Tobacco lobbyist tied to Premier --ON
Ran ad campaign in last election Dec. 16, 2004. 01:00 AM
Smokers' website `totally up-front'
ROBIN HARVEY LIFE WRITER
They say they are more than 10,000 strong, reflecting the voices of ordinary adults "who choose to smoke."
The public-interest group that operates the website mychoice.ca has emerged in recent weeks as the voice of smokers targeted by new laws. The group makes no secret of being funded by tobacco companies. Less well-known is that it was organized by the professional lobbyist who helped remake Dalton McGuinty's image.
The smokers' rights group is running ads in print, on radio and on television attacking Ontario's proposed anti-smoking laws. Mychoice.ca president Nancy Daigneault is regularly quoted in news stories.
But the organization that operates mychoice.ca is called Smokers Voice Inc. It was set up by a lobbying firm run by James Deacey, who Industry Canada confirms is listed as a registered lobbyist with Imperial Tobacco.
Deacey is head of the Ottawa public relations and lobbying firm Association House, which lists tobacco companies Imperial and JTI Macdonald as clients.
He was advertising chair for Dalton McGuinty in the last provincial election. He was communications chair for Paul Martin in the 1990 federal Liberal leadership race, communications chair for Premier David Peterson in the 1987 election and chairman of communications for Don Johnston in his 1984 Liberal leadership bid.
In an e-mail yesterday, Deacey referred questions about the firm and his own activities to Association House vice-president Sean Durkan.
Durkan said Association House was paid by tobacco firms to create mychoice.ca and the ads as part of its lobby work. He said Association House created the non-profit corporation Smokers Voice because they had to appear at "arm's length" from the tobacco lobby and they "had no members yet."
They intend to find non-lobbyists to run the group in the new year, he said.
Daigneault said mychoice.ca has 10,500 members and has been "totally up-front and honest." She added that it was open about being promised $2.5 million from Imperial Tobacco Canada, Rothmans, Benson and Hedges Inc. and JTI Macdonald when the site was launched.
Gar Mahood, a veteran anti-tobacco crusader, takes a different view.
"They say they are up-front about their funding, but they don't tell the whole story," he said. "The entire process was manufactured by professionals with the tobacco lobby."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1103152222350
Someone should punish drivers -ON
Dec. 17, 2004. 01:00 AM
Home last refuge for most smokers Dec. 16.
"Unless Ontarians want to be exposed to cigarette smoke, they won't be," Health Minister George Smitherman solemnly declares. Too bad they won't be allowed the same respite from car exhaust, which makes every cubic inch of air in the city of Toronto, indoors and out, blue.
But then, some forms of deadly air pollution (the containable kind like tobacco smoke, oddly) are really, really bad and others (the kinds that spew from millions of auto exhausts or coal-fired generating plants, say) we can live with if we have to.
Car drivers, unlike tobacco smokers, are too powerful a class to tangle with. Better to put smokers in the stockades and hold them up as an unholy example.
To ban grownups from indulging in exclusive grownup pastimes, such as smoking in pubs, is plainly infantile. To defend such infantility based on a spurious, selective and hypocritical notion that the health of one is the health of all is to promote a loomingly ominous intolerance of others whose behaviour does not match ours in every personal particular.
The new Puritans righteously force-marching the rest of us into their brave new world where we will all be protected, whether we like it or not, from selective kinds of bad behaviour (as long as such salvations don't impact too much on the base economy) are far more dangerous to our society in their self-satisfied bigotry than any poor schmuck innocently lighting up a smoke over his beer.
George Higton, Toronto
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1103237409982
Restrict smoking in shared spaces -ON
Home last refuge for most smokersDec. 16.
It pleases me to no end to praise Health Minister George Smitherman's efforts to curb tobacco usage in the province of Ontario in any way that he can. What puzzles me though is the exception granted buildings containing shared, common and adjoining living spaces such as those found in apartment buildings, condos, hotels and nursing homes.
In each of these cases, cigarette smoke represents the very same menace it does in any other building or enclosure. Walk through the hallways of just about any apartment building or condo you care to. When people are cooking, the cooking aromas fill the hallways. When people are smoking, the hallways are filled with that stuff too. And the balconies? Where cigarette smoke is concerned, it just doesn't seem to matter. The foul stuff gets everywhere; upwind and downwind and both, it seems, at the very same time.
In short, cigarette smoke is horrid, unhealthy and wholly unnecessary. It's one substance we can all do completely without. And this includes each and every one of our smokers, too.
So Smitherman should add all living spaces, both permanent and temporary, to the new bill requiring that all Ontarians act in a completely smoke-free way.
Bob Unitt, Burlington
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1103237410779
Want to smoke indoors? Try the Whitehorse hospital -YUKON
WebPosted Dec 18 2004 08:16 AM CST
WHITEHORSE - You won't be able to smoke in bars in Whitehorse on Jan. 1, nor in restaurants, or your office, or at any other public building… except the hospital.
When the city's new smoking bylaw takes effect in two weeks, the Whitehorse general hospital will be the only public place in the city where smoking is permitted indoors.
