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The Juneau Clean Air Coalition donned brooms and dustpans to clean downtown streets for Litter Free Clean Up Day on May 10.
"We'd heard complaints about the cigarette butts downtown so we chose to clean up that area as our community service project," said Wendy Hamilton, Tobacco Program Coordinator for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.
"The amount of cigarette butts was surprising, especially considering the City Street Maintenance crews clean the sidewalks and streets seven mornings a week in the summertime," she said.
Most people don't think of cigarette butts as litter, but in fact, cigarettes are the most littered item in America and the world. Research shows that individuals who would never consider littering an aluminum can or a piece of paper may be littering cigarette butts.
"Cigarette butt litter is a worldwide environmental threat," Hamilton stated.
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JUNEAU — Students will have to abide by new rules regarding drug, alcohol and tobacco use if they want to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities next fall.
Schools had been developing their own guidelines until now, but the Alaska School Activities Association board of directors this week adopted a statewide policy that includes penalties that are cumulative and grow progressively harsher with each violation.
More than 70 percent of the 40,000 students in Alaska participate in some kind of extracurricular activity, said Gary Matthews, ASAA executive director.
“We have something that kids want to do and that’s to be able to play. In order to be able to play we hold them to higher standards now,” . . .
The penalties range from a 10-day suspension from activities for a first offense . . . If a student is caught using tobacco during the suspension, the clock starts over. The student must complete the 10 days no matter how many times the suspension is restarted.
We now party in a world of smokeless venues, congregations of smoke clouds lingering above sidewalks, designated smoking sheds (of varying comfort levels) and divisions between smokers and nonsmokers.
Nearly a year ago, local voters endorsed a law to ban smoking in public places by a more than 2-to-1 margin, and on July 1, 2007, it went into effect and the nightlife scene changed forever.
But the issue is still smoking.
When reached for this column, some venue owners refused to comment, bristling at the mention of the ban. Most party people either love the ban or hate it, but many bartenders are torn -- they admit hesitation to push patrons outdoors but relish that they now get off work with smoke-free uniforms.
Lawyers for the Alaska Native coastal village of Kivalina, which is being forced to relocate because of flooding caused by the changing Arctic climate, filed suit in federal court here Tuesday arguing that 5 oil companies, 14 electric utilities and the country’s largest coal company were responsible for the village’s woes.
The suit is the latest effort to hold companies like BP America, Chevron, Peabody Energy, Duke Energy and the Southern Company responsible for the impact of global warming because they emit millions of tons of greenhouse gases, or, in the case of Peabody, mine and market carbon-laden coal that is burned by others. It accused the companies of creating a public nuisance.
In an unusual move, those five companies and three other defendants — the Exxon Mobil Corporation, American Electric Power and the Conoco Phillips Company — are also accused of conspiracy. “There has been a long campaign by power, coal and oil companies to mislead the public about the science of global warming,” the suit says. The campaign, it says, contributed “to the public nuisance of global warming by convincing the public at large and the victims of global warming that the process is not man-made when in fact it is.” . . .
Some lawyers in the case participated in the long-running litigation against American tobacco companies in the 1990s, and some of the same legal theories echo through the complaint. But the hurdles may be greater than those in the tobacco wars. Global warming is a diffuse worldwide phenomenon; a successful public nuisance case requires that defendants’ behavior be directly linked to the harm.
Bar owners in Juneau say the city's new smoking ban is ruining their businesses.
They spoke Monday night at the Juneau Assembly meeting. The Assembly is considering a rewrite of the smoking ordinance.
A barrage of bar owners told Assembly members Monday night that the smoking ban is ruining the bar business in Juneau.
The comments came during the public testimony for a rewritten smoking ordinance, the "Second Hand Smoke Control Code."
The Assembly held over the proposed ordinance in favor of more discussion at the next Assembly work session.
The ordinance was rewritten by city attorney John Hartle at the request of the Assembly as a way to close loopholes allowing some private clubs to escape enforcement.
The Juneau Assembly introduced an ordinance Monday closing gaps in the smoking ban that officials claim keep the city from fully enforcing the law.
If adopted at the next Assembly meeting, the new code would define a "bar" as any business, other than a restaurant, licensed by the state to sell alcoholic drinks. It is currently defined by type of liquor license.
The proposed ordinance continues to ban smoking in previously regulated locations, adds clarifying details and expands banned areas to include outdoor seating at restaurants and coffee shops. It would also rename the Smoking in Public Places Ordinance.
The citywide smoking ban pertaining to bars went into effect on Jan. 2.
A plumber working at the Thunder Mountain High School construction site recently reported to the city that workers were smoking inside and he wanted it to stop.
The city bans smoking at workplaces. The last phase of the city's smoking prohibition, which bans smoking in bars, went into effect Jan. 2.
