Email
Password
(Forgot Password?)
Three metro counties will spend about $204,000 from state health-improvement grants over the next two years to help apartment landlords and renters make their buildings smoke-free.
They start the effort with a survey showing that half of local renters would consider moving to a smoke-free building, including 16 percent of smokers.
"We know that many people want to live in smoke-free environments, and we know that can improve public health," said Lisa Mueller, who administers the state grants for Hennepin County.
Hennepin, Ramsey and Dakota counties, as well as Minneapolis, are pooling part of their state grants to hire the nonprofit Association for Nonsmokers Minnesota to advise them on voluntary non-smoking efforts in multi-unit housing.
The association used part of that grant money to conduct the renters survey. It was conducted by Wilder Research and released to coincide with the annual Great American Smokeout, a stop-smoking effort started in 1974 in Minnesota.
Jump to full article »
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.
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.
a new study from Minnesota finds that there is no significant difference between partial bans, complete bans and even no bans, in terms of their impact on number of employees in restaurants and bars.
"This is the first study to compare the economic consequences of partial bans, total bans and no bans on smoking in public places. Because they don't have any differential effect on employment in restaurants and bars, it is obvious that a total ban on smoking is the only way to protect employees and patrons from second hand smoke, which is known to cause lung cancer, heart disease and respiratory diseases" according to study author Elizabeth Klein, Ph.D., MPH, Assistant Professor in the Health Behavior & Health Promotion Division of the College of Public Health at Ohio State University. Klein conducted the study while she was at the University of Minnesota. The study is published in the June issue of Prevention Science, a peer reviewed journal of the Society for Prevention Research.
Klein studied ten cities in Minnesota from 2003 to 2006
Crossing state lines into Wisconsin has been an option for many Minnesotans dead-set on smoking in bars. But that will change next year under the state's recently passed smoking ban.
Gov. Jim Doyle plans to sign the ban, which will make smoking illegal in almost every workplace in the state when it takes effect July 2010.
Mike Maguire, spokesman for the American Cancer Society, calls the new policy "a step forward for the health of folks in Wisconsin."
But walk into Ellie's On Main in Hudson, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who agrees with him.
"I remember sitting out on my balcony last year and being able to smell someone smoking," she said. "Even if you can't smell it, there's toxins in the air."
The number of apartment buildings with non-smoking policies -- while small -- is growing, according to Live Smoke Free, a program of the Association for Nonsmokers-Minnesota funded by a Minnesota Department of Health grant.
The group has identified about 280 multi-unit apartment complexes with at least one non-smoking building, said Carissa Duke, community outreach coordinator for the organization. About a half dozen housing co-operatives and condominiums also have gone smoke free. All told, the smoke-free buildings account for about 2 percent of the state's rental properties, she said.
Waterstone Place is the fourth area smoke-free apartment building managed by Steven Scott Management, which handles 62 buildings in the Twin Cities.
A new electronic smoking device that provides nicotine without the unhealthy cigarette byproducts has sold out in a western Minnesota test run and could reach businesses in Northeastern Minnesota later this month.
Though they have raised concerns among some health officials, the electronic cigarettes were flying off the shelves Feb. 13 at eight retailers in Alexandria. The test run held by Henry’s Foods, an Alexandria-based distributor, was so successful that the e-cigarette could be on shelves in an estimated?250 convenience stores or bars from Cloquet to Grand Rapids by mid-March, said Terry Loeffler, the director of sales and marketing at Henry’s Foods.
“It has exceeded our expectations,” Loeffler said. “Every business that I’ve been in has said yes [to sell the product]. That is not an exaggeration — 100 percent.”
Henry’s Foods, which will control the majority of the market for Fifty-One brand e-cigarettes in Minnesota and North and South Dakota, intends to establish a partnership with another distributor for the e-cigs in Duluth within three months, Loeffler said.
Fifty-One promotes itself as a healthier alternative to traditional tobacco cigarettes while maintaining the actions of the smoking habit.
Almost half the states now have comprehensive smoking bans on the books, but no neighboring states have restrictions quite as stringent as what's being proposed in South Dakota.
"We've all seen the studies that show the danger of secondhand smoke. People who don't smoke are involuntarily subjected to it," said Sen. Stan Adelstein, R-Rapid City, a co-sponsor of the bill. "That's the reason for the total removal of exceptions."
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia, including Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska and Montana, have passed comprehensive smoking laws, according to the American Lung Association.
Exceptions in those states include hotel rooms, tobacco product shops, scientific studies and traditional Native American ceremonies.
Now bar customers are showing up with little smokeless nicotine inhalers that pretend to be cigarettes, right down to the lighted red tip.
And although state health officials say the battery-powered atomizers -- called "e-cigarettes" -- don't appear to violate the ban, they are causing some confusion, with at least a few customers being asked to take them outside.
They include Carrie Goutermont of Silver Bay, Minn. She went online and bought her Smart Fixx Super-Mini Electronic Cigarette and extra liquid nicotine cartridges two weeks ago, hoping it would help her quit smoking. . . .
Cheesy or not, her faux cigarette so resembled the real thing that Tom (Charlie) Byrnes, manager of the Silver Bay Municipal Liquor Store and Bar, decided one recent Saturday night to tell her not to "light up." Two other customers who bought their own e-cigs on her recommendation were likewise told to keep their fake smokes stowed.
