Vt. anti-tobacco lobby wants $1-a-pack tax hike

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Puffing on a Marlboro outside a coin-operated laundry, 19-year-old Dan Blanchard was quick to say how he feels about a plan to add a $1-a-pack tax on cigarettes bought in Vermont.

"That wouldn't be cool," he said. "That would be insane."

Vermont's anti-tobacco forces say otherwise.

They're pressing lawmakers to boost the state's per-pack tax — now $2.24 — in hopes of offsetting planned budget cuts to anti-tobacco efforts, raising more money for the state and discouraging people from lighting up.

Representatives of the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Vermont joined with officials of the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association and the Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council on Tuesday to propose the increase, which they say would raise $10.2 million in new revenue for state government, drive some smokers to quit and save millions in health care costs.

Gov. Peter Shumlin has proposed a $2.1 million cut in the state's tobacco control efforts. The anti-tobacco lobby says nearly five times that amount could be raised — and some tobacco-control programs spared — by slapping $1 more onto Vermont's per-pack tax.

The hike would prompt 2,000 smokers to quit and prevent 3,600 children from taking it up, according to the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Vermont. It would raise money for the state, which is facing a budget shortfall of about $176 million for the fiscal year starting July 1, and reduce Medicaid expenditures, according to coalition coordinator Tina Zuk, of Colchester.

"It's a win-win for everyone," said Zuk. "The primary role of the tax is not the revenue, although I think to some that sweetens the deal. Where we're going is that from a public health perspective, it's the single best way to get youths not to smoke and to get smokers to quit."

State Rep. George Till, D-Chittenden, a physician who's among bill's sponsors, says using tobacco is the single most preventable cause of death and disease in Vermont.

Now, cigarettes sell for about $6.50 a pack in Vermont, and about 17 percent of adults smoke.

The Vermont Grocers' Association opposes the increase, which it contends will drive smokers to buy somewhere else, not quit.

"No one wants to see increased smoking," said Jim Harrison, president. "We want to see decreases. However, just changing the tax rate, it has other unintended consequences. We've seen it time and time again, especially when small geographic states like Vermont increase the rate. It shifts sales to neighboring state, the Internet, Indian reservations.

"We think we've decreased (smoking), but we really haven't, and what we really ended up doing is losing commerce in Vermont, and some of that tax revenue," Harrison said.

Shumlin agrees.

Vermont state government has reaped about $4.9 million more in cigarette tax revenues in this fiscal year than it forecast, mainly because of price-conscious smokers from neighboring New York who head east to buy for less, according to state Agency of Human Services Secretary Doug Racine.

In New York, the state tax on a pack is more than $4.

"We wish people weren't doing this, and we know it contributes to higher health care costs, but we're seeing New Yorkers come into Vermont to buy cigarettes," Racine said.

Blanchard, who's been smoking since he was 15 and goes through about a pack a day, said paying more wouldn't get him to kick the habit.

"If I'm going to smoke, I'm going to smoke. I might start buying cheaper cigarettes, though," he said.

FDA launches anti-tobacco drive near schools, colleges

37 shop owners near educational institutions fined since Jan 10

Schools and colleges are required to display boards with warnings that prohibit consumption of tobacco products, says the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Since January 10, the FDA has launched an anti-tobacco campaign and fined 37 shop and stall owners near various schools and colleges in the city.

The FDA seized tobacco stock worth Rs 58,199 from shops located within 100 metres of each of the 27 educational institutions in the city.

“We collected Rs 6,000 as fines from shopkeepers who sold tobacco products so close to schools and colleges. We also urged the educational institutions to help us in the anti-tobacco campaign,” said Food and Drug Joint Commissioner, Pune, Sanjay Patil.

One of the provisions of the Cigarette and Tobacco Products Act, 2003, states there should not be any shop selling tobacco products within 100 metres of an educational institution.

US warns stores for selling cigarettes to minors

Mississippi stores warned after illegal sales found

* FDA actively using new powers to regulate tobacco

* Retailers nationwide on notice for tougher scrutiny

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - U.S. health officials have warned 25 Mississippi convenience stores to stop illegally selling cigarettes to minors, exercising for the first time new federal powers over sales to people under age 18.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it sent the stores warning letters for failing to check picture identification and selling cigarettes to minors after inspections in November uncovered the illegal sales.

