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Sunday, June 14, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Blogs
Sun Coverage
One day, as smokers wait in Nevada’s casinos for their next hand or roll of the dice, they will have a little something extra to consider as they pass the time.
Cigarette packages will be splashed with big, new warning labels, graphics that take up the top 50 percent of the front and back of each package, under a bill passed by Congress last week.
The legislation will also require tobacco companies for the first time to disclose to the Food and Drug Administration the ingredients used in making cigarettes, including nicotine content and additives that can make their products more addictive.
The bill is the result of a 20-year effort waged by health advocates to warn consumers of health risks of smoking.
“This bill has obviously been a long time coming,” President Barack Obama said Friday in brief remarks at the White House Rose Garden.
The president, who has struggled with his own nicotine addiction, is expected to soon sign the bill into law. “After a decade of opposition, all of us are finally about to achieve the victory with this bill, a bill that truly defines change in Washington,” Obama said.
The bill drew bipartisan support in both chambers, but votes fell along party lines among Nevada’s delegation in Washington.
The House initially passed the bill 298-112, with 70 Republicans joining 228 Democrats. Nevada’s Democratic Reps. Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus voted yes, and Republican Rep. Dean Heller voted no.
The final version passed the House on Friday with a slightly wider margin, but the Nevadans’ votes were unchanged.
The Senate similarly moved the bill 79-17 last week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid voted yes, Republican Sen. John Ensign voted no.
Some critics believe the bill did not go far enough to regulate tobacco and its use.
The American Lung Association, which backed the bill, said more than 392,000 people die every year in this country from tobacco-caused disease, “making it the leading cause of preventable death.” Another 50,000 die from exposure to secondhand smoke.
But the fact that rang out in Washington as this debate unfolded was the 3,500 kids who every day take their first drags.
That fact brought out stories from the old days.
On the floor of the Senate, Reid recounted a scene he has written about in his autobiography, when he is a young boy riding in a car with his older brother, Don, behind the wheel:
Don is smoking a Kool cigarette and Reid, a decade younger, begs him for a puff.
The older brother instructs the younger to breathe in as hard as possible.
Reid put his fingers to his lips on the Senate floor, demonstrating how he took that first knockout drag.
The now-Mormon senator said he has been smoke-free ever since.
For some of those first-time smokers, “it will also be their last,” Reid said. “They will feel as I did when my older brother let me try my first cigarette — and like me, they will say that once is enough.
“But for far too many others, it will become a part of their daily lives.”
The law establishes limits on advertising to children and provides for stepped-up enforcement on sales to minors. Within three months of its enactment, companies also must stop selling sweet-flavored cigarettes that critics say are marketed to kids.
The new warning labels will come about more slowly. The FDA has two years to devise them.
Nevada has been reluctant to outlaw smoking on casino floors, though other parts of resorts have made smoking off limits. A voter-passed 2006 initiative prohibits smoking in Nevada’s restaurants and taverns that serve food, among other places.
When (and if) the new labels emerge, smokers in Nevada can review the new warnings as they take a drag, pondering their next bet.
They have their hands deep in tobacco lobbyists pockets just as we will soon see they have with insurance and drug companies.They could care less about their constituents just the payola for them.
Apparently the bill also outlaws certain types of tobacco products allowing Phillip Morris to secure its stranglehold of the market - yet again.
Anyone who thinks they are doing any good by using government force is dead wrong. All the government regulation has done is to give more power and profit to the major tobacco companies at the expensive of the smaller companies and consumers.
The US is becoming more corporatist day by day.
If you've got 13 minutes listen to this: http://ne.edgecastcdn.net/000873/dailypo...
He argues that the new regulation is harmful and unnecessary.
1) Smokers not only are already aware of the risks but they overestimate the risk of smoking
2) Smokers not only pay for the cost of the damange they do to themselves but subsidize the health and welfare of non-smokers
3) Increased costs of smoking (taxes and regulation) increase the smoking intensity of smokers (they need a certain level of nicotine and will smoke a cigarette more intensely to get the nicotine rather than having to buy more cigarettes...that means more exposure to the deadly carcinogens). Essentially the taxes decrease the health of the smoker.
4)The regulation will bar no entries into the market helping Phillip Morris maintain its market share.
It would hve been nice if the LV Sun had stated why Sen Ensign and Rep Heller opposed the bill.
"The American Lung Association, which backed the bill, said more than 392,000 people die every year in this country from tobacco-caused disease, "making it the leading cause of preventable death." Another 50,000 die from exposure to secondhand smoke."
Isn't a crime to lie to Congress?
How many decades has this organization taken donations and still can't find a cure besides more draconian laws? Nearly half a century of radio or TV ads being banned and those PLAIN warnings on all tobacco products and people still use them. It's called what the proponents of this bill hate -- free will.
Once again, here's the link for "Lies, Damned Lies, & 400,000 SMOKING-RELATED DEATHS" https://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg...
Ensign and Heller -- not so easily fooled.
The FDA could have the power to ban smoking in all public places including casino's
scouser -- and why exactly do you propose the FDA should have that kind of power over private property?
So we get to the bottom of the opposition's agruement. And if their agruement is that it gives the federal government to much control over people's lives, I agree with the opposition. If it's killing so many people every year, why isn't it banned? The answer is money. Federal, as well as state budgets would suffer due to the loss of tax money.