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TAHLEQUAH -- In an effort to keep area residents healthy, Thursday, has been designated as Great American Smoke-out Day in the Cherokee Nation. In honor of the event, the tribe is offering classes and incentives to help smokers and tobacco users stop for at least one day.
Cherokee Nation Healthy Nation will be celebrating the day by offering free cessation kits and prizes to all who commit to stop smoking and using tobacco for at least one day. Resources
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Anti-smoking proponents say they will push once again for legislation to close loopholes in state law that permit smoking in some bars and restaurants.
The intent is to protect workers from the health effects of secondhand smoke, representatives of the American Heart Association and the state Health Department said.
On Thursday proponents said they would seek legislation similar to a bill that died in the Oklahoma House this year.
The bill would remove exemptions to anti-smoking legislation approved in 2003. The exemptions allow smoking in stand-alone bars and in separately-ventilated smoking rooms in restaurants. . . .
Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease, said Dr. Alan Blum, a family medicine professor at the University of Alabama and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society.
Blum said restaurant groups that oppose bans are influenced by tobacco companies that want to protect their profits.
"Basically, it's about health over money," Blum said.
Anti-smoking advocates called on lawmakers Thursday to make bars and restaurants in Oklahoma smoke-free by closing loopholes in the state law restricting smoking in public places.
Officials from the American Heart Association and the state Department of Health said they will support legislation next year to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, similar to a bill that died in the Oklahoma House last spring.
Oklahoma was among the first states in the nation to regulate smoking in public places in 2003. But the legislation allows smoking in separate smoking rooms in restaurants and stand-alone bars. When the bill died in the House last spring, Rep. John Trebilcock, R-Broken Arrow, chairman of the House Public Health Committee, said he was not inclined to give it a hearing because of the investment restaurants had made to comply with state smoking restrictions.
Since Oklahoma's law went into effect, 27 other states have adopted comprehensive smoke-free laws that ban smoking in public places, said Marilyn Davidson, government relations director for the American Heart Association in Oklahoma City.
Several area Indian smoke shops are selling cigarettes without a new kind of fire-safety paper required by legislation enacted last year, a Tulsa World investigation shows.
The World bought several packs of discount-brand cigarettes at smoke shops in Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Sapulpa and Beggs. A new state law requires cigarettes to be wrapped in fire-safe paper, beginning Jan. 1, 2009, said Paula Ross, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Tax Commission.
To delay the law's effect, several area smoke shops appear to be selling old inventory bought before the law took effect about 10 months ago. The law allows retailers to sell old inventory until Jan. 1, 2010.
"Our plan for after January 1, 2010, is to contact the fire marshal's office if nonfire-safe cigarettes are found during a routine compliance check," Ross said.
The Oklahoma Tax Commission is missing out on more than $1 million a month in tax collections by refusing to strongly enforce state tobacco tax laws, an Oklahoma City wholesaler has alleged.
"Legitimate distributors are being forced out of business," said tobacco wholesaler Alan Beck, who operates a wholesale business at 2305 S Agnew Ave.
Beck said he has complained to Tax Commission officials for more than four years about the "blatantly illegal" sale of untaxed tobacco products by a few dishonest Oklahoma wholesale operators.
Beck said he has repeatedly provided the Tax Commission with the names of businesses committing tax fraud, explained how their schemes work and told authorities how tax auditors can document the illegal conduct. . . .
A northeastern Oklahoma wholesaler said he sometimes wonders if certain illegal wholesalers are being protected.
Beck said he is aware of one large wholesaler who had his license revoked but said a relative just took over the operation. , , ,
Dishonest wholesalers, however, are buying cigarettes from importers and other sources, then selling the unstamped cigarettes to retailers for cash at discount prices, he said. The retailers then sell the unstamped packs to regular customers or to customers who come in at night or on weekends when store owners don't think enforcement officers are working, he said.
Welch said enforcement officers sometimes work on nights and weekends to try to thwart such schemes and have an array of other investigative techniques they also use.
Beck said fraud is even more rampant on other tobacco products such as cigars, snuff and chewing tobacco because there is no tax stamp system for those products to help monitor compliance.
