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Native Americans from all over the U.S. are in Middle Georgia this week, and they are declaring a war--a war on the negative use of tobacco. The group camped in Mile Branch River Park in Pulaski County for the three-day national summit.
Native Americans came from Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Colorado to teach their younger generation how to value tobacco, and not abuse it.
Inter-Tribal Council Member Dr. Dewey Painter says he knows first hand that commercial use of the drug is destroying the lives of Native Americans everywhere.
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Native Americans from across Georgia gathered in Hawkinsville to warn young people about the dangers of tobacco in the Native American Indian Youth Anti Tobacco Summit.
It's a three day event that started Tuesday and runs through Thursday at noon. The goal of the summit is to teach children from an early age how harmful tobacco can be, while preserving its traditional uses.
The event, which focuses on Native American youth, is open to all kids from ages 13 - 21.
Many people don't like to talk about it in this part of the country because tobacco was once a big cash crop -- perhaps the largest. . . .
There are those who will argue that tobacco is not a health issue. Likewise there are those who will argue that the Holocaust didn't happen. For either, the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.
The tobacco market of the South (and many of us grew up on tobacco farms) is likely one of our biggest hypocrisies. We have come far in the battle against cigarette smoke by educating the public as to its health dangers (cancer, emphysema, heart disease, etc.) as well as banning smoking in public places where non-smokers were subjected to the second-hand, unfiltered smoke.
Some argued this was government intrusion. Talk to one patient who has terminal cancer linked to smoking or an emphysema patient who must carry an oxygen tank with him everywhere he goes and one's perception possibly can change ... if in fact enlightenment is the pursuit.
There's one thing that is absolute about cigarettes. They have no socially redeeming value in the sense that nothing good can come to one's health from this usage. Make that two things ... the public is burdened with much of the costs for treating health issues produced by cigarette smoking -- whether they smoke or not.
So if there is a rational way to reduce the chance of our youngsters smoking, then let's embrace the concept. In a sense, we will be embracing the very lives of those kids.
Everyone knows smoking is bad for you. But many do not realize the worldwide implications that tobacco has on health care and human rights, said Dr. Carolyn Dresler, the director for the Arkansas Department of Health Tobacco Prevention and Cessation.
"The tobacco epidemic is a global epidemic of which Georgia or the U.S. is just a piece of the puzzle," Dresler said. "For the most part what we treat are preventable diseases."
Dresler spoke to a group of medical professionals and representatives from community groups about the importance of tobacco cessation Tuesday at the Chattahoochee Country Club.
Dresler presented the group with some alarming facts -- for example, that smoking causes more deaths than AIDS, car crashes and alcohol and that 1.5 times more women die from lung cancer than from breast cancer.
CANDON, Ilocos Sur--From 1996 to 2008, the provincial government here received some P5.816 billion from the national government's tobacco excise tax collection. But the likes of Cesar Despe, a third-generation tobacco farmer, just shrug their shoulder when asked how the tobacco fund has helped them.
As of today, using tobacco products is forbidden on Athens Technical College's main campus in Athens, as well as satellite campuses in Elbert, Walton and Greene counties.
College officials made just one exception: Students and staff can smoke if they are sitting in their own vehicles, and are allowed to keep a door open when they do.
Penalties for violators will be stiff - a letter of warning on a first offense, a $50 fine for a second violation and dismissal from the college for a third. Despite the stringent policy, Athens Tech officials expect the change to go smoothly today, as spring quarter classes begin.
Other state colleges have enacted similar restrictions with little complaint, said Andrea Daniel, Athens Tech vice president for student affairs.
On April 1, the federal tax on cigarettes will jump from 39 cents per pack to $1.01. Not surprisingly, many smokers would like to stock up on cigarettes now, to save a little money before the price increase goes into effect.
But that strategy has been thwarted by major tobacco companies, who already have raised prices on their products. Since the feds won’t start collecting the tax until April 1, for now the extra money is going into the pockets of the companies, reportedly to pay taxes on their own stockpiled inventory.
Kenneth Head of Gainesville, a lifelong smoker, was outraged when he went to buy cigarettes last week.
"I paid $54 for a carton of Camels," he said. "A month ago, it was about $42."
Head might have had to pay even more if a bill to raise the state tobacco tax by $1 per pack had been passed by Georgia General Assembly. But the legislation didn’t come up for a vote in this year’s session.
All the while, legislators have stubbornly ignored the most obvious revenue generator: increasing the state tax on cigarettes.
Georgia's 37-cent state tax on a pack of cigarettes is 44th lowest in the nation. Raising the tax by $1 could generate $298 million . . .
Cigarette taxes are also apparently one tax that most taxpayers can stomach fairly easily. Polling for the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids found that 75 percent of Georgians favor increasing the tobacco tax by $1. Support was more than 70 percent among both Democrats and Republicans, and at 63 percent among smokers.
That seems like just the political cover Perdue and other lawmakers need.
The Walker Board of Health has passed a resolution supporting a one-dollar-a-pack increase in Georgia's cigarette tax, and is urging the General Assembly to enact enabling legislation during its current session.
The average state cigarette tax nationally is $1.19 per pack. At 37 cents per pack, Georgia's tax ranks 43rd in the country, according to the Georgia Alliance for Tobacco Prevention.
According to Northwest Georgia Public Health's Dr. Wade Sellers, "A one-dollar-a-pack increase in the state cigarette tax would reduce teen smoking, help fund the state's tobacco-prevention-and-cessation program to the level recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, protect children on PeachCare and Georgians who rely on Medicaid from being cut off from health care they need, and aid working families seeking health coverage."