The hospital keeps one ventilated smoking room with its own outdoor entrance for patients to light up.
The hospital says it doesn't encourage smoking, but it's willing to make an exception for the sake of its patients.
For Ken Dervishire, his twice-a-day visit to the smoking room is a relief.
Lighting up an Export A, he says his recovery from a heart attack would be a lot harder if he couldn't have his cigarette fix.
"I've been smoking for 40 years, I can't just jump in the Mercedes and drive around the block," he says. "Around here I can't even walk."
Dervishire says he spends about an hour a day smoking at the hospital.
He says asking him to quit would be too much.
"That's like following a dying dog and throwing stones at him, not all dogs need the stones thrown at them," he says.
Nurse Valerie Pike says patients like Dervishire often stay at the hospital for weeks at a time.
She says closing the smoking room would cause more harm than good.
"The belief is that during a hospital stay is not the time to insist that people either go outside at -40 and smoke, or hang around the front wrapped in blankets and pajamas and that sort of thing," she says.
Whitehorse city council says it has no plans to shut down the hospital smoking room.
http://north.cbc.ca/regionalnews/caches/hospital-smoke-12182004.html
Don't be hypocrites -- ban tobacco products -ON
Letter to the editor-Dec.18/04
The smoking ban has been in force for over a year in Winnipeg and
Brandon and only a few months for the rest of Manitoba.
It is painfully obvious that revenues and profits for provincially
operated casinos and privately operated bars, lounges and restaurants have
declined dramatically as a direct result. This exercise has proven,
beyond a doubt, that the vast majority of the non-smoking public of this
province do not go to casinos, bars, lounges, etc. The smoking ban is
effectively protecting people who do not patronize the hospitality
industry.
Both civic and provincial levels of government are extremely
hypocritical in their approach to this situation. The Manitoba government is
saying that smoking in casinos and bars is unhealthy but they are still
allowing tobacco products to be legally sold at the corner store, thereby
continuing to collect huge tax revenues. The City of Winnipeg, which
first imposed the ban locally, is still receiving funds from the
provincial government and the private sector which contain revenues from the
sale of tobacco products. This situation is grossly unfair and
inequitable. If both levels of government support the principle of anti-smoking,
then all tobacco products should be immediately banned and removed from
store shelves.
A complete ban would be less hypocritical and force all Manitobans, not
just the hospitality industry, to foot the bill. Are all Manitobans
ready to pay more if their provincial and municipal taxes increase as
dramatically as the loss of revenue experienced by the hospitality
industry?
TERRY BAILLEY
Winnipeg
Winnipeg Free Press
Provincial anti-smoking laws go beyond Thunder Bay bylaw -ON
By Chen Chekki - The Chronicle-Journal
December 18, 2004
Medical officials and political leaders in Thunder Bay are excited about Ontario’s proposed anti-tobacco rules, which will amount to a double-whammy of smoking bans in the city.
However, a gripe some have of the province’s idea of a ban that appears much the same as Thunder Bay’s law is that it is coming later than hoped.
“It’s a good thing and a bad thing,” said Joe Vander Wees, Thunder Bay councillor-at-large. “It’s a bad thing because they should have done it a long time ago.”
He said the Ontario ban that is targeted to start in 2006 would be law in Thunder Bay, too, as did councillor-at-large Iain Angus.
Angus said parts of the law that would be over and above Thunder Bay’s ban would be applied in the city and parts of the city’s smoking ban not covered by Ontario’s rules would still apply.
Ontario’s smoking ban would cover all indoor workplaces and enclosed public places just like the city ban, but goes beyond by banning in-store displays of tobacco, for example.
Likewise, the city ban appears to go beyond the proposed Ontario ban by snuffing out smoking within three metres of public entrances.
“We don’t have bylaws to reduce provincial laws, but add to them,” Angus said.
He is disappointed that the provincial ban will take more than a year to start-up, but agrees with Vander Wees that the proposal is quite appropriate and long overdue.
Those at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre believe the ban could help reduce the number of patients they see with smoking-related illnesses.
“We are in favour of anything that curtails smoking because it is so disadvantageous to health,” said hospital board chairman Ron Nelson.
Jim Morris, who leads the hospital’s Nicotine Dependence Centre, wants the provincial law to require more support for programs that offer intensive programs to quit smoking and for those who are trying to kick the habit.
His centre is the only intensive smoking cessation program out of Ontario’s 11 cancer centres.
It has received close to 600 clients since 2001 and has a success rate of 35 to 40 per cent. Going cold turkey, Morris said, only succeeds about five per cent of the time.
Enrolling in the center costs $100, and the only people currently getting the fee waived are cancer patients, their relatives and those who had heart attacks or are covered by their employers.
“The government doesn’t pay to help people quit smoking,” Morris said.
Meanwhile, Ontario’s health minister told the grand chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Stan Beardy, that traditional aboriginal ceremonies requiring tobacco in indoor settings would be protected under the new law.
