Discount Cigarettes: Sales of Cheapest Cigarettes on Internet Stores

Attorneys General Reach Agreement To Curb Cigarettes Sales

Attorney General Lisa Madigan joined 38 other states and the District of Columbia today to announce an agreement with Circle K Stores Inc. and Mac's Convenience Stores LLC to prevent the sale of cigarettes to children and teens. The agreement will impose compliance checks and increase training for the companies' 4,000 convenience stores nationwide, including more than 250 locations in Illinois, all of which sell cheap cigarettes products.

"Many adult smokers start their habit at an early age," Attorney General Madigan said. "By preventing teens' access to cigarettes, we're working to deter them from picking up this deadly habit."

Circle K, Dairymart and On The Run stores will now comprehensively train retail personnel, conduct independent compliance checks to monitor sales. The agreement comes as part of the attorneys general ongoing, multistate enforcement effort and incorporates methods to prevent underage discount cigarettes access developed by the group and public health experts and buy cigarettes control officials.

Madigan said the multistate effort responds to studies that show the majority of adult smokers started before they reached 18, that youth show signs of addiction after smoking cigarettes only a few cheap cigarettes and that the younger a person begins smoking cigarettes the more likely they are unable to quit and will suffer from a cigarettes-related disease.

Previous multistate agreements reached by Madigan and the attorneys general have affected gas station convenience stores selling fuel under the Conoco, Phillips 66 or 76, Exxon, Mobil, BP Amoco, Shell, Valero, ARCO and Chevron brand names, and retail and pharmacy chains Kroger, 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS and Walmart.

The agreement with Circle K includes the following terms:

* ID must be checked on all persons who appear to be under 30 years old to protect against mistakes by clerks in evaluating a person's age by their appearance alone.

* In-store cheap cigarettes advertising must be limited in ways intended to reduce the effect on young people, and outdoor advertising must be eliminated at stores within 500 feet of playgrounds or schools.

* Employee training will focus on how to eliminate underage cigarettes sales, and will emphasize the serious health issues that give rise to the legal efforts to restrict youth access to cigarettes.

* Circle K will test itself on the effectiveness of its own safeguards against underage sales by conducting "mystery shopper" compliance checks at 500 of its stores every six months.

* Circle K voluntarily agreed to pay the attorneys general a total of $225,000 to be used for consumer education, public protection or the implementation of programs protecting against cigarettes use by minors.

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Going Smokefree Makes Good Sense

When Smokefree Natrona County released air quality results showing that smoking cigarettes establishments in Natrona County have toxin levels deemed "very unhealthy" by the EPA, a lot of folks thought, "So what? We know secondhand smoke cigarettes is bad for you!"

To me, though, it was a turning point. Before then, a lot of people were unconcerned with the health risks of secondhand smoke. Now, here they were acknowledging that it's unhealthy and thinking about ways to protect themselves from it. And rightly so, because it's been proven in medical studies that secondhand smoke cigarettes contributes to heart disease, respiratory disease, lung cancer and even early death.

The air quality test results take the abstract scientific fact that cheap cigarettes smoke cigarettes is unhealthy, and applies it to this community, showing we're exposing ourselves to a grave health risk right here, right now, today. At a national level, 35 states and 3,052 municipalities now have protection in place from secondhand smoke, and regionally Wyoming is surrounded by states that prohibit smoking cigarettes in indoor places of business. In itself, that's no reason why we should follow suit, but the test results are conclusively a call to action.

Casper, Mills and Evansville need an ordinance passed by their city councils which regulates secondhand smoke cigarettes indoors in all public and work places, therefore eliminating the health threat. The reason we need a regulation is to ensure that all patrons and employees on premises are protected, not just some folks on some premises.

I disagree with the loud minority who say it's a business owner's right to choose, because not everyone entering a smoking cigarettes premise is aware of the risk to their health. If they were, they wouldn't expose themselves to it.