Boards of health in Bartow, Chattooga, Dade, Floyd, Gordon, Paulding and Polk counties have passed similar resolutions to Walker's, according to Sellers.
In 1776, three things were considered "extremely proper subjects" for taxation: Rum, sugar and tobacco. They were taxed, not because they were evil, sinful products, but because they weren't considered "necessities of life."
Last Wednesday, a state legislative subcommittee listened to three hours of testimony concerning the timeless topic of tobacco taxation. House Bill 39 by State Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, increases Georgia's 37 cent cigarette tax by $1 per pack and raises the 10 percent tax on smokeless tobacco to 25 percent.
In the recent Savannah Morning News column "Sin taxes: A big lie," former talk radio shock jock Ben Crystal called the tobacco tax increase "an easy way to shovel money into the state coffers in the guise of nanny-state style wrist slapping."
What was he smokin'? Crystal's use of extremist rhetoric and his distortion of the facts obfuscated the truth about this important issue. . . .
HB 39 is not about sin. Nobody is trying to place a scarlet "S" for "Smoker" on anyone's chest. It's about common sense, personal responsibility, equity, economics, child protection and public health.
Should the state subsidize health care for persons who choose to smoke . . . .
Nobody likes taxes, however as a society this is the way we fund our government and some taxes are considered more palatable than others.
Would you pay more than $6.50 for a pack of cigarettes? The American Cancer Society hopes you won't. Thursday, a number of local anti-smoking activists went down to the state Capitol to lobby on behalf of House Bill 39, which would increase Georgia's excise tax on a pack of cigarettes from 37 cents to $1.37.
The tax was just 12 cents until 2003, when the Georgia General Assembly passed a 25-cent increase. But health advocates believe the initial tax hike didn't go far enough. Studies show that the more cigarettes cost, the less likely people are to smoke.
When someone asked to smoke at his home, he'd hand them a wooden ashtray shaped like a coffin with a sticker: "Please don't smoke. You might croak." He also had a cigarette lighter that, when flicked, unleashed a horrific, hacking cough.
Friends and family say such antics were vintage Althafer, a health educator who oversaw anti-smoking campaigns in a decades-long career with the Centers for Disease Control.
Charles "Charlie" Althafer, 77, of Tucker, died Feb. 9 of heart failure at his home in Tucker. A memorial service will be 1 p.m. Saturday at Living Grace Lutheran Church in Tucker. Wages & Sons Funeral Home in Stone Mountain is in charge of arrangements.
In the 1960s, Mr. Althafer was acting director for a project of the National Clearinghouse for Smoking and Health that researched smoking and its consequences in San Diego. He joined the CDC in the mid-1970s as deputy director of a federal anti-smoking program . . .
Charlie was one of the pioneers who just kept working at it, saying it was something we had to change. He was involved not only in the usual anti-smoking programs, but in developing surgeon general reports that came out on smoking. You can see the results now of his work in this country."
And then there were the jokes. Mr. Althafer, who had been a radar specialist with the Marines during the Korean War, had one for any occasion.
The city of Savannah is taking exception to your nasty habit of tossing cigarette butts wherever you please. On Wednesday, officials announced a multi-pronged effort to first educate, then later enforce anti-litter efforts against smokers.
"We're going to find the guilty folks and try to persuade them to do what they need to do, and if they won't, we're going to go to the next step," said Mayor Otis Johnson at a news conference.
Mr. Johnson noted that as he arrived for the meeting with reporters, he found the parking area behind City Hall littered with cigarette butts.
City ordinances allow for fines of up to $110 for littering, city spokesman Bret Bell said. But officials will set a lower fine for cigarette litter - probably about $50.
Michael Eriksen's opinion column hit so many good points ("U.S. lags in war against a mass killer --- smoking," @issue, Jan. 16). When the first report to the surgeon general came out in 1964, there were 50 million cigarette smokers; 45 years later there are 45 million. That isn't much progress. Much is due to low taxes, which don't deter youth smoking. Plus lawmakers in state legislatures and Congress have not taken this seriously and have taken too much money from the tobacco cartel.
Eriksen has an ally in state Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Savannah) who has introduced a bill to raise the Georgia excise tax on cigarettes by $1 a pack. However, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle doesn't want to raise taxes, which means he wants nonsmokers to continue to pay for tobacco-caused diseases, and that is not fair. We can no longer afford the losses in health, wealth and lives to smokers and nonsmokers.
Do we pay now, or do we pay a lot more later? The reason for my question revolves around Georgia's opportunity to provide tobacco cessation benefits to state employees, a necessary health service Georgia does not currently offer.
According to the Georgia Division of Public Health, more than 10,000 Georgians die of tobacco-related illnesses every year. And, when you consider the emotional and physical pain associated with those diseases and deaths, not to mention the more than $1.8 billion price tag paid by Georgia taxpayers to tend to the sick, the simple argument for state-sponsored tobacco cessation becomes not only easy to understand, but compelling.
In Floyd County, the community that I live and work in as a family physician, we have the highest tobacco use rate in the entire state of Georgia. . . .
Physicians will confirm and study after study shows that nicotine, the addictive substance in cigarettes and other tobacco products, is actually more addictive than heroin. This helps explain why quitting is so difficult for so many tobacco users. It used to be that we, as doctors, had no way to help our patients stop using tobacco. The only advice we could offer them was to "hang in there." Today, we can offer them so much more, including counseling and medication to help them stop their tobacco use. . . .
It is my hope that our state leaders will actually act and take the leadership role our state needs in providing better health for state workers, sending a clear message to all Georgia businesses that they should follow suit.
For too long, we've only treated people when they are sick or after they develop costly, debilitating chronic conditions caused by tobacco. Let's stop that trend, save money and ultimately save lives.