ALBANY, N.Y. (WIVB) – New York State smokers will be sending millions more of their money up in smoke, now that lawmakers have passed the most expensive tobacco tax in America. Sen. George Maziarz warned, “There will be a clash of cultures here in this state.” Sen. Maziarz is referring to a Native American backlash over a sales tax increase on cigarettes. The tax increase passed, despite the state’s Republican senators all voting “no” to raising the sales tax. The plan also allows New York to collect tax on Indian reservations from non-tribal customers. “You really wonder if this isn’t just phony revenue. If they’re putting this out there, knowing they’re not going to collect it, just to get through the budget process,” wondered Sen. Maziarz.

Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer said New Yorkers are already overburdened.

Sen. Ranzenhofer commented, “You’re continuing to drive more and more people from this state.”

The tax will be raised from $2.75 to $4.35, making a pack cost over $9. The tax on cigars pipe and chewing tobacco and other tobacco products will jump from 46 percent of the wholesale price, to 75 percent, all of this is expected to bring in around $440 million this year.

And while lawmakers continue to pass the entire budget, another extension was voted on, but the deadline came a bit too late for New York’s Budget Division. Some of the 153,000 state workers due to be paid Wednesday now likely won’t get paid until at least Thursday.

Lawmakers voted on just over a billion dollars in savings Monday. This was the 12th time that lawmakers voted on a budget extension. Governor David Paterson has given the legislature a deadline of next Monday.

From wivb.com, June 22, 2010

Washington, D.C. – The International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association has come out in support of proposed Washington D. C. Council legislation to reduce under-aged smoking and against the same piece of legislation that would impact smokers’ rights outside businesses.

The proposal would assess new penalties on under-aged youth for purchasing or possessing tobacco products. At the same time, the bill allows shop owners to post no-smoking signs in front of their establishments to include 25 feet of their front door or from the sidewalk.

“As owners of premium cigar stores, we have very few people coming into our stores who are underaged and, if they try to make a purchase, they are carded without exception. So the part of the legislation regarding underaged youth and tobacco is not a problem for us, unlike the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids which, ironically, opposes this aspect of the legislation,” said Chris McCalla, Legislative Director of the IPCPR. “It’s the other part of the legislation that bothers us – no smoking outside of buildings – even though it contains no enforcement provisions.”

McCalla pointed out that the vast majority of premium cigar and pipe smokers are courteous and mindful of people around them when they are smoking. However, he said, legislated smoking bans of any kind are anathema to the group and its individual members.

“Anyone who says there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke, including that which is found outdoors, is totally misinformed. In fact, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has set safe standards for secondhand smoke. Those OSHA standards are 25,000 times higher than air quality levels found in restaurants and bars. So, whatever wisps of smoke may occasionally waft into a building cannot possibly be unsafe, according to OSHA,” McCalla said.

Referencing those people who cite the Surgeon General’s report regarding the alleged adverse health effects of secondhand smoke, McCalla said: “There is absolutely no evidence presented in the report that supports this claim. These misinformed people have been brainwashed by neo-prohibitionists and tobaccophobes into believing otherwise,” he said.

“If store owners don’t want smoking in their places of business, they have the right to declare their property smoke-free. And if these property owners don’t want people to smoke outside of their places of business, they have the right to ask people not to smoke there. We support that. But enacting legislation that gives the government authority over these individual property rights we do not support,” he said.

“Not only is it not justified from a medical standpoint, it is not a justified deprivation of our personal rights from a constitutional standpoint. Next thing you know, the government will be running our nation’s auto companies, financial institutions and the entire health industry – or trying to.”

Contact:
Tony Tortorici
678/493-0313
tony(at)tortoricipr(dot)com

The smoking ban inside Southwest Florida International Airport’s passenger terminal could go outside.

Business people who advise Lee County’s Board of Port Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously recommended establishing marked no-smoking zones outside the terminal within 50 feet of the two main entry doors – numbered 2 and 5 – on both the terminal’s first and second levels.

