Email
Password
(Forgot Password?)
The state's smoking-cessation efforts are being consolidated into the Vermont Quit Network, which plans a statewide mailing to Vermonters this week in hopes of reaching the 18 percent of adults who smoke.
The free services include a toll-free Vermont Quit Line -- 1-800-QUIT-NOW, hospital-based smoking cessation programs for individuals or groups and online and self-help resources.
An estimated 87,000 Vermont adults smoke, and about half try to quit each year, the Health Department said Wednesday.
Jump to full article »
Research, including that of the surgeon general of the United States, the President's Cancer Panel, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Cancer Institute, has demonstrated that comprehensive state tobacco use prevention and treatment programs, sustained over time, can achieve substantial reductions in tobacco use.
We know what works. Now is not the time to reduce funding for Vermont's tobacco use prevention and treatment program. Now is the time to appropriate an additional $5.2 million, for a total of $10.4 million (just 25 percent of our payments from the tobacco companies) to fight the leading killer and disease agent in Vermont. Vermonters deserve nothing less.
Vermont banned smoking in restaurants many years ago, and in bars in 2004. I have heard many arguments both for and against smoking in public places, many of which focus around personal rights. I fully back Gov. Tim Kaine in his proposed smoking ban.
Coming from a state that already has similar bans, I want to say that people do get used to it and are able to smoke outside the bars and restaurants.
MONTPELIER, Vt.--A VFW post that had defied Vermont's ban on smoking in public places has been ordered to stop allowing people to light up inside.
Caledonia Superior Court Judge Thomas Zonay ruled Thursday that the law -- which was amended in 2005 to include buildings owned by social and fraternal organizations -- prohibits smoking at the VFW in Lyndonville and ordered its officials to stop allowing it and to eject anyone who refuses to comply.
He found the VFW post to be in violation for allowing smoking in its bar area, despite the ban. The state sued on behalf of Health Commissioner Sharon Moffatt, saying it was a public area and therefore subject to the ban.
Since the granting of an exemption by one settling state will automatically lead to the reallocation of its allocated portion of the NPM adjustment to all other non-exempt settling states, each governmental signatory has its own self-interest at stake in the outcome of this issue, which is necessarily in conflict with every other state. Such a result defeats the whole purpose of having a Master Settlement Agreement. The mechanism of submitting disputes involving the decisions of the Independent Auditor to a neutral panel of competent arbitrators, who are guided by one clearly articulated set of rules that apply universally in a process where all parties can fully and effectively participate, obviates this problem and ensures fairness for all parties to the MSA. To hold otherwise is contrary to both the spirit and the plain language of the Master Settlement Agreement.
Id. We agree. Even if the State’s fear that a single arbitration panel will be unable to adequately address the specifics of each state’s case proves to be true, that fear is not a basis for denying arbitration here. How the arbitrators pursue their determination of diligent enforcement is a separate issue from whether arbitration is required by the MSA. Such problems, if they do materialize, may be raised in a post-arbitration motion to vacate or modify the award pursuant to § 16(a)(3) of the FAA.
The order compelling arbitration and dismissing the suit is affirmed.
A dispute over how much the state of Vermont gets under a 1998 settlement with tobacco companies should be resolved through arbitration, not the courts, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled Friday.
In a victory for the tobacco companies, the court -- upholding a Chittenden County court's ruling -- said an arbitration clause in the 1998 agreement between them and 52 states and territories covers Vermont's complaint about payments and that it should be resolved through arbitration.
"We wanted to litigate it here in Vermont, and the court said `No, you essentially agreed to arbitration under the agreement,'" said state Attorney General William Sorrell. . . .
The tobacco companies contend that none of the states diligently enforced their "qualifying statutes." . . .
"In all likelihood, there'll either be a national arbitration proceeding or a bunch of states will combine and demand the arbibtrations to go forward. We'll be one that says we want it convened as soon as possible," Sorrell said.
I was troubled yesterday up at the Yankee Sportsman's Classic Hunting and Fishing vendor fair. I thought the event was wonderful with one exception -- there were two booths -- Skoal and some other brand of smokeless tobacco -- giving away free samples to adults (18 and up).
I believe it is illegal to give away free cigarettes, so why is it OK at this event that attracts many youths to give away another toxic product that we know causes cancer? . . .
I am a nurse. I see the results of the tobacco industry and their outcomes on real people hooked on their products. Please let's not help them reach their goal
Kids against tobacco took their message to the statehouse Wednesday.
More than 330 students marched through Montpelier. They are all members of Vermont Kids Against Tobacco, or VKAT.