Jeremy Roselle said Thunder Mountain is being built with "tobacco-stained" walls from workers' smoke as they rush to finish the school by the August deadline. He said some workers top off the indoor air pollution by throwing cigarette butts into spaces between the walls of the $60 million school.
"The walls are full of cigarette butts," he said. "It's unsanitary."
Smoking in a Juneau bar is now illegal. Beginning today, both smokers and bar owners could be fined for violating the ordinance that extends Juneau’s smoking ban to bars.
Life in Anchorage is going to be miserable "from now until May," said Mr. Duggan as he sat morosely on a wooden bench outside the bar one recent evening when the temperature was in the 20s. Shivering in a T-shirt as he puffed on a Camel Ultra Light, Mr. Duggan noted that at least his seat inside was safe. He had put a bar-issued placeholder with a puffin bird's image on it that read "Gone Puffin" next to his bar stool.
As Anchorage settles in for its first winter with smoke-free bars, smokers across the state's biggest city are scrambling to deal with having to light up outside. Some sneak out in their indoor clothes. Others bundle themselves up repeatedly throughout the night. Some are doing what was once unthinkable: cutting back on their habit. And Anchorage's taverns and bingo parlors are rushing to erect makeshift outdoor smoking tents, shacks and other shelters.
At the Pioneer Bar downtown, workers a few weeks ago put up a plywood shack atop cinder blocks in an adjacent parking lot. The unheated, 200-square-foot shelter has plastic strips serving as a door. . . .
More than 30 states and hundreds of cities nationwide have passed indoor-smoking bans in recent years. But the issue is particularly heated in Alaska, which has the fifth-highest smoking rate in the country -- not to mention the coldest winters. According to a 2006 survey by the Centers for Disease Control, 24% of adults in Alaska smoke, compared with a national average of 21%.
In response to Bart Williams' Dec. 10 letter "Hospitals show lack of respect in imposing smoking bans": He states that no one can name anyone who died from secondhand smoke. Heather Crowe died in May of 2006 from lung cancer as a result of secondhand smoke.
In fact, secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 deaths from lung cancer and approximately 46,000 deaths from heart attacks each year in the U.S. . . .
I just wanted Williams to know that there are names of people who have died from diseases caused by exposure to secondhand smoke out there, but you have to open your eyes and see the truth about tobacco to find them. He may not feel that the hospitals are showing respect, but they are; they are respecting all of their patients and staff, both smoking and nonsmoking, by providing clean air and a good example.
No longer will a patient at Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center be seen dragging an IV outside in order to get a puff from a cigarette.
Providence is now smoke-free since a ban on smoking inside or outside of the hospital went into effect.
“The idea is to practice what we preach,” Alice Coen, hospital director of quality and accreditation, said Friday.
Providence initiated the new policy in November as part of the Great American Smokeout.
For the above reasons, negligence on the part of a clerk is, in my view, an issue of central importance in licensee sanction proceedings and a licensee is entitled to a meaningful hearing on this issue. It follows that, to the extent that AS 43.70.075(m)(1) bars such a hearing, it violates a licensee's due process rights.
Today the Health and Social Services Behavioral Health Director praised the recent Alaska Supreme Court decision affirming businesses are responsible for harm that may result from the products -- in this case tobacco -- they sell.
"This decision clarifies responsibilities for stakeholders in our mutual efforts to keep minors tobacco-free," Behavioral Health Director Melissa Stone said. "The decision strongly supports the Health and Social Services mission 'to promote and protect the health and well-being of Alaskans.'" . . .
"Curbing illegal tobacco sales to minors is an essential component of the best practices for state tobacco programs set by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," said Lisa Aquino, program manager Alaska Tobacco Prevention and Control Program.
The business owner in the case had argued the statute violated due process. While the case progressed, the state Legislature updated the statute to address retailers' concerns and reward conscientious employers' education efforts, while retaining the same basic penalty structure.
The Alaska Health and Social Services Behavioral Health Director has praised the recent Alaska Supreme Court decision affirming that businesses are responsible for harm that may result from the products - in this case tobacco - they sell.
"This decision clarifies responsibilities for stakeholders in our mutual efforts to keep minors tobacco-free," Behavioral Health Director Melissa Stone said. "The decision strongly supports the Health and Social Services mission 'to promote and protect the health and well-being of Alaskans.'"
The court issued a decision on Nov. 23, 2007, upholding Alaska Statute 43.70.075 in a case involving cigarette sales to minors. The court determined that a business owner can be held . . .
The court concluded that "when an industry engages in commercial activity that routinely exposes the public to significant harm, the legislature has a legitimate interest in holding the industry's licensed participants accountable for all conduct in exercising the license, not just for the licensee's personal negligence or fault."