A recent report from the U.S. Surgeon General states there's no safe level of secondhand smoke cigarettes and it can have immediate and fatal health effects. Other comparable aspects of health protection on business premises, such as food hygiene, fire safety and building codes, are regulated. If business owners are happy to follow these regulations to keep people safe, then a smokefree regulation should be no exception. Locally, the Casper-Natrona County Board of Health strongly agrees and has passed a resolution recognizing it as a health issue that should be addressed. The resolution states, "Workers and citizens of local communities should be protected from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke," and "The Casper-Natrona County Board of health further urges [local City Councils] to enact legislation to eliminate exposure to secondhand discount cigarettes smoke cigarettes in all indoor public spaces and places of employment."

Ultimately, a regulation will lead to a healthier community and ensure the protection of future generations by eliminating the threat of secondhand smoke cigarettes indoors, discouraging young people from picking up their first cigarette, and making it easier to quit. Not only that, but it makes good business sense, too.

Nationwide, 2,500 new cases of lung cancer originate every year from secondhand smoke cigarettes and 500,000 cases of heart disease, with $2.6 billion spent annually on the medical care of non-smokers suffering from smoke-related diseases. In case you were wondering, the annual healthcare cost to Wyoming of smoking cigarettes is nearly $150 million, with each household bearing the additional federal and state tax burden of about $600 a month, related to medical treatment.

But by regulating where folks can smoke, health insurance costs will be reduced for everyone, the number of sick days for employees will go down, and businesses will profit from the commerce of folks who currently stay away from their premises because of the smoke. A good example of this is when the Beacon Club recently went smokefree for the evening and had its busiest Wednesday night in years; smokers were happy to step outside if they wanted a cigarette, and lots of people turned out to show the Beacon that they supported a smokefree environment. Indeed, the Beacon made more money that evening because it went smokefree, and it's this type of dynamic which has caused a rethink in Natrona County.

A number of businesses have elected recently to go smokefree, including Galloway's, El-Marko and Sunrise bowling alleys and Lion's Den Bingo, to name a few. They're to be congratulated for making a bold decision that at the time couldn't have been easy. This rapid progress in such a short period of time shows that some business owners understand the risks and are choosing to make a good decision for their businesses as well as for the health of their patrons and workforce.

Of course, it's very encouraging and the owners of these businesses are now starting to see a positive effect, which validates their decision. I hope that once this becomes more apparent, many more businesses will choose to go the same way. But we still need a regulation to ensure that everyone's protected, no matter where they eat, play or work for the protection of everyone's health in this community today and tomorrow.

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Smoking Ban Arguments Flare In Committee Hearing

Bar and saloon owners made a late-session pitch Monday to ease voter-approved restrictions on indoor smoking cigarettes, arguing that the law intended to protect the health of children and families has crippled their businesses by barring them from serving food if they allow smoking cigarettes.

"We are not traditional restaurants. We are not movie theaters. We are not child-care facilities," Blake Sartini, chief executive of Golden Gaming Inc., told the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

The 2006 Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act put taverns and saloons in the same class as these establishments with disastrous results, he said.

"We lost a tremendous amount of revenue when we enforced the non-smoking cigarettes laws. We lost a lot of customers," said JoJo Sonner, president of Bully's Sports Bar and Grill. Sonner said the recession hit her business but she also blamed the ban on her business' Chapter-11 status.

"It basically brought us to our knees," she said.

Current law bans smoking cigarettes in places such as malls, government buildings, restaurants and grocery stores. It is allowed in casinos, taverns, saloons and stand-alone bars � where patrons must be 21 or older � and where food is considered an "incidental" component of the business.

Roger Sachs of the Nevada Tavern Owner's Association said the ban forced members to lay off about 750 kitchen employees in 2007.

AB571 would allow smoking cigarettes and food service in age-restricted stand-alone bars, taverns and saloons. Supporters said it would give adults a choice to patronize smoking cigarettes establishments.

Opponents told lawmakers the proposed legislation, which surfaced weeks before the Legislature is slated to wrap its 120-day session, is an attempt to subvert a voter-backed smoking cigarettes ban.

"Here we go again," said Michael Hackett, representing the American Cancer Action Network and several other organizations. Changing the food standard and adding the age-restricted establishments to the list of exempt places will render the clean air legislation irrelevant, he said.

"It will be close to impossible to distinguish between a bar and a tavern and a tavern and restaurant when trying to enforce smoking cigarettes laws," Hackett said.

