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Calaveras Officials Feel It Is Too Easy For Minors To Buy Cigarettes 

Students at Bret Harte High School recently conducted a study in conjunction with the Calaveras County Public Health Department to find out how easy or difficult it is to purchase tobacco underage.

The students attempted to buy cigarettes at 39 businesses, and 33% (13) willingly sold to the students. When the clerks asked for an ID, the students showed their personal identification cards, clearly confirming that they are under the age of 18.

"What we know about cigarette smoking is that the younger they are when they start, the more likely they are to become addicted," says Dr. Dean Kelaita, Calaveras County Public Health Officer. "Selling to the underage is occurring at an unacceptable rate."

Three of the nine tobacco retailers in Angels Camp sold to the minors, so the students recently took the findings to the Angels Camp City Council.

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EDITORIAL: The rights and the wrongs of smoking in public 

While living in the San Fernando Valley in early 2006, I remember thinking how ludicrous it was that the Calabasas City Council had adopted an ordinance that basically eliminated the ability for anyone to smoke in public. The secondhand smoke control ordinance specified that smoking was prohibited in all public places where other persons could be exposed to secondhand smoke, including indoor and outdoor businesses, hotels, parks, apartment common areas, restaurants and bars where people could reasonably be expected to congregate or meet.

At the time, as a half-a-pack-a-day smoker, I felt persecuted and loathed. . . .

After I left the Valley, I moved up north and found myself in a pro-smoking environment. It was widely accepted, if not condoned, as a bridge to meeting new people. But as the butts piled up, I found the habit to be more destructive and bothersome. The initial buzz that everyone gets with the first cigarette wears off as the day progresses. Instead of relaxing and enjoying cigarettes, I was tense and frustrated because my nicotine level wasn't high enough. And as a friend pointed out, it wasn't the nicotine that was making me feel relaxed; it was taking deep breaths throughout the day to deliver more oxygen into my body -- something that was defeated as my lungs sucked up nasty carcinogens.

By December 2007, I decided I'd had enough. . . .

although I am not in favor of the government legislating certain behaviors, the problem is that when you are a smoker, you simply aren't taking into account how you are affecting other people, be it their health, their level of comfort or their children by modeling for them that smoking should be a norm in our society. . . .

because fighting between the smokers and nonsmokers will never cease, cities like Thousand Oaks and Moorpark have decided to follow Calabasas' lead and make it more difficult to expose nonsmokers to the carcinogenic plumes of cigarettes through their own anti-smoking ordinances. . . .

While not every provision of the new laws seems fair, including forbidding smoking in rental homes, it isn't about the person who is committing the act; it is about everyone else who has to be subjected to it. For this reason alone, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks are headed in the right direction toward putting an end to exposing others to a debilitating habit.

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Moorpark modifies anti-smoking ordinance 

The Moorpark City Council changed its anti-smoking ordinance Wednesday night to allow businesses within the city to apply for a temporary permit to host smoking-related events.

The change will delay final adoption and approval of the city's smoking ordinance until a future council meeting.

The council unanimously voted to make the change after Moorpark Chamber of Commerce CEO and President Patrick Ellis said the original smoking ordinance would hurt restaurants and other businesses in Moorpark if passed.

The original ordinance made it illegal to smoke in public areas, including "within 20 feet of the entrance, exit, or open window of any public building."

Smoking is already prohibited indoors at restaurants, but the ordinance would have also prohibited smoking in all outdoor eating areas as well.

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To Solve Deficit, Schwarzenegger Turns to a Democrat  

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his effort to end the partisan bickering that is pushing California to the brink of insolvency, is deploying Susan Kennedy, his cigar-smoking, paintball-playing Democratic chief of staff, to get the job done.

The 48-year-old Ms. Kennedy has built a reputation as a pragmatic leader equally inclined to work with -- and lambaste -- lawmakers from both parties. Such a regard would have been unthinkable five years ago, when Republicans viewed her as a stereotypical Democrat -- a former director of the state party and top aide to Gov. Gray Davis who lives in famously liberal Marin County with her partner.

She is now Mr. Schwarzenegger's closest adviser and "partner," as the governor called her in an interview in his smoking tent in the Capitol courtyard, where the two often enjoy stogies in the afternoon.

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Community Hospital of San Bernardino is now a tobacco-free campus  

Since 1910, the goal of Community Hospital of San Bernardino has been to heal the sick.

