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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/

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

City Council votes to restrict e-cigarette use in Duluth

By: Peter Passi, Associated Press
New restrictions soon will confront users of electronic cigarettes in Duluth.
A series of ordinances passed Monday night by the Duluth City Council will subject people using e-cigarettes to the same restrictions faced by smokers puffing on conventional cigarettes. The ordinances also will prevent hookah bars from doing business in the city.
But several councilors expressed misgivings about different aspects of the new rules.
Councilor Sharla Gardner supported many of the restrictions but not one that would prevent patrons of smoke shops from testing out e-cigarettes and sampling different flavored solutions on premises.
“I’m really not OK with banning something or demonizing it when everyone agrees all the science isn’t in on this,” Gardner said.
She also noted that e-cigarettes have been a helpful tool in helping wean some people off yet more dangerous conventional cigarettes.
“I certainly don’t want to be harming people’s efforts to quit,” she said.
But Councilor Jennifer Julsrud, who introduced the ordinances, said they were necessary.
“I wrote these ordinances and I pushed for them because I want to protect kids, and I believe in supporting clean air,” she said.
Councilor Jay Fosle, who opposed all the new ordinances, said the rules were unnecessary, as it’s already against the law to sell e-cigarettes to minors.
He said individual businesses and properties already have the right to ban the use of e-cigarettes if they wish and said the council should be more concerned with the use of other products.
“What we should really be concerned about is the use of heroin and ecstasy,” he said.
Fosle said that by taking such a restrictive stance toward e-cigarettes, the city would push businesses into neighboring communities.
“We’re going against businesses that would bring more money onto our tax rolls,” he said.
Fosle contended it was wrong to lump e-cigarettes in with tobacco.
But Duluth resident Sharon Lund testified that e-cigarettes have not been shown to be harmless. She said the devices have been found to emit about 20 percent of the pollutants that regular cigarettes do, but she could not support introducing them into spaces where clean air has become the norm.
“Do we really want to take a step backwards and expose people to more carcinogens and toxic chemicals again?” she asked.
Lund said she also was sickened by e-cigarette manufacturers’ attempts to appeal to young people with flavored solutions, such as bubble gum or cookies and cream.
Councilor Jim Stauber said that for him watching out for the public welfare, particular for young people, takes top priority.
“I generally don’t like government intruding on people’s lives, but I think this is the right thing to do,” he said.
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/277452/