Nishnawbe Aski Nation received the phone call earlier in the week from the minister George Smitherman about the proposed anti-smoking legislation.
Beardy told Smitherman the proposal is a good thing.
Residents in NAN, which has about 40,000 people in 49 First Nations, have high rates of lung cancer which Beardy blames on smoking.
“I want to find a way to work with the province to see how (the proposal) can be applied to benefit our people,” Beardy said.
On the other hand, Fort William First Nation wants its bingo hall to be exempted from the Ontario smoking ban.
All of the public buildings and administrative offices in the community just south of Thunder Bay are smoke-free, but there is a special space for smokers inside the bingo hall.
“It’s part of the (economy), allowing people to smoke and come to our bingo hall,” said the chief of the First Nation, Peter Collins.
He said the bingo hall serves as a good revenue generator for his community. With about half the patrons at the bingo hall being smokers, Collins sees smoking as a basic right.
“That’s the way it is,” he said.
http://www.chroniclejournal.com/story.shtml?id=24972
'I don't even smoke and I think it's stupid'
KELLY PEDRO, Free Press Reporter 2004-12-18
A law that would ban smoking nearly everywhere in Ontario but in people's homes isn't going down well among smokers on London's busiest bar stretch. The Richmond Row eateries and bars were already hit by the city's no-smoking bylaw, which prompted many to build costly outdoor patios to cater to patrons who smoke.
But the McGuinty government's proposed new law -- said to be the toughest in North America -- would sweep away even those last refuges for diehard smoking customers.
"I don't see a problem with being outside and smoking because if you're a non-smoker just stay inside," said customer Danielle Bateman, while smoking on the patio at Jack's on Richmond Row.
"If it's not morally wrong, I don't see why we can't smoke outside."
Bateman, who works at the Honest Lawyer on Dundas Street, said that bar doesn't have a patio and smokers puff in a back alley.
"That's the kind of environment they're going to force everyone into," she said.
Queen's Park this week announced the tough new Smoke Free Ontario Act that would make it hard to smoke anywhere, except in homes.
If passed, the law would take effect in May 2006. Smoking would be banned in bars, restaurants, Legion halls and casinos.
It would still permit hotel guests to smoke in designated suites and residents in long-term care facilities to light up.
But the law would ensure anyone who doesn't want to be exposed to smoke won't be.
"Any server who serves in an establishment knows that second-hand smoke is an inherent part of the job," said Mike Fabrizio, a smoker.
While Fabrizio wondered about the potential profit loss for bar owners, friend Matt Bateman said the proposed law is disappointing, but wouldn't stop him from hitting the bars.
The legislation has smokers and bar owners -- who spent thousands outfitting outdoor patios with screens and heaters to comply with London's smoking bylaw, which would be overtaken by the new law -- fuming.
"It's disgusting," said Dan Saint, a smoker and Club Phoenix employee.
"People have already paid to put patios up to make people comfortable outside and now they're saying you can't? That's ridiculous. If you look around the bars in London almost every one has spent money to put up patios like this," he said of the red screens and heaters set up at the club.
Even non-smoker Matt Chung said he thinks the legislation goes too far.
"I don't even smoke and I think it's stupid," he said.
The anti-tobacco bill would also restrict in-store cigarette displays.
The legislation prohibits countertop tobacco displays in convenience stores and limits the size of behind-the-counter power walls -- rows upon rows of cigarettes for sale.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/12/18/787888-sun.html
'Ban it and buy us out' -ON
HANK DANISZEWSKI, Free Press Business Reporter 2004-12-18
A tough new Ontario law that would ban smoking practically everywhere except in homes is another blow for farmers in the heart of the tobacco belt, and for bar owners in London who have invested heavily in patios that have allowed them to skirt the city's smoking bylaw.
DELHI -- Here in the heart of the tobacco belt, Ontario's tough new anti-smoking legislation is another nail in the coffin. At the Delhi tobacco exchange, two growers lean over a bale of fragrant golden leaf and glumly talk about the end of the Canadian industry.
For years tobacco producers vigorously defended themselves, saying smoking was a personal choice and Canadian smokers should buy Canadian tobacco. They still say those things, but now they mainly talk about getting out.
"If you want a smoke-free Canada, ban the product and buy us out," said Steve Csercsics, who grows tobacco near Langton.
There are only about 700 growers left in the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers Marketing Board, down from a peak of about 3,700 in the '70s. In the United States, the federal government is scrapping its tobacco marketing system, under pressure from world prices, and buying tobacco quota back from producers for about $10 a pound.
Csercsics said if Canadian growers got the same deal, "everybody and their brother would get out."
Emiel Janssens, who has grown tobacco for 44 years, doubts a new generation can take over the business.
"The old farmers are the only ones who can survive. The younger ones can't," said Janssens, who farms east of Port Burwell.
Mark Bannister got out of tobacco growing last year but still owns quota. He is one of the organizers of a new group called Tobacco Farmers in Crisis aimed at getting the best deal for growers trying to get out of the business.
