Flavored tobacco a trick not a treat
Halloween has us talking about candy. Gummy bears, cotton candy, watermelon — all great flavors for the treats filling trick-or-treaters’ buckets. Unfortunately, that’s not the only place Maine kids see them.
The tobacco industry knows flavors entice kids to begin using their products, including e-cigarettes. With one study identifying more than 15,500 distinct flavors available — including candy, fruit and mint flavors — surging youth e-cigarette use isn’t surprising. In Maine, the rates continue to climb. Nearly 16 percent of Maine high school students use e-cigarettes, and overall, 81 percent of youth who ever used tobacco products started with a flavored one.
While Maine has made huge progress recently increasing funding for tobacco prevention and cessation and raising the sale age of tobacco products to 21, the tobacco industry hasn’t stopped making products that appeal to our kids, and we can’t stop fighting to protect them.
As a grandparent and advocate, I urge lawmakers to stand up against the tobacco industry by restricting the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes.
Tobacco companies shamelessly try to hook our kids by masking the harsh taste of tobacco with flavors. This Halloween, I call on lawmakers to commit to keeping flavors where they belong: in trick or treaters’ buckets, not in tobacco products.
Diane Aston
Volunteer
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network
Westbrook
Bonneville has my vote in Belfast
The upcoming election for Mayor of Belfast, Councilor for Ward 3 and Councilor for Ward 4 will determine the city’s direction for the next two years. Two of the positions are uncontested; Ward 3 (and all of Belfast) will choose between two candidates, Brenda Bonneville and Sophia “Ridgely” Fuller.
Neither has been a city councilor before; both have much to learn. Their votes on the council will depend on enormous amounts of new knowledge that emerge and evolve over time.
The problems facing Belfast now, the ones we must do something about, involve our tax base, infrastructure repair, diversity of new jobs, and affordable housing. It will take a functioning city council, working as a team and open to new ideas, to move government forward over the next two years.
We will need a representative who can work with other councilors, welcome input from both her friends and opponents, and commit herself to solving the hard issues facing our community. I know that Brenda Bonneville has these qualities. She has demonstrated them in her capacity as mother, merchant, director, engaged citizen and friend. To know her is to know of her honesty, intelligence, warmth and humility.
Change is inevitable, change is hard. That is why I want to hand the wheel of city government to people I know and trust, people who know how to apply both the brakes and press the accelerator, who have the courage to take our community where it needs to go. That is why I am voting for Bonneville for Councilor of Ward 3 on Nov. 5 and encourage others to do the same.
David Loxterkamp
Belfast
Questions about proposed wood chip operation
If ever a project screamed out for an environmental impact statement, PERC’s proposed wood chip operation in Orrington is one. PERC is planning to use the electricity it produces to dry huge quantities of Maine wood chips for export as “renewable” energy.
Burning wood chips makes sense environmentally, if sourced from sustainable forests and used efficiently in combined heat and power (CHP) plants.
So the first question to be asked is whether PERC will source its chips from sustainable operations such as — at a minimum — those certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. If not, the project will be a carbon polluter from day one.
The second question to be asked is the size of the overall carbon footprint.
In the PERC proposal, carbon would be emitted not once but three times. First, trash is burned to make electricity to dry the chips. Second, bunker fuel is burned to transport the chips. Third, the chips are burned in biomass plants across the pond that may or may not be CHP efficient.
Without an impact statement, it is hard to imagine that this project won’t be a sizeable carbon polluter. Another big carbon source is not what Maine needs at this juncture.
Denny Gallaudet
Cumberland