Duluth News Tribune view: Obvious danger requires fair and responsible rules

The packaging on electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, doesn’t say much. Which actually is kind of scary. Just what’s being inhaled into the body when “vaping?” Certainly not just vapors, as suggested by the slang verb for puffing on the products. And what’s being exhaled for everyone around to breathe in and ingest?
One thing the packaging does say: e-cigarettes contain nicotine. How much? Doesn’t say, and, according to experts, it can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and from brand to brand. But does it even matter? It’s not like there’s such a thing as a safe amount of the highly addictive, cancer-causing drug nicotine.
Even scarier? E-cigarettes, as addictive, dangerous and harmful to health as they may be, are actively being marketed to kids, just the way tobacco cigarettes used to be. Remember Joe Camel and the portrayal of smoking as cool and hip and what everyone who’s anyone was doing? This time — powered by nearly $21 million in advertising in 2012, according to the New York Times — it’s kid-friendly flavors like watermelon and cookies-and-cream milkshake and the portrayal of vaping as cool and hip and what everyone who’s anyone is doing.
Unlike tobacco, however — and this may be most troubling of all — kids can buy e-cigarettes easily and legally, including online. And they are. The percentage of U.S. middle school and high school students taking drags on e-cigarettes more than doubled from 2011 to 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last week. In 2012, more than 1.78 million middle school and high school students nationwide had tried e-cigarettes, a precursor to tobacco cigarettes.
So something clearly has to be done, right, before a whole new generation embraces a filthy, unhealthy habit and sees it as just a normal part of our culture? On Monday, the Duluth City Council has an opportunity to take some sensible action.
The first of three ordinances the council owes it to the community to approve would require a license to sell e-cigarettes the same way sellers of tobacco have to be licensed. In fact, an existing tobacco license would cover e-cigarettes under the measure. A second ordinance would prohibit the use of e-cigarettes in places already designated by law as no-smoking, like inside public buildings, along the Lakewalk, at bus stops and elsewhere. And a third ordinance would close a loophole in clean indoor air laws meant to allow the sampling of tobacco in tobacco shops prior to purchase. Some are exploiting that provision to sell group-smoking experiences in lounge settings.
“The big misconception for a couple of weeks was that Duluth wants to ban e-cigarettes. That’s not it at all,” Jill Doberstein, program manager for tobacco prevention and control for the American Lung Association in Duluth, said in an interview last week with the News Tribune editorial board.
No, the idea is responsible regulation of their use, not the banning of e-cigarettes altogether.
Some users of e-cigarettes swear by their effectiveness in quitting tobacco even though the government has yet to certify them as safe and effective smoking-cessation devices the way it has nicotine patches and other products.
The safety and effectiveness for smoking cessation of e-cigarettes is still being studied and determined, and while the jury is out, adults certainly should be allowed to ignore the health risks and dangers and use e-cigarettes. They can be allowed to forget that the only safe air to breathe is clean air. It is a free country.
But allowing e-cigarettes to pollute the air of others, to be pushed on unsuspecting kids, or to be used without any rules, regulations or controls whatsoever is, well, it’s just downright scary.
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/277303/

Target Field Says ‘No’ To E-Cigarettes

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (WCCO) – More smokers are turning to electronic cigarettes as a less-expensive and less-regulated way to get their nicotine. But they’re still so new, governments and businesses are grappling with how to deal with them.
E-cigarettes have a battery-powered heating element that produces vapor rather than smoke. They’re not restricted under Minnesota’s Clean Indoor Air Act, but many businesses – including the Minnesota Twins – are telling customers to put them away.
The team’s senior director of communications, Kevin Smith, says the restriction has been under consideration for some time.
“Because of the proliferation of it, we want to make it crystal clear that Target Field is a non-smoking venue of any kind,” Smith said.
Smith says an increasing number of fans had been spotted using the e-cigarettes, so stadium announcer Adam Abrams now has an extra line in his pre-game announcements.
Twins fan Jay Rudi of Edina appreciates the team’s policy.
“When I bring my family here, I don’t want to have to be breathing in smoke,” Rudi said.
Sina War, owner of Uptown Vapor Shoppe, says her store has been in business since April. She says many people misunderstand how e-cigarettes work.
“We call it ‘vaping’ because it’s vapor,” War said.
It may look and feel like smoking, but the e-cigarettes aren’t loaded with tobacco. They’re filled with liquids, in flavors like Red Bull, cupcake and mango.
Most of those liquids contain nicotine, which comes from tobacco.
“It just smells like what you’re vaping on, so if you’re vaping on lemonade, it just smells like lemonade,” War said.
Nancy Carlson of Minnetonka talked her cigar-smoking husband, Brian, into visiting the Uptown Vapor Shoppe in hopes that he’ll make the switch.
“We have a shed, and he’s banished to the shed in the winter time,” Carlson said.
The FDA has indicated it may start regulating e-cigarettes in the fall. For now, there are few studies into whether they’re actually safe.
“It’s not hurting anyone around you,” War said. “It’s helping the person actually using it.”
Advocates for e-cigarettes wish they could take the word “cigarette” out of it because of the negative connotation.
In California, they’re known as “personal vaporizers,” or PVs.
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/08/19/target-field-says-no-to-e-cigarettes/

