On Wednesday, September 28, 2011, 55 Lincoln area businesses and organizations were recognized for their commitment to enhance the health of their employees and those they serve by implementing tobacco- and smoke-free campus policies.

Tobacco Free Lancaster County (TFLC), a local group working to reduce the number of area residents suffering from tobacco-related illness, is sponsoring this recognition and is pleased to honor businesses that have taken the lead in establishing these policies.

Scientific studies confirm that worksite-based policies prohibiting the use of tobacco throughout the employer grounds effectively reduces tobacco use.

The recognition event featured testimonies from a local employer who enacted such a policy and an employee of that business who was influenced to quit smoking after 30 years because of the implementation of the policy.

Congratulations to the following businesses in Lancaster County for their commitment to smoke-free air and the health of their employees and customers by implementing a smoke-free or tobacco-free campus. 

• American Heart Association
  
• B & R Stores
  
• Back to the Bible
  
• Bailey Lauerman 
  
• Beynon Farm Products Corporation 
  
• Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska 
  
• BryanLGH Health System
  
• CEDARS Youth Services
  
• Community Health Endowment
• Continuum EAP 
  
• Cornhusker Bank
  
• Crete Carrier Corporation
  
• Crossroads Physical Therapy
  
• Duncan Aviation
  
• First State Bank
  
• Foundation for Educational Services
• Gastroenterology Specialties
  
• Great Western Bank
  
• Hampton Enterprises, Inc.
  
• Lincoln Christian School
  
• Lincoln Council on Alcoholism and Drugs
• Lincoln Industries
  
• Lincoln Medical Education Partnership
• Lincoln Public Schools
  
• Lincoln Regional Center
  
• Lincoln Surgical Hospital
  
• Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital
• Malcolm Public Schools
• National Arbor Day Foundation 
• NEBCO Inc.
• Nebraska Bankers Association
• Nebraska Community Blood Bank
• Nebraska Heart Hospital
• Nebraska Heart Institute
• Nebraska Occupational Health Center/Lincoln 
• Nebraska Risk Management Association, Inc.
• Nebraska Safety Council
• Nebraska Sports Council
• NMPP Energy
• Norris Public Schools
• NRD – Nebraska Association of Resources Districts
• NRD-Lower Platte South
• Pathology Medical Services, P.C.
• Pfizer, Inc.
• Physical Therapy Associates
• Schneider Electric
• Speedway Motors, Inc.
• St. Elizabeth’s Regional Medical Center
• State Farm
• Tabitha Health Care Services
• Talent Plus
• The Salvation Army
• Union Bank and Trust
• Union College
• University of Nebraska Foundation
• YMCA of Lincoln 

 A new report published today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides powerful and concrete evidence that the nation’s battle against tobacco use has not only driven down smoking rates, but is also saving lives by reducing lung cancer, the number one cancer killer in the United States, according to a national organization committed to reducing tobacco use.

But that's not all it does, according to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. It also tells elected officials that if they care about protecting constituents from lung cancer, they must take action to reduce smoking.

Research shows that there are strategies demonstrated to reduce tobacco use and the health harms that result.

"The most successful states have implemented a comprehensive, scientifically proven strategy that includes higher tobacco taxes, smoke-free workplace laws and well-funded programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit," according to a statement by Matthew Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. 

California, the first state to implement such a strategy, reduced lung and bronchus cancer rates nearly four times faster than the rest of the U.S. between 1988 and 2004. California's adult smoking rate in 2010 was 11.9 percent, compared to 19.3 percent for the nation as a whole. 

"It is telling that the ten states with the lowest smoking rates all have strong smoke-free laws that cover restaurants and bars and have an average tobacco tax that is almost three times as high as the ten states with the highest smoking rates."

"Every state can do as well as California — and even better — in reducing smoking and lung cancer. The states must step up their efforts to increase tobacco taxes, enact smoke-free laws and fund tobacco prevention and cessation programs. It is especially critical that states reverse budget cuts that have decimated tobacco prevention and cessation programs in recent years, cutting total funding by more than a third."

When apartment tenants light up a cigarette, it's not just their neighbors who suffer. Landlords also suffer in higher cleaning costs. 

A new UCLA study shows that putting in place smoke-free housing policies could save owners of California multi-unit rental buildings up to $18 million a year statewide on the cost of cleaning apartments vacated by tenants who smoke. Importantly, these policies also protect their other tenants from the secondhand smoke that seeps between units. 

