Why St. Clair County has the highest percentage of smokers in the U.S. is not for certain, but the statistics do show that 27.4 percent of the county’s population smokes. Statewide 19.06 percent of the population smokes and the national average is at 17.9 percent, according to a report from the St. Clair County Community Health Program.

The St. Clair County Health Department has its work cut out for them, said Health Education and Planning Director Susan Amato.

“We don’t know why,” she said. “We are still scratching our heads at that one.”

Helping people give up a tobacco addiction to improve the quality of their life is one of the county health department’s roles. To play their role, the county recently scouted out six people during a contest called the Great American Smoke-out. The winners received a chance to try another option for quitting by local psychologist, William Miskell, Ph.D. Miskell joined the St. Clair County Smoke-Free Team after he recently moved to the area. He said he has worked with hundreds of patients to help them lose their nicotine habit through a process called “Change Your Mind.” The process is based around hypnosis.

The six participants submitted their top five reasons for wanting to quit smoking and why they believed hypnosis might help. Amato said the reasons for quitting were similar among the entrants, with the most frequent reason to be a better role model for their children and grandchildren. The smell, cost, health benefits and even the challenge were also commonly stated top reasons. Amato said one entrant stated, “because I am tired of quitting!”

“We know that there’s a lot of different ways to quit and one method will work with one and not the other,” she said. “But after they’ve taken the patch, medication, classes and support groups, they may agree to hypnosis. It is not harmful but could be helpful.”

Amato said Miskell places the subject in a relaxed state and then addresses their subconscious mind to look at themselves as a non-smoker.

The free sessions, would have cost the participants $249. After the sessions, they will be contacted to find out how they are doing. They will check back again in three, six and 12-months.

Miskell said most people think of hypnosis as a mystical experience, a time when subjects are put in a hypnotic trance to do embarrassing things in front of an audience. He maintained this is not the case for his work though.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris ruled Wednesday that tobacco shops that serve alcoholic beverages can’t allow patrons to smoke indoors. Harris rendered the opinion at the request of the city of Pasadena, which wanted to know whether a private smoker’s lounge located in or attached to a tobacco shop that serves alcohol was exempt from the Legislature’s 1994 ban on smoking in workplaces. The law took full effect in 1998.

“We are informed that in some communities private smokers’ lounges serve alcoholic beverages to their customers and, further, that the California Department of Alcoholic Beverages Control … has issued alcohol licenses to some of these entities,” Harris stated in her ruling. “This practice has caused concern among local enforcement authorities and raised questions about how workplace no-smoking rules apply.”
Local government agencies commonly ask the attorney general for legal opinions when a state law can be read in different ways.
Such was the case here. The smoking ban carved out certain explicit exceptions, including one for “retail or wholesale tobacco shops and private smokers’ lounges.”
The law defined a smoker’s lounge as an “enclosed area in or attached to a retail or wholesale tobacco shop that is dedicated to the use of tobacco products, including, but not limited to, cigars and pipes.”
And that’s the sticky part. What does “not limited to” mean?
“When we are called upon to interpret the meaning of a statute, our primary task is to determine what the Legislature intended,” Harris said. “In doing so, we look first to the words of the statute themselves, giving to the language its usual, ordinary import and according significance, if possible, to every word, phrase and sentence in pursuance of the legislative purpose. If there is no ambiguity in the language of the statute, then the Legislature is presumed to have meant what it said, and the plain meaning of the language governs.”
Focusing on the phrase, “dedicated to the use of tobacco products,” Harris said: “’Dedicated’ means “holly committed to a particular course of action. Therefore an area ‘dedicated to the use of tobacco products’ is set aside for the use of tobacco products, and for tobacco products only.”
Another part of the law identifies tobacco shops as places that sell “tobacco products, including, but not limited to cigars, pipe tobacco and smoking accessories.”
“While this language is marginally less restrictive than the definition of a smokers’ lounge,” Harris said, “the differences are not significant enough to produce a different conclusion.”
The term “smoking accessories,” Harris ruled, “cannot reasonably be interpreted as including alcoholic beverages.”

