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• ledabeth

  Kids want to do what adults don’t want them to do or don’t approve of– so we need some psychologists to come up with the advertising campaign for us that will be even more effective.  They’ve had some great ads on TV in the past but I haven’t seen them for quite some time now.

• Smell Ya Later Occutards!

  If we made tobacco illegal, no one would smoke.

• Anonymous

  Make it illegal in Maine for anyone born after December 31st, 1999, to smoke.   Savings of millions of $$$ in health and insurance costs not to mention the savings from not buying cigarettes. 

• Anonymous

  To all smokers: you smell like stale smoke, you have facial wrinkles and aged skin. You’re slowly killing yourself, and offending everyone around you. You’re wasting a ton of money. I watched my grandfather die from lip cancer that matasticized, it took him two years to die a slow, painful death.. He went from a healthy, active man to a wasted, 95 lb man with half a face. He had no face from the upper lip down, it was one nasty, open wound. I also watched my father die, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in December, and died in April. He had radiation, chemo, half a lung removed,  total treatment was $300,000, and he never made it home after surgery. Still think smoking is cool?

• Anonymous

  How horrible. You painted the picture very vividly.  So glad I never started that habit.

• Anonymous

  Sarcasm?

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YET2UVZHDLJQP25IMGCO2YPUXI Dustin

  sure, lets just outlaw everything you don’t like while we’re at it, not like this is a free country or anything…

• Anonymous

  Smoking makes fools look cool.

• Anonymous

  Diversion of all but 4.8% from the tobacco settlement is criminal.  Also, it’s apparently still too easy for kids under 18 to have access to cigarettes.  In addition, the UMaine smoking ban on campus doesn’t seem to be working.  Undoubtedly difficult to enforce but nothing heard about it since it went into effect.

• Anonymous

  If these teens want to smoke. Mainecare shouldn’t be paying for their ER visits for bronchitis. They are too lazy to go to a doctors appointment, so they go to ER and get an antibiotic everytime they get coughing. Triage them to their Doctors office and make them pay out of pocket or a huge, huge copay. This would stop the crap if it was costing them to fix their problems.

• Anonymous

  Make people on the state pay for all scripts associated with cigarette smoking. If you want to smoke the state is not picking up your tab for inhalers, oxygen and antibiotics for your bronchitis.

• Anonymous

  The ultimate hypocrisy. We tax tobacco at great levels to generate revenue and then spend that revenue on caring for smokers and for anti-smoking campaigns.

• Smell Ya Later Occutards!

  Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

• Anonymous

  Your arguement is a good one and yet it will fall on death teenage ears who know more than any adult does. That is why I started smoking at 19 after I had seen family members die of emphasema and lung cancer.

  I never got really hooked into. Thank goodness. Havent smoked since I was 22.  I was lucky.

• Anonymous

  Take a drive out in the country from where I live in Salta, Argentina(half the year) and you will see acres(hectares) of tobacco fields.  It is going somewhere, they keep growing it year after year.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PZWOQR34TPD2SNQ6LEOAQHJHQA Ricko

  lol this is too funny

• Anonymous

  You can’t cure dumb.

• Anonymous

  Can we outlaw having to help fund cancer treatment for smokers?

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NXPTPFL746OV2VGR5WBOEUF6W4 Roger

  We spent 9 million tax payer dollars to tel people they should not smoke?  Everybody knows smoking is not good for you even those that smoke. That said it is a CHOICE!!! it is a legal product and the state of Maine as well as the federal government is highly hypocritical in that they make more off tobacco then the the makers do.

  Then on top of that we now say hey don’t worry about your health cause we are not only going to give you medicare, medicade, Maine care and ( I hope not ) Obama care and no matter your problem we will tax tax tax to make sure you get the health care you want. Yet another twisted endless circle of gooberment programs.

• Little Bear

  Are the teens buying or stealing the cigs at $5 to $7  pack. Kind of  worthless habit for any kid to get into know. All you kids that are taking up smoking you smell like the botton of a ashtray and your clothes stink. So do yourself a big  favor and stop. Enjoy being  smoke free. It makes alot more since. Think healthy!!! 

