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Mainers disagree on beach smoking ban 

Smokers heading to Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough Beach will no longer be allowed to light up there.

Gov. John Baldacci earlier this month signed into law a bill prohibiting smoking at Maine’s state park beaches, which include Crescent and Scarborough.

The bill, LD 67 – “An Act To Protect Beaches in Maine’s State Parks” – was sponsored by state Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, and passed in the state Senate in April. Baldacci signed it on May 13.

The smoking ban applies to areas within 20 feet of beaches, playgrounds, snack bars, group picnic shelters, enclosed areas or public restrooms.

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• Smoking Banned At State Parks And Beaches 

Governor John Baldacci today signed into law a bill to prohibit smoking at state parks, beaches and historic sites. The bill's sponsor and the Department of Conservation don't think it will be difficult to enforce, but others question the need for such legislation.

Democratic state Senator John Nutting, of Leeds, says his bill to ban smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products at Maine's public parks and beaches stems from concerns about second hand smoke and littering. "A constituent last fall wrote me a very impassioned letter, who had taken her young two-year-old daughter to several state park beaches and always being a typical two-year-old, when she was on the beach she liked to put things in her mouth and ended up putting a lot of cigarette butts in her mouth."

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Final vote nears for patio smoking ban 

A bill modeled after a Portland ordinance that limits smoking on restaurant decks and patios is facing its final vote in the Maine Senate.

The House on Thursday voted 88-50 to give final approval to the bill, which would prohibit smoking in outdoor eating areas of restaurants. The measure doesn't include a time restriction as the original bill did.

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Maine Youth Takes on Big Tobacco 

The Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine and the Maine Youth Action Network (MYAN) along with a Youth Planning Team is hosting the 5th Annual Stop. Quit. RESIST! Anti-Tobacco Summit, which brings together youth from all over Maine to join with adult advocates to fight against Big Tobacco. The Anti-Tobacco Summit will be held at the Augusta Civic Center on Thursday, April 30th and Friday, May 1st. Participants who attend the Summit will gain resources, connections, and skills from various workshops that strive to give participants tools and information to make the communities of Maine healthier.

Since 2005, the Stop. Quit. Resist! Summit has promoted three main goals. The first is to stop the big tobacco companies' lies by exposing the truth. The second goal is to help people who smoke to quit the habit and to teach youth who do not smoke how to support individuals who are trying to quit. The last goal that the Summit promotes is to help youth resist the pressure to smoke and to help others do the same. Those three main principals have made this Summit a success from the start.

This year's keynote will feature Rick Stoddard

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EDITORIAL: Times do not favor a higher cigarette tax 

The bad budget news keeps coming, and while Gov. Badacci has rightly said he would not support broad-based tax increases to make the numbers work, sin taxes and other small levies will no doubt be considered. Included in the discussion will be higher tobacco taxes, which usually make sense as public policy.

These pages have long supported higher cigarette taxes because they provide a steady and predictible source of state revenue and they discourage smoking, especially among teens. This year, however, our support of higher tobacco taxes is limited.

One idea that will get a hearing is to raise the tax on tobacco products other than cigarettes to bring those items in line with cigarette taxes. This makes sense. . . .

Perhaps if the tobacco tax proceeds were given back in the form of a low-income tax credit, the economics could be made to play out differently.

But given the dire condition of the state budget - which has a $570 million hole in it - it's not reasonable to expect that the Legislature would hike the cigarette tax and then send the money out the door to help low-income Mainers.

Considering that reality, it's best that lawmakers equalize tabacco taxes for various products, but keep a hike in the cigarette tax off the table.

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Smoking Ban on Beaches  

On Tuesday, the Maine senate voted to enact a bill that would ban smoking at state park beaches.

The bill bans smoking on state beaches, as well as places where people commonly congregate together at state parks or other historic sites.

It would apply only to areas within 20 feet of beaches, playgrounds, snack bars, group picnic shelters, enclosed areas, or public restrooms.

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EDITORIAL: Progress goes up in smoke  

THE USE OF billions in payments from the 1998 tobacco settlement to bring down the incidence of smoking, especially among young people, is a tale of two states. Maine, which had some of the highest rates of smoking in the country 10 years ago, has consistently spent a larger share of its settlement on smoking prevention and cessation programs - last year it was 62 percent of the recommendation of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Massachusetts, by contrast, spent 15 percent of the recommended amount, despite being an early national leader in anti-smoking campaigns.

The predictable results: Maine now has a lower percentage of high school students who smoke or use smokeless tobacco products than Massachusetts; indeed, the incidence of high school smoking declined 64 percent in Maine over the past 10 years.