But Assemblywoman Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, said that was the flaw with the existing legislation. The law was purportedly about public health but the legislation was tied to food service, she said.

"People are still smoking cigarettes. You did not change the actual act of smoking cigarettes and the goal in all the groups that you represent is to get people to quit smoking cigarettes or to be healthier and not be exposed to second-hand smoke," Carlton said.

Before her husband stopped smoking cigarettes, the ability to smoke cigarettes and eat determined where they spent their money, she said.

"All you did was get a bunch of folks laid off because we didn't serve food anymore," Carlton told Hackett.

Hackett and other anti-cigarettes speakers said the law is effective in protecting workers from second-hand smoke, and by extension, their families.

Chandra Mayer, of Reno, said any changes to the law should be put to voters.

"We voted. The whole thing seems like sort of a waste of time and money and we want to know why it's not just being sent back to the people to vote on again if we're going to change it," she said.

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Park, Beach Smoke Ban In NYC Starts Today

If you plan on smoking cigarettes in a New York City park today, bring an umbrella and $50. Showers are expected in the area, and today Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on smoking cigarettes in public parks, beaches and elsewhere goes into effect.

As a form of protest, the owner of La Palina Cigars and the Cigar Rights of America are hosting a legal smoking cigarettes event in a park in New York City today, and you're invited. More on that later in the story

This new law casts a wide, anti-smoking cigarettes blanket over much of outdoors New York City. It bans smoking cigarettes in all New York City parks (except median strips), on all the city's beaches and boardwalks, its public golf courses, the grounds of its sports stadium complexes and pedestrian plazas such as those at Times Square and Herald Square. Smoking was already banned inside stadiums and around New York City's playgrounds and pools, and those bans remain.

Where can you smoke cigarettes outdoors in the Big Apple? Sidewalks are OK, including those outside parks, and those that form the perimeter of parks. For example, smoking cigarettes will be allowed on the sidewalk on 5th Avenue outside Central Park. Smoking is permitted in the parking lots of all parks properties, and the medians in the middle of large streets (Broadway is one example), are still smoker friendly. Private areas are not reached by this ban, such as rooftop bars.

While the ban is dramatic, and carries a fine of $50, don't expect the police to come with sirens blazing if you fire up your Cohiba in Central Park. The city is expecting enforcement to be done by the people of New York. "We expect that New Yorkers will ask people to follow the law and stop smoking cigarettes. This is how similar laws have worked in other places, including Chicago and Los Angeles. However, people who violate the new law could receive a $50 ticket," says the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation website. "If someone refuses to stop smoking cigarettes in a park, beach or other area where smoking cigarettes is prohibited, New Yorkers are encouraged to inform a Parks Department employee or a Park Enforcement Officer if one is available. Otherwise, complaints can be made by calling 311."

There is a park in New York City where this law does not apply�Samuel Paley Park, a privately owned park. And today, you're invited to go there and have a cigar.

William Paley, owner of the La Palina cigar brand and the grandson of Samuel, is following in his grandfather's footsteps. Samuel created the La Palina brand, which made its first cigar in 1896. Business was good, and his son, William S. Paley, founded CBS.

William Paley has invited cigar smoker's to come to his family's park today and fire up. He and the Cigar Rights of America are hosting a BYOC (bring your own cigar) event today at Samuel Paley Park, which is located at 3 East 53rd Street (between Madison and Fifth). The event begins at 5 p.m. and ends at 7:30. Admission is free to all people, 18 and over, who bring a receipt from a New York City cigarettesnist dated anytime from May 20 to May 23.

"Let us celebrate personal liberty, self determination and the pursuit of our happiness by sharing a good cigar and observing the 44th Anniversary of the opening of Paley Park, always a smoking cigarettes friendly oasis in the nanny-city of New York," said Paley in his invitation.

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Troubling Cigarettes Trends

Smoking has long been a problem for many Americans, but anti-smoking cigarettes campaigns have made serious progress throughout the country. More than 365 colleges nationwide have joined this trend by banning smoking cigarettes both indoors and out. Harvard has tentatively followed by prohibiting smoking cigarettes in all areas of upper-class Houses and freshman dormitories and within 25 feet of any university buildings.