While the audience was not as large as at previous Township Committee meetings where a possible medical marijuana facility was discussed, the majority of residents at the Dec. 15 meeting made it clear that they supported an ordinance later passed by the governing body that prohibits any entity not complying with federal law from coming before any township board with applications. Although medical marijuana use is permitted in New Jersey, it is still illegal on the federal level.

Residents stressed the lack of a municipal police force, potential lowering of property values, and issues with educating their children about marijuana.

Jon Fisher, an attorney and director of the Breakwater Alternative Treatment Center (BATC), the nonprofit organization seeking to open a medical marijuana growing facility in the town, said legally, the ordinance is a mistake.

“I know you have extremely competent counsel and have been advised as to the legality of the ordinance,” he said.

BATC wants to build an inconspicuous facility on land and in a location that works for everybody, and asked to work with the governing body, Fisher said. He said people receiving marijuana under the program are sick and will not come to the community, as the dispensary will be located in another town.

He said he does not know if BATC will file a lawsuit but it is a possibility. When litigation ensues, “someone loses, and someone loses more,” he said.

Resident Larry Chiaravallo said BATC’s proposal is an indoor facility, not a farm.

“Even if it is in an inconspicuous place, every criminal in New Jersey will know it’s in a town without a police force,” he said.
Chiaravallo said he wants “Upper Freehold’s future to be as idyllic as its past.”

Vanessa DePompo, president of the Upper Freehold Regional PTA, read a statement from the organization opposing BATC’s facility, citing proximity to the school and bus routes and inconsistency with the way children are educated about the danger of drug use. She asked whether the schools would have to go on lockdown whenever a shipment left the facility.

Jim Lunsky said, because of BATC, his 7- year-old son knows what marijuana is.

“I would have liked it if my son were a little older than 7 before I had to explain to him the danger of marijuana,” he said.

Eric Brown, a special agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), said in the last two weeks, he met five different people who, when he told them where he lived, asked if that was where the pot farm was being put in. He said there was no guarantee about what the DEA would do with medical marijuana in the state, as it never had to deal with it before.

Township resident Richard Edgar held up a photo of his late sister-in-law who died in August, saying that when she became terminally ill she used marijuana, the only thing that gave her an appetite and allowed her to eat.

“Rejecting the ordinance is the compassionate thing to do,” he said.

However, Patrick Nolan said his sister-inlaw, who has multiple sclerosis, does not believe in the use of medical marijuana and would not want such a facility in her town.

Marc Covitz said security was his main concern with the BATC facility, but a lawsuit could cost the town a substantial amount of money.

“People are concerned with Council on Affordable Housing fees; we’re trying to get $6,000 for a trail and told there’s no money,” he said. “I’m worried about the implications for taxpayers.”

Michael McCormick, a lawyer who supports the ordinance, said he would volunteer his services to help the township fight a potential lawsuit.

Kristin McLoughlin said her 9-year-old daughter asked, “Why would they bring a terrible place like that here?”

Secretary of State Robin Carnahan has approved for circulation an initiative petition to increase the tax on cigarettes by 73 cents per pack. Organizers — including University of Missouri System Curator Warren Erdman — now will need to collect roughly 100,000 signatures from registered voters to get the language on the November ballot. If approved, the hike would increase taxes on a pack of smokes from 17 cents — the lowest cigarette tax in the nation — to 90 cents a pack. The national average is $1.46.

The tax could generate between $283 million and $423 million more a year, and the money would be allocated for tobacco prevention and for K-12 and higher education.

While a pack of Marlboro cigarettes costs about $6 in the United States, the price in Senegal is now a bargain basement $0.79, following a decision by Philip Morris International (PMI) to cut prices in the West African country. Marlboro, the world’s best-selling cigarette, now costs 400 CFA francs (79 cents US) a pack in Senegal, down from 650 CFA francs — a price cut of nearly 40 percent, according to Agence France-Presse.

Anti-smoking activists in Senegal are reportedly fuming over decision. They accuse tobacco companies of pushing into Africa because they’re losing business in the West, where there are increasingly stringent anti-smoking laws.