He said the buyout of American quota will undermine the Ontario marketing board. He said manufacturers will inevitably refuse to negotiate a premium price for Canadian tobacco that is well above the world price.
"Come springtime, this will all collapse," he said, nodding toward the exchange floor.
The smoking ban announced this week will take effect in May 2006 and is expected to drive down tobacco consumption even farther.
It means growers at the auction exchange would have to butt out, despite being surrounded by tonnes of tobacco.
"I would not want to be the guy who has to enforce it," said Csercsics.
At the Tillsonburg headquarters of the tobacco marketing board, chairperson Fred Neukamm says the legislation was no surprise, noting the McGuinty government has vowed to wage war on tobacco.
The federal government has committed $67 million to compensate farmers who want to sell their quota and get out of the business. But Neukamm said that money is contingent on a $50-million provincial program that has been promised but never announced.
He said Premier Dalton McGuinty promised him the money was coming as recently as last week.
"The cheque's in the mail is not good enough at this point. We have a segment of growers who want to exit and need to exit," said Neukamm, a third- generation tobacco producer from the Aylmer area.
Neukamm said the 700 tobacco growers left in Ontario still support 10,000 full-time jobs and half a billion dollars annually in economic activity.
Ontario Agriculture Minister Steve Peters, whose Elgin riding includes the western end of the tobacco belt, said he understands the hardship facing the tobacco belt.
He said the government is still working on the details of a "transition" plan for tobacco farmers. In the meantime, growers will have to be patient.
"When we are in a position to reveal that option, we'll do so."
Tillsonburg Mayor Stephen Molnar said that in the government's zeal to stamp out smoking, the effect on the tobacco belt has been ignored. Over the years, Tillsonburg has lost its cigarette processing plant, a tobacco exchange and other spin-off revenue.
"The impact on rural development and municipal growth is devastating. Those decisions are not being co-ordinated within government and that's dangerous," Molnar said.
At the Bunkhouse sports bar on the main street of Delhi, smokers are still welcome to light up, but owner Vassilos Vatiliotis knows the day is coming when he'll have to tell his customers to butt out.
He said he has seen the downtown decline along with the tobacco industry since he arrived in Delhi in 1980.
Down the street, the Golden Leaf restaurant, a landmark gathering place for generations, is shut down and boarded up.
"The farmers know eventually there isn't going to be any tobacco.
"They just want something out of it," Vatiliotis said.
The provincewide ban on public smoking that comes into effect in May 2006 will not have much impact in the London area, where most municipalities have already gone smoke free.
Chatham-Kent - June 2003
London - July 2003
Middlesex County - October 2003
Huron County - September 2004
Lambton County - September 2004
St. Thomas - Smoking ban takes effect March 2005
Oxford County: Woodstock, Ingersoll and Zorra Township have smoking bans.
Perth County: four rural municipalities, Stratford and St. Marys have smoking ban bylaws, although some allow smoking in private clubs.
Elgin County, Norfolk County and five Oxford County municipalities have not enacted public bans.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/12/18/787887-sun.html
Cardiovascular effects in patrol officers are associated with fine particulate matter from brake wear and engine emissions
Abstract
Background
Exposure to fine particulate matter air pollutants (PM2.5) affects heart rate variability
parameters, and levels of serum proteins associated with inflammation, hemostasis
and thrombosis. This study investigated sources potentially responsible for
cardiovascular and hematological effects in highway patrol troopers.
Results
Nine healthy young non-smoking male troopers working from 3 PM to midnight were
studied on four consecutive days during their shift and the following night. Sources of
in-vehicle PM2.5 were identified with variance-maximizing rotational principal factor
analysis of PM2.5-components and associated pollutants. Two source models were
calculated. Sources of in-vehicle PM2.5 identified were 1) crustal material, 2) wear of
steel automotive components, 3) gasoline combustion, 4) speed-changing traffic with
engine emissions and brake wear. In one model, sources 1 and 2 collapsed to a single
source. Source factors scores were compared to cardiac and blood parameters
measured ten and fifteen hours, respectively, after each shift. The “speed-change”
factor was significantly associated with mean heart cycle length (MCL, +7% per
standard deviation increase in the factor score), heart rate variability (+16%),
supraventricular ectopic beats (+39%), % neutrophils (+7%), % lymphocytes (-10%),
red blood cell volume MCV (+1%), von Willebrand Factor (+9%), blood urea
nitrogen (+7%), and protein C (-11%). The “crustal” factor (but not the “collapsed”
source) was associated with MCL (+3%) and serum uric acid concentrations (+5%).
Controlling for potential confounders had little influence on the effect estimates.
Conclusion
PM2.5 originating from speed-changing traffic modulates the autonomic control of the
heart rhythm, increases the frequency of premature supraventricular beats and elicits
pro-inflammatory and pro-thrombotic responses in healthy young men.
http://www.particleandfibretoxicology.com/content/pdf/1743-8977-1-2.pdf
Deep frying tonight -UK
The campaign for healthy eating could be a long and messy one
Ruaridh Nicoll Sunday December 19, 2004
Who are these people who thought the deep-fried Mars bar was a myth? Dr David Morrison of NHS Greater Glasgow said he had never seen one and didn't know anyone who had tasted one, so he set out to prove it was an urban tall-tale. 'I was certainly surprised by the results,' he said.