The agency, which began regulating tobacco products under a 2009 law, told the stores to prevent future sales to minors or face possible penalties that could include fines, a ban on selling tobacco products and product seizures.

The FDA's move is the latest sign that federal regulators are actively using new powers given to them under the law. It also puts retailers nationwide on notice to expect tougher scrutiny.

"If inspectors identify violations, the FDA will take swift actions to protect young people," Lawrence Deyton, head of the FDA's new tobacco center, said in a statement.

Mississippi is one of 15 states using state inspectors to conduct such FDA investigations. This year, the FDA plans to expand the partnership to all 50 U.S. states.

Cigarette sales to minors have long been illegal. Still, more than a quarter of children and teenagers have tried or used cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and other similar products, according to U.S. government statistics.

The FDA announcement regarding the convenience stores came two days after the agency said cigarette makers must provide regulators with detailed information about the ingredients and design of products they have introduced or changed since early 2007 or face possible penalties. [ID:nN05272003]

Under the 2009 law, which won bipartisan support in Congress, FDA gained wide power for the first time over cigarettes and other tobacco products, allowing it to regulate manufacturing and ingredients as well as sales and marketing.

The FDA sent the warning letters, dated Dec. 29 and made public on Friday, mostly to stores at gas stations as well as other convenience stores and delis

Chris Rickert: Don't balance budget on backs of the poor

Several years ago at the paper I used to work for in Illinois, some of us in the newsroom were batting around the ideas legislators had been floating to fix the state budget.
If you think Wisconsin's two-year, $3.3 billion projected budget deficit is bad, it's small potatoes compared to the Land of Lincoln. Its one-year deficit is estimated to reach about $15 billion by June, and the state has long been adept at a kind of budgetary sleight of hand that depends heavily on kicking the problem down the road.
But the main issue that day was a proposed increase in the cigarette tax, a common way for governments to raise money and still be able to say they haven't raised taxes — as in taxes, like income and sales taxes, that people other than nicotine addicts pay.
Over about the last decade, states have raised cigarette taxes more than any other, Arturo Perez, a fiscal analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures, told me last week, although the tax brings in comparatively little revenue.
I said that day in Illinois that a cigarette tax increase is basically a tax on the poor because the poor are more likely to smoke — as demonstrated, for example, by a 2009 study by the UW-Madison Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention that found that 42 percent of adults in some of Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods smoked. Compare that to about 21 percent of adults nationally.
One of my colleagues disagreed. He said a cigarette tax is a "stupid tax," as in if you don't have the brains to stop paying for the privilege of slowly killing yourself, perhaps you deserve what you get.
This is a concept I struggle with anytime lawmakers start talking about transferring large amounts of capital from America's more or less permanent underclass to the government or some other moneyed interest.
And for that reason, I'll be interested in seeing what Beloit does with a proposal to provide much-needed employment, economic development and tax revenue by building an Indian casino, as well as whether the Republicans taking over state government will weaken a law passed last year to regulate so-called predatory lenders.
Because both fall into the poor vs. stupid quandary.
Walk into any casino outside the Las Vegas strip and it becomes pretty clear pretty fast that the people pumping quarters into the slot machines are not exactly the types with a lot of disposable income. A study released in February by the Lehigh Valley Research Consortium — part of a Bethlehem, Pa.-based association of colleges — found that almost half of those with incomes under $20,000 said they were likely to visit a casino soon to open in their area.
That's in contrast to the 20 percent of people making over $100,000 who said they likely would go.
Meanwhile, the opportunities for legalized gambling — via slot, scratch-off, etc. — have been steadily increasing nationwide.
Payday and auto title loans are by definition aimed at people who don't have enough money to pay relatively small (for the rest of us) bills and thus must rely on short-term loans at exorbitant interest rates secured by either their transportation or their paycheck.
But does that mean gambling and short-term loan providers are intrinsically unfair, and thus ripe for government oversight or outright bans? Seeing as how it's no secret that even the loosest slots' odds are tilted pretty heavily toward the house and that any person with an eighth-grade education should know the ramifications of carrying a loan with a 300 percent annual interest rate, do the poor, to put it bluntly, deserve what they get?
To be clear, I am not equating poverty with stupidity, just as I would not equate wealth with intelligence (for by that measure, Paris Hilton should be living under a bridge).
It's just that with a new Legislature and governor set to begin tackling the state's problems on Monday — shifting from total Democratic to total Republican control — the question of who pays is sure to come up again. It is, in public policy matters at least, arguably the only question there is.
Perhaps the poor, especially those getting government assistance, shouldn't be pitied if they're doing things clearly counterproductive to improving their financial lot — like buying cigarettes and lottery tickets or relying on predatory loans.
So feel free to dispense with the pity. But be aware that it's probably just as counterproductive — for all of us — to kick them while they're down.