These days, the hospital on Medical Center Drive is also focused on keeping its employees healthy.

In keeping with that wellness campaign, as of Tuesday the entire facility is now tobacco-free.

"We have wanted to do this for a long time, to send a positive message to employees and the public that this is something everyone can do to improve their health," said hospital spokeswoman Tobey Robertson.

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Smoking ordinance cheered, criticized  

After shopping at Target, Simi Valley resident Karen McKennan stood in the parking lot of the Moorpark Marketplace shopping center to smoke a cigarette.

“Life has been stressful lately. (Smoking) on occasion helps me relax,” McKennan said Wednesday.

Smoking after she shops has been a regular habit for the 25-year-old, but after Aug. 1 she may have to be more discreet or find a smoking-designated area.

The Moorpark City Council on June 17 initially approved an amendment to an existing smoking ordinance, prohibiting smoking in public places — including sidewalks and athletic fields. Violators can be fined $100 to $500, depending on how many times they are cited within a period of time.

The ordinance still needs final approval from the council. If approved at the council’s next general meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday, the ordinance would take effect Aug. 1.

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Ask Us Anything: Is smoking banned in San Clemente city parks? 

Q. Did the city pass a no-smoking ordinance in city parks? If so, what was/were the reason(s) for such. If not, why not? - Dean

A. Since 2004, San Clemente has banned smoking on city beaches and the pier. In 2008, the ban was extended to the San Clemente Coastal Trail and other public trails operated by the city. . . .

The parks commission recommended extending the ban to city parks, but City Council members were divided over that. Parks are wider spaces, some said, and state law al

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Moorpark may ban smoking in public areas 

The smoking ordinance in the city of Moorpark may soon be amended.

On June 17, the Moorpark City Council initially approved an amendment to an existing smoking ordinance, prohibiting smoking in public areas, including parks, sidewalks and athletic fields. Violators

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• SF Supes Committee Approves Cigarette Fee 

A proposal by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to levy a fee on cigarettes to help pay for the city's cleanup of discarded butts received backing from a Board of Supervisors committee Monday.

The mayor's office, however, Monday lowered the originally proposed 33-cent-per-pack fee to 20 cents.

Newsom praised the decision by the Budget and Finance Committee, which is expected to forward the item to the full board next week.

"All litter creates unnecessary costs for the city and its taxpayers," he said in a prepared statement, adding, "Cigarette butts are a big part of the problem."

The cleanup also removes toxins that can leach from the cigarette butts into groundwater or the bay and ocean, he said.

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All litter creates unnecessary costs for the city and its taxpayers. Cigarette butts are a big part of the problem.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose plan to levy a unique fee on cigarettes to help pay for the city's cleanup of discarded butts received backing from a Board of Supervisors committee Monday.

FLEENOR: Higher cigarette taxes: unhealthy and unfair 

Nicholas Goldberg's "How and why taxes go up, in smoke" (June 14) reads more like press release from the anti-smoking lobby than an objective question-and-answer backgrounder: Smoking is bad and the state needs more money, therefore hiking the cigarette tax is good. If smokers quit, so much the better. It's a win-win!

Oh, if life were only so simple. . . .

An overarching theme of the article is that smoking is simply a bad thing. Yet we live in a diverse society in which tastes vary widely. For some, total bliss is a pack of Marlboros and a day at the monster truck show; for others, it's a bottle of Cabernet and a night at the opera. There is no reason one group should be subject to punitive taxes while the other is praised for its sophistication. . . .

It doesn't take a Nobel laureate to know what would happen if the cigarette tax were doubled or tripled. The marked rise in bootlegging would mitigate any health benefits of the hike. Moreover, as commerce migrates from the corner store to the street corner, youth access to tobacco products would probably increase.

A higher tax would also probably trigger a wave of cigarette thefts, a problem that has plagued the state in the wake of past tax hikes. The increase in such lawlessness coupled with the rise in the crimes traditionally associated with black markets -- murders from deals gone bad, gun battles over turf and so on -- would adversely affect smokers and nonsmokers alike.

Conclusion

There are no easy answers to California's budget woes. These problems have been building for decades. Perhaps it's time for citizens to fundamentally reappraise exactly what they want the state government to do and devise a fair and efficient tax system for collecting revenue. Hiking what is already one of the most unfair and disruptive taxes on the books will only increase the harm to smokers and nonsmokers alike.