WICHITA, Kan. -- A federal judge has tossed out key evidence in the case against a Kansas tobacco wholesaler and his business associates who are accused of trying to avoid paying $25 million in cigarette taxes to Oklahoma and Indian tribes.
U.S. District Judge Monti Belot ruled Thursday that a Kansas Highway Patrol officer had no reason to suspect that the driver of a U-Haul van that was found to be loaded with cigarettes was violating any laws, and the search was therefore illegal.
"The officer testified that he was curious, and that does not rise to the level required by the Constitution," said Jack Focht, the attorney representing the driver of the van, Danny Davis.
It is unclear what impact the barred evidence will have on the prosecution's case.
The state Supreme Court has dismissed an injunction had barred state collection of cigarette taxes from tobacco stores licensed by the Osage Nation.
Justices last week ruled that a lower court didn't have jurisdiction to stop the Oklahoma Tax Commission from collecting 86 cents per pack from the tribe's licensed tobacco retailers.
The justices noted that a tobacco compact between the parties required any disputes be resolved through binding arbitration.
For smokers trying to quit their habit, that "last" cigarette is usually the final one in the pack.
To an addict, cigarettes are so valued that not finishing the pack would be downright wasteful, said Oklahoma State University researcher Jared Dempsey.
Even those who have quit but relapse and buy a pack are likely to smoke the entire thing, further derailing their cessation.
His solution? Donate those unused cigarettes to science.
Dempsey and his research team will use the cigarettes to help others stop smoking and to help understand the impact of visual cues on an addict's brain.
Dempsey will use some of the cigarettes in photographs of smokers and smoking that scientists across that world can use when testing brain reaction to positive and negative stimuli. . . .
The cessation treatment Dempsey advocates is called brand fading. Smokers are weaned off cigarettes by lowering nicotine levels, by only smoking brands they don't like and with nicotine patches.
The Tribal Council sustained Principal Chief Chad Smith's veto of an act that would have provided monthly tax rebates to Cherokee Nation-licensed border smoke shops during an Aug. 10 meeting at the Tribal Complex.
By a 9-8 vote, the act didn't get the required two-thirds majority to override Smith's veto.
Sponsored by Dist. 9 Tribal Councilor Chuck Hoskin, the act would have protected the "viability of Cherokee Nation licensed smoke shops that are designated as a 'border' smoke shop" by giving the shops a monthly rebate.
According to the act, border shops would have received $1.50 back from the tribe for each carton of cigarettes sold. The rebate would have been in effect for 18 months or until a neighboring state's tax rate increased, the act states.
Border shops are tribally licensed smoke shops located within 20 miles of the Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas state lines. Border shop owners have said they have lost business under the tribe's current tobacco compact with the state, which raised cigarette prices at those locations by 61 cents per pack.
Although illegal sales of tobacco to minors nationally are at historic lows, some state officials fear that Oklahoma sales might have risen enough to trigger the loss of $7 million in federal funds used to treat substance abuse.
“We are on pace to go over the threshold this year if nothing improves,” said Jessica Hawkins, director of prevention services for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
Last year, 18.1 percent of Oklahoma retailers were found to have sold tobacco to minors, up from 12.5 percent the previous year, she said.
The next reporting period for these sales ends Sept. 30. The agency must submit its report in December, Hawkins said. . . .
On Tuesday, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released a report lauding all 50 states and the District of Columbia for reducing illegal sales of tobacco to minors below that 20-percent threshold.
The late Oklahoma congressman Mike Synar was author of the 1993 amendment that requires states to maintain a compliance rate of at least 80 percent on illegal tobacco sales to minors to keep the federal block grant funding. . . .
But Jim Hughes, assistant director for the Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission, said the state’s compliance rate appears to be higher this year.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the Oklahoma Tax Commission and tax commissioners filed by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation after the commission seized what it calls contraband cigarettes from tribal delivery trucks.
In his decision issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Terence Kern of the Tulsa-based Northern District of Oklahoma granted the OTC's motion to dismiss the seizure case because the commission's "sovereign immunity" exempts it from suit.
