Stop Smoking Help

The rising cost of car tags is grabbing headlines as six state legislators return to Jackson Tuesday to continue debating how much to raise Mississippi’s cigarette tax, but the equally serious matter of smoking and its health care costs remains a major part of the debate.

The House and Senate have passed different versions of a cigarette tax increase. The House bill would have raised the cigarette tax to $1 a pack while the Senate approved raising the tax about 49 cents a pack.

A conference committee of three state senators and three House members is trying to resolve the different measures, but they’re stuck.

So far, Senate conferees have agreed to raise the tax to 64 cents a pack.

The House is standing pat at 75 cents a pack.

Negotiations resume Tuesday at the Capitol in Jackson.

Conferees agree raising the cigarette tax will replenish the State Tax Commission fund that rebates auto sales tax money to counties to help hold down the cost of car tags.

When the cost of cigarettes goes up, the number of smokers goes down. That means state and federal government have to spend less on smoking-related illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, stroke and respiratory illnesses like emphysema.

The largest increase in federal tobacco taxes occurred April 1 when the tax rate rose from 39 cents to $1.01 per pack of cigarettes.

That move is expected to result in a million smokers giving up the habit and prevent 2 million young people from ever starting, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Mississippi, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids estimated that that state spends $8.37 in health care for every 18 cents — the current state cigarette tax rate per pack — collected in cigarette taxes.

Mississippi’s cigarette tax rate is the third-lowest in the country.

Meantime, quitting smoking is one of three health care practices — childhood immunizations and the prophylactic use of aspirin (mainly to prevent heart disease) are the others — that the state funds, which will result in a net gain for taxpayers, said Thomas Payne, a clinical psychologist and associate director of The ACT Center for Tobacco Treatment and Research at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

“We collect 18 cents (in taxes) and shell out $8.37 in health care per pack of cigarettes sold,” Payne said.

“This is very costly to society. For every pack of cigarettes sold, we lose more than $8.”

Additionally, treating smokers who are on Medicaid is costly for the state. The federal government funds about 76 cents of every Medicaid dollar spent in Mississippi. The state pays the rest.

The CDC estimates up to 37 percent of Medicaid recipients are smokers, which means state and federal governments eventually will have to pay health care cost for them.

About 24 percent of Mississippians are smokers, Payne said.

He noted a direct correlation between education levels and smoking. Only 5-6 percent of individuals holding doctoral degrees smoke, but more than 20 percent of people who did not finish high school are smokers.

“The higher the education and income level, the lower the rate of smoking,” he said.

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With the smoking ban announced for all regions of the United Kingdom and brought into force in 2006 for Scotland and 2007 for the rest on the UK, the end of smoking in public buildings is finally here.

The law aims to protect workers and the general public from the harmful effects of passive smoking. It is estimated that exposure to second-hand smoke increases the risk of lung cancer in adult non-smokers by 24 per cent and heart disease in adult non-smokers by 25 per cent.

Passive smoking also causes respiratory disease and asthma in non-smoking adults and children. The UK Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health concluded in 2004 that second-hand smoke is a serious public health risk.

Those in charge of the premises would be fools to let you get away with it, especially considering that they could face a £2,500 fine if they fail to stop you. They could also be charged on-the-spot fines of £200 if they fail to display no-smoking signs, with the penalty increasing to £1,000 if the issue goes to court.

With the UK goverments decision to finally ban smoking in all public places by mid 2007. The future of the nation health looks set to improve, with reductions in smoking related diseses.

Studies from New York have shown a 20% reduction in the number of people lighting up and a greater reduction of cigarettes being smoked by the people who have failed to kick the habit. Its difficult to see any negative impact the new legistition with have on the citizens on the United Kingdom.

However the impact on the enviroment of this country will be more noticable. With people being forced to smoke outside the workplace, pubs, restaurant and all other public building, the increase in cigarette litter will be increadible.

With millions of cigarette per day being smoked outside, it will not be long before tons of addition litter will be effecting the places we all live and work.

There is a lot of misinformation out there regarding cigarette butt litter. The biggest myth is that cigarette filters are biodegradable. In fact, cigarette butts are not biodegradable in the sense that most people think of the word. The acetate (plastic) filters can take many years to decompose. Smokers may not realize that their actions have such a lasting, negative impact on the environment.

What happens after that butt gets casually flicked onto the street, nature trail, or beach? Typically wind and rain carry the cigarette into the water supply, where the toxic chemicals the cigarette filter was designed to trap leak out into aquatic ecosystems, threatening the quality of the water and many aquatic lifeforms. Cigarette butts may seem small, but with several trillion butts littered every year, the toxic chemicals add up!

The battle against cigarette litter can only be won if smokers join the fight on the right side. There are already millions of smokers who don’t litter their cigarettes, and many of them are actively spreading the word to fellow smokers. Unfortunately, they are still a small minority. If you are a considerate smoker who doesn’t litter, THANK YOU! Please continue setting a positive example and please continue to help us in any way that you can.

We are also as a country going to require additional public spending to keep clean our towns, cities and countryside. Its been estimated the cost of keeping our country clean and dealing with the problem will run into 100’s of millions of pounds per year. Enforcement of anti-litter law with play a very important part of reducing the impact of cigarette litter, but more importantly providing cigarette bins and outdoor ashtrays will greatly reduce the numbers of cigarette butts littering the country by collecting them in the areas there people will continue to smoke.

