Email
Password
(Forgot Password?)
Fifteen Dan's and Macey's grocery stores no longer will sell tobacco products starting June 1, joining three other Utah supermarkets that have stopped selling cigarettes, company officials said on Thursday.
The stores, located from Logan to Utah County, join the two Dick's Markets in Centerville and Bountiful and a Ream's store in Provo that stopped tobacco sales in the mid-1990s.
Dave Wirthlin, president of Dick's Market, Dan's and Macey's, said the decision to stop selling tobacco products came from health concerns for employees and shoppers, which far outweigh financial impacts from lost sales.
"The long-term health effects of smoking on communities don't come close to any monetary gain from selling these products," said Wirthlin. "And it's inconsistent with our focus on a healthy lifestyle and family-first orientation that makes our stores unique."
Jump to full article »
Two of Utah’s major grocery stores will no longer sell tobacco products. The owner of the stores says that the change is to help promote healthy living.
Tobacco products will officially be taken off the shelves of Macey’s and Dan’s Food Stores on June 1st. President Dave Wirthlin says that they are very happy about the move and want to promote fresh products and good health.
“Tobacco is the only product that even when used as directed, causes harm to the user and the people in the near vicinity,” said Wirthlin.
With three news articles in less than a week about restricting and regulating the use of tobacco, I must throw in my 2 cents' worth. If I am to believe what has been reported, secondhand smoke is so absolutely horrific that to even catch a whiff of it in an outdoor area will cause me cancer.
That is the truth, and according to U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. This is the most obvious reason that Davis County has banned smoking in public and some private outdoor areas. So, why doesn't our government at the federal, state and local levels ban tobacco altogether?
The answer, of course, is that we are addicted as a society to tobacco, smokers physically and non-smokers to the tax revenues. . . .
So, welcome to Davis County, where is it legal to publicly purchase tobacco, but illegal to smoke it where anyone can get a whiff of it.
LAYTON -- Park visitors across the county will be greeted this spring with "no smoking signs."
South Weber already has all of its signs in place in its parks, health officials said.
Layton also has posted 40 "no smoking" signs.
West Point is ordering more signs so they can put them on the backstops of local baseball diamonds
The City Council's 4-1 vote prohibits smokers from lighting up in the city's parks, cemeteries, open spaces, recreation areas, transit stations and within 25 feet of bus stops or 50 feet of mass gatherings.
The sole naysayer, City Councilman Alan Summerhays, said the measure was too broad.
"I don't want people smoking around kids at baseball diamonds. But if they're going to smoke by themselves out in the middle of nowhere, let them kill themselves by themselves," the nonsmoker said Wednesday.
DRAPER - This city has become the latest to ban smoking in outdoor public areas.
The City Council's 4-1 vote prohibits smokers from lighting up in the city's parks, cemeteries, open space, recreation areas, transit stations and within 25 feet of bus stops or 50 feet of mass gatherings.
Draper and Holladay have joined a spate of other municipalities in outlawing outdoor smoking in parks and other public places.
Holladay has also outlawed alcohol in public places; the city had been one of few cities to allow public drinking.
On a day when The Associated Press is reporting that scientists have pinpointed a genetic link that makes people more likely to get hooked on tobacco, teens throughout the valley were working to clean up smokers' mess.
Members of OUTRAGE swarmed area parks on Tuesday, sweeping cigarette butts. The group works primarily to protect children from the effects of cigarettes, including second-hand smoke. According to the American Lung Association, secondhand smoke is responsible for as many as 300,000 lower-respiratory-tract infections in infants and results in up to 15,000 hospitalizations each year.
OUTRAGE members found most of the cigarette butts around playground equipment.
Holladay's City Council voted this week to douse smoking in outdoor public areas. Smokers no longer will be able to light up in the east-side city's parks, cemeteries or recreation areas. Smoking is OK on sidewalks and streets but not within 25 feet of a bus stop. "We felt that it was a health issue and wanted to make a statement in support of a healthy environment for our citizens," Mayor Dennis Webb said Friday.
WeDidItStory.com, a Web site promoting The TRUTH's ?eWe Did It? campaign, has unveiled a new set of electronic greeting cards (e-cards) for users to send to their loved ones as encouragement in quitting tobacco.
The Utah Department of Health's (UDOH) ?eWe Did It? campaign is the first of its kind to customize its messages to non-tobacco users.
Before someone else complains about the no-smoking proposal, why don't we hear from someone who has experience with asthma? Did any of the writers of the previous letters to the editor ever experience an asthma attack triggered by smoke? Did they realize that Cache Valley already has bad air, and so to add cigarette smoke to the already unhealthy air is a recipe for disaster for asthmatics? Did they "research" how many carcinogens and toxins are in secondhand smoke?
Let's look at a study done at UCSF (a school not known for morals). In 2005, medical researchers there reported "directly measured secondhand smoke exposure appears to be associated with poorer asthma outcomes [than previously thought]. In public health terms, these results support efforts to prohibit smoking in public places." Do you think that those medical researchers included a 'moral factor' in their study when they recommended to ban smoking? . . .
Before anyone complains more about the morals behind banning smoking, try looking at it from the point of view of those with asthma and 'bad genes.'
The full ban of tobacco products from USU infringes on the rights of students, but a partial ban or enforcing current policy is a better solution to the secondhand smoke problem on campus, said Erik Petros, a debate team member. USU's debate team held a tobacco policy debate Thursday in the Taggart Student Center Auditorium, where Petros and his partner Di Lewis debated against the full tobacco ban.
Mike Smith and Shannon Johnson, other debate team members, debated for a full tobacco ban.
Smith said a full tobacco ban is better because it doesn't infringe on the rights of the 98.5 percent of students who don't smoke, while the present system does because these students are breathing in smoke they don't want.
Petros said there is a very small, insignificant number of people who smoke at Utah State, which doesn't require such a dramatic ban. He said a partial ban with designated areas to smoke in would infringe on the least amount of rights of the students.
Counties in the southwest area of Utah hold a higher tobacco use rate than the rest of the state, according to recent data.
Jordan Mathis, director of health promotion at the Southwest Utah Health Department, said the most recent information, collected from a survey conducted in 2005, implies a higher starting rate for underage smokers in the counties of Beaver, Kane, Garfield and Washington.
Mathis said he is unsure as to exactly why this might be, but he said those working for the Utah Department of Health are trying to narrow it down.
It all started with a simple question.
Paul Ream's 9-year-old daughter returned home one day last fall after participating in her school's DARE program. She learned both alcohol and tobacco were classified as drugs, and she wondered about the presence of alcohol and tobacco products sitting on the family's grocery store shelves. This knowledge prompted her to ask her father: "Why do you sell drugs?"
When Ream was faced with his daughter's inquiry, he knew something had to be done; that "something" involved pulling all alcohol and tobacco products from the store's shelves and inventory in September 2007.
Six months later, the store continues to be recognized for Ream's choice. . . .
Day's Market, another local grocery store, has also pulled tobacco and alcohol products from its shelves. But this trend has not been merely a Utah phenomenon. A grocery chain in New York is following suit.
"It's a nationwide movement," Plewe said.
Student leaders at Utah State University have approved a campus-wide tobacco ban, which could take effect if it is also passed by school administrators. Members of the executive council of the Associated Students of USU debated two proposed amendments before approving the original bill on a 7-2 vote Tuesday. The ban would include all tobacco products and prohibit sales or use on campus.