He also granted the OTC commissioners' motions to dismiss because, under the tribe's arguments, the tribal entity does not constitute a "person" who can bring suit.
The tribe filed the suit in May after the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, working with the Oklahoma Tax Commission, stopped three different tribal vehicles, and seized a total of about $100,000 worth of tobacco out of two of the vehicles. The third vehicle did not have any tobacco in it.
A Republican senator who is also a doctor is calling for a new era of Prohibition — outlawing cigarette smoking and other tobacco use.
The unlikely demand comes from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of the staunchest free-market conservatives in the Senate.
Coburn, one of two doctors in the Senate, is well-aware of the health risks that come with smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco.
“What we should be doing is banning tobacco,” Coburn said in a recent Senate floor speech he gave during a debate on a tobacco regulation bill. “Nobody up here has the courage to do that. It is a big business. There are millions of Americans who are addicted to nicotine. And even if they are not addicted to the nicotine, they are addicted to the habit.” . . .
Coburn made his case against the bill because he said it would send a mixed message to the FDA, which is charged with ensuring the safety of food and drugs. Coburn’s argument is that there’s nothing safe about tobacco and that it would make more sense for the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to regulate it.
Coburn suggests that putting cigarettes and chew under the authority of an agency that to this point has been tasked with ensuring product safety would only make it tougher to ban tobacco someday.
A federal judge on Wednesday asked the Oklahoma Tax Commission not to stop Muscogee (Creek) Nation vehicles that are transporting tobacco until a judge can rule on part of a lawsuit filed against the commission by the tribe.
“I hope this doesn’t cause a flurry of vans filled with illegal cigarettes traveling the roads late at night, but I would ask that you stop this (until the court can rule),” U.S. District Judge Terence Kern said Wednesday.
The tribe filed the suit against the Tax Commission on Friday in Tulsa’s federal district court after agents working with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol stopped trucks on May 13 and May 15. Agents seized $40,000 worth of cigarettes in the first stop and about $68,000 in the second.
Each stop and seizure happened without a warrant, without the driver’s consent and without probable cause, the tribe alleges.
Laura Clay says she was being poisoned by a neighbor's cigarette smoke.
Clay, 31, of Norman, said she started complaining to her landlord about the smoke coming in the vents of her apartment a short time after moving there in 2007. When her 8-year-old daughter's asthma worsened and her son was born prematurely in summer 2008, Clay quit asking and started demanding that something be done.
"They told me there was nothing they could do," Clay said, "that my neighbors had every right to smoke in their apartment. But we couldn't breathe." . . .
Then she started calling around for advice.
She reached Doug Matheny, tobacco use prevention chief for the state Health Department. He said secondhand smoke exposure in multi-unit housing like apartment complexes is an issue he regularly gets calls about.
Municipalities and counties across the country, including areas in Washington, California and Minnesota, have already banned or restricted smoking in multi-unit or public housing.
Matheny said Oklahoma isn't looking at policy options, but officials want to educate people about the health risks.
Percy Brown, project coordinator for the Tobacco Free Zone program, is working on a research project examining smoking trends in three of the Tulsa Housing Authority's 14 communities.
More than a decade ago, Oklahomans took a visionary step and locked in place 75 percent of the expected funds coming from the 1998 tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
Oklahoma voters invested the money in an endowment fund and formed a Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust to manage the millions of dollars expected from the lawsuit settlement. Oklahoma is the only state that has set aside the settlement earnings.
Earnings have grown over the years and now amount to more than $15 million per year. We are now 13th in the nation in funding for tobacco prevention and have received almost $90 million over the years. . . .
Now, lawmakers are likely to pass legislation asking voters to set aside 10 percent of the settlement funds for "adult" stem cell research. HR 1035, authored by Rep. John Enns of Enid, passed the House 99-0 and is currently before the state Senate.
If approved, it would set aside money for specific programs other than the ones that the TSET board selects through its program of priorities.
If approved by voters in November, it could roll back the progress currently being made in Oklahoma's tobacco use rates. Adult smoking rates have moved below 25 percent for the first time since the endowment was put in place.