DURANT — City workers are prohibited from using smokeless tobacco while riding on the back of a garbage truck or on a tractor under an amendment to the city’s personnel manual approved during a Tuesday meeting of Durant City Council.

The new rule reads, “In keeping with the city’s intent to provide a safe work environment, smoking and the use of smokeless tobacco is prohibited throughout the workplace and extends to 25 feet beyond any portion of city buildings or facilities. Any tobacco use in city-owned or leased vehicles is also prohibited. This policy applies equally to all employees, customers and visitors.”

Assistant City Manager Tim Young said the policy mirrors what is already state law. Vice Mayor Ron Cross asked if it would apply to a worker riding a tractor and Young said that it would, although enforcement would be difficult.

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THE HOUSE AND SENATE. Beacon Hill Roll Call records local senators’ votes on four roll calls from the week of May 5-9. There were no roll calls in the House last week.
$472 MILLION TAX HIKE (S 2675)

Senate 31-6, approved a tax package that would raise $472 million in new tax revenues. A key provision imposes a $1 per pack increase in the state’s cigarette tax. The measure would raise the current $1.51 per pack tax to $2.51. The package also includes provisions providing a mix of phased-in tax rate cuts for corporations and financial institutions and increased taxes on corporations by closing so-called loopholes; requiring businesses that resell hotel rooms to collect taxes on the difference between the retail price of the room paid by the consumer and the discounted price the reseller pays to acquire the room and allowing stores to lower the price of cigarettes to compensate for the $1 tax hike.

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The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an appeal from a California smoker who blamed rising cigarette prices on the $206 billion settlement reached a decade ago between 46 states and the nation’s largest tobacco companies.
The justices, without comment, today refused to revive Steve Sanders’s antitrust lawsuit against California Attorney General Jerry Brown and tobacco companies including Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA unit and Reynolds American Inc.’s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco unit. A San Francisco-based federal appeals court threw out the lawsuit in September.
Sanders’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully that the 1998 settlement led to lockstep price increases of $12.20 per carton between 1998 and 2002 alone.

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SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)  — San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing a plan to ban the sale of tobacco at drug stores.

Newsom says pharmacies are in the business of healthy living and should not be selling cigarettes, cigars or any other tobacco product. He will pitch the idea to the Board of Supervisors this week.

Most small independent stores don’t sell tobacco, but big chains such as Walgreens and Rite Aid do. Grocery stores with in-house pharmacies would not be affected by the proposed ban, according to Newsom.

The tobacco industry opposes the ban. Phillip Morris, for one, says retailers, not government, should make decisions on what they sell.

Latin America’s per capita consumption of tobacco will drop over the next four years due to new laws and increased enforcement.

BY JIM DALY

Countries throughout Latin America have been increasing the number of laws controlling labeling and public smoking. In the midst of growing health concerns and increased global pressures to establish and enforce tobacco legislation, some Latin American countries are strongly pushing new legislation as it relates to bans on tobacco, while others are making moves to expand previous legislation that was rarely enforced.

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MADISON, Wis. - The state’s Revenue Department has sent out more than 1,000 letters this year to smokers who bought cigarettes online telling them to stop buying cigarettes that way or to pay the $1.77-per-pack state tax that’s now in effect.

The letters could mean the smokers could be billed if their names show up as repeat buyers later.

The state said it got the names from Internet cigarette vendors after notifying 75 of them that a federal law makes it their responsibility to ensure Wisconsin gets the tax money.
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Cut-rate cigarettes could choke the market and expose a whole new generation to the cancer-causing habit under a plan to throw out price controls on butts that has already won state Senate approval, fuming anti-smoking activists warn.

“It’s a dramatic and extreme reversal. I see no justification for overturning the law,” said Northeastern University’s Edward Sweda, a public health attorney.

Kevin O’Flaherty, director of advocacy for the Northeast Region’s Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, agreed, saying, “(The) amendment actually benefits the tobacco companies - not public health.”
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The Oswego County Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee has rejected a proposal that would have raised the minimum age to purchase tobacco in the county from 18 to 19. At the April 30 meeting of the committee, the proposal brought by Legislator Lee Walker to ban sales to those under age 19 did not receive the support needed to move forward.

Last month, Walker proposed raising the age to 19. That prompted telephone calls from constituents who were opposed to the ban of cigarettes to those who are old enough to register for the draft and go to war. Several legislators said they received calls from residents who did not want the bill supported for those reasons.

Walker wanted to exempt military personnel; however, county attorney Richard Mitchell said that is not legal to do so.
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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) Governor John Lynch is about to tell a legislative committee some more ways he wants to close a budget shortfall.

His proposals are expected to include a 25 cent per pack increase in the state cigarette tax. The current tax is $1.08 a pack.

The Telegraph of Nashua reports that in addition to the cigarette tax hike, Lynch also wants to cut in half a 20 percent discount that restaurants and grocery stores get for wine they buy from the state.
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Look closely at what a model in a fashion magazine is smoking: a green cigarette to go with her neon yellow jacket.

Fashionably hued cigarettes?

Oh, goodie. Lung cancer now comes in colors!

Next thing you know, Heidi Montag will launch a line of zebra-stripe (her trademark print) ciggies.

How do we stop this nightmare?
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