• Anonymous

  Tobacco kills. We can’t make tobacco illegal, but it’s possible to tax its use severely–perhaps reducing the number of cigarettes people smoke, and certainly increasing the money we have for campaigns against smoking. Sounds good to me.

• Anonymous

  Do you have insurance? Does having insurance cause you not to bother to take care of your health?

• Anonymous

  There is enough tobacco money to keep a lot the old and poor warm this winter.  I am a smoker and this suit was on my behalf as well as others. I would rather see them balance the budget in other ways and use this money for heating assistance.

• Guest

  we should take this money and build tobacco farm or drying/processing camps. Teens that smoke are breaking the law. All high school kids could be tested and if they have smoked they can be assigned to these camps as punishment.

• Anonymous

  Yeah , right,Argentina.Great.
   But do they sell it by the pound or kilo?

• Anonymous

  take them right off the market they never will make to much money its a double standard

• Anonymous

  Sorry about your loss.

• Anonymous

  Agree, I hope non of these anti, non freedom types stop driving cars and continue to pollute my air with their exhaust needs

• Anonymous

  Really?  Just like making marijuana illegal has resulted in no one using it?  Cocaine?  Worked for alcohol in the 20′s?

• Anonymous

  We don’t really spend it on the smokers.  The tax money goes into general revenue.  We don’t even spend all the tobacco settlement money on tobacco related problems.  That was how that case was won, but Maine along with most states uses the money as it chooses.

  The fact that Maine spends more than most other states on anti-smoking programs and still has a rise in the number of teenagers smoking would lead a rational person to conclude that the amount of money spent has either no relation or a bad relation to stopping smoking.  Our solution will be to demand more money be spent, because that is the mindset of everyone when it comes to anything to do with children.

• Anonymous

  Actually, that was what the tobacco settlement was intended to do:  pay for the medical care of the people who smoked so the taxpayers would not have to.  

• Anonymous

  Has anyone noticed that after many years of no one smoking in movies (the film, not the theatre) Hollywood decided to reintroduce smoking characters?  Put out all the silly little D.A.R.E.-like programs you want, get all the kindergarteners you want to sign pledges never to smoke (worked with drugs, didn’t it?) and then let them see one of their superstars lighting up while being supercool on the big screen and see where the influence is!

• Anonymous

  Everything is metric here. So it is weighed in Kilograms or metric tons. Acres and acres of it growing all over the place.

• Anonymous

  Then let’s do the same with alcohol……tax the heck out of it…..less drinkers……less people on disability due to alcoholism……sounds good to me.

• Anonymous

  And how much is the state paying to fly those helicopters around every September?

• Anonymous

  For one thing, maybe we should be pushing for tobacco companies not to put addicitve and cancer causing agents into their cigarettes. Sure, any time you inhale smoke you are taking in carcinogens, but straight tobacco leaf vs. tobacco leaf laced with a dozen toxic chemicals including (I’ve heard) rat poison? We could certainly make the cigarettes that are for sale of a higher (and safer) quality.
  In any case, nothing makes me want to rip a butt more than hearing an anti-smoking commerical or seeing a sign that tells you not to smoke–and I’m not a smoker. Quit trying to control other people’s lives and decisions because, in this case, it has the opposite of the desired effect.

• Anonymous

  So does fast food. Let’s tax people for being fat and a drain on our health care system–it’s only fair. (I don’t really think we should do this, so don’t get riled up, posters. I am just saying that it is the same idea–penalizing people for making personal decisions about how to live their lives when they aren’t breaking any laws.)

• Anonymous

  Maybe you should quit and donate the equivalent money to heating assistance programs.

• Anonymous

  I wouldn’t complain about a special tax on fast foods because of their detriment to public health, as long as nutritious foods are available at a reasonable cost. I was in favor of the soda pop tax, which was quashed by a heavy-duty PR campaign by beverage manufacturers.

• Anonymous

  Lots of states (and countires) do tax it more.

