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Minnesota puts more health care cost data online  

Minnesota residents got access to more online health care cost information on Wednesday, but they're still a ways off from tapping into easy price-quality comparisons that could force efficiencies.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty showed off the improvement to a nonprofit Web site, mnhealthscores.org, at a news conference where he also championed $47 million in previously appropriated grants to help communities curb smoking and obesity.

That prevention spending, approved by the Legislature in 2008, survived the Republican governor's own proposal earlier this year to cut the grants in half to help balance the budget. . . .

The prevention grants will go to 39 local and tribal governments, paying for projects such as college smoking bans and quit-smoking programs, safe walking routes for schoolchildren and fresh produce in city neighborhoods. The changes are supposed to save the state $1.9 billion by 2015 as people lose weight and stop smoking.

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Minnesota puts more health care cost data online  

Minnesota residents got access to more online health care cost information on Wednesday, but they're still a ways off from tapping into easy price-quality comparisons that could force efficiencies.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty showed off the improvement to a nonprofit Web site, mnhealthscores.org, at a news conference where he also championed $47 million in previously appropriated grants to help communities curb smoking and obesity.

That prevention spending, approved by the Legislature in 2008, survived the Republican governor's own proposal earlier this year to cut the grants in half to help balance the budget. . . .

The prevention grants will go to 39 local and tribal governments, paying for projects such as college smoking bans and quit-smoking programs, safe walking routes for schoolchildren and fresh produce in city neighborhoods. The changes are supposed to save the state $1.9 billion by 2015 as people lose weight and stop smoking.

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Smoke-free workplaces? The entire property? 

The AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project is about making the healthy choice the easy choice, and local business representatives learned how they can make it an easy choice for their employees to quit smoking.

“It’s still a leading cause of illness and death in America, and it’s preventable. It is an addiction and a very challenging thing,” said Joel Spoonheim, director of health initiatives with Blue Zones.

Kelli Thielges, Wellness Manager, Schwan’s Shared Services LLC, spoke Tuesday in the Freeborn Room of the Freeborn County Government Center about Schwan’s policy to prohibit smoking on company property. She also spoke about the businesses partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota to provide employee assistance programs and nicotine replacement therapy to all employees to help them quit smoking.

Thielges said she turned to her father, a former smoker, for advice to get the project going. He told her most smokers want to quit.

Her father said he wanted to quit for three reasons: expense, family and his workplace banned indoor smoking.

Since he couldn’t smoke indoors at work, it was an extra inconvenience to go outside.

But the biggest motivation was to his grandchildren . . .

From a business perspective, Thielges said the initiative needed to be profitable, and she said she tells management the program pays for itself. She estimated the program cost $155,000 and the cost savings were estimated to be about $222,743 — a net savings of $70,743.

In 2008, 699 employees were enrolled in the tobacco cessation program, and in 2007, 86 were enrolled in the program the entire year, Thielges said. Six months into the program, 119 of 699 said they had not used tobacco in the previous 30 days, she said.

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ClearWay Minnesota(SM) Adds New Director of Research 

ClearWay Minnesota announced today that Dr. Raymond Boyle, Ph.D., M.P.H., will be the new Director of Research for the organization. Dr. Boyle has training in Health Education and Epidemiology from the University of Oregon and the University of Minnesota.

"We are very excited about this new addition to ClearWay Minnesota and our research department," said David Willoughby, Chief Executive Officer of ClearWay Minnesota. "Dr. Boyle is well respected in his work on tobacco control and will help us continue to achieve our goals of reducing the harm of tobacco in Minnesota."

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Class Action Notice for Minnesota Light Cigarette Litigation From Lommen, Abdo, Cole, King & Stageberg, P.A. 

Court ordered Class Notice in Curtis, et al., v Altria Group, Inc. and Philip Morris USA, Inc., et al., court File No. 27-CV-01-18042 (action filed 11/28/01).

If you purchased Marlboro Lights cigarettes in Minnesota at any time before November 30, 2004, this class action notice may affect your rights.

A class action lawsuit involving the marketing, advertising and promotion of Marlboro Lights cigarettes is pending in Hennepin County, Minnesota, entitled Curtis, et al., v Altria Group, Inc. and Philip Morris USA, Inc., Court File No. 27-CV-01-18042. This notice is to inform you of the Court's decision to certify a Plaintiff Class (the "Class"), the nature of Plaintiffs' claims, and your right to participate in or exclude yourself from the class.

This notice tells you about the case, about your rights and responsibilities, and what to do if you decide to participate or not participate in this case.

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Kids Launch Campaign Against Second Hand Smoke 

Children from Duluth's East Hillside shared results Thursday from surveys they conducted in hopes to end second hand smoke inhalation at DTA stations.

Children from the "Mind 2 Mind" summer camp program, along with the American Lung Association in Minnesota, have launched a tobacco free DTA campaign called "Let Us Breathe."

In the last three months the youth conducted 211 five-question surveys at the Duluth downtown transit centers.

The results found that 87% of respondents recognized that smoking around children at bus stations was a problem, and 75% wanted to see a change.

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Confessions of a smoker: Dave Thune ready to quit (again) 

Editor's Note: We caught up with St. Paul Council Member Dave Thune, who spearheaded the St. Paul smoking ban, which kicked in about six months ago. We quizzed him about starting to smoke again--at least he was honest ...) . . .

Pulse: A long time ago there was a report out that said it was more difficult to quit smoking than to quit heroin.

Thune: I’ve never been hooked on heroin (laughs), but I’ve heard the same thing. In fact, Zyban is a drug that they used initially to get people off cocaine.

Pulse: That’s kind of sobering.