Letter: Tobacco tax is working

By:  Gina Johnson, Red Wing
In July 2013, a new law went into effect raising our state tobacco tax by $1.60, causing the average price of cigarettes to raise to $7.50 a pack.
Many people were concerned about how tobacco users who have limited income would manage. As a public health professional, I am pleased to see many tobacco users are now getting professional help to quit tobacco.
A recent study done by QUITPLAN Services, a free tobacco cessation program available to any Minnesotan, shows that this tax hike is reducing the smoking rates. The increased price of cigarettes has caused an increase in many smokers to seek out professional cessation support to help them quit.
QUITPLAN Services saw an increase of 256 percent in the first two weeks of July 2013 compared to the same time period in July 2012.
This data proves that price increases work, and that our communities are one gigantic step closer to becoming tobacco free.
Thank you to everyone who supported the $1.60 increase!
Gina Johnson is the Clearway Minnesota tobacco grant coordinator with Goodhue County Human and Health Services.
http://www.republican-eagle.com/content/letter-tobacco-tax-working#sthash.xxzIkHT6.dpuf
 

Letter of the Day (Aug. 13): Electronic cigarettes

An article last month (“Up in vapor,” July 13) described research related to electronic cigarettes and smoking cessation. As one who conducts research related to electronic cigarettes, I feel compelled to provide additional findings.
First, the Italian researchers cited in the article also conducted an experiment with smokers by randomly assigning them into using electronic cigarettes with or without nicotine (published in PLOS ONE). They found that smokers who used electronic cigarettes with nicotine reduced and quit smoking at the same rate as those who used electronic cigarettes without nicotine. This suggests the limited ability of nicotine-delivering electronic cigarettes to aid smoking cessation.
Second, researchers have studied the effect of secondhand electronic cigarette smoking. This work, published in Inhalation Toxicology, found that nonsmokers who stayed in the same room with electronic cigarette users showed elevated nicotine concentration in the blood, comparable to that of secondhand cigarette smoke.
The Freedom to Breathe Act of 2007 protects nonsmokers, particularly those who work at bars and restaurants, from the harmful effect of secondhand smoking. Given the known effects of secondhand electronic cigarette smoking, the Legislature should consider expanding the act.
KELVIN CHOI, Minneapolis
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters/219329381.html

New cigarette tax saves lives in Minnesota

By: Lindsay Aijala, Two Harbors, Lake County News Chronicle
I’m writing in support of the $1.60 increase in the cigarette tax, which was included in the tax bill passed in the recently completed legislative session. The $1.60 per pack increase means that 47,000 Minnesota kids will never become addicted to cigarettes and have to face the life-long health problems that result from the addiction. My family and I have lived in Lake County for most of my life and I have noticed how cigarettes are getting into the hands of high school students and even middle school students. This increase could help the youth in our county from becoming lifelong users.
Thanks to this increase, youth smoking will decrease by 16 percent and save 5,700 Minnesotans from premature, smoking-related deaths. This increase in the cost of a pack of cigarettes is important because tobacco is still a big problem in Minnesota. Smoking costs our state $3 billion a year. The number of deaths in Minnesota caused by smoking is more than alcohol, homicide, car accidents, AIDS, illegal drugs, and suicides combined. This increase has contributed toward my efforts to help others improve their health, including many family and friends.
http://www.twoharborsmn.com/event/article/id/25323/group/Opinion/#sthash.1CHRwcRX.dpuf
 

