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...

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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,...

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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...

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