Even though smoking rates for kids has been cut in half in the past decade, a recent survey found 7% of 8th graders had smoked one or more cigarettes during the past 30 days. To stop people from smoking, students told lawmakers they've organized awareness days, and they also shared why they're in the group.
New research from Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) strengthens the case that children's exposure to smoking in movies influences their decision to start smoking. It further suggests that smoking in movies seen in early childhood has an equally significant impact on that decision as movie smoking exposure closer to adolescence. The study, published in the January issue of Pediatrics, was the first of its kind to focus on elementary school children, and the first to update the children's exposure to movie smoking over time.
Lead author is Dr. Linda Titus-Ernstoff, a professor of community and family medicine and of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School (DMS), and the associate director of the Hood Center for Children and Families. The research team surveyed more than 2,200 children ages 9-12 from 26 schools in New Hampshire and Vermont. . . .
"This finding suggests that the process which leads children to initiate smoking begins much earlier than adolescence. Viewing smoking in the movies may influence the decision to smoke in more than a third of children."
The take-home message from this study is that exposure to movie smoking occurring during early childhood is as influential as exposure that occurs nearer to the time of smoking initiation, Titus-Ernstoff says.
The Vermont Department of Health will issue grants totaling more than $1 million beginning in July to fund community tobacco control initiatives across the state, Health Department officials said today.
The Department of Health is now accepting request for proposals for grant applications. Proposals will be due to the Department on Feb. 29. The grant period is July 1 through June 30, 2009, with a one-year renewal option.
Young people who start smoking may be influenced to do so by movies they saw in early childhood, new research suggests.
What's more, the study found that almost 80 percent of the exposure to smoking scenes in movies came through films rated "G," "PG" and "PG-13."
"Movies seen at the youngest ages had as much influence over later smoking behavior as the movies that children had seen recently," said study author Linda Titus-Ernstoff, a pediatrics professor at Dartmouth Medical School.
"And I'm increasingly convinced that this association between movie-smoking exposure and smoking initiation is real," she added. "That's to say, causal. It is quite improbable that the association we see is due to some other influence, some other characteristic inherent in children or parental behavior. The relationship is clearly between movie-smoking and smoking initiation."
The findings are published in the January issue of Pediatrics. . . .
"What this means for parents is that they need to pay more attention to what children are watching," Titus-Ernstoff said.
I'm increasingly convinced that this association between movie-smoking exposure and smoking initiation is real. That's to say, causal. It is quite improbable that the association we see is due to some other influence, some other characteristic inherent in children or parental behavior. The relationship is clearly between movie-smoking and smoking initiation. SLinda Titus-Ernstoff, a pediatrics professor at Dartmouth Medical School and author of the study which found Young people who start smoking may be influenced to do so by movies they saw in early childhood; often those movies were G or PG rated.
Nearly a third of kids aged 9-12 who start smoking do so because they saw movies in which characters smoked, according to new research on movies, children, and smoking.
The study, published today in Pediatrics, comes from Dartmouth Medical School Professor Linda Titus-Enrstoff, PhD, and colleagues.
"The take-home message from our study is that the influence of viewing smoking in the movies starts much earlier than previously thought,"�Titus-Ernstoff tells WebMD via email. "Also, most of children's exposure to movie smoking comes from youth-rated movies (G, PG, PG-13), so simply preventing kids from watching R-rated movies won't protect them from movie smoking exposure."
Titus-Ernstoff and colleagues studied more than 2,200 kids aged 9-12 in New Hampshire and Vermont.
A recent report issued by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids ranks Vermont 16th in the nation in terms of funding efforts to keep children from smoking. . . .
Krawczyk said that her group had surveyed local middle schoolers and found that 40 percent of them think young people start smoking "to be cool." Krawczyk said her group was working on ways to battle the perception that smoking is cool.
"There's a Web site, called www.8outof10.com, that's aimed at correcting the misconception that a lot of kids smoke," Krawczyk said. "Twenty-seven percent of middle school students think the majority of high school students smoke."
Krawczyk also said a new campaign coming next year will focus on the way smoking is portrayed in the movies.
LYNDONVILLE, Vt.--Determined to quit, a cigarette smoker put his nervous energy to good use -- knitting more than 1,000 hats for schoolchildren and community organizations.
"I knew I had to have something to do with my hands," said Robert Perkins, 65, of Lyndon.
He started at age 11 and had tried to quit numerous times. Last March, he tried again, this time with the help of a Knifty Knitter, a knitting device for beginners.