“I don’t want to risk having a total ban,” said Airports Special Management Committee Chairwoman Fran Myers. She called Tuesday’s decision preferable to suggesting no change in airport rules, which some commissioners believe are too lax on smokers and distressing to people with breathing problems.

Bonita Springs winter resident Sophie DeWitt, 62, grabbed a smoke outside the terminal Tuesday afternoon while waiting for her son to arrive from Canada.

To move outdoor smoking farther away from the main entrances “is no problem for me,” said DeWitt, who described herself as a light, occasional smoker.

Still, the airport “should provide some area for people to smoke, and to have that last cigarette before they board a plane. That’s just fair,” DeWitt said.

Initially, most committee members endorsed the status quo, which restricts ash cans to no closer than 25 feet from any terminal entry door, and also provides for two employee smoking areas far from the doors.

“I think banning smoking is not the right move for us, at least not now,” said committee member Kitty Green. Noting that Lee Memorial Health System recently banned smoking on the grounds of its medical centers, Green said airport leaders should see how that works out for Lee Memorial, and “learn from their experiences.”

Committee member Dan Baggot said a total ban on smoking outside the terminal could hurt the region’s lifeblood tourism industry. “I don’t see where hassling (tourists who smoke) helps anyone,” Baggot said.

The committee’s proposal is less than the total ban Commissioner Frank Mann suggested airport managers consider at a Nov. 9 meeting between the airports committee and commissioners.

Mann could not be reached for comment late Tuesday afternoon. An aide didn’t know whether he’d heard the committee’s compromise recommendations.

Those recommendations will go to Lee County commissioners sitting as the port authority board at their next joint meeting with the airports committee. That meeting is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 11.

PRESIDENT Arroyo has ordered the release of the P5.8-billion share of concerned local government units (LGUs) from excise-tax collections on locally manufactured Virginia-type cigarettes from 2002 to 2009.

The President issued the directive through Executive Order (EO) 846, dated November 16, authorizing the monetization of the unappropriated and unreleased share of Virginia tobacco-producing LGUs from the 15- percent excise-tax collection on locally manufactured Virginia-type cigarettes for calendar years 2002 to 2009.

In issuing EO 846, the President noted that “there are unreleased appropriations for the calendar years 2002, 2005 to 2008, and an unappropriated share of LGUs for CYs 2002-2004, accumulating to P5,810,192,796.”

She ordered the Department of Finance (DOF), Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the National Tobacco Administration (NTA) to take “all the necessary steps to ensure that the beneficiary-LGUs get their respective shares from the unreleased and unappropriated portion of the 15 percent of the excise-tax collection on Virginia-type cigarettes for CYs 2002 to 2009 amounting to P5,810,192,796 through a monetization program [MP].”

Should beneficiary LGUs avail themselves of the fund, the MP will give the latter the option to collect in advance from the trustee banks their respective shares at a discounted value, net of interests and other charges.

The President ordered the Bureau of Internal Revenue to submit to the DBM a certification representing 15 percent of the excise-tax collection on Virginia-type cigarettes, to provide an appropriation cover.

The NTA will submit to the DBM a certification, duly approved by the NTA administrator, of Virginia tobacco production and Virginia tobacco acceptances by province, including congressional districts, cities and municipalities of each beneficiary-province.

The DBM will determine the share of each beneficiary-LGU from the unreleased portion of 15-percent excise-tax collection of volume and production and trade acceptances; issue the corresponding notice of payment schedule to inform the beneficiary LGUs of their share; and provide an annual appropriation cover.

The President also ordered the DOF to provide the letter confirmation of “the national government that the P5,810,192,796 constitutes an obligation of the Republic of the Philippines.”

The DOF will “favorably endorse to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, or other regulatory agencies as the case may be, the application to secure the necessary financial features for the investment certificates that may be issued to improve the net proceeds to the beneficiaries.”

At the option of the recipient LGU, the DOF will make an arrangement with the trustee bank on the requirements for opening a special trust account.

