AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s latest report card on tobacco use shows a continuing slide in the state’s grades.
The American Lung Association of Maine, whose report card is being released Thursday, gives Maine an A for protecting people from secondhand smoke and a B for helping smokers quit.
But Maine gets a C for not raising its cigarette tax beyond the current $2 per pack. The anti-smoking group gives Maine a D, its first ever, for tobacco-prevention funding that’s less than the federal government’s recommended figure.
The lung association’s Ed Miller says the A, B, C and D grades reflect a downward slide from 2005, when Maine got straight A’s.
The group favors a cigarette tax increase and continued Medicaid reimbursements for smoking cessation programs.
Outlaw the sale of cigarettes period. Then we would get all A’s. Cigarettes kill more people than all other illegal drugs combined.
And what good what that do? You could still get them elsewehere. Just like Prohibition, a Black Market would instantly appear. And how about the increased law enforcement officials needed? Smaller government, eh?
Then we redirect the drug agents we already have busting people for weed to busting people using and selling tobacco. Use our law enforcement dollars to save as many lives as possible.
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Population control? :-0
(Just kidding. Often the only people more pompous then non smokers are ex smokers.)
If people want to smoke in a bar, then put a sign on the door and let the customers and employees decide. It gets irritating at the neighborhood watering hole when the bartender spends more time out back on a smoke break than getting you another draught.
This anti smoking thing is just a waste of money. Let them smoke if they want. Last time I checked it was a free country. But not for long the way things are going.
They can cram that grade.
Free to polute, harm the health of others in addition to your own? With freedom goes responsibility, remember?
what a load of crap. It is a big world and no one lights up in public confined space.
Get over yourself.
Maybe in Maine, but I see plenty of it too close to buildings. What amazes me is those out smoking (too close to restaurant doors) in terrible weather. Get a patch! Better, yet, quit.
Also note that I’m civil, unlike current company.
it’s legal.
Not everywhere.
Unfortunately, it affects others in more than one way…including increasing the cost of healthcare for everyone.
They should outlaw salt and fatty foods too too. that adds to the increasing cost of healthcare too. it starts with one thing and then you can’t do anything.
Support anti-busybody legislation: “Friends don’t let friends be prigs.”
Busybody? Get real. And if those are friends of yours, you can keep them.
It is some really smug and arrogant people who think you can effect human behavior by “taxing something out of existence”. Human history is full of times when people acquired that which they desired, even in the face of outright “prohibition” as in acohol in the USA in the 1920’s. The country was awash in it despite the federal laws.
Government efforts like this one simply spawn black markets which have sprung up all around us. Anyone with a computer can purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products, anywhere in the world, for 1/3 of the price in Maine, and have them delivered to your door.
Those who wish to smoke, will do so just like those who wish to take heroin, cocaine and bath salts manage to do so even in the face of laws against it. So much for government.
Free people can not be controlled by hack politicians!
More like concerned regulators (the politicians aren’t helping, just hindering). And increasing cigarette taxes does decrease smoking incidence. Not to zero to be sure but a defintie decrease.
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This is much better than smoking, did it for me.
V2Cigs, the world’s best electronic cigarette.
Check it out here: http://www.v2cigs.com/html3497…
No smell, no tar, cheaper, better health and the best is you can smoke where you want!
Type “v2n” in the coupon field and get a discount.
Our company gave an employee a $ 1.00 an hour if we would quit smoking. He’s going on his third month and loves it because he makes another $ 40 a week, plus saves $ 50 a week on his cigarettes .. He’s only 21 years old so I hope he will keep this up.. What a difference it will make in the rest of his life if he does.
As being a smoker for 45 years or more, let me tell you how RIGHT you are.