Not as surprised as I am that anyone who works in the NHS could have suspected such a thing. I thought the nation's doctors spent much of their working lives desperately trying to stop Scottish hearts exploding like popcorn in a pan.
What Dr Morrison found when he rang 500 of Scotland's chippies was that nearly a quarter of them sold the battered chocolate bar, 10 of them selling between 50 and 200 a week. His study allowed a sight of the enemy in Jack McConnell's fight against Scotland's eating habits. News from the front is not encouraging. One in three of our children is overweight, while one in five is clinically obese.
McConnell's urge to make us live better has been one of his better traits. While it does not have the grand vision of Aneurin Bevan founding the National Health Service or Bevan's wife, Jennie Lee, setting up the Open University, it does show his desire to make a difference. It is also smart politics given how low our expectations are of its success, for it chimes the forlorn bell that we Scots love so much.
While the forces that face McConnell may be terrifying, some small successes have cheered the troops. The astonishment of our southern neighbours was wonderful to behold last week when they discovered that English schools still serve a food banned here: Bernard Matthews's Turkey Twizzlers.
Rather than be outraged that the Twizzlers are more than a fifth fat (and look as if they might have corkscrewed out of an electrocuted turkey's bottom), it was the knowledge English children were eating things that even the Scots disdained that so worried the English press. So no change then from when Samuel Johnson defined oats in his dictionary as 'a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but which in Scotland supports the people'.
This reassuring prick on English assumptions is down to McConnell's initiatives. Children in primary one and two now receive free fruit, while fizzy drinks are being removed from school vending machines.
Yet for McConnell, the playground is territory he controls. Irn-Bru might have been banished, but only as far as the school gate where it hangs about with the deep-fried Mars and the Embassy Regal. The Executive hits out with endless adverts in the hope it will change our perception, but given that the teacake-making Tunnock's just reported increases in domestic sales and Gregg's shares are up 20 per cent on the year, perhaps they are not terribly successful.
More radical action - warning labels on food or even outright bans - would probably be counterproductive. Where do you draw the line? At flumps or at sausage rolls? We'd rebel. Last night, I saw the perfect stocking gift for the smoker: small cards that perfectly mimic the government health warnings on cigarette packets, except these say: 'Smoking makes you hard' and: 'Smoking makes you cool'.
It is the Executive's other effort towards healthy living - getting children to play sports - where greater hope lies. Given the recent exit of Celtic, Rangers and Hearts from European competition, it is also pressing. I didn't notice the Australians eating particularly healthily the last time I was there, and many of them share our blood. One of the truly distressing studies of recent times showed that a majority of Scottish men choose to be overweight because they don't want to appear puny.
There is no doubt McConnell is trying to promote sport in schools. He is also moving to make the routes to school safer, so more children can walk. This is where the battle of our eating habits will be won, getting children to find exercise they enjoy. We may not have the weather but we certainly have the countryside.
Our history of innovation is proud but a little disturbing. The telephone meant we no longer had to walk when we wanted to talk to our friends. Tarmac was a boon to the gut-expanding car. Most recently, we have given the world Grand Theft Auto, the computer game that has little boys everywhere sitting in front of their television sets, busy stealing and running over prostitutes ... but that's another story.
We are good at this stuff. I once interviewed the inventor of the deep-fried Mars. He told me that it was an ongoing project trying out new treats on the youngsters who patronised the now-defunct chippie in Stonehaven. Like all good innovators, he had had both successes and failures. A notable fiasco was the deep-fried Chewit. He hadn't reckoned on the candy turning white hot inside the batter. 'It nearly took the top of the mouth off,' he said. 'I stopped that sharpish, before their mothers heard.'
The First Minister faces a long war. I hope he's feeling fit.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1377018,00.html
Vendors demand £30m over smoke ban -UK
MURDO MACLEOD Sun 19 Dec 2004
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
CIGARETTE vending machine companies are to demand millions of pounds in compensation from the government if smoking is banned in pubs and clubs in Scotland.
They are claiming around £30m, arguing that the proposed ban on smoking will "devastate" their businesses and cost hundreds of jobs.
The vending companies have launched their own campaign to head off the ban, which involves stickers on every packet of cigarettes sold out of machines, urging smokers to sign petitions.
But the Scottish Executive has ruled out any prospect of compensation, saying that since smoking was not being made illegal, the vendors had no right to any cash.
Rod Bullough, the chairman of the National Association of Cigarette Machine Operators (NACMO) said they were campaigning against the smoking ban and claimed it would kill off his business.
He said: "We shall certainly be calling for compensation if smoking is banned in bars and pubs. The farmers got compensation over the foot and mouth outbreak and the same principle should apply to us.
"If people are no longer able to smoke in bars our trade will be completely devastated."