The DOF will also arrange with the Bureau of Treasury to make available its facilities, including the Registry of Scripless Securities, the Automated Debt Action Processing System, and others as may be required and necessary for the auctioning process and the implementation of the MP.

The government financial institution or institutions designated by the recipient-LGU shall serve as trustee bank or banks to monetize the shares of beneficiary-LGUs.

All MP-related transactions shall be undertaken according to existing accounting, auditing and budgeting rules and regulations. A list of the beneficiary- LGUs that availed themselves of the MP shall be submitted to the DBM.

The Commission on Audit shall provide guidelines in recording the obligation in the books of account of the national government.
EO 846 also provides that if any section or provision is declared unconstitutional or invalid, unaffected sections of the EO shall remain in full force and effect.

Under Republic Act 7171 and Memorandum Circular 61-A, LGUs producing Virginia tobacco shall have a 15-percent share from excise tax collected on locally manufactured Virginia-type cigarettes, to be spent on projects to “advance the self-reliance of Virginia tobacco farmers,” EO 849 stated.

BIR Revenue Resolution 12-2008 provides that Virginia-type cigarettes shall refer to cigarettes containing Virginia-type leaf tobacco, whether imported or locally produced.

Two dozen protesters stood squinting into the sun at the intersection of Southwest 34th Street and Hull Road Saturday morning, chanting “Justice now!” and holding signs that read “Hasta la Victoria” – “Onward to Victory.”

The group was made up of members of the Student Farmworker Coalition, the National Farm Worker Ministry, Youth and Young Adults and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, including students from UF and the University of Central Florida.

Their cause: justice for tobacco farmworkers in North Carolina who suffer low wages and poor working conditions at the hands of Big Tobacco.

The rally came on the heels of a Student Senate resolution calling for a pay increase and better treatment of Immokalee farmworkers, who pick the tomatoes used by Aramark, UF’s food provider.

“Somebody’s got to fight for social justice,” said UF junior Justin Wooten.

The UF Foundation held its fall board meeting Saturday at the Hilton UF Conference Center. Roberta Perry, a National Farm Worker Ministry community organizer, said it was rumored Susan Ivey would be attending.

Ivey, a UF alumna and UF Foundation board member, is the CEO of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the second-largest tobacco company in the country.

Perry said Ivey has refused so far to meet with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to address the plight of the farm workers.

“R.J. Reynolds has a corporate responsibility to monitor what happens in the fields,” Perry said. “What we’re asking for is a conversation between R.J. Reynolds and the farmworkers.”

Although the farmworkers are employed by private growers, R.J. Reynolds buys the tobacco from the farms, making them ultimately responsible for the workers at the bottom, said UCF student Dominique Aulisio.

By demonstrating in front of the board meeting’s venue, the protesters said they hoped to show Ivey that farm workers’ issues are important and should be recognized by tobacco companies.

“This is definitely a state that is anchored in farm workers’ issues,” said Lauren Gill, a UCF student and vice president of Youth and Young Adults’ Orlando chapter.

Although Ivey wasn’t in attendance at the meeting, the students handed out informational fliers to the board, including UF President Bernie Machen, who told them he would make sure Ivey got a flier.

By ERIN JESTER, November 9, 2009 Alligator

JAKARTA -Cigarette maker PT BAT Indonesia (BATI.JK) said Tuesday it plans to merge with sister company PT Bentoel Internasional Investama (RMBA.JK) in order to create a stronger entity.

“The combined market share of the two companies is expected to be around 8%,” BAT Indonesia, a unit of British American Tobacco PLC (BTI), said in a joint statement with Bentoel.

It said each BAT Indonesia share will be exchanged for 7.68 Bentoel shares.

The merger proposal follows the 99.74% acquisition of Bentoel’s shares in July by British American Tobacco.

BAT said the merger is subject to approval from both shareholders of the companies and legal consent from Bapepam, the country’s market watchdog.

The two companies will hold shareholder meetings Dec. 4 for the approval of the merger plan.

