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The Gurdon School District Coordinated School Health will be sending home "Smoke-free Home and Car" pledges to the parents of students in grades K-8 next week.
"In recognition of the National Kick-Butts Day on April 2, 2008, we are asking for parents to join us in the fight against second-hand smoke by committing to be a smoke-free home and car family." said Lisa Turner, Gurdon Coordinated School Health Coordinator.
When the student returns the pledge card to their teacher their name will be entered into a drawing for a $25 and $50 Wal-Mart gift card. The deadline for the pledge cards is April 11, 2008.
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John Glasgow had a healthy salary, with an opportunity to pick up stock in the construction company where he worked. He was the kind of guy who paid back a $500 bonus he got for completing an anti-smoking program because he started to light up again.
But now Glasgow has been missing since Jan. 28, with his car was found abandoned the next day, and family and police say it's impossible to tell whether he killed himself, was abducted or left to start a new life elsewhere.
His family said the easygoing 45-year-old felt overwhelmed and anxious about a company audit, but the company says no money is missing.
A Little Rock Parks Commission panel is exploring the idea of restricting tobacco use in city parks.
Depending on the rule's final form, smokers could find themselves with fewer locations to light up, and nonsmokers could see a concert or watch children play without breathing in fumes.
"Smoke-free facilities are important, and we want to be a proactive group for Arkansans and their families," said Scott Daniel, a parks commissioner serving as a spokesman for the advisory committee.
The group also is troubled by the time and money spent picking up cigarette debris
Premier Dalton McGuinty is following former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's lead on banning smoking in cars carrying children.
In welcoming Ontario's move, Arkansas officials yesterday offered some free advice on how the province should implement the law.
The southern U.S. state, which proudly claims to be the first jurisdiction in the world to ban smoking in vehicles carrying kids, has found Arkansans welcome the prohibition.
Huckabee, who abandoned his run for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, enacted the historic legislation in 2006.
The University of Arkansas will impose a campus-wide smoking ban starting July 1. The university is already smoke-free inside buildings, but starting July 1, 2008 smoking will be banned outside as well.
"We actually have had a lot of complaints about tobacco use outside the stadium, lots and lots of complaints," Serafini said.
All sports facilities will be part of the smoking ban, even for people not affiliated with the university, including sports fans who are on campus just to attend games.
Mike Huckabee
Although he is sometimes pegged as a one-dimensional "evangelical Christian," former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has lived his faith in ways that confound stereotype. To do this he has fought-and beaten-some in his own party.
Huckabee's "heart and soul" legislation centered on children's' health care and education. In 1997, Huckabee introduced ARKids First, a health-insurance program for poor children. This was surprising enough in a state dominated by paleoconservatives, but he raised the stakes a year later, deciding that all the state's proceeds from its tobacco-industry lawsuit settlement should go to health education, anti-smoking campaigns, and Medicaid expansion, a Republican bugbear. When his own party blocked the tobacco plan in the state legislature, Huckabee put it before voters, and the referendum passed-two-to-one-in 2000.
The American Lung Association has awarded Arkansas with A's for its tobacco prevention and control spending and its smokefree air laws.
The association's report, "State of Tobacco Control: 2007," tracks progress on tobacco control guidelines at the state and federal levels and assigns grades to policies on smoke-free air, cigarette taxes, tobacco prevention spending and youth access to tobacco products. Arkansas received a D for its cigarette taxes and a C for youth access.
For the first time since Fayetteville voters authorized a smoking ban in February 2004, the city's prosecutor expects a court battle with businesses ticketed for violating the ordinance.
City Prosecutor Casey Jones said Evelyn Longstreth, a bartender at Art's Place, 2530 N. College Ave., and Mark Wright, the owner of On the Mark, 2588 N. Gregg Ave., will be arraigned Feb. 1.
"I think these are going to be trials," Jones said. . . .
"I think there are a few folks who don't understand or pretend they don't understand, but by and large, people are adhering to the ordinance," Coody said. "I haven't heard any complaints since a week after the law went into effect.” Fayetteville, Fairfield Bay, Pine Bluff and Highfill have smoking ordinances, and a statewide ban against smoking in public places took effect in July 2006.
The Fayetteville law bans smoking in enclosed public places, except stand-alone bars that only serve alcohol.
Heisman Trophy runner-up Darren McFadden was handcuffed by police and then released without charges after being involved in a "pretty rowdy scene" at a piano bar early Thursday.
Arkansas' All-America running back and at least four others were at the downtown bar, called Ernie Biggs, when a disturbance broke out shortly after midnight . . .
The Little Rock bar also allows smoking, and state law allows smoking in only certain establishments, but does not allow those businesses to admit anyone under 21.
Ed Barham, a spokesman for the state Health Department, which enforces the smoking ban, said the agency will look into the disturbance after hearing about it through the media. He said if it appears the club violated the law, the agency will refer the matter to the state Board of Health.
