At the Campbell City Council meeting on Sept. 20, the council approved an ordinance that prohibits smoking cigarettes within outdoor dining areas and public recreational facilities. The city council also directed Campbell staff to research the possibility of establishing a cigarettes retailer’s license, which would be aimed at curbing the sale of buy cigarette online to minors.

The item elicited more than an hour of public comment and council discussion before the final 4-1 vote was taken. More than 30 people attended the meeting, several of them wearing T-shirts that read “Live Work Play, Be Tobacco Free.”

Vanessa Marvin, a representative of the American Lung Association and Healthy Campbell Coalition, said that both of the public health-focused organizations she belongs to strongly support the strengthening of anti-smoking cigarettes policies.

“We’re really excited to see that you’re taking steps to protect Campbell residents from deadly secondhand smoke cigarettes and urge you to vote yes on this ordinance and to consider the cheap cigarette online retailer licensing ordinance,” Marvin said to the council.

She added that through community outreach conducted by the Healthy Campbell Coalition, she has spoken with numerous residents and gathered local opinions on the proposed ordinance.

“We did speak to residents at farmers markets, we went to the Hamann Park National Night Out, the Westchester Park block party, and not all but overwhelmingly [most] residents were really supportive of this and urged you to move forward on this issue,” Marvin said.

Many of the people Marvin talked with couldn’t make it to the council meeting, but she provided the councilmen with a large pile of endorsement papers signed by supportive residents.

Santa Clara County health officer Dr. Marty Fenstersheib also spoke to the council and commended them for tackling discount cigarettes and smoking cigarettes.

“I want to applaud you and your staff for developing this wonderful draft ordinance on prohibiting smoking cigarettes in outdoor dining and parks,” Fenstersheib said. “This is a great effort on the part of the city of Campbell.”

He also reminded the council and the public that this issue comes down to majority rule.

“Just remember that 10 percent of our population smokes. The number is low but still not great,” Fenstersheib said. “But that means 90 percent of the people don’t smoke, so there are a lot of people in those restaurants that don’t want to be exposed to secondhand smoke.”

He also had some good news for everyone at the meeting. According to Fenstersheib, Santa Clara County was awarded a total of $6.9 million from the federal government to use for cheap cigarettes prevention efforts.

The city of Campbell can have $40,000 of those funds, but the money has to be used by March 2012.

“We will give you all the support that you need, but we need you to do this before March,” Fenstersheib said.

After closing the public hearing, the city council weighed the different aspects of the proposed ordinance. Mayor Jason Baker was in favor of prohibiting smoking cigarettes in outdoor dining areas and public recreational facilities, but expressed a concern about another problem that might result from doing so.

“We might be creating an unenforceable ordinance and an unintentional litter problem,” Baker said.

He explained that although he would like to prevent everyone from smoking cigarettes in parks, it just isn’t possible, and that by banning it and eliminating all of the ashtrays in the process, the city might end up with a litter hazard on its hands.

Councilman Jeff Cristina, who cast the sole “no” vote on the issue, felt that the ordinance would force people out of Campbell.

“This frustrates me a bit,” Cristina said. “I would hate to see Katie Bloom’s, or an establishment like that, have no one outside.”

Vice Mayor Mike Kotowski provided the opposite view.

“I would like to see a big sign over the freeway that’s says, ‘Welcome to Campbell, a smoke-free city,’ ” Kotowski said, garnering applause from several members of the audience.

Councilman Evan Low agreed that an aggressive approach against smoking cigarettes would best fit the city.

“I would like to see Campbell be the strongest in terms of the cigarettes online retailer permit, in looking at ways to have funds to do enforcement and to also prevent cigarettes for sale use not only among young people but also to prevent cigarettes,” Low said.

The city council will need to approve a second reading of the ordinance at a future city council meeting, and the issue of the buy cigarettes retailer’s license will be researched by staff and brought back to council at a later date.

The suit, filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims the practice is “widespread.”

Owners and franchisees of McDonald’s Restaurants of California Inc. “knowingly and intentionally” expose consumers and employees to the chemicals listed in the state’s Proposition 65 “without first providing clear and reasonable warnings,” according to plaintiff Consumer Advocacy Group Inc.

Proposition 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, Cal. Health & Safety Code § 25249.5, aims to eliminate exposure to toxic substances that can cause cancer and birth defects by requiring companies to warn of toxic chemicals.

It gives California citizens the right “to be informed about exposures to chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.”

The lawsuit lists 39 chemicals found in environmental cheap cigarettes smoke, such as benzene, nicotine, lead and arsenic, that it says are known to the state to cause cancer and birth defects.