After the merger, Bentoel’s assets will increase to IDR4.90 trillion from IDR2.35 trillion previously, the statement said.

In morning trade Tuesday, Bentoel shares were up 7.7% at IDR700 on the news.

-By I Made Sentana; Dow Jones Newswires; 62-21 39831277; I-Made.Sentana@dowjones.com

ANDREWS – Another West Texas hospital is putting the brakes on tobacco. They’re banning all smoking and dipping anywhere on the property. The Permian Regional Medical Center (PRMC) in Andrews is the next to go Tobacco Free. They said it’s part of a state and nationwide trend. However, some smokers said the trend is forcing them to kick the habit.

“It’s everywhere. It’s not just the hospitals. It’s everywhere,” Katherine Morgan, an Andrews Hospital employee and smoker, said. “There’s a lot of people that don’t even want to come around you if they see you with a cigarette.”

It’s not unusual to find Katherine Morgan and Tracy Herron taking regular smoke breaks at the Permian Regional Medical Center in Andrews. However, they may give up cigarettes entirely after hosptial officials announced everything inside and out will be smoke free.

“When we do want to have a cigarette, where are we going to have to go to smoke it?” Morgan asked. “So, to me, out of all of it, I feel like we’re more or less being pushed to quit. I mean, where are you going to go to smoke?”

The Andrews hospital is one of many facilities throughout West Texas following the state and even nationwide trend. Even in Odessa, the debate continues over whether to ban tobacco in city parks.

“It’s not just the hospital pushing it, it’s everywhere,” Morgan explained. “You can’t smoke in a restaurant, you have to be so many feet from any facility to have a cigarette, they’re raising the taxes, you can’t afford them. There is a combination of things that’s actually pushing us to quit. They’re trying to make smokers quit.”

Hospital officials told NewsWest 9, the idea is to promote healthier lifestyles and to set the example.

“We will be providing medications as well as counseling services,” Tasa Watts, Director of Marketing and Public Relations with PRMC, said. “If they would like to quit. We are not making anyone quit. It’s a choice. If you want to quit, we will provide the help to quit. If you don’t want to quit, you just can’t smoke on campus. You can go elsewhere to smoke.”

For other PRMC employees, like Tracy Herron, kicking the habit will be a challenge. However, she said the ban may be the little push she needs to make her life healthier.

Hospital officials in Andrews said their ban will go into effect in January. They said they already have several dozen employees signed up to get help to kick the habit. Hospitals in Midland and Odessa have already made the switch to tobacco-free campuses.


By Wyatt Goolsby, Newswest

Bingo parlors on opposite ends of Richland County are suing each other, claiming their competitors are ignoring a county law that prohibits smoking.

The two – Carolina Gold Bingo on Decker Boulevard and Mr. Bingo on St. Andrews Road – have hired well-known lawyers, as well as private investigators to spy on each others’ customers.

At the heart of the dispute is Richland County Council’s indecision about how vigorously to enforce a law that has generated few reports of violations and carries just a $25 fine.

Opposing each other in back-and-forth allegations of unfair competition are Columbia defense lawyer Joe McCulloch and James Smith, a local legislator who recently ruled out a run for governor.

McCulloch represents Carolina Gold owner Wayne Kirby, who opened his “mom and pop” bingo operation in June 2008.

Kirby said he thought there was room in the market for an upscale bingo hall.

“I like to go to Vegas, so I said, ‘We’re going to bring Vegas atmosphere to Columbia, South Carolina.’”

He put in flat-screened TVs, special lighting and a ventilation system allowing him to separate his smoking customers behind a glass partition.

Then the county passed a smoking ban.

That prompted Kirby to petition council to amend that ban, to exempt businesses like his with separate heating-and-air systems for smokers.

But health advocates convinced council to defeat that proposal earlier this month.

The lengths to which the bingo parlors are going hints at the lucrative and competitive nature of the business.

The two parlors – among four total in Richland County – each grossed more than $700,000 last year. Carolina Gold was only open part of the year.

The operators don’t keep all the profits, though.