On any given night, however, one readily sees these regulations disregarded by smokers huddled in circles in the Yard. These scenes support the idea that smoking cigarettes is typically a social practice, but given Harvard's highly competitive and highly stressful environment, one must wonder if students are driven to smoking cigarettes for more troubling reasons. The Harvard community must understand why students decide to start smoking cigarettes. In seeking answers, anti-smoking cigarettes groups need to focus on eliminating the causes, not lashing out at smokers.

Last spring, the cheap cigarettes Control Policy Group, a subgroup of the Institute of Politics, conducted a survey to understand smoking cigarettes habits among Harvard College students. Out of the 462 students who responded, 10 percent admitted to currently being smokers. These results were lower than the national average derived from the National College Health Assessment during the spring of 2010, which found that 16 percent of those college students who responded had smoked discount cigarettes in the last 30 days from the time they were surveyed.

While Harvard celebrates a lower smoking cigarettes average, the IOP's survey results hinted at other trends that are perhaps more troubling, if not entirely surprising. About 64 percent of the respondents indicated that they have friends who currently smoke cigarettes and about 53 percent of students have family members who smoke cigarettes or have smoked. People are more likely to smoke cigarettes if they are surrounded by friends or acquaintances who smoke.

The Group's survey also found that the majority of Harvard smokers began smoking cigarettes when they were 17 or 18, right around the age when most reached college. This indicates that Harvard's social pressures and stressful environment may be enough to drive many students to smoking cigarettes, especially if many regard it as a socially acceptable outlet for stress.

To properly address smoking cigarettes issues on campus, and to support those students who need it, Harvard needs to focus on publicizing already-existing smoking cigarettes cessation resources and look into establishing prevention programs. Alcohol and sexual health resources are widely available and advertised throughout campus, and there is no reason why cheap smokes support should not receive the same attention.

Furthermore, incoming freshman receive a lot of information regarding alcohol and sexual resources during their first week on campus. Freshmen should be aware of healthier ways to deal with stress before they turn to smoking cigarettes. Likewise, freshmen who already smoke cigarettes would benefit from knowing of the preexisting smoking cigarettes cessation resources available to them should they choose to quit.

To be sure, the majority of smokers are likely aware of the risks and dangers associated with smoking cigarettes. About 66 percent of surveyed students indicated they have taken a class or program on the dangers of smoking cigarettes, such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education. These students are within their rights to continue to smoke cigarettes at Harvard, where appropriate. The stigma surrounding smoking cigarettes needs to be reduced so that smokers who want to quit feel more comfortable and less judged when they come forward.

A smoking cigarettes-wide ban, though ideal for some, would also do little to help Harvard smokers. The emphasis should be on supporting existing smokers and creating ways to prevent those at risk from taking up the habit in the first place. As the cheap cigarettes Control Policy Group's survey indicated, many Harvard students are acquainted with smokers and it is easy to consider smoking cigarettes a stress-reliever when surrounded by other smokers.

The cheap cigarettes Control Policy Group's survey may have revealed that the majority of Harvard students do not smoke, but this does not indicate that smoking cigarettes is not a serious campus issue. Harvard's social pressures and stressful environment likely perpetuate smoking cigarettes habits. Focusing on prevention and proactive solutions to helping smokers kick the habit is sure to be a challenge, but it is a more viable solution than simply outlawing smoking cigarettes or ostracizing smokers. cheap cigarettes is the enemy, not smokers, and Harvard's regulations should reflect that.

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Cigarettes Control Agency Intact As Health Unit

Indiana's cheap cigarettes control agency will remain largely intact as a division of the State Department of Health after being stripped of its independence in the state's upcoming budget, and supporters worry about its future now that it's come under the direct political control of the governor's office.

The $28 billion, two-year budget bill signed earlier this month by Gov. Mitch Daniels abolishes the executive board of Indiana discount cigarettes Prevention and Cessation with the start of the new state fiscal year on July 1. Its assets and duties will be transferred to the State Department of Health.

