New Report Shows New York’s Fall From Grace

(Albany, NY) (November 30, 2011) – Once a national leader in anti-tobacco programming, drastic budget cuts over the past few years have resulted in New York’s status among states tumbling in a new ranking.

“A Broken Promise to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 13 Years Later,” released today by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, ranks New York as 20^th.

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Celebrate the Great American Smokeout^®

Buffalo, NY – Community leaders and health advocates in Niagara Falls are encouraging smokers to quit smoking and nonsmokers to invite loved ones to take the tobacco-free pledge on Thursday, Nov. 17 during the Great American Smokeout.^®

Those who take the pledge simply commit to quit smoking for 24 hours.  The tobacco-free pledge can be found on Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center’s website at www.nfmmc.org.

Memorial Medical Center will commemorate the day by hosting a Great American Smokeout^® celebration from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in front of the medical center’s first floor cafeteria at 621 10^th St., Niagara Falls.  Community leaders will be on hand to distribute information, answer questions and offer encouragement to those who want to learn more about kicking the smoking habit.

The event will be co-sponsored by the Community Health Center of Niagara, Creating a Healthier Niagara Falls Initiative, Erie-Niagara Tobacco-Free Coalition, Mount St. Mary’s Hospital, Niagara County Health Department and Tobacco Cessation Center-North.

“This is a great opportunity to offer a wide range of preventative health information to city of Niagara Falls residents with the goal of creating a healthier community,” said Charles Walker, Memorial’s director of community outreach.  Mr. Walker, who also serves on the Niagara Falls City Council, recently led an effort to legislate smoke-free parks in the city.

More Americans try to quit smoking during the Great American Smokeout^® than any other day including New Year’s Day, according to the American Cancer Society.

“While the Great American Smokeout® is a great time for smokers to quit, we also encourage communities to quit tobacco by creating smoke-free housing for their residents, adopting smoke free outdoor air in parks and recreational areas, and reducing tobacco marketing that targets youth in retail stores,” Erie-Niagara Tobacco-Free Coalition Director Anthony Billoni said.

Tobacco is not a normal consumer product. It causes sickness and death when used exactly as intended by the manufacturer and is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.

In New York State, tobacco kills more than 25,000 people a year. Niagara County has one of the state’s highest smoking rates at 27.1 percent compared to the statewide rate of 15.5 percent.

“The Great American Smokeout® not only challenges people to stop using tobacco, but raises awareness about the dangers of smoking and the many effective ways available to quit smoking permanently,” said President & CEO Joseph A. Ruffolo of Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, which instituted a smoke-free campus policy in 2008.

New York State smokers can receive free coaching and tips for quitting by calling the New York State Smokers’ Quitline at 1-866-NY-QUITS (1-866-697-8487) or visiting www.nysmokefree.com.

While candy shaped marijuana causes outrage among parents and politicans, tobacco products are in more than 800 stores in our counties – and their displays influence our kids to take up this deadly habit.  More than 25,500 people who die every year from tobacco use in NYS.

WGRZ-TV - Community activists believe the key to new efforts to get stores to stop selling marijuana-shaped candy and synthetic marijuana, might be found in dusting off an old strategy.

They’re calling for reviving the Deli Task Force, which was a coordinated effort in the 1990′s to crack down on inner city mom and pop stores engaged in selling illegal drugs and guns, cigarettes to minors, and food stamp fraud.

Link to WGRZ-TV story

Associated Press By Carolyn Thompson

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) – Candy shaped like marijuana that’s showing up on store shelves around the country won’t get kids high, but aghast city leaders and anti-drug activists say the product and grocers carrying it represent a new low.

“We’re already dealing with a high amount of drug abuse and drug activity and trying to raise children so they don’t think using illegal substances is acceptable,” said City Councilmember Darius Pridgen. “So to have a licensed store sell candy to kids that depicts an illegal substance is just ignorant and irresponsible. (more…)

National Institute on Drug Abuse contract supports largest-ever study of tobacco use in the U.S.

