Smoke free at NIC

Beginning July 1, the use of all tobacco products will be prohibited on the community college campus.

Students, employees and visitors will not be allowed to smoke cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, electronic cigarettes, pipes or hookahs. The use of smokeless tobacco products – dip, chew, snuff, snu – will also be prohibited. Well known cigarettes are Dunhill cigarettes and Gauloises cigarettes.

“This is not a policy that’s been adopted by the board (of trustees),” said John Martin, the college’s vice president for community relations.

The college’s administration will begin regulating tobacco usage based on a guideline approved this spring by NIC’s various constituent groups representing students, staff and faculty.

The initiative will be reviewed in six months, and again at the end of the year.

“Then we’ll decide at that time whether we should make it a full college policy,” Martin said.

The call for a tobacco free campus was initiated last fall by student government leaders.

“One of the main reasons was, we were afraid of the health concerns. We truly want this to be a healthy campus,” said Nick Dimico, vice president of the Associated Students of North Idaho College (ASNIC.) “We want to protect our students.”

The goal, Dimico said, is to provide other, healthier options to tobacco-users.

ASNIC will begin offering a cessation program in September.

Dimico said there are many tobacco-users on campus, and many non-smokers. He expects there will be some push back, but believes the initiative will be a success.

The guideline states that smoking, tobacco use and tobacco sales will not be allowed on NIC owned, operated or leased properties including the student residence hall, the NIC beach front, parking lots, walkways, sidewalks, sports venues, and college-owned and private vehicles parked or operated on college property.

The sale and free distribution of tobacco products, the acceptance of money or gifts from tobacco companies, and tobacco advertisements in college-sponsored publications will also be prohibited.

The first year of the tobacco-free protocol will be largely educational rather than punitive, although the guideline does include enforcement measures.

It states that the college “reserves the right to initiate disciplinary procedures against any individual found to be in continuous violation of this guideline.”

“We’re working on a communication plan, and a plan for signage,” Martin said.

The guideline calls for signs at all college entrances and drives on the main campus in downtown Coeur d’Alene and at all NIC outreach facilities. Employees and students will be advised of the college’s tobacco-free status during orientation and during the hiring process.

Violators will initially receive warnings, or “courtesy tickets,” issued by student leaders, administrators, staff and college security. They will also be given educational materials.

“We’ll do our best to help people with smoking cessation programs,” Martin said. “This ties in with our wellness plan.”

Repeat offenders, or those who fail to comply after being warned, risk disciplinary action by the dean of students or the director of human resources, depending upon the offender’s campus status.

Visitors and non-employees who disregard the tobacco-free guideline, after being “politely informed” and “provided with information explaining the guideline in a supportive and educational manner,” may be issued a warning or escorted off campus by college security.

Certain activities may be exempt from the tobacco-free guideline – cultural activities by American Indians that are accordance with the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and dramatic performances where “smoking is integral to artistic content.”

Prior to promoting the tobacco-free measure, Dimico said the students researched how other colleges and universities were handling similar issues.

Going tobacco and smoke-free is a growing trend on college and university campuses throughout the United States.

The American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation has a list of 500 campuses, that as of April, are 100 percent smoke-free.

Boise State University and the College of Southern Idaho ban smoking on campus.

“We don’t want to tell people that they have to quit smoking. We just don’t want them to do it here,” Dimico said.

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Tobacco Trust Fund key to N.C. agriculture’s future

The N.C. House’s version of the state budget proposes to permanently eliminate the Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, putting that money into the General Fund to help cover the budget shortfall. Since 2001, the Tobacco Trust Fund has received an annual appropriation of several million dollars from the General Assembly. These funds were awarded to the state under the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (in the current version of the House budget, these moneys are called Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement Funds). Now that this has become a hot topic in the budget debate, some have been wondering what the Tobacco Trust Fund actually does for small farmers and local, healthy food. The name of the fund doesn’t describe the breadth of work it supports.

The Independent Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, comprising 18 appointed members, makes grants to farmers and nonprofit organizations to develop new agricultural products, study new opportunities for growth, and create innovative operational methods on farms. The Tobacco Trust Fund doesn’t operate as a subsidy to former tobacco farmers: It makes grants, not direct payments. Those grants enable farmers to risk investing in new, unproven technologies. The lessons learned from the grants are then shared with the rest of the state’s farming community, allowing North Carolina’s agriculture industry to grow and adapt faster than it otherwise would.