Under state law, bingo games must benefit “fraternal, religious or charitable organizations,” said Adrienne Fairwell, a spokeswoman for the S.C. Department of Revenue.

However, the state agency is not privvy to the individual contracts that set out how much of the net proceeds a promoter shares with a nonprofit group, she said.

And McCulloch and Smith each said they didn’t know.

In May, Kirby was sued by Smith’s client, Mr. Bingo, on St. Andrews Road. The company has a Texas-based owner, which Smith characterized as a “professional and sophisticated operator” of bingo games.

The lawsuit said Carolina Gold was allowing people to smoke “for the purpose of increasing their market share and harming … competitors.”

The company’s violations were “so frequent and pervasive” that no one else in the industry could compete unless they were to break the no-smoking law, too, the suit said.

Indeed, one of the documents in the court file reveals other businesses are allowing their customers to smoke.

A private investigator hired by McCulloch went by three of the county’s bingo parlors one night, using his cell phone to take pictures of people smoking while they played bingo.

One of the places the investigator visited was a bingo hall right next door to Mr. Bingo.

Now, McCulloch has counter-sued, charging that Mr. Bingo made an arrangement with the tenant next door allowing smokers to step over there whenever they need a cigarette.

“It seemed odd to us, and meaningful to us, that the plaintiff would bring suit against a competitor across town – but not all competitors,” McCulloch said.

Smith said Mr. Bingo does not allow smoking and, to his knowledge, neither does the place next door. The businesses are owned by the Littlefield Corp. and one of its subsidiaries.

But all this could be avoided if Richland County started ticketing violators of its no-smoking law, which went on the books 10 months ago.

Since then, just 21 complaints have been lodged – 11 of them involving people lighting up at county bingo parlors.

So far, the county has issued warnings but no tickets.

“If they’re not going to enforce it, why have it?” asked Tom Sponseller, director of the S.C. Hospitality Association, who said allowing some businesses to ignore the law does set up a system of unfair competition.

County administrator Milton Pope has asked the council on more than one occasion to make time to hash out enforcement issues – like how many violations it would take before the county yanks a business license.

But Councilman Bill Malinowski said one of his biggest concerns in citing a business is that an underhanded entrepreneur could put a competitor out of business just by making a habit of going into their place and smoking.

Sponseller said cities and counties around the state have different approaches on who takes the blame if someone gets caught smoking at a business.

“Some cities and counties penalize the smoker. Some penalize the smoker and the business,” he said. “Some only penalize the business.”

Smith, representing Mr. Bingo, said without county enforcement there’s no mechanism to get competitors to follow the law.

“The ordinance as a policy decision is a good one,” Smith said. “It needs teeth to ensure it’s enforced.

“The good news is the vast majority of businesses in the county are following the law.”
Reach Hinshaw at (803) 771-8641.

Who would have thought graphic, disturbing pictures, like those showing a dead fetus lying amidst cigarette butts, or gangrenous feet, or ugly, bleeding mouth sores, or throats bulging with massive red tumors or black lung tissue would be so widely distributed, and even legally mandated?

I’m talking about cigarette packaging, of course.

Those of you smokers who travel have seen these pictures on cigarette packs abroad. In Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, everywhere. These caring and enlightened governments have long ago made it a law that cigarettes packaging must carry graphic images of diseases and the effects of tobacco on our health, in an aggressive effort to scare people off smoking. The more graphic the pictures, the better to convince people to kick the habit.

Canada, which started doing this in 2000 with a picture of mouth cancer, is now contemplating upping the ante by putting the actual deathbed photos of anti-smoking activist Barb Tarbox, as she looked, emaciated, and withered just before her recent death from cancer. Their research has shown that the photos elicit an even more intense response from smokers than the usual diseased body parts.

More recently, the United States, which had limited health warnings on cigarette packaging to a short, small text-only message from the Surgeon General on the side of the box, is now about to implement similar graphic pictorial warnings on 50% of the front and back of the pack. President Barack Obama, who is a smoker himself trying to quit, signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act last June 22 that imposes this law on tobacco companies, in addition to a cigarette “sin tax” he imposed in April that raised the tax from 39c to $1.01 per pack to discourage smoking.