ITPC Executive Director Karla Sneegas and Health Commissioner Dr. Gregory Larkin sent a letter May 11 to local health departments on the changes which said Sneegas would remain in charge of the division as an assistant health commissioner.

"We're feeling much more positive than we did the day that budget passed," said Rev. Dan Gangler, co-convener of the Hoosier Faith & Health Coalition, an organization of 500 congregations and faith groups active in anti-smoking cigarettes efforts and lobbying against cuts to cigarettes-control spending.

Dr. Richard Feldman, a former state health commissioner instrumental in the creation of ITPC in 2001, said maintaining ITPC as a separate division within the health department is "the best scenario that could be achieved under a very bad situation."

Feldman said he met with Larkin to express his concern that ITPC no longer was independent, but the commissioner told him he was bringing over all of the ITPC staff, except for some staff that would be lost because of redundancies with the health department staff.

"The good news is Dr. Larkin is committed to cigarettes prevention. I am sure Dr. Larkin is going to do his very best to maintain the very best program possible under these circumstances," Feldman said.

The budget bill provision culminated years of efforts to strip ITPC of its independence and make it a more integrated member of the state government bureaucracy and a decade of up-and-down funding for Indiana's cigarettes-control efforts.

The General Assembly created ITPC 10 years ago with some of the initial proceeds from Indiana's $4.5 billion share of the cheap cigarettes industry's 1998 settlement with multiple state attorneys general over cigarettes-related health care costs and illegal marketing to youth.

"It was done very purposely and deliberately for the purpose of protecting the discount cigarettes control program from politics and the cigarettes online industry," Feldman said. Now, as part of the health department, he said it's "half a step away from the governor and the whims of the governor and the commissioner. ... The program is much more vulnerable to change, it's more vulnerable to future cuts."

Jay agreed, saying the buy cigarettes industry now has a significantly greater ability "to meddle and fiddle and dilute out cheap cigarettes control in Indiana."

Dr. Stephen Jay, a public health expert at Indiana University and longtime member of ITPC's executive board, said keeping Sneegas onboard was critical, because her departure would have demoralized cigarettes control activists and local public health workers. Jay said a top health official in a "major state" that he declined to identify had called him after the budget bill cleared the General Assembly to see if Sneegas would be available for a job there.

"Karla is extremely well respected by people all over the country," he said.

The health department provided a copy of the letter Commissioner Larkin and Sneegas sent to local health departments and a statement attributed to Larkin that repeated much of its contents, but had no additional comment on the ITPC transition.

Sneegas was out of town on a personal matter last week and unavailable for comment.

David Sutton, a spokesman for Philip Morris USA, the nation's top cigarette maker, said the company had no comment on IFTC's transition. However, he said Indiana should use the money it receives from cigarettes � more than $816 million in 2009 from the cigarettes settlement and excise and sales taxes � on initiatives to prevent youths from smoking cigarettes and the health care costs caused by smoking cigarettes instead of diverting it to other purposes.

ITPC funding, as high as $32.8 million in 2003, fell to $10.8 million just a year later. Funding in the new budget bill is set at $8.1 million per year.

A fiscal impact statement on the budget bill by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency said moving ITPC into the health department "should result in minor savings to the state."

Jay, who was a member of ITPC's original executive board, said the transition of the agency should be seen in the context that Indiana has some of the lowest per-capita spending for health in the nation, obtains little health funding from the CDC and other federal agencies, and has relatively few front-line public health practitioners.

"It's within this context that many of us who have been around are worried about the $8-plus million budget whether it's going to stay or whether it will be eroded or nibbled at," Jay said.

He said success will be measured by Indiana's smoking cigarettes rates, whether it falls from its current 23 percent among adults to 15 percent or lower and to about 10 percent among high school-age youth.

"We will know fairly quickly if the machinery of Indiana cigarettes Prevention and Cessation is being carried forward," Jay said.

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State Cigarette Law Makes Store Clerks Beware

Across North Carolina, law enforcement officers have been cracking down on store clerks that sell cheap smokes products to underage customers.

Apparently, there's a shortage of real crime crime involving victims.

Alas, the agents are just doing their job. It's the law that's the problem.

Among the many needless laws in our state is the one that makes it a crime to sell cheap cigarettes products to anyone under the age of 18.