Western N.C. has seen particularly significant local-food growth thanks to the Tobacco Trust Fund. Farmers and food entrepreneurs using Blue Ridge Food Ventures, a shared-use food-processing facility in Candler launched with funding from both the trust fund and the Golden LEAF Foundation, have increased their sales by close to $4 million since 2005. Carolina Ground, a small-scale, cooperatively run flour mill in Sylva that buys organic wheat from North Carolina farmers, was started with Tobacco Trust Fund money. The new WNC Regional Livestock Center (which is increasing marketing opportunities for small cattle farms), New River Organic Growers in Boone (a vegetable-marketing cooperative) and the successful local-food campaigns of the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, Buy Haywood and RAFI-USA’s WNC AgOptions program have all received significant trust fund investments.

Over the past nine years, the Tobacco Trust Fund has invested more than $45 million in grants to increase the diversity and resilience of the state’s farm economy. From 2001 to 2006 alone, Tobacco Trust investments were leveraged into $62 million in farm income and more than $3 million in state tax revenue — all without a dime of taxpayer money. Moving N.C.‘s agricultural economy away from a lucrative cash crop like tobacco toward new high-value crops and markets is a challenge that the state’s farmers have met with determination, creativity — and the help of the Tobacco Trust Fund. As a result, N.C. is recognized as a national leader in both local-food markets and diversified, small-scale agriculture. If we lose the Tobacco Trust Fund, we will lose opportunities to continue to innovate and lead the nation.

Those who want to see more North Carolina foods on grocery-store shelves and farmers’ market tables should urge our state representatives and senators to carry on the wise tradition of investing our tobacco-settlement funds in our agricultural future through the Tobacco Trust Fund.

By Roland McReynolds, executive director of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.

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Tobacco-Facts ads Philip Morris International: Alternative Annual Report » Combine tobacco tax hike with effort to get rid of low-cost cigarettes

Missouri hospital executives who lost a long-simmering lawsuit against tobacco companies last month shouldn’t fret over the potential loss of more than $455 million in civil damages.

A better method exists to collect that revenue, and if the hospitals are smart about it, they’ll make the tobacco companies their partners, not their enemies.

It is time for the state of Missouri to get serious about raising its lowest-in-the-nation tobacco tax. The path to victory will require a partnership that might make both sides uncomfortable.

As the legislative session winds down this week, there are two proposals unlikely to pass that should be combined into a ballot initiative in the near future to raise needed revenue for the state while cutting down on tobacco use and improving the health of Missourians.

Both results would be good for the hospitals stinging from their losses in City of St. Louis v. American Tobacco, which took 13 years to litigate before verdicts came down April 29 favoring the tobacco companies.

Tobacco taxes should have been raised long ago, but the Legislature won’t consider the idea, even though the state desperately needs revenue and even though Missouri’s 17-cents-per-pack tax is shamefully below the national average of $1.45 per pack.

Tobacco tax increases have failed on the statewide ballot twice in the past decade. They were close votes, but in one case, proponents sealed their fate by earmarking the funds — a process voters don’t trust. In the other case, proponents tried to place the increased tax in the state constitution, where it doesn’t belong.

For a tobacco tax hike to escape heavy opposition from tobacco companies and their supporters, it should be combined with a provision that would end Missouri’s status as the nation’s dumping ground for low-cost cigarettes.

In 1998, when most states in the nation entered into an agreement with the major tobacco companies to settle lawsuits over misleading marketing, the settlement left a loophole that allowed small tobacco companies that weren’t parties to the agreement to flood the market with lower-cost products.

Except for Missouri, every state that is part of that agreement has fixed that loophole. The result is that Missouri has the fifth-highest smoking rate in the nation, which results from its low tax and low prices.

This two-pronged approach to raising the tobacco tax while ridding the state of its lowest-cost cigarettes would accomplish three positive goals:

Tripling Missouri’s tax would raise an additional $190 million per year and still keep the tax below every border state. Going higher is tempting, but it would invite opposition.
Increasing the costs of cigarettes lowers smoking rates. Various studies have shown a direct correlation between raising the price of tobacco products and reducing their use. This would make a long-term dent in the more than $2 billion spent on health care in Missouri each year as a result of the devastating effects of smoking.
Finally, by helping Big Tobacco to solve its unfair market competition problem, the health care groups that have been yearning for a tobacco tax increase for more than a decade can keep the major tobacco companies on the sideline in a statewide initiative campaign.

Missouri’s health-conscious voters should be given a chance to do what the anti-tax Legislature won’t even consider: Raise tobacco taxes to a reasonable level, get rid of Missouri’s status as a cigarette dumping ground and improve the chances that our next generation can grow up healthy.

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