When people think of enforcement they too often think of the police or other government agencies. It is true that we need more enforcement of existing litter laws from those groups, but the best enforcement for something like this comes from friends, co-workers, and family. If you know someone who litters, tell him or her openly how you feel about it. If your employer allows you or your colleges to smoke at the back door of the work place, then ask them to provide a cigarette bin. If you or your friends smoke outside the pub then ask the landlord to provide an outdoor ashtray for disposal of cigarette litter. This is a problem we can all help to reduce one butt at a time.

Please visit our site for more information about Cigarette Bins

Keeping clean goes beyond our home. It is just as important to have clean streets, parks and beaches as it is to have a clean apartment to live in.

Every where you go there is a nasty looking cigarette butt on the ground. Not only do they look bad but they smell. When I try to lay out my blanket on the beach there is no spot that is free of them. It takes me over twenty minutes to clear the area before I can lay down my blanket. Even when I am at rest trying to look at the ocean those dam cigarette butts come into view. They are everywhere. I no longer want to go to a cigarette littered beach but enjoy the sunshine in my rear yard. The trips to the mall are also spoiled, because parking lots are full of twisted and flattened butts. The ugliest ones have a brown filter at the end, they look like poop when they are bunched together. But poop is better because it at least dries up and disappears. Something has to be done about this terrible situation because it is destroying the beauty of our country.

I am retired and have chosen to spend my last years doing something useful for the country that was so good to me. Every morning I go out into the streets with two burlap bags and a pick. I don’t return until those two bags are filled with cigarette butts. Some times it is a twelve hour day and I never take a rest. Sunday I spend examining the sidewalks and gutters preparing myself for the job that has to be done the next day. When I return home I am happy to know that my day was spent helping to make my city a cleaner place

We stand helplessly buy and watch people throw butts out car windows or just flip them on the sidewalk. But most of us are not aware of the real danger that cigarette butts pose..

A lit cigarette can ignite a forest fire

Cigarette butts can take 25 years to break down due to cellulose acetate in the filters

Butts can release toxic substances including arsenic, cadmium and lead into water as they breakdown

Animals sometimes mistake cigarettes for food which can give them digestive problems.

Besides that, cigarette butts are an eyesore.

Each year hundreds of thousands of migrant workers cross our borders to harvest the fruit and vegetable crop, and after they are done they happily return to where they came from. They have done a great job and we are thankful for it. But their job in not fully done, they have left the most important part of the harvest untouched. Trillions of cigarette butts have not been picked up and put into the burlap bags they carry on their shoulders. Our government must give them permission to continue their harvest. There has to be cigarette butt disposal sites across the nation where those migrant workers can drop off their burlap bags of butts. There they will be paid for their harvest. When the harvest is complete, they will happily go back to their country and families. Like all harvest workers they will return next year to harvest a trillion new cigarette butts.

I wake up early in the morning, and with my burlap bag and pick, I spend the day gathering cigarette butts. But I am not alone, because there are others like myself that hate those nasty looking butts all over the ground. We have formed a team, hired a flatbed truck and visit new areas each day. People greet us everywhere we go, they too hate those lousy stinking cigarette butts in their neighborhood. But unfortunately we are making no progress, as soon as we pick up a butt another one replaces it. We must turn to Mexico and their millions of harvest workers to pick up the trillions of cigarette butts that lie untouched on our streets, beaches and parks. We must do it quickly before there is no place that is not filled with that stinking brown tipped litter.

Melpol http://www.associatedcontent.com/melpol

No more waiting in line and hoping that your favorite brand of cigarettes is not sold out. All you do is simply choose the cigarettes that you are going to purchase and once you have them paid for they are brought right to your door.

Cigarette coupons like Marlboro Coupons Savings, Marlboro Cigarette Coupons, Marlboro Discount Coupons, Cheap Marlboro Coupons, Marlboro Online Cigarette Coupons, Purchase online cigarette coupons, Free Cigarette coupons are usually distributed by marketing executives employed by the cigarette companies through shops or in person, or it is given as a freebee alongside bulk online purchases made from online cigarette stores.

The cigarette coupons you receive in the former way will be like any other discount coupon in appearance and feel, while the cigarette coupons that are available online may require the customers to print it or if making online purchases, type in a verification code in order to check the authenticity of the buyer as fraudulent coupons are also rampant these days.

Either way, from the cigarette maker’s perspective, they’ll make sure that the cigarette coupons are indeed given to ardent smokers so that they’ll be tempted to comeback to the specific brand more than usual. After all, for most of the smokers, the major deterrent or hindrance in fulfilling their wishes is the lack of money they can spend on cigarettes, and nothing else.

The other places where you could commonly find cheap cigarette coupons are in supermarket flyers and inside weekend newspapers. Also, it is a viable option to get it directly from the cigarette companies. Many cigarette makers keep a mailing list of their customers in that regard. If your name figures there, such offers reach your mail directly and promptly when the cigarette company announces such a discount scheme with Marlboro Com Ciggarette Coupons.

You are also much more likely to be offered a deal while you are shopping for discounted prices of tobacco products online. While a lot of local retailers will offer you a buy two packs get one pack of smokes free type of offer there are many merchants on the internet that offer even better deals like the ability to earn credit with your purchases that you can utilize for future shopping with that particular site.

So as you can see there are several great benefits to deciding to buy your tobacco items online. You can not only save yourself time you can also end up saving a ton of money.