• Anonymous

  Most of the cancer-causing agents in tabacco smoke are there before additives and are typically more toxic.  Nicotine is very toxic and is the primary addictive agent.  Remove it and you don’t have tobacco.  Attempts were made in decades past to make “safer” cigarettes, typically low-tar.  Apparently, the tar (probably the primary carcinogens) led to less “taste” and they didn’t sell.  Additives like menthol were added to “smooth” the taste and have become quite popular.  Probably not toxic but it’s heat decomposition products may be.  In addition, the non-cancerous toxic effects need to be accounted for, including carbon monoxide, which lead to the need to control second hand smoke (and “third hand” residue).

• Anonymous

  Huh?

• Anonymous

  Only morbidly.

• Anonymous

  Sure it isn’t hectares?  And so what?  The product probably stays local.

• Anonymous

  I believe hectares are the metric version of land area measurement, our version of acres. It is not a weight measure. My point was that smoking doesnt seem to be on the decline based on the amount of stuff I see growing. The majority of the tobacco here seems to be sold to two co-ops that then sell it to foreign interests. The sales are covered in the newspaper. Foreign companies like Phillip-Morris, British American Tobacco and China National Tobacco Corporation

• Anonymous

  Actually, that sounds very sensible.  Or would you rather those programs come out of the general fund?

• Anonymous

  It just seems akin to a hamster running on the turning wheel. Nothing ever leads to anywhere.
  It would be like taxing the use of something like DDT and then turning around and using the tax revenue to restore damage done. Seems kind of insane to me.
  If someone came out and said that they were going to tax tobacco for the sole purpose of having money to fund the healthcare costs associated with smoking then that would be fine with me. But no ever adknowledges that is what they are doing. And research shows that the goverment would have to taxes of around ten dollars on each pack of cigarettes to break even with what they spend on taking care of smoke related disease and illness.

• Anonymous

  Your point being?  You don’t like smokers? You think the money won on smokers behalf should be public moneys? And anyway I have already donated to 3 diffrent charitable funds for fuel assistance to the poor and elderly.

• Anonymous

  In theory, a great idea. Unfortunately, there is a giant loophole. Drunks will learn to make it themselves. Under current rules it is usually cheaper to buy it already made. If you greatly increase the tax that will change and, you will not get as much of the money.

  Similarly, if you greatly increase the tax on cigarettes, middlemen will simply go to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, etc. and purchase it straight from the farm. If that were to happen, you know nobody would get carded.

• http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1628932330 Naran Row-Spaulding

  The state, and the nation, should get serious about tobacco issues.  Either make it illegal, or stop the ever-increasing “Sin Taxes.”

  I don’t smoke, and I don’t like being around it, but the constant “punishment” of users is getting old.

• Anonymous

  Key word that the intention of the new tax. I wonder if they are kicking in when these teens on welfare are going in for inhalers and antibiotics for bronchitis, due to smoking. I know a young man that must be allergic to smoking, because he is in the ER on a very regular basis. Due to his welfare card, he pays nothing. Sad, if they made him pay upfront, he would choose to use a primary care like the rest of us. He is 17 and for last 4 years pays nothing.

• Anonymous

  How much does a hectare of tobacco weigh ?
  In kilograms?

• Anonymous

  I suppose it would depend on the yield. What is the usable portion of each tobacco plant. How much Tobacco is produced from each hectare on average. Then the stuff gets dried in drying huts. So is it picked weight or dried weight.

• Anonymous

  orry if I misunderstood.  Your stance on these issues is tough to interpret.  No, I don’t think these funds should be public moneys.  I can’t say that I really like smokers, I sympathize with them, but don’t affect me with your habit (nor your families, your kids, etc.).  Thank you for providing asistance.

• Anonymous

  If that’s what it takes …

• Anonymous

  You said acres, I didn’t.

• Anonymous

  A hectare is about 2.2 acres.  In the ag industry, a pound an acre is about a kilogram per hectare.

• Anonymous

  Its been nice splitting hairs and nitpicking with you.

• Anonymous

  Ok , so far so good.
  Almost.
  Is the tobacco “dried” or “cured”  when weighed?