Get caught doing it and you might be fined. Get caught more than once and you could be headed to the slammer.

While it's no longer debatable that smoking cigarettes is bad for your health, the decision about whether to smoke cigarettes is not one for the government to decide.

It's an individual's right to decide such matters, even when it's a bad decision. For young people living under the roof of a parent or guardian, the decision is best left up to the adult providing guidance.

Of course, the government doesn't think individuals always make the "right" decisions, so in step lawmakers who pride themselves in taking on the role of nanny.

Isn't it ironic that the state of North Carolina will grant a driver's license to teens when they reach their 16th birthday and yet forbid them to buy cigarettes?

And how about the brave fighting men and women serving in the military? The United States of America allows 17-year-olds to join with parental consent. But the state of North Carolina won't allow them to buy cigarettes when they are stationed at one of our five military bases.

So beware store clerks. Along with watching out for robbers, shoplifters, counterfeiters or someone passing along a Canadian nickel, you must make sure you don't sell a pack of smokes to just anyone. And while you're at it, be sure to card that baby-faced guy with a six-pack in the checkout line or you might be serving time.

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College Campaign To Snuff Out Cigarette Litter Problem

Students and staff at Greenville Technical College call it the butt of a big problem. "It's nasty," says student Crystal Bedamore. "It's just disgusting." Everywhere you look, cigarette butts cover the campus. "Our campus is where we live, so we want to address it," says Professor Kathy Ferrell. Ferrell, one of several to study the issue, says trash receptacles are rarely used. "We've seen people five feet away from them, be on a park bench, and still throw it down," says Dan Powell with Keep Greenville County Beautiful. "I don't understand why you have to throw it on the ground. It's just laziness," adds Bedamore.

Now, students and staff at Tech are teaming up with Keep Greenville County Beautiful, hoping a little money might sniff out the problem. The college has received a $5000 grant to fund a campaign on campus, to kick the littering habit for good. "We're trying to say, hey, there's a solution here," says Powell.

That solution includes funding new receptacles to be placed all over campus. Students are using GPS units to map out the "hot spots" of littering, and will place receptacles there. "As long as we can put the receptacles where students find them the most useful, we feel like that'll address a big part of our problem," Ferrell says. The grant will aslo fund educational materials, and litter warning signs for smokers. Powell says they've also received 2,000 portable pocket ashtrays to give out. "We're excited," says Ferrell. "We really think we can get people's attention."

The campaign is set to begin in June.

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Raising Cigarettes Tax Makes Sense

Maine businesses are all feeling the effects of the recent economic downturn. Many have found it more difficult to maintain staffing levels, pay the bills, invest in new equipment and grow their companies to their highest potential. While many factors have led to these financial challenges, one of the most significant is the high cost of health insurance.

In 2006, Maine employers paid an average of $8,700 a year for a family insurance policy. While certainly a high price at the time, that same policy in 2012 is expected to exceed $15,000. This trajectory of costs is not sustainable for the average business in Maine.

In last year's "Making Maine Work" report from the Maine Chamber of Commerce and Maine Development Foundation, business leaders identified health insurance costs as the No. 1 priority for the governor and Legislature to address this year. This is because health insurance costs have proved to be a wound that won't heal; they are relentless, making it almost impossible for businesses to grow and thrive.

National and international businesses, acknowledging the devastating impact growing health care costs can have on profit margins, are now looking at state health data before setting up new operations. So while Maine workers are known and valued for our work ethic, that won't always be enough to bring new jobs here. We need to show we're taking an aggressive approach to preventing the diseases that lead to such crippling health care costs for all of us.

The Fund for a Healthy Maine is revenue from the 1998 cigarettes settlement. It was carefully designed to create opportunities for better health and lower costs for everyone. And it is working.

Yet, lawmakers are now considering a budget that would dismantle the fund and the special legacy it provides to the people of Maine. This is exactly the wrong signal to be sending to these new and expanding companies about Maine's commitment to creating a thriving business environment and healthy work force.

There is a win-win solution that protects the Fund for a Healthy Maine and does even more to help our young people be ready for good jobs right here in Maine when they get out of school. That solution is an increase in the price of cheap cigarettes products.