Byrnes said the problem wasn't secondhand mist or smell, because he couldn't detect any.
"The problem is, they look like a real cigarette," Byrnes said. "Other people coming in the bar will think someone is violating the ban, or they will want to 'smoke' too."
Michael Dahl has smoked two packs of Camel Lights every day for more than 20 years. David Scott Huber has smoked nearly a pack of Camel Lights, Winston Select or Winston Lights every day for the past 10 years. The two Minnesotans are now suing the cigarette manufacturer, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, on behalf of all people in the state who have smoked their “light” brands over the years.
The plaintiffs aren’t claiming that their health has suffered as a result of their tobacco use, but rather that they were deceived by the company’s advertising and marketing about the nature and effect of smoking “light” cigarettes.
The case stalled for a while due to a split in the U.S. circuit courts over whether the claims were pre-empted. But the decision from the U.S. Supreme Court last month in Altria Group Inc. v. Good that state law fraud claims relating to cigarette packaging and marketing are not pre-empted by federal law has allowed Dahl, Huber and many other plaintiffs to begin moving forward again.
Minneapolis attorney Gale Pearson, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said it’s important the tobacco companies don’t get away with deceiving customers into thinking light cigarettes are better for them than regular cigarettes.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling breathed new life into at least three local cases against Big Tobacco that had been in danger of being snuffed out.
In a 5-4 ruling early last week, the nation’s highest court found that smokers are not barred by federal law from suing cigarette makers for deceiving them about the health risks from “light” cigarettes.
While Minnesota entered into a $6 billion settlement with cigarette manufacturers in 1998, the agreement only blocks state suits, not private litigation. The issue locally was whether federal cigarette labeling and advertising law pre-empted a fraud action brought under Minnesota law. A year ago, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled in Dahl, et al. v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., et al. that federal law did not shield tobacco companies from state-law fraud and misrepresentation claims over how they advertised “light” cigarettes. R.J. Reynolds sought review from the Minnesota Supreme Court, which stayed the case pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s resolution of the case decided last week.
The U.S. high court decision paves the way for the R.J. Reynolds case – and two other similar cases in Minnesota trial courts – to proceed to trial, according to Kay Nord Hunt, one of the attorneys representing the R.J. Reynolds plaintiffs on appeal.
As a chemist at 3M, she's had plenty of chances to join health and fitness programs on the job. But like many Minnesotans, she's simply chosen not to.
Now, that choice is starting to get costly.
At a growing number of workplaces, employees are paying a price for refusing to take part in wellness programs. Some face hundreds of dollars a year in higher costs for health insurance. Some are missing out on cash and gifts used to reward their colleagues -- not for their work, but for the way they eat, exercise and conduct their lives. . . .
"I think everyone is collectively beginning to understand that the 400-pound gorilla in the room is health and wellness," said Dr. Ted Loftness, a vice president at Medica Health Plans. "We can't dance around it anymore. We have to do something about it."
Experts say that upwards of 40 percent of U.S. medical costs are linked to obesity, smoking and other lifestyle factors -- a statistic not lost on the nation's employers. As a result, more than half of large corporations now use incentives to get employees to shape up, a 2008 survey found.
But in the process, employers are pushing the boundary between work life and private life.
At 3M, General Mills and many other Twin Cities worksites, employees can earn up to $100 in cash or shave hundreds of dollars off their health insurance if they (and sometimes their spouses) take a "health risk assessment" -- a detailed survey of their personal health habits.
Some companies are tying payments to medical test results.
Minnesota high school girls aren't smoking as much, but a new 2008 state survey finds their male classmates haven't kicked the habit.
Only 19.1 percent of high-schoolers smoked cigarettes in the month before their surveys, down from 32.4 percent in 2000.
Similarly, only 3.4 percent of middle-schoolers reported smoking cigarettes in the previous 30 days, down from 9.1 in 2000.
Girls accounted for most of the recent decline, though. From 2005 to 2008, the rate of tobacco use dropped 31 percent among high school girls but not at all for boys.
Health officials were still pleased with the results. Smoke-free laws appear to be paying off
The stream of customers Monday at D & L Spur in Fountain City, Wis., confused owner Lynn Biesanz.
It's not uncommon for Winonans to cross the Interstate Bridge to patronize the store. But it is unusual to see so many buying whole cartons of cigarettes, she said. Several shoppers asked if the store had the "normal" cigarettes, and one man closely inspected his pack before buying it. "I wasn't sure what was going on," she said.
A new Minnesota law requiring the sale of so-called fire-safe cigarettes went into effect Monday. The law, which doesn't apply in Wisconsin, surprised local retailers, even as smokers drove a few extra miles to buy cigarettes without the safety features.
'Fire safe' cigarettes have hit the shelves in Minnesota, complying with a new state law going into effect on Dec. 1.
The new law requires all cigarettes sold in our state to be 'fire safe,' meaning the cigarette self-extinguishes if left unattended too long. The most common fire-safe technology used by cigarette manufacturers is to wrap the cigarette in three thin bands of less porous paper that act as 'speed bumps' that make the burning of the tobacco slow down and eventually, go out. . . .
Minnesota joins New York, Vermont, California, Illinois, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts in adopting 'fire safe' laws.