I don’t smoke, and I never have, but my father, a soldier who fought in the Korean War and is a retired military officer smoked like a chimney when he was young and in the army. A two-pack-a-day Lucky Strike man, it nearly killed him, until he quit cold turkey. As a child, I remember sitting on his knee, fascinated by the smoke coming out of his mouth and nose, like it was some cool parlor trick, and thought to myself, when I grow up, I’m gonna do that too, yes I was. But I saw the agony he went through recovering, and then dealing with the withdrawal. I never picked up a cigarette.

I first saw the disturbing graphics warnings on packs being sold in Singapore years ago, and I vividly remember the picture: a full-color shot of a dissected, diseased lung, all red and black, streaked with tar and nicotine. I wanted to gag. Man, that was horrible, I thought, but also thinking, what a ballsy way to get people to quit, and marveled at a government able to force the issue. If I smoked, I would’ve quit then and there.

It also occurred to me what a hell of a compromise that really was, and how it underscored how helpless they really were to do the right thing: outlaw smoking outright. That fact that governments had to stoop to stunts like these told me two things: one, how massively powerful the tobacco industry was, and two, how weak human will was—no, not in quitting smoking as a habit, but in dealing with the problem as a society.

Of course, I’m talking out of my ass here, not being a smoker myself, and I’ve been told passionately many times by my smoker friends how I could never really understand that will power had nothing to do with it. Ok, I respect that. But man, what is the power of this habit that you can still pick out a stick from a box festooned with gruesome photo evidence of the consequences and light up?

I am reminded of the story of a friend of mine, whose father, as much a smoker as someone can possibly be, had gotten so sick from it he had to undergo a quadruple heart bypass that plunged his family into debt. But the minute he got out of the ICU, he asked for cigarettes and snuck out of his room in his hospital gown, with tubes still up his arms and chest, to sneak a couple of smokes out back.

Sheesh. I’m glad I never learned.

So, how does one deal with a problem like this in an organized, systematic way? Two obvious solutions are to make it so expensive that they won’t be able to afford it and stop and/or show them how disgusting and dangerous it is by putting gruesome pictures on the product itself, right in their faces and scare them off it.

Unlike our ASEAN neighbors, our country’s entire program to discourage smoking consists of seven words in small type on the box: “Cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health.”

So what do we do, slap on the gore? Might not work. I have a feeling pictorial warnings won’t wash here, with our overly sensitive and touchy populace. Besides, we love out vices, and denial is our favorite hobby. Gross pictures on my cig packs? I can already imagine the uproar. The other option is sin taxation. It’s a big, rich mother lode. The two largest companies, Philip Morris and Fortune Tobacco, control 90% of the P85 billion annual business.

But hey, wonder of wonders, our government has finally seen the light! Inspired by the recent radical movies by other countries to finally curb the tobacco menace, we’re actually doing something too!

Just recently, our lawmakers recently began motions to substantially increase the excise tax for alcohol and tobacco. If they can get the law to pass, the Finance Department says it hopes to generate at least P20B in the first year of implementation, and P40B the following year. Great! They figure that it will ease pressure on the budget deficit, which is expected to hit a record P250B by yearend, and minimize our loans. The additional collection will also help fund infrastructure and support social services.

Huh?

That’s why we’re doing this? To pay off our massive debts by charging us more to kill ourselves?

For a minute there, I actually thought we were going to do something right. The entire thing is profit-motivated. I should have known. Not a single word about discouraging smoking. Not even a mention of the possibility, of the remote hope, that if they increased the cost of smoking, people would actually stop the filthy habit and lives would be saved. That it might, just might, make our world a better place. Instead, they’re computing how much money they’ll make.

Oh, man. That’s gotta be the most faithless, cynical and jaded thing I’ve heard yet.

This country is really going up in smoke.


09/15/2009 Cbnnews