Higher Minn. cigarette prices drive more to try to quit

by Mark Zdechlik, Minnesota Public Radio
MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Anan Barbarawi expected cigarette sales at his store to drop once Minnesota’s $1.60 a pack tax increase took hold in July. But Barbarawi, manager at Maplewood Tobacco, was shocked to see his numbers plunge “50 to 70 percent.”
On the bright side, Barbarawi said, sales of electronic cigarettes have taken off.
A month into the tax increase, it’s not clear yet how much cash Minnesota is collecting. The stiff tobacco levy, though, is changing behavior.
Programs that help people quit smoking say they’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of Minnesotans contacting them for help because of the higher prices. Demand for tobacco alternatives is up.
State officials maintain that was always the goal when they pushed the total tax to $2.83 per pack. They say they’d be happy if they didn’t get any tax revenue from tobacco and argue the state would save huge amounts of money on health care if Minnesotans didn’t smoke.
There’s no doubt cost led Bob Holmes to stop at the end of May — a month before the cigarette tax increase took effect.
“Yeah, it might have helped push me into quitting smoking,” said Holmes of St. Paul, who’d driven his friend to the Maplewood smoke shop to pick up some cheap cigars.
It’s good the higher tax is getting people to stop smoking, he said. Still, he and many other smokers thinks it’s not fair that many of those hardest hit by the tax can least afford it.
Tobacco tax figures from July on are not yet available, but anti-smoking advocates say the effects are visible already.
Calls to Minnesota’s QUITPLAN program were up more than 250 percent over the same time last year and website hits were up almost 300 percent, for the first half of July, said Mike Sheldon, spokesman for ClearWay Minnesota, the group that runs QUITPLAN.
ClearWay offers free quit-smoking counseling using $202 million from Minnesota’s 1998 legal settlement with tobacco companies. Summer is usually not a busy time, he said.
The group says about 625,000 adults in Minnesota smoke. About three of every 10 QUITPLAN clients abstain from tobacco for at least six months, Sheldon added.
The tobacco tax increase inspired Erik Nordstrom, 38, to look for options. The St. Paul man, a smoker since age 14, hopes to wean himself from nicotine with e-cigarettes. That’s what brought him to the tobacco store in Maplewood.
Quitting tobacco is the ultimate goal, but there was an immediate need to cut spending. He was fed up with paying almost $300 for his monthly cigarette fix.
“When I go into a store and I’m paying $7.75 (for cigarettes), there’s something seriously wrong with that picture,” he said. “I had a pack of Newports on me which is the last pack I’ll be smoking.”
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2013/08/02/health/cigarette-prices

E-CIGARETTE BAN: Hennepin County property now off-limits

by Bill Keller
Smokers may be able to smoke in vehicles and their homes, but there are fewer public places to light up. Now, even electronic cigarettes are banned on Hennepin County property.
Most private buildings have a rule about smoking near entrances, but a new law is cutting a new way to cut cravings out of the picture.
“I was just a little disappointed that the county would take that stand on them because people are trying to quit,” said Donna Bratulich.
E-cigarettes seemed to fill a void as smoking restrictions continued to mount by offering a way to get a nicotine fix without breaking the law, but Hennepin County employees got an e-mail clarifying the tobacco-free property policy on Tuesday that listed the devices on a list of prohibited products.
“We are proactive. We’ve been proactive here,” said Hennepin County Administrator David Hough. “We want to make sure that our workforce and the residents, clients in the building are being protected.”
Hough said the decision was made after concerns were raised last week even though e-cigarettes do not violate the state’s Clean Indoor Air Act.
“The law is very specific in how it defines smoking as involving the combustion of tobacco or other materials to create smoke,” Dan McElroy, of the Minnesota Restaurant Association, told FOX 9 News. “So, an e-cigarette is not a cigarette or smoking device in the eyes of the law.”
McElroy told FOX 9 News he is not aware of any restaurants that ban e-cigarettes, but he has fielded several questions on the topic.
“The difference in e-cigarettes is they don’t create second-hand impact,” he explained.
Hennepin County’s decision may mark the first ban on nicotine regardless of where it comes from, and it applies to anyone on Hennepin County property regardless of whether the person works there or not.
Metro Transit is also in the process of updating its rules to make using e-cigarettes on a bus or light rail a violation of its code of conduct.
Read more: E-CIGARETTE BAN: Hennepin County property now off-limits – KMSP-TV http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/22973287/e-cigarette-ban-hennepin-county-property-now-off-limits#ixzz2ajIG8Ki4