacco use poses a major public health threat for our young people. Nearly all tobacco use begins in childhood and adolescence — in fact, according to a 2012 Surgeon General report, approximately 88 percent of regular smokers begin by age 18. Each day, over 3,800 people under 18 smoke their first cigarette. According to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, an estimated 23,000 children currently under the age of 18 could die prematurely from a smoking-related illness.
In Providence, we’re fighting back.
Fruit and candy flavored tobacco products appeal to young people who wrongly think that these products are less harmful than traditional cigarettes. The FDA banned most fruit and candy flavored cigarettes in September of 2009, and our ordinance closes the loophole that allows the tobacco industry to sell other fruit and candy flavored tobacco products, like cigars, chewing tobacco and other emerging tobacco-based products, here in the City of Providence.
Similarly, research has shown that the single most effective deterrent to smoking — particularly for young people — is the cost of a pack of cigarettes. According to the American Lung Association, a 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes reduces youth consumption by approximately seven percent. But in Rhode Island and elsewhere, the tobacco industry circumvents state minimum price laws through creative “buy-two-get-one-free” gimmicks. Our ordinance closes this loophole too.
Predictably, big tobacco has challenged us in court. In December of 2012, the U.S. District Court rejected the tobacco industry’s arguments, siding with the city in our efforts to protect vulnerable, young people from the dangers of the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry has appealed this decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
I encourage you to learn more about the harmful effects of smoking and what you can do to support our efforts by visiting here.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Policymakers have no excuse for not taking this issue on, and I’m proud that Providence is working with a wide variety of stakeholders — our City Council, community groups, advocacy organizations and public health campaigns — to stand up for our young people.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angel-taveras/providence-anti-tobacco-laws_b_3786575.html

Health Matters: N.D. resources for tobacco cessation

By: Dr. Joshua Wynne, Grand Forks Herald
Q. I know that I need to quit smoking cigarettes, but it sure is hard! My doctor tells me that I need to quit cold turkey, but when I’ve done that, I soon restart puffing away. I think I can stop by gradually reducing my smoking. What do you think?
A. Although many might favor abruptly discontinuing cigarettes as the preferred strategy (similar to what often is recommended for abusers of alcohol), the available evidence actually suggests that the gradual route may not be significantly inferior to abrupt cessation. Some patients I’ve worked with have stopped smoking completely by setting targets — and then meeting them. So, for example, a patient might be smoking half a pack per day (10 cigarettes) and cut down by one cigarette/day every week.
Thus, in less than three months, the patient can be free of tobacco use. The key to the gradual option is to hold to the preselected targets — otherwise the patient will end up right back where she started. One very helpful resource in North Dakota is NDQuits, a free telephone-based service available to smokers and smokeless tobacco users. People using NDQuits have about a 10-fold higher chance of staying off of cigarettes after one year than those choosing to go cold turkey on their own. Give them a call at (800) QUITNOW or (800) 784-8669. And please call them soon!
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/271022/group/homepage/