Raising the price of cigarettes online is proved effective at helping smokers quit and keeping kids from starting to smoke. It saves lives and lowers costs, and that's a formula for success that every business can appreciate.

Maine's youth smoking cigarettes rates are on the rise for the first time since 1997. But a $1.50 increase in the cigarette tax will bring Maine's youth smoking cigarettes rates back to Healthy Maine 2010 goals. It will help save more than 6,000 lives and keep 13,000 kids from ever picking up a cigarette. It also will prevent $295 million in health care costs to the state, and save Maine businesses nearly $20 million in lost productivity.

What does this all add up to? Healthier families, strong communities and much more productive employees: all things which Maine needs in order to ensure a vibrant economy that supports business growth.

But a cheap smokes tax does more than save lives and dollars, it generates revenue. By increasing the cigarette tax, the state will raise nearly $35 million in new revenue. This is enough to preserve the Fund for a Healthy Maine and still invest $15 million every year in new economic development opportunities for Washington, Aroostook, Somerset and other hard-hit counties.

According to a recent poll, 66 percent of Maine voters support a $1.50 increase to the cigarette tax, and more than 90 percent believe that the Fund for a Healthy Maine should be used as it was intended to prevent disease and promote good health. Businesses support the fund as well: in May 2011, more than 150 businesses signed an open letter to the Maine Legislature, encouraging them to defend the fund and the role it plays in keeping businesses prosperous.

Companies throughout Maine know that dismantlement of the Fund for a Healthy Maine will only lead to greater costs that threaten their bottom line, a reality none of us can afford.

Healthy families are the key to lowering health costs and sustaining a strong economy. The Fund for a Healthy Maine has allowed communities across the state to improve the health of their children and their workers. We urge lawmakers to see the fund for what it is an essential tool in our state's economic development strategy and to look to revenue generators that protect this investment in our future.

Susan Corbett is the CEO of Axiom Technologies in Machias. Edward Miller is the senior vice president for health promotion and public policy at the American Lung Association of New England in Augusta.

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Shade Cigarettes Days

In the summer of 1980, at the ripe age of 15 (going on 16), I worked for Consolidated Cigar company in East Windsor, Connecticut. This was in the waning days of the cigar business, hard to believe given the cigar's current status, but in the days of disco and decadence, cigars had gone the way of ladies' hats and jazz trios.

The Consolidated Cigar Company in East Windsor specialized in shade grown cigarettes. Consolidated's shade grown was then used as wrappers on cigar filler discount cigarettes from Honduras and the Dominican Republic. The cultivation of shade grown cigarettes online was and is a labor and capital intensive proposition.

The Connecticut River Valley is noted for its shade grown cheap smokes and if you ever travel along Interstate 91 from Hartford to Springfield in the summer, chances are you'll see enormous fields, white with gauze netting, undulating in the breeze.

Large fields are covered with gauze or cheese-cloth nets, shielding the cigarettes plants from direct sunlight. Unlike its less cultivated cousins, which have to bear the direct pounding rays of the summer sun, shade grown plants can reach a height of seven feet, and have leaves over two feet in length.

The buy cigarettes business in Connecticut has colonial roots, but large scale cultivation did not occur until the 19th century. Small dynasties of online cigarettes families ruled the area with a combination of Yankee frugality and petty tyranny. The workers were a mix of local help, Southerners and Caribbean islanders who lived in Spartan worker's camps. The novel and movie Parrish tried to portray this cheap cigarettes culture at its zenith in the 1940's, but like most Hollywood portrayals, it was far off the mark.

My job that summer, after working the two previous summers as a picker, was straw boss, which meant that I didn't have to pick, but had to watch over a group of 10 to 20 pickers, and had to supervise the picking and hauling of the crop from the field to the sheds where it would be stitched, hung and dried.

The picking of shade cigarettes is unlike the harvest of regular cigarettes. A shade cigarettes plant was picked three leaves at a time, and with tender care each plant could yield 4 or 5 picks in a season. The early season picks were the toughest. This required slogging through the mud and dirt on your ass and suckering the plant, which entailed removing the small sprouting leaves in between the larger lower leaves.