The head of a Senegalese anti-smoking umbrella group said it will ask the government to force PMI to reverse the price cut.

AFP said the company refused to explain the decision to slash Marlboro pack prices.

The US group Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said in a statement that the cheaper Marlboro cigarettes in Senegal is “a move sure to increase tobacco use among youth.”

“Senegal suffers from alarming smoking rates, with nearly one out of every three adults and an estimated 20 percent of youth already smoking,” the group said.

“It is imperative that Senegal’s government take action to counter PMI’s price ploy by increasing the taxes on tobacco products,” Matthew L. Myers, the group’s president, was quoted as saying.

“Higher cigarette prices are scientifically proven to prevent young people from starting to smoke and encourage smokers to quit,” he said.

Two stores, on Staten Island and in Chinatown, have agreed to stop selling roll-your-own cigarettes after New York City accused them of being fronts for evading cigarette taxes. The owners of the stores, both called Island Smokes, agreed to close them by February as part of a consent decree filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, according to the city’s Law Department. They also agreed that no one associated with the businesses would operate a similar enterprise in New York City; stores had already been planned for the East Village and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

The stores, which sell loose tobacco and rolling papers and have machines to help customers make their cigarettes, had appeared to operate in a legal gray area. The owners had argued that because they sold loose tobacco, they should not be subject to full state and city cigarette taxes, which can nearly double the price of a pack of cigarettes.

But the city’s lawyers contended that the businesses were set up to defy tax laws, which have pushed the price of cigarettes in the city to more than $10 a pack. They noted that store employees would help customers assemble the tobacco into cigarettes, including filters, using the machines on the premises. The cigarettes, packaged in a small tin, cost $6, or $4.50 for a refill.

“The success of the lawsuit should serve as a reminder to others thinking of ‘gimmicks’ to skirt New York City’s tough cigarette laws that the city will enforce those laws vigorously,” Michael A. Cardozo, the city’s corporation counsel, said in a statement. Mr. Cardozo noted that the city had ordered other stores to comply with tax laws or face litigation.

Jonathan B. Behrins, a lawyer for the shop owners, said that though he thought Island Smokes’ case was winnable, “a business decision” was made to close, rather than bear the cost of litigation.

“They researched the law through and through, and there’s a gaping exception for pipe and loose tobacco,” Mr. Behrins said. “These gentlemen saw the opportunity to make a niche out of it.” He said the stores appealed to people who wanted additive-free, “more organic” cigarettes, and just because customers used the machines in the stores, the city “put us in the same category with the Philip Morrises of the world, and that’s not fair.”

Similar stores under other ownership have proliferated, including at least three on Staten Island, he said. He compared the litigation against his clients to the Bloomberg administration’s grading of restaurants for compliance with health rules, which has led to some grumbling that the administration is overzealous.

The Bloomberg administration has portrayed cigarette taxes as not just a revenue source but as a tool to improve public health by discouraging people from smoking.

Two new initiative petitions have met state standards for circulation in Missouri. One relates to taxation on cigarettes and tobacco products; the other relates to a municipal police force (see ballot language below). Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan says before either measure can reach the statewide ballot in November 2012, they each need the signatures from registered voters equal to 5-percent of the total votes cast in the 2008 governor’s election from six of the state’s nine congressional districts.

The signatures are due to the Secretary of State’s Office by 5 p.m. on May 6, 2012.

The ballot title for the petition relating to taxation on cigarettes and other tobacco products reads:

Shall Missouri law be amended to: create the Health and Education Trust Fund with proceeds of a tax of $0.0365 per cigarette and 25% of the manufacturer’s invoice price for roll-your-own tobacco and 15% for other tobacco products; use Fund proceeds to reduce and prevent tobacco use and for elementary, secondary, college, and university public school funding; and increase the amount that certain tobacco product manufacturers must maintain in their escrow accounts, to pay judgments or settlements, before any funds in escrow can be refunded to the tobacco product manufacturer and create bonding requirements for these manufacturers?