E-Cigarettes Win Court Ruling

Electronic cigarettes moved a step closer to being regulated just like mainstream tobacco products on Tuesday when a federal appellate court unanimously upheld an injunction against the Food and Drug Administration’s attempt to ban them or regulate them more strictly as drugs.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered tubes that look like cigarettes. They deliver nicotine by vaporizing a nicotine-derived liquid without combustion. Their distributors say this makes them more healthy than cigarettes. They can even deliver steam to exhale like a clean, smoke-free smoke.

The F.D.A., concerned with marketing claims of products that deliver a highly addictive substance, has tried to ban e-cigarettes as unapproved drug delivery devices.

But the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld a lower court injunction against the F.D.A. ban. The appellate court said the F.D.A. should regulate them under the 2009 legislation that set up a Center for Tobacco Products. E-cigarettes are marketed for the pleasure of a product, not for the therapeutic benefit of a drug or medical device, the court said.

Jeffrey Ventura, an F.D.A. spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday, “We are studying the opinion and considering next steps.”

The e-cigarettes in the case were manufactured by Sottera of Scottsdale, Ariz., doing business as NJOY. It sells the products and refill cartridges on a Web site requiring certification that the buyer is 18 years old. A starter kit costs $79.99.

Quit-smoking products like nicotine patches and gum and the Pfizer pill Chantix are regulated by the federal drug law, which requires them to be proven safe and effective. The tobacco law allows the F.D.A. to regulate ingredients and marketing claims in “any product made or derived from tobacco,” but shifts more of the burden of proof to federal regulators.

The F.D.A. tried to regulate all tobacco products as drugs in 1996. The Supreme Court ruled against that by a 5-4 vote in 2000, leading to work in Congress to develop the tobacco control act that passed last year.

The appellate court ruling was hailed by advocates of e-cigarettes, who say they are much safer than cigarettes.

“This is a huge victory for public health and civil justice,” Bill Godshall, founder of Smokefree Pennsylvania, a nonprofit group supporting e-cigarettes, wrote in an e-mail message. “It’s time for F.D.A. officials to come to their senses by reclassifying (and promulgating reasonable regulations for) e-cigarettes as tobacco products.”

The American Heart Association was among the antitobacco groups to support a drug ban or tighter regulation.

“We’re gravely concerned about the implications of today’s ruling,” the association’s chief executive, Nancy Brown, said in a statement. “The appeals court has cleared the way for the industry to peddle these products to consumers without any scrutiny as to their safety or efficacy. There is no scientific evidence that e-cigarettes are effective smoking cessation devices and, until they undergo rigorous evaluation by the Food and Drug Administration, they should be pulled from the marketplace. With this ruling, e-cigarette manufacturers will continue to make misleading claims that their products can help smokers quit.”

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington advocacy group, said the ruling would leave an unregulated period before the F.D.A. could assert jurisdiction.

“This decision will allow any manufacturer to put any level of nicotine in any product and sell it to anybody, including children, with no government regulation or oversight at the present time,” the campaign’s president, Matthew L. Myers, said in a statement. “We urge the government to appeal this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. “