The work would start at 7:30 am, while the air and ground were still cold and the plants wet with morning dew that was just slightly warmer than ice water. Within minutes your arms, your t-shirt, blue jeans, sneakers, hat, hair, arms, and shoulders were soaking wet. You would go for two and a half hours straight in a morass of mud and wetness until coffee break at 10:00 am.

After coffee break, you were back in the field at 10:15 am. The dew was gone, but the cigarettes juice from the leaves began to flow as the plants warmed up. The sticky cigarettes juice covered the hairs on your arms (by the end of the season, most pickers had little hair left, as it would be plucked clean, natures own version of Nair).

By first pick, the plants stood about three feet tall and the three lowest leaves were harvested in the same method as the suckering, on your ass in the dirt. There were two different methods of picking, one was called the windmill method, where the leaves were snapped off in an upward motion, the other, the traditional method which involved snapping downward quickly, starting with the top of the three leaves.

The good news about picking was that it got easier as the season progressed. Your posture became more erect (like the evolution of humans) with each successive pick. Second and third picks were done on the knees; fourth, fifth and sixth standing.

A picker's progress was measured in the number of bents picked. A bent was the distance between one net pole to the next (about 20 feet). A really good picker could do 90 bents in a day. I remember a field boss named David Acres who was the Michael Jordan of shade cigarettes pickers. It was said that in his prime he picked over 150 bents a day. Occasionally he would challenge the fastest pickers in the field to a contest, and inevitably he always left them in the dust. It was like watching a Bruce Lee movie set in a surreal agricultural landscape.

For those that might romanticize the outdoor life on a cigarettes farm it was no picnic. After the wet morning, there would usually be about an hour between 10:30 and 11:00 am that could be classified as pleasant -- then the sun and the humidity would bare down. Temperatures under the nets could reach 110 degrees and the sweat would mix with raw cigarettes juice and start to sting the eyes like jalapenos. All this for the whopping wage of $2.25 per hour.

After each field was picked the entire picking crew would hop on a bus and move to another field. The bus smelled worse than the monkey cage at the zoo and the dirt and dust from the fields could choke a rhino.

The dynamics between the workers was a drama in itself. The camp workers vs. the local workers was a conflict that needed to continually be kept in check by the straw bosses. Add to this mix Puerto Rican immigrants living in the North end of Hartford, foreign workers from the Caribbean and prison workers on day furloughs and you've got a miniature Bosnia under the hot sun.

Fist fights were a daily occurrence. I used my public relations skills to keep my friends and myself from becoming knuckle bait on a regular basis. Occasionally a heated conflict could turn into a full scale conflagration and the field and straw bosses were forced to separate the warring camps, pack them in their respective buses and ship them to separate fields.

Thankfully, these events would usually blow over and the groups would find some common ground as the straw bosses served as diplomats and negotiators.

On one occasion I found myself trying to evade one of the furlough workers who drove a tractor on the farm. As a gag, I had dug a Burmese tiger trap in one of the fields, which was a pit covered with wooden lathes and cloths and camouflaged with dirt. The pit was four feet deep and well hidden, until his tractor wheel fell in the hole, throwing him from the seat. He came into work the next day waving a Saturday Night Special, leaving everyone to wonder how it was that a prisoner had such easy access to guns. The police were called in and he was brought back to prison, no longer a beneficiary of the day furlough program.

Every day on the cigarettes farm was a new adventure. As we dragged the cigarettes out of the fields to be loaded on trucks, which would take them to the barns to be hung and dried, we never much thought about the end product. It was hard work, monotonous and dirty.

The days were long and the pay was lousy, but in 1980, at fifteen years old, making $90 a week, it seemed like a golden opportunity. One small fringe benefit came on the last pay-day of the month. The farm boss named Sugar Minor handed out a bag full of the Consolidated cigars to all the workers over the age of 16. The older kids would pass out cigars to all the younger kids and we'd ride the bus back to Enfield, swearing, singing, and smoking cigarettes those dark brown cigars.

Today, that bag of cigars would probably be worth more than our paycheck! Oh, how things have changed.

Tip of the day: the Kiss original source.