Estimated additional revenue to state government from this proposal is $283 million to $423 million annually with limited estimated implementation costs or savings. The revenue will fund only programs and services allowed by the proposal. The fiscal impact to local governmental entities is unknown.

The petition, which would amend Chapters 149 and 196 of the Missouri Revised Statutes, was submitted by Mr. Robert Hess, Husch Blackwell, LLP, 235 E. High St., PO Box 1251, Jefferson City, MO 65102-1251.

The ballot title for the petition relating to a municipal police force reads:

Shall Missouri law be amended to:
allow any city not within a county (the City of St. Louis) the option of transferring certain obligations and control of the city’s police force from the board of police commissioners currently appointed by the governor to the city and establishing a municipal police force;
establish certain procedures and requirements for governing such a municipal police force including residency, rank, salary, benefits, insurance, and pension; and
prohibit retaliation against any employee of such municipal police force who reports conduct believed to be illegal to a superior, government agency, or the press?

State governmental entities estimated savings will eventually be up to $500,000 annually. Local governmental entities estimated annual potential savings of $3.5 million; however, consolidation decisions with an unknown outcome may result in the savings being more or less than estimated.

As of Wednesday, December 21, it is against the law to install cigarette vending machines within 1,000 meters of schools and other educational institutions. Starting on January 1, 2014, the use of tobacco vending machines will be completely barred. The delay for the complete prohibition resulted from objections by vending machine companies and others, who said they would lose money and needed time to make up for their losses, although proponents of an immediate ban said vending machines for cigarettes could easily be changed to sell anything from stamps and envelopes at the post office to healthy foods and toys.

Last May, the government decided on the basis of Health Ministry recommendations to adopt a national program for reducing smoking and damage from tobacco, especially among children and youths. One of the regulations was to bar tobacco vending machines in two years and those within a kilometer of educational institutions now.

The ministry said it plans to enforce the rules against vending machine owners who violate the law; the fine will be a prohibitive NIS 226,000. Until now, although cigarettes cannot be sold legally to minors, any child could buy them from vending machines.

If you’re a smoker, you know it is a costly habit in Florida. Some lawmakers are pushing to make the high cost even higher, citing a goal of cutting down on teen smoking. Not many people will disagree teen smoking is a problem that needs to be dealt with. A higher tax could even encourage adult smokers to knock the habit, but for those who won’t quit, it could be become quite the burden. At Cig-O-Rama in Tallahassee, if you’re looking for a deal, all you’ve got to do is pick out your tobacco and hit a button.

At the bottom of the machine, machine-rolled cigarettes cost you half the price of what you would pay for a carton of brand name smokes.

The man who owns the machine, Greg Haskins, said business is booming and it could get even busier if new taxes raise the price of cigarettes.

The new tax bill would double Florida’s cigarette tax. Haskins predicts the move would send more value-conscious customers his way.

Though he will get more business, Haskins feels the move would still accomplish its main goal of making it tougher for teens to smoke.

“I think it’ll be a better incentive for the young adolescents to try to stop that, because, you know, it’s going to be more money for them and it’ll be harder to find it,” Haskins said.

Statewide, one-fifth fewer high schoolers are lighting up.

When lawmakers hiked the tax over two years ago, Florida began raking in a billion dollars more a year.

Raising that kind of money in this economy is also a big selling point for the bill, but there is no guarantee the money jar will fill again.

If the tax were to climb packs of cigarettes to $2.34, many smokers could find they couldn’t keep their habit going.

If they stop paying for the packages, the extra money won’t roll into the money jar. But, there are folks like Ann Ladato who have been smoking for 30 years or more.

“If I had to buy regular cigarettes at that price, I’d have to leave town to buy them,” Ladato said. “[I'll] go to Georgia, or buy them when I go home for a visit in Louisiana.”

The bill faces a high hurdle.

The Capitol’s majority Republicans, along with Governor Rick Scott, have made it clear they’re opposed to any and all new taxes.

Even though they voted overwhelmingly to hike cigarette taxes in 2009.

The bills has been dubbed the ‘Youth Smoke Prevention Act’ and is sponsored by South Florida Democratic State Rep. Jim Waldman.