Across the UK, the cigarette vending machine business is worth about £360m per year and employs about 1,000 staff in small companies.
Bullough said: "Our whole rationale is the selling of cigarettes in bars so that the landlord doesn’t have to. There’s not much else you can put in our machines that you can’t already get from behind the bar."
In addition to calling for compensation, NACMO has also set up its own "Oppose the Ban" campaign aimed at fighting plans to ban smoking in bars. The campaign, which features stickers on every pack sold from a machine, is pushing for better facilities for non-smokers, such as better ventilation and no-smoking zones.
But the Scottish Executive has ruled out any prospect of compensation.
A source close to First Minister Jack McConnell said: "I can’t imagine we’re talking to anyone about compensation. We are not banning smoking and we are not banning cigarettes or the sale of cigarettes."
He added that the licensed trade was fighting a losing battle by opposing the ban.
He said: "There is a massive weight of public support behind the legislation. The best thing the licensed trade can do is recognise the fact that the ban is coming and concentrate on the marketing opportunities it brings."
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=1447892004
Health Costs Making It Harder for States To Have Full Economic Recoveries, USA
19 Dec 2004
States' financial situations continued to improve this year, but states' full recovery from the "worst fiscal crisis in six decades" has been stymied by "soaring health care costs," according to a new report from the National Governors Association. States ended fiscal year 2004 with combined balances totaling $25.3 billion -- or 4.8% of state spending -- up from balances of $16.4 billion, or 3.2% of state spending last year.
According to the New York Times, a 5% balance "cushion" is considered "healthy," and 23 states reported balances of 5% or more, up from 12 in 2003. In addition, spending from state general funds increased by 3% this year to $523.5 billion after two years of "hardly any growth," according to NGA, the Times reports. Nine states reported a decline in general fund spending from 2003 to 2004. NGA also said that tax collections have stabilized since 2001, when a recession reduced state revenues for two years. The higher tax revenue resulted in part from an increase in cigarette and tobacco taxes -- which brought in an additional $888 million -- and an increase in sales taxes totaling $710 million.
Rising Medicaid, Health Care Costs
The governors said that tax revenues still are "not sufficient to pay for the growth of Medicaid and other health costs," the Times reports (Pear, New York Times, 12/17).
Medicaid costs this year for the first time exceeded elementary and secondary education as the largest budget item for states, and the program's costs are expected to increase by 12.1% in fiscal year 2005, Reuters reports. The Medicaid cost increase is partly because of the absence this year of "federal stimulus funds" given to states last year to "help them through the economic and fiscal weakness," Reuters reports (Reuters, 12/16).
According to the Times, Congress provided $20 billion in fiscal relief to the states, but the aid expired in June (New York Times, 12/17).
Reaction
The report said, "Even though the overall fiscal situation seems to be getting better in many states, most are still keeping expenditures reined in, especially considering pent-up demand that resulted from the recent fiscal crisis" (Tanner, AP/Cincinnati Post, 12/16).
Raymond Scheppach, NGA executive director, said, "We have just come through a tremendously difficult fiscal period. The light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to appear, but unfortunately it's a long tunnel." Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, said that the report shows "relative improvement from the fiscal malaise of the past few years, [but] the states' fiscal situations will remain difficult for the foreseeable future" (New York Times, 12/17).
He added, "There's stability on the revenue and spending front, but it's really the bills to pay that keeps ratcheting up the problem" (Reuters, 12/16). The report is available online. Note: You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the report.
Broadcast Coverage
NPR's "Morning Edition" on Friday reported on the NGA report. The segment includes comments from Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D); Trish Riley, director of Maine's Governor's Office for Health Policy and Finance; and Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers (Jones, "Morning Edition," NPR, 12/17). http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_hpolicy.cfm#27301
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=18032
Criticism stung new mother, father
By Joe Kennedy THE ROANOKE TIMES Saturday, December 18, 2004
Mellisa Williamson has no computer and has never used the Internet, but she has seven stapled pages of ridicule that computer users aimed her way after she was depicted in our newspaper smoking a cigarette while pregnant in September.
The photograph accompanied a story about traffic-calming measures in Southeast Roanoke. Williamson said she worried that noise from jackhammers might harm the child she was carrying. The cigarette, the quote and the photo made the pregnant Williamson a target of worldwide derision. Comedian Jay Leno made sport of her on the "Tonight Show."
Her name appeared on hundreds of Internet sites, and some talk radio hosts fed off the topic like swine at a trough.
There is no dispute that smoking - if not jackhammer noise - has been linked to heart, lung and other diseases in adults and birth defects in children. The habit is estimated to account for 20 percent to 30 percent of low birth-weight babies, up to 14 percent of preterm deliveries and 10 percent of all infant deaths.
In an interview a week after the photo furor began, Williamson shrugged off her critics and said her doctor had asked her to cut down on smoking, but not to go cold-turkey for fear of stressing herself and her unborn child. She claimed she had reduced her daily cigarette consumption from two packs to half a pack. And, she said, people had bugged her about smoking since she started the habit 20 years ago. She was used to it.