BUFFALO, NY — Will the new graphic health labels on cigarette packages keep youth from becoming addicted and help smokers quit? Does providing information about harmful and potentially harmful constituents in tobacco products deter use? What do consumers believe about health hazards from different tobacco products, and how do these beliefs affect use?

Scientists at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) will answer such questions as a research partner in the largest study to date of tobacco use in the United States. RPCI will receive $4.5 million over five years through a contract from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in collaboration with the Center for Tobacco Products at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (more…)

Increased spending to battle smoking will pay off for the state in the long run

Updated: September 24, 2011, 9:14 AM

In overtaxed New York, we feel the pain every day as the state struggles to make ends meet. New Yorkers demanded — and got — a budget that spent less than the previous year, without increasing taxes. That required some penny-pinching and was the right choice. But some of that penny-pinching involved diverting most of the hundreds of millions of dollars collected in tobacco taxes each year into the state budget.

New York has never spent what it needed to spend on anti-smoking programs. The concept of a “lockbox” is as foreign to this Legislature as it is to just about any other. Money is there to be spent on programs that take priority for one of two reasons: They serve the public or they serve the politicians. In that context, it’s easy to see how state officeholders have long found it easy to redirect money that should be spent on anti-smoking efforts. (more…)

Buffalo News Story Published 09/21/2011 

Cigarette mailing ban on Senecas is upheld

By Phil Fairbanks

Buffalo News Staff Reporter

A federal appeals court upheld a ban on the mailing of cigarettes by Seneca Nation businesses Tuesday but left intact an injunction against the collection of taxes on those cigarettes.

The court, in siding with U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara, upheld most of a sweeping new federal law prohibiting the U.S. Postal Service from delivering commercial cigarette shipments. (more…)

Report shows a continuing decline among men, and a promising decline among women

The rates of new lung cancer cases in the United States dropped among men in 35 states and among women in 6 states between 1999 and 2008, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among women, lung cancer incidence decreased nationwide between 2006 and 2008, after increasing steadily for decades.

The decrease in lung cancer cases corresponds closely with smoking patterns across the nation. In the West, where smoking prevalence is lower among men and women than in other regions, lung cancer incidence is decreasing faster. Studies show declines in lung cancer rates can be seen as soon as five years after smoking rates decline. (more…)

WE’VE SEEN ENOUGH!

Buffalo – This World No Tobacco Day, when it comes to in-store tobacco advertising, Buffalo area youth want to send a clear message to cigarette makers: “We’ve seen enough!”

Recruiting “replacement smokers,” also known as kids, is a building block for big tobacco’s marketing strategy.  Recent surveys have shown kids are consistently targeted by flashy cigarette advertising in local stores.  On May 31, local teens joined together at Clarence High School to raise awareness about this deadly influence.

World No Tobacco Day 2011 from RPCI Health Behavior-Paul Hage on Vimeo.

Buffalo, N.Y. – More than 100 teens came together in Buffalo to send a clear message: They have seen enough in-store tobacco marketing, and they want their change. On August 11, 2011, Reality Check youth from across New York State rallied together to send the message that dangerous tobacco marketing should be removed from stores where kids shop. 

News coverage by Western New York broadcast media.

WIVB – Teens send message to big tobacco 

WKBW- Teens Demand Removal of Tobacco Ads in Local Stores 

WBFO – Teens unite against tobacco industry

WBEN – Hear a Roswell Expert discuss tobacco and teens.

YNN  – ‘We’ve seen enough’

Buffalo News by Henry Davis

Get ready for pictures of rotted teeth, diseased lungs and other shocking images on cigarette packs.

Nine powerful images, which were released Tuesday by federal health officials, will cover the top half of cigarette packages in the first significant change in warnings on the labels since 1985. (more…)