Secondhand smoke results in about 4,000 deaths each year from ischemic heart disease and lung cancer, and it causes about 31,000 childhood asthma episodes and 4,700 pre-term infant deliveries annually, the UCLA researchers said. 

Smoke wafts between units through shared airspaces and ventilation, hallways, cracks in walls and floors, electrical outlets, and plumbing fixtures, or from outside. 

"Secondhand smoke is an important cause of morbidity and mortality, and many current policy efforts are focused on encouraging owners and managers of multi-unit housing to implement smoking restrictions," said lead study author Dr. Michael Ong, an assistant professor-in-residence in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

This is the first study to take a systematic measure of smoking-related costs in multi-unit housing, as well as the first study of smoking and multi-unit housing to take into account small-scale multi-unit buildings — those with 15 or fewer units, according to Ong. About 66 percent of California Apartment Association (CAA) members own or manage small-scale buildings. 

Smoking-related costs for recently vacated units included cleaning, repairs and maintenance; painting and decorating; trash collection and fire damage; property and fire insurance; and legal, administrative and other operating costs. The researchers found that nearly half of the multi-unit housing properties owned or managed by CAA members had no smoke-free policies, but the smaller properties had a threefold higher rate of smoke-free policies than the larger ones. They also found that:

• More than 25 percent of multi-unit housing properties had smoking-related costs in the past year.
• One-third of multi-unit housing properties are currently completely smoke-free.
• For a single multi-unit housing property, the mean smoking-related cost was nearly $5,000 in the past year and the median cost was $2,000.
• The likelihood of incurring smoking-related costs was reduced by half with the presence of a complete smoke-free policy.
• Implementing complete smoke-free policies in California multi-unit housing could result in an estimated property savings of $18 million overall in the short-term.

The researchers caution that the survey response rate — 22.4 percent — was low, though it was similar to other CAA survey response rates. The study was published online August 18 in the American Journal of Public Health and will appear in the journal's October print issue.

Strategies put in place to provide smoke-free recreation areas are the topic of a September research article being published by, "Preventing Chronic Disease: Public Health Research, Practice, and Policy."

Localities in California have, since 2000, put in place hundreds of policies and ordinances to protect citizens from secondhand smoke. This research, conducted by Travis D. Satterlund, Ph.D., J.D.; Diana Cassady, Dr. Ph.; Jeanette Trieber, Ph. D.; and Cathy Lemp, looks at strategies used by state-funded local tobacco control programs to enact smoke-free policies involving outdoor recreational spaces.

The smoke-free recreation areas article is also available as download as a pdf file.

For the first time since Gallup initially asked the question in 2001, a majority of Americans (59 percent) support a ban on smoking in all public places. At the same time, fewer than 2 in 10 support the idea of making smoking totally illegal in this country.

As Americans have learned more about the devastating health consequences of breathing secondhand smoke, support for laws that protect the right to breathe smoke-free air has grown.

Thanks to Nebraska's smoke-free worksites law, most Nebraskans now are protected on-the-job from secondhand smoke.

But Nebraskans and others who travel out of state -- even just past the Nebraska border to the Missouri river to the boats -- for entertainment at the casinos, and the people who work at those casinos don't have the same protections most of us Nebraskans have on the job.

In fact, casino workers work in high-risk jobs. To help raise awareness of the plight of casino workers, Roswell Park and ANR Foundation have recently produced an eight-minute video to highlight casino workers' struggle for smokefree air. 

Casino workers are still dying from secondhand smoke and are too often viewed as an expendable compromise. This video helps to put a human face on this issue and helps of this public health tragedy. 

The project was made possible with funding support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

A $1.00 increase in Nebraska’s cigarette tax would prevent approximately 11,000 youth from smoking and, over five years, save an estimated $3.62 million in lung cancer, heart attack, and stroke costs. 

And keeping all workplaces, restaurants, and bars in Nebraska 100 percent smoke-free is the best way to continue protecting all 1,826,300 residents from the dangers of secondhand smoke.

That's according to two new tobacco reports from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) released Wednesday. The reports measure the dramatic health and economic benefits of implementing strong tobacco control policies in the states. The results provide new evidence that comprehensive smoke-free laws and increased tobacco taxes have the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars in health care costs.