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Equality and better treatment sought for lung cancer patients  

But Weitz never smoked cigarettes - did nothing he knows of that would infect the delicate tissue of his lungs.

Yet even for those with lung cancer who have never smoked, the condition comes with a negative stereotype. They often are asked, "Did you smoke?"

It's a perception health advocates say needs to be shattered. Why, they ask, should state or federal funding toward the detection and treatment of lung cancer be any different than, say, for illnesses associated with obesity, alcoholism or other kinds of cancer?

"We have to get to the point of saying it doesn't matter," said Kim Norris, a Los Angeles resident who founded the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.

The foundation's goal is to raise enough funds to lead to lung cancer research and treatment. The five-year survival rates for all stages of lung cancer haven't changed in decades, a result of little progress toward finding better treatments, Norris said.

Norris and others note that research for lung cancer treatment remains "under-funded, under-researched and under-reported," because government funders view it as the "the black sheep" of cancers.

"Just because smoking is legal - and the Department of Defense once handed out cigarettes during wars - doesn't mean (those who smoked) deserve (lung cancer)."

Norris formed the foundation as a result of lessons learned when her husband, Roy, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1997. She saw firsthand the lack in treatments and supported Roy as he tried five different lung cancer research clinical trials. . . .

Last month, the NIH launched research into early detection studies among those who have never smoked, which never existed for lung cancer.

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PRICE: I'll shed no tears for fate of Joe Camel 

The president and I have a few things in common: a vastly underappreciated game of basketball (long abandoned, in my case), a wife who looks capable of winning arm-wrestling matches (and has, in my wife's case -- just not, ahem, against me), and a history with tobacco we'd both like to forget. . . .

No matter what you might think about Obama's health care efforts, it's tough to deny one overarching philosophy: A wellness strategy will ultimately deliver better results than the reactive, ultra-expensive fix-'em-when-they-start-bleeding approach we have now. The government's move to regulate tobacco products like the drugs they are is an important step in that direction.

Obama's not going to take your cigarettes, but he eventually might cause you to want them a little less urgently. Complain about ever-expanding federal government, if that's the way you feel about it, but don't confuse that issue with this. Celebrate the fact that we're finally treating tobacco companies with all the apprehension, fear and mistrust they so richly deserve.

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Council approves smoking ban in city parks 

The Atascadero City Council voted 4-0 in favor of prohibiting smoking in all city parks, the Charles Paddock Zoo and public events. Councilman Jerry Clay was absent.

Councilman Tom O'Malley made the motion and Councilman Bob Kelley seconded it, with the assistance of the city attorney since the motion was leading to a city ordinance.

Brady Cherry, city community services director, told the council that, "this item this evening is to consider some smoking restrictions to our parks and recreation areas as well as the Charles Paddock Zoo."

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Smoking ban goes into effect in San Dieguito River Park 

A new no-smoking policy is now in place for the San Dieguito River Park, which stretches from the gateway at the lagoon in Del Mar to the crest of Volcan Mountain.

The Board of Directors of the San Dieguito River Park Joint Powers Authority approved the policy, following the lead of 14 other cities in San Diego County. The authority is a multi-jurisdictional agency formed to plan, create, preserve and enhance the San Dieguito River Valley Regional Open Space Park.

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Fitch Takes Various Actions on California County TSA Series 2002 & 2006 Bonds (Stanislaus County) 

Fitch Ratings affirms four and downgrades one class of tobacco settlement asset-backed bonds from California County Tobacco Securitization Agency (Stanislaus County Tobacco Asset Securitization Authority) series 2002 and 2006, as follows: . . .

The various actions are based on the level of stress each class is able to withstand as indicated by Fitch's new breakeven cash flow model. The model indicates, for each class of bonds, the level of the annual Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) payment percent change the trust would be able to sustain and still pay the bond in full by the legal final date. The base case 'B' corresponds to a 1% increase in the MSA payment received by the trust every year. The 'BBB' category corresponds to an annual MSA payment decline of 1.25%. The cash flow model accounts for the amount of the latest reported MSA payment that the transaction has received, the capital structure, the reserve account, and the bonds' legal final dates.

The bond payments are also tied to the tobacco companies making MSA payments.

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