Online Tobacco

Industry News: Tobacco: Lax laws expensive

WEST VIRGINIA’S failure to enact strict laws to keep tobacco out of the hands of minors may prove very costly, both in dollars and lives.

The state could lose more than $3 million from a federal block grant because too many teens are able to buy cigarettes in sting investigations by the state. Underage buyers made purchases 36 percent of the time in these stings. Federal guidelines call for penalties if that number is above 24 percent.

To avoid losing the money, the state must increase spending for tobacco law enforcement by more than $1 million by March 1.

But legislators should look at this as an opportunity. A 50-cent or $1 increase per pack in the cigarette tax would raise tens of millions of dollars, while acting as a huge deterrent to teen (and adult) smoking.

Legislators could save money, raise revenue and save lives — while attacking one of the most pernicious public health problems in this unhealthy state.

Industry News: Tobacco money should go to clinics / Revisionist history

Missouri has done nothing with the money except argue about how much the lawyers will get off the top.

If Missouri were truly concerned about tobacco-related illness, it would already have set up free cessation clinics for the people. Free clinics that would assist our citizens to kick the tobacco habit are the only moral way to spend the money.

If it is not to be spent attempting to free people from the habit, it should be refunded to the smokers who paid the taxes on the products over the years.

If they really want to represent reality, they should show FDR smoking, because that is how he always appeared in public and in photos and cartoons of the 1930s and '40s. When smoking, he always used his trademark long cigarette holder, at the time a symbol of the rich upper class.