As students at one of the few high schools in the state that allows an open lunch, Fayetteville High School pupils are not confined to a cafeteria and designated areas of the campus during lunch time.
They can use the 46-minute lunch break to eat out at nearby restaurants, run errands or study.
Some students use it for another opportunity - a chance to walk off campus and take a cigarette break.
One of the popular areas to go smoke in the recent fall semester was on the west side of the campus' Garland Avenue border near the University of Arkansas nowdemolished Carlson Terrace apartment complex.
Would it cause some smaller businesses, particularly those that operated as private clubs where smoking was more prevalent, to go under ?
Nineteen months later, those questions have been answered. The overwhelming consensus seems to be that not only have customers adapted, but the smoking ban has actually led to increased business at many establishments.
"It's actually been a very positive thing for my business," said Cecil Turner, owner of the Station Cafe, on the Bentonville Square. "I was actually considering going nonsmoking before the state brought the issue up, but when the government started dragging its feet I just went ahead and did it. Within a few months, the whole state went smoke-free and it just took all the weight off my shoulders.
When Mike Huckabee became lieutenant governor of Arkansas in 1993 . . .
To bridge the gap between his income and his expenses, Mr. Huckabee and a few close political advisers came up with a plan. They formed a nonprofit organization that raised money for Mr. Huckabee to travel the country promoting conservative politics to fellow ministers and attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan. . . .
In its three-year life span, the organization, Action America, collected $119,916 from a dozen or so donors. Among them were former Senator Bob Dole’s political action committee, an Arkansas cotton gin owner who had been jailed for stock fraud, and R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco giant that had opposed the Clinton health plan. As for Mr. Huckabee, he ended up with $61,500 for his efforts before becoming governor in July 1996 and shuttering the group. . . .
As for Action America, new details have emerged, first reported by Newsweek, about the extent of tobacco money behind it and the way the industry tried to use Mr. Huckabee’s rising profile among conservatives to create grass-roots opposition to the Clinton effort, which would have raised taxes on cigarettes.
Mr. Huckabee, who was president of Action America, has denied knowing that Reynolds money was behind the group — a claim other officers of Action America dispute. But long before Mr. Huckabee began seeking the Republican presidential nomination, he resisted efforts to identify Action America’s donors. . . .
Two political associates, J. J. Vigneault and Greg Graves, who were also consultants to R. J. Reynolds, a division of Reynolds American, approached Mr. Huckabee with the idea of creating a nonprofit so he could earn money from speaking engagements — and, at the same time, drum up opposition to the Clinton plan. Mr. Huckabee was the only person paid by the organization.
“We would give him the Congressional districts to go to,” Mr. Vigneault said in an interview. “And he would put together the pastoral meetings. . . .
Others involved in the effort included Brenda Turner, who became Mr. Huckabee’s chief of staff, and William Cox, his personal accountant. The organization was registered in Texas.
Tax filings reported in Arkansas newspapers show that Mr. Huckabee gave 38 speeches to nearly 4,000 people in nine states — but not Arkansas — in 1994 and 1995. . . .
Maura Payne, a spokeswoman for R. J. Reynolds, said company records showed that it gave the group $20,000. The company is continuing to search its records to see whether it gave more.
Michael Huckabee once accepted $40,000 in contributions from the tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds to campaign against a national cigarette tax proposed by Hillary Clinton. But later, Mr. Huckabee ignored his sponsors and imposed his own tax on cigarettes. . . .
The donation, former Huckabee consultants J.J. Vigneault and Greg Graves told Newsweek, was to fund a speaking tour aimed at Christian evangelicals in which Mr. Huckabee would condemn Mrs. Clinton's health care proposals, which included a cigarette tax. Mr. Huckabee says he had no knowledge of the funds from the tobacco company and that he cannot recall meetings with executives from J.R. Reynolds, though he acknowledged the events may have slipped his memory.
"I don't recall those meetings. I'm not saying they never happened. But I don't have any recollection of them. If they can show me pictures of me there, that might help," he told Newsweek. "I fully complied with every bit of the law. I don't even know who all the donors were. They sure didn't get anything out of me," he said.
The number of inspections of businesses accused of violating Arkansas' workplace smoking ban more than tripled over the past four months as health officials stepped up enforcement of the law.
Arkansas health director Paul Halverson said the state in July dropped its policy of waiting until after multiple complaints have been lodged to inspect a business accused of violating the ban, which took effect last year. Now, the state conducts inspections after one complaint.
"What we did was move to a more aggressive position," Halverson said.
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Lisa Watson filed a class action lawsuit against the tobacco company Philip Morris, claiming that the company had violated Arkansas law by misrepresenting the amount of tar and nicotine in cigarettes branded as "light."