Thune: Oh yeah. This isn’t any kiddie toy addiction. ||

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ARCHIVE: Order regarding Privilege and the Crime-Fraud Exception and Setting Forth Procedures to Determine Privilege Beginning with the Liggett Documents (May 9, 1997) 

Conclusion

Pursuant to the Attorneys General Settlement Agreement dated 3/20/97, Liggett has produced documents for which it claimed privilege. Liggett has waived its privilege with respect to certain of those documents, and such documents have been ordered produced to the Plaintiffs herein. Defendants claim a joint defense privilege with respect to the remaining documents produced by Liggett. Plaintiffs, however, have made a prima facie case to invoke the crime-fraud exception. Thus, further review of the remaining Liggett documents by the Special Master is warranted. Such review shall proceed according to the procedures established herein by the Special Master and approved by this Court, which procedures shall apply to all parties' allegedly privileged documents unless otherwise ordered.

K.J.F.

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LILEKS: Is it Art? The courts say no, but who makes up these rules? 

The Appeals Court has settled the issue for good with a decision you can sum up thusly: Oh, c'mon.

It's obvious the bar's managers were trying to get around the law, right? They weren't making a grand philosophical point about the nature of Art. They just wanted to let consenting adults light up a nail indoors without standing outside where the winter wind flays faces to the bone. But if they said it's art, well ... isn't it? . . .

But this goes against everything we've been told about Art for the past 50 years. Art is not a matter of conforming to academic rules set down by stern, gray-haired men in frock coats and watch chains; Art is what you say it is. . . .

If the bar folks filmed the event as part of a 19-hour-long video installation, they would have had a better case. If they'd had a grant, even better. But no. Here we are: It's not art if the court says it isn't, and that's the part that ought to rankle.

On the other hand, on behalf of everyone who has paid admission to a gallery only to find big canvases covered in black paint and Lucky Charms -- let the lawsuits begin!

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EDITORIAL: Editor: Bar owner deserves answer 

What is the definition of a theatrical production?

That’s the question Tom Marinaro, owner of Tank’s Bar in Babbitt, wanted the Minnesota Court of Appeals to answer.

While it is clear to anyone that if a bar holds a “theater night” with patrons wearing badges that say “actor” would seem a violation of the state ban on smoking in workplaces, how does the law delineate what is a real theater production and what isn’t? It is a speech question that can be hard to pin down.

The bar owner deserves a clarification on this question — mostly so another bar doesn’t try it again.

It is poor jurisprudence to sidestep the heart of an argument in an appeal and simply rule against Tank’s Bar. It’s like a parent saying “Because I said so.” . . .

Now judges across the state are left to determine what is and what isn’t theater. Good luck.

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Court denies bar’s ‘Gunsmoke’ appeal  

Smokers at a Babbitt bar were not engaged in a “theatrical performance” and consequently the district court made the right call when it found the owner of the bar guilty of smoking in a public place in violation of Minnesota law, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

Tom Marinaro, owner of Tank’s Bar, was accused of violating the state’s Freedom to Breathe act . . .

Marinaro contended that Gun SMOKE Monologues was a form of improvisational theater in which actors performed without a script.

“There was no discernable evidence of a theatrical production,” 6th Judicial District Judge James Florey wrote in a memorandum to his decision. “The mere addition of wearing a badge that says ‘Actor’ does not create a theatrical production. The Gun SMOKE Monologues has no costumes, script, director, doesn’t take place on a stage or set apart from the general bar area and according to testimony is indiscernible from the general activities taking place in Tank’s Bar before the smoking ban went into effect, but for the ‘Actor’ name tags.”

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• State of Minnesota, Respondent, vs. Thomas Eugene Marinaro, Appellant. (PDF) 

S Y L L A B U S

The district court did not err by concluding that customers of appellant's bar were not engaged in a "theatrical performance" while smoking in the bar on the date of the alleged offense. Accordingly, the district court did not err by finding appellant guilty of allowing smoking in a public place in violation of Minnesota Statutes section 144.417, subdivision 2(a) (Supp. 2007). . . .

The district court did not err by concluding that the conduct of the customers of Tank's Bar on the afternoon of March 14, 2008, was not within the theatrical-performance exception to the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act's prohibition on smoking in bars. Therefore, the district court did not err by finding Marinaro guilty of the charged offense. 

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• Appeals Court: Bar Violated Smoking Ban 

The Minnesota Court of Appeals has agreed with a judge's ruling that "theater nights" in a northeastern Minnesota bar were violating the state's smoking ban.

Tank's Bar in Babbitt had allowed patrons to smoke under a loophole in the smoking ban that allows actors to smoke as part of a theatrical production.

But a St. Louis County judge ruled in May that wearing a badge that says "Actor" doesn't make it a theatrical production. On Tuesday, the appeals court agreed.

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Experts hope cigarette taxes will help curb smoking  

The federal tax increase was more than 60 cents, going from 39 cents to $1.01. When combined with the state tax of $1.504, Minnesotans are paying $2.51 in total tax on a pack of cigarettes.

The end result in Minnesota is a pack of most brands of cigarettes now costs more than $5 - in some cases more than $6 - and the cost of a carton of cigarettes averages close to $50.

The tax is part of the federal initiative Healthy People 2010 set up to achieve national health objectives. However, not enough time has passed since the tax went into effect to determine if it will result in decreased tobacco use, local and state health officials said.

Claudia Fercello, of the Minnesota Department of Health's Tobacco Prevention and Control Office, is hopeful it will have an effect.

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Fire at airport causes evacuation in baggage claim area 

A fire at the Minneapolis airport closed an area in the baggage claim area Wednesday afternoon.

According to a Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport spokesman, a janitor went outside to clean the cigarette butts near an airport entrance on the lower level. He sprayed them down to make sure they were all out, but one remained lit. So when he dumped the garbage in the janitor's closet a fire started.

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