According to the reports, jointly titled Saving Lives, Saving Money, if all states enacted comprehensive smoke-free laws and tobacco tax increases, over time they could reduce the number of smokers by 2.5 million, avert nearly 2 million deaths, and save nearly $2 billion in health care costs. 

The smoke-free report is the first of its kind to show the possible number of fewer people smoking, fewer deaths and savings in health care costs if states with weak or no smoke free laws were to enact comprehensive laws. 

The tobacco tax report compares data from every state to determine the potential lives saved, revenue raised and Medicaid dollars saved with a $1.00 cigarette tax increase over current levels.

“Tobacco is the only legal product that kills when used as directed, and it costs billions of dollars in health care spending,” said John R. Seffrin, PhD, chief executive officer of ACS CAN. “We now have concrete evidence that enacting comprehensive smoke-free laws and increasing state tobacco taxes can save millions of lives, prevent smokers from picking up the habit and save states significant dollars in health spending. Strong state tobacco control policies aren’t just a good idea in stemming the tide of the tobacco pandemic – they’re a necessity.”

Comprehensive smoke-free laws, which include all restaurants, bars and workplaces, reduce exposure to secondhand smoke, encourage people to quit or cut down on smoking, and prevent youth from starting to smoke. Data show they also reduce disease and health care spending, and improve employee productivity. Currently, 23 states and the District of Columbia have enacted comprehensive smoke-free laws. If the 27 states that do not have comprehensive smoke-free laws implemented them:

• More than 1 million adults would quit smoking.
• Nearly 400,000 youth would never start smoking.
• We could save more than 600,000 lives.
• State economies would also save nearly more than 1.3 billion in the costs to treat lung cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and pregnancy complications over five years.

Increasing cigarette excise taxes has been shown to reduce the number of current and potential smokers. Research shows that every 10 percent increase in the price of tobacco reduces youth smoking rates by 6.5 percent and overall cigarette consumption by 4 percent. 

Cigarette taxes are also a powerful economic tool, directly producing sustained increases in state revenues and resulting in large savings in health care costs. If every state nationwide increased its tobacco tax by $1.00:

• Nearly 1.4 million adults would quit smoking.
• Nearly 1.7 million youth would never start smoking.
• 1.3 million people could be saved from smoking-related deaths.
• State economies would raise $25.7 billion in tax revenue (a 54 percent increase over current revenue) and, over five years, save more than $645 million in health treatment costs.

Nebraska Senator Calls Proposal to Increase Cigarette Tax Excessive
A proposal to raise the state's cigarette tax from 64 cents per pack to $1.99 per pack would be a "massive tax increase in new state revenue," according to Sen. Norm Wallman of Cortland. The proposed increase, he said, is excessive. 

In a column published in the Beatrice Daily Sun, Sen. Wallman said he doesn't "think smokers should bear an unfair burden for our state shortfall."

LB436 would increase the tax on cigarettes from 64 cents per pack to $1.99 per pack, and would increase the tax on other tobacco products from 20 percent of wholesale to 65 percent of wholesale. Earlier this month, the Revenue Committee considered raising the cigarette tax from 64 cents per pack to $1.28 per pack. A motion to advance that proposal from the Legislature’s Revenue Committee failed to get a second. The bill remains in Revenue Committee.

New Report: Nebraska One of Half of States with Smoke-Free Worksites Law
Nearly half of U.S. residents are covered by state or local indoor smoke-free worksites laws, according to a CDC report issued this week.

Another ten states have laws that require smoke-free workplaces in bars or restaurants, or non-hospitality workplaces, the Omaha World Herald reported.

Tobacco smoke is a cause of lung cancer, heart disease and other maladies, according to the article.

New Study Details Smoking Rates in Dakota and Thurston Counties
According to a newly released study, 23 percent of adult residents of Dakota County and 34 percent of adult Thurston County residents smoke.

Smoking was one of a number of health factors that were examined in a report that placed Dakota County as 74th of 75 ranked counties for health in Nebraska, as reported by the Dakota County Star.

In Nebraska, 20 percent of adults smoke, placing the smoking rate for Dakota and Thurston counties above the state average.

The County Health Rankings examined behaviors including smoking, adult obesity, excessive drinking and deaths in motor vehicle crashes, providing county-by-county health comparisons throughout the United States.

Nebraska is among  half of the United States that has a law in place protecting residents from secondhand smoke, according to a new study.