Simple joy
Tuesday afternoon, I dropped in at the apartment that Williamson and Emmett Muse Jr. share in a house on Bullitt Avenue Southeast. She was in the front room, dressed in a red sweat shirt and white pants and holding Emmett Muse III - the baby she bore at 1:15 a.m. on Nov. 15.
Emmett III weighed 5 pounds, 2 ounces at birth and measured 18.5 inches in length. He arrived one day early. He is up to 6 pounds now and doing well, she said.
She and Muse, her partner for two years, had a good Thanksgiving, and they anticipate a good Christmas.
Muse is 49, a big man in a camouflage jacket who has applied for disability because of a back injury he suffered in car wreck several years ago. Williamson, 35, is a small woman who worked at a fast-food restaurant until after she became pregnant. She is unemployed and on public assistance.
A small, artificial Christmas tree stands decorated in the front room. The baby's bassinet and swing are there, too.
If Jay Leno happened by, Muse said, "He would see a perfect child made by God almighty and the angels above."
Hard words
Clearly the couple is thrilled by their newborn - Emmett's first child and Mellisa's second. Their moods shift when the talk turns to the criticism caused by the photograph of Williamson smoking while pregnant and her jackhammer quote.
Here are some examples of the reactions, taken from www.sternfannetwork.com, a Web site for fans of radio shock jock Howard Stern.
• "Those rednecks down there just don't care."
• "What a moron."
Somebody even published the couple's telephone number on the Internet.
"I got calls from people telling me how stupid I was," Williamson said.
Someone else gave her the seven pages of criticism she has saved. Her ability to shrug it off didn't last long.
"I just cried," she said. "It upset me, but I thought, 'I can't be upset,' so I had to overrule everything because I was pregnant."
One online wit suggested that Emmett III's father really was her uncle.
The remark infuriated Emmett Jr., who called it "slander, big-time, on a person."
The critics, he said, "are all being judgmental unless they've had the nicotine habit."
He has known people who got off cocaine and other drugs but failed to shake nicotine.
"It's like a sickness to a person," he said.
Nevertheless, he said, he has reduced his smoking, just as Mellisa has.
She and Muse said they hope to marry in January.
Despite their smoking, their apartment did not smell of smoke.
"We don't allow no smoking in the house at all," Muse said, emphatically. "Cigarettes are a habit my son will never pick up."
http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/kennedy/15601.html
Plan Would Sanction Minnesota Welfare Recipients For Smoking
Dec 17, 2004 3:27 pm US/Central
St. Paul (AP) First, it was junk food. Now, a Minnesota legislator wants to keep some of the state's poor people from using state aid for cigarettes.
Rep. Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, said Friday that welfare recipients should be fined for smoking because the habit increases the state's health costs.
Seifert, the chairman of the House State Government Finance Committee, said he would introduce legislation next month imposing higher premiums, co-payments or economic sanctions for people getting state assistance who don't quit smoking.
Seifert would test smokers on welfare periodically to verify that they've quit, and said the state could help them enroll in programs to kick the habit. The proposal would apply to people receiving public health and welfare benefits, he said.
"The bottom line is, if you're a recipient of health and welfare benefits, we expect you to stop smoking with the taxpayers' money," Seifert said.
He estimated that a pack-a-day habit costs a smoker at least $1,200 a year. Seifert said he'd also like to impose sanctions for gambling and buying alcohol, but said it's too difficult to test for compliance.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture turned back a plan from Gov. Tim Pawlenty to ban food stamp recipients from spending their benefits on junk food, saying such a ban might stigmatize people receiving assistance. Reining in health care costs is one of the top priorities for the legislative session that starts Jan. 4.
Forcing welfare recipients to quit smoking would be discriminatory, said Linden Gawboy, of the Minnesota Welfare Rights Coalition.
"Are the legislators going to get their salaries cut if they don't quit smoking?" she said. "Smoking is an addiction. They've made it so much harder to get health care, people can't even get help. I'd like to see where they're going to get the money for these programs when they're cutting all the programs that people need."
The Legislature last year used $1 billion from a settlement with tobacco companies to help plug a $4.2 billion deficit. That move meant the end of the Target Market anti-smoking campaign aimed at teenagers. The number of likely teen smokers jumped 10 percentage points after the program's elimination, according to a survey for the Minnesota Department of Health.
About 900,000 people got public assistance, health care or both from the state in the last fiscal year, according to the Department of Human Services. Almost half were were under age 21.
Lawmakers also will consider proposals to raise the cigarette tax in the session that starts Jan. 4. Raising the tax $1 per pack would affect more than 100,000 Minnesotans, who either wouldn't start smoking or would cut back or quit, according to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota.
http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_352162843.html
Across Europe, Smokers Are Hitting the Streets
BY REBECCA GOLDSMITH
Newhouse News Service
DUBLIN, Ireland -- After the Irish government banned smoking from public places earlier this year, Caroline Kennedy made a rash decision. Instead of suffering the indignity of puffing outside like an outcast, or the frustration of holding her drink in one hand without a cigarette secure in the other, the devoted pub patron vowed to stay home.