The current budget crisis has put pressure on all states to divert even more tobacco settlement money to other uses. But Massachusetts has been a particular laggard, spending just 1.8 percent of the settlement funds as originally intended. . . .

The state's political leaders are forever saying that prevention is the best way to reduce healthcare costs and preserve the gains in access to care that have been made through the state's landmark universal coverage law. There's no good excuse for allowing quite so much in proven preventative measures to be squandered.

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New Report Shows New England States Spending Little on Tobacco Control Despite Receiving $1.8 Billion in Tobacco Funds 

The Presidents/CEO's of four major voluntary health organizations released a report today showing that New England States are not keeping their promise to use a significant portion of funds from the 1998 state tobacco settlement to reduce tobacco's toll on the states' children, families and communities. The report, released during a news conference at the Massachusetts State House, finds that more than 10 years after the settlement, none of the New England states is funding tobacco prevention at levels recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report, titled "SHORT CHANGED: BROKEN PROMISES ON TOBACCO CONTROL PLACE MILLIONS OF KIDS ACROSS NEW ENGLAND AT RISK FOR ADDICTION AND EARLY DEATH," is being released two days before the states receive their next round of multi-million dollar payments from the settlement. The report was compiled by the Washington, DC-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. View the full report.

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• SHORT CHANGED: BROKEN PROMISES ON TOBACCO CONTROL PLACE MILLIONS OF KIDS ACROSS NEW ENGLAND AT RISK FOR ADDICTION AND EARLY DEATH (PDF) 

Ten years after the November 1998 state tobacco settlement, we find that most of the New England states have failed to keep their promise to use a significant portion of the settlement funds to reduce tobacco’s terrible toll on America’s children, families and communities.

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• Report: NE states fall short on tobacco prevention 

Health advocates said Monday that New England states have failed to deliver on a pledge to use settlement money from tobacco companies to pay for prevention programs, with most states funding programs at just one fifth of recommended levels.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids released a report detailing how New England states will spend only 2.3 percent of the $1.8 billion in tobacco settlement and tax revenue on tobacco prevention programs this year when these programs save both lives and money by containing health care costs by preventing tobacco-related illness.

"We know for a fact that these programs save lives and reduce health care costs," said Don Gudaitis, CEO of the American Cancer Society's New England Division. "As more and more Americans face a threat of lack of access to health care and lack of access to health insurance, underfunding the most proven way to reduce health care costs is all the more intolerable."

Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island are funding tobacco prevention programs at less than 20 percent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommendations, according to the report.

The report also said Maine and Vermont are the only New England states funding tobacco prevention at half the CDC's recommended levels.

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Senate OKs amended bill to ban smoking at state beaches  

The Maine Senate gave initial approval Thursday, April 9, to an amended version of a bill that would ban smoking at State Park beaches.

Sen. John Nutting, D-Androscoggin County, sponsored the bill after a constituent told him that when she and her 1-year old daughter visited a state beach she found cigarette butts indiscriminately left in the sand.

During the bill's public hearing process, the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee amended the legislation to specify the smoking ban should include not just state beaches, but also places where people commonly congregate together at state parks or other historic sites.

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Bill To Ban Smoking On State Park Beaches Moves Forward 

The Maine senate has given initial approval to an amended version of a bill that would ban smoking at state park beaches.

The bill was sponsored by senator John Nutting. The ban would apply only to areas within 20 feet of beaches, playgrounds, snack bars, picnic or enclosed areas, and public restrooms.

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Bill restricts outdoor smoking in Maine 

A bill modeled after a Portland ordinance that limits smoking on restaurant decks and patios is on its way to the Maine House with a committee's endorsement.

Rep. Joan Cohen's bill has received the support of a majority of the Health and Human Services Committee.

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Bill restricts outdoor smoking in Maine 

A bill modeled after a Portland ordinance that limits smoking on restaurant decks and patios is on its way to the Maine House with a committee's endorsement.

Rep. Joan Cohen's bill has received the support of a majority of the Health and Human Services Committee.

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Officials: $530K in damage after Kittery fire; cause was cigarette 

A three-alarm blaze which raged through an Admiralty Village apartment complex Saturday night and left eight families without homes was caused by the careless disposal of smoking materials, fire officials say.

By Sunday morning, the cause of the fire in the naval housing complex had been determined by investigators from the Kittery Fire Department and the Office of the Maine State Fire Marshal. Fire Chief Dave O'Brien said the blaze was called in at about 7:39 p.m. after a cigarette was disposed of on a upper level deck at the rear of the Howard Street apartment complex, igniting pine needles and other debris in the area.

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