But by late November, as Dublin's slick sidewalks and cobbled alleys heaved with smokers exiled from bars, Kennedy was among the reluctant converts satisfying nicotine urges outdoors, between pints of beer at the pub.
"The idea was so alien to me," Kennedy said. Even now, "the very first thing I do when I go to a bar is take a cigarette out."
Nine months ago, the unthinkable happened in Ireland. The Emerald Isle, once one of the world's most smoker-friendly countries, became the first nation to go cold turkey, banning smoking inside bars, restaurants, businesses and other public places. The sheer audacity of turning the storied pubs of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett into smoke-free zones emboldened other countries to follow suit in a way that earlier bans in New York and California never did.
Now, countries in Europe are following Ireland's lead. Driven by rising health costs and a fear of passive-smoking lawsuits, Scotland, Norway and Malta have enacted measures, and Sweden is scheduled to do so next year. England, with its 12 million smokers, is likely next.
"Ireland has provided the template of something most governments wanted to do but feared a populist reaction from individuals and from lobby groups," said Ray Kinsella, director of the Centre for Insurance Studies at University College Dublin. "In Ireland, the lobby groups were faced down by the government."
Even more impressive than getting industry to back down was persuading the Irish people to go along with the ban. This was no small feat in a country where "the craic" (pronounced "crack"), or a fun time, is viewed almost as a God-given right.
"If this had happened in someplace like Germany or Switzerland, it wouldn't have been a shock. They're not known for letting down their hair. They're known for conformism," Kinsella said. "We do like our enjoyment. We don't like the government looking over our shoulder. Beneath the surface, we're a rebel people."
Ireland's smoking ban has affected all aspects of life, from the economics of tax collections to the business of "smirting" -- Irish slang for "smoking and flirting." One in four Irish people smoke, down from 31 percent in 1998. In the United States, the smoking rate was 22.5 percent in 2002, down from 24.1 percent in 1998.
And while the Irish government has declared it a success, the decrease in smoking may prove more expensive than predicted.
Sales of cigarettes, according to the government, fell by 17.6 percent this year, cutting tax revenue by $171 million -- $78 million more than projected. Alcohol sales, which bring in about $6.7 billion to Ireland's economy, also are down. The Irish Brewers' Association, an industry group, said pubs sold 6 percent fewer pints of stout, ale and lager between April and September compared to the same period the previous year.
Perhaps nowhere is the transformation more dramatic than at local pubs -- centers of communal life and meeting places for friends, colleagues and families. The haze of smoke had become as integral to the decor of pubs as trees in a forest.
Mulligan's, where Kennedy met her colleagues last weekend, once was among the smokiest pubs in Dublin. Now, smokers cluster outside on Poolbeg Street, huddled against the raw wind coming off the River Liffey a block away. Inside the 1785 watering hole, fashioned with dark wood and pressed-tin accents, the difference is enormous.
"Can you see the time on the clock?" asked Paul Cantwell, a 56-year-old non-smoker who has been a regular for 32 years. "Previously, you could not see beyond your fingers.
"The ban is the best thing that ever happened in this country."
Indeed, non-smoking pub-goers expressed almost universal enthusiasm for the change. But the ban also is surprisingly popular among some smokers.
"Our pubs were so smoky before. Your clothes would stink. Your hair would stink. They weren't places where you really brought children much," said Crona Barrett, a 33-year-old Web development manager who said smoking is crucial to her enjoyment on a night out.
Many smokers -- especially young women -- said they smoke less now. Barrett, for instance, said she smokes three to five cigarettes a night, when she previously smoked 10.
"As it's getting colder and colder now, it's a lot less attractive of a proposition to stand outside getting cold and wet. I still do it, but a lot, lot less. I absolutely think it has impacted smoking in a good way," she said.
Though most pub-goers said the ban has enhanced pub culture, Ireland's influential hospitality industry -- which bitterly opposed the ban -- tells another story. The Vintners' Federation of Ireland, which represents 6,000 pub owners, said the ban and a new law barring children from pubs after 9 p.m. have devastated business.
"You just don't have the same atmosphere in the pubs. There's a lot less people coming to the bars. There's more people drinking at home," VFI President Seamus O'Donoghue said. "It has changed the face of sociability."
Some bars have attempted to make outdoor smoking more comfortable by constructing beer gardens with protection from the rain and powerful gas heaters. The hardest-hit watering holes are the traditional bars that attracted an older clientele and had no room for expansion.
"The older generation won't go out to smoke at the front of the pub. It looks bad. People don't want to be seen smoking out the front of the pub. They're ashamed that they have to be put out as if they had leprosy or some other disease. Because they want to go out for a smoke, they feel like second-class citizens," O'Donoghue said.
Dec. 17, 2004
(Rebecca Goldsmith is Europe correspondent for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. She can be contacted at rgoldsmith@starledger.com.)
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/goldsmith121704.html