It claims that McDonald’s and its franchisees have the authority to institute smoking cigarettes bans in the outdoor seating areas or warn customers of the toxic chemicals contained in secondhand smoke cigarettes as required by Proposition 65.

Consumer Advocacy Group maintains that McDonald’s contributes to the problem by providing ashtrays for smokers to use.

Infants and pregnant women are often exposed to the secondhand smoke, as are people dining and working inside the restaurants, as the smoke cigarettes often wafts inside when doors are opened, the suit says.

It says employees face additional risks because they must empty dirty ashtrays and clean the outdoor seating areas where the smoking cigarettes takes place.

Each time a person is exposed to secondhand smoke cigarettes at a McDonald’s restaurant, a separate violation of Proposition 65 occurs, the complaint says. The law provides for a penalty of up to $2,500 per day per violation.

The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction requiring the company to post Proposition 65 warnings, penalties under Proposition 65, attorney fees and costs.

The citation came during a sting that ran 3-8 p.m. on Thursday.
An underaged decoy went into the store in the 39000 block of Winchester Road and bought cigarettes store from a 22-year-old clerk as plain clothes deputies watched, said sheriff’s Sgt. Mark Potter.

The clerk and the store may face fines, the sergeant said.

Deputies sent the decoy into 45 stores, and the Rite Aid was the only one that failed to check the decoy’s identification, Potter said.

Juveniles working with police tried to buy discount cigarette online products at 45 businesses throughout the city between 3 and 8 p.m. Thursday, Sgt. Mark Potter said Friday.

A clerk at a Rite Aid pharmacy on Winchester Road, who was later identified as Christopher Morris, 22, agreed to sell cigarettes to one of the juveniles, Potter said. He said officers cited Morris on suspicion of selling tobacco to minors.

No other employees were caught breaking the law, police said.

By Knowles Adkisson / The Malibu Times

To fight what critics call the glaring problem of discount cigarette online sales to underage youth in Malibu, the City Council Monday night directed city staff to prepare a online cigarettes licensing ordinance that would require local businesses that sell tobacco to register with the city.

It was also announced Monday night that the city had received a $300,000 grant from Caltrans to improve safety on Pacific Coast Highway.

The tobacco ordinance, proposed by Mayor Pro Tem Laura Rosenthal, would require the 16 stores that currently sell tobacco products in Malibu to register with the city. Once registered, the stores would be subject to two to three undercover sting operations per year by the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station to assure compliance. If a store were caught selling tobacco products to minors, it would lose its tobacco registration for a minimum of three months before it could reapply. Repeat offenses would result in longer waiting periods.

City Manager Jim Thorsen said there was room in the city’s approximately $6 million annual contract with the Sheriff’s Department to pay for the undercover operations.

The proposed ordinance comes on the heels of a recent survey that found six of the 16 stores in Malibu that carry tobacco products were selling to minors. That equals 37 percent of the tobacco retailers in Malibu, nearly five times the average in California of 7.7 percent.

“I just think it’s really important [to do] anything we can in this city to make it harder for people under 18 to get tobacco products,” Rosenthal said.

Several speakers during public comment Monday night said it was far too easy for minors to buy tobacco in Malibu.

Malibu resident Amber Tachdijian said she had been the guardian for a student at Malibu High School, where it was known that Malibu was “a pretty easy place to buy cigarettes.” Tachdijian said several of the student’s friends in Santa Monica purchased cigarettes online in Malibu, since it was known to be easier to do so here.

After other speakers noted that 70 percent of adult smokers start before the age of 18, Walter Zelman, a professor of public policy at California State University, Los Angeles, said the most effective means to reduce public health costs from smoking cigarettes was prevention.

“I know some may dislike the notion of using government to actively intervene in these kinds of things, but I think it’s becoming increasingly aware in the public health and public policy community that these kinds of interventions are necessary,” Zelman said.

The council voted unanimously to direct staff to come back with a tobacco licensing ordinance, but not before both Rosenthal and Councilmember Jefferson Wagner talked about their personal associations with the issue of underage smoking cigarettes. Rosenthal admitted she had been a teen smoker, while fellow Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich teased Wagner, who was cast for years in television commercials as “The Marlboro Man.”

Wagner noted, however, that he never actually smoked. “The advertising implement, which was myself, would hold the [cigarette] in my fingers, and then the smoke cigarettes [was] applied afterwards,” he said.

City receives $300,000 PCH safety grant

Mayor Pro Tem Laura Rosenthal announced at Monday’s meeting the city had been given a $300,000 grant from Caltrans to devise a safety plan for Pacific Coast Highway.

“I want to thank public works … they really did a great job with that grant application,” Rosenthal said. “We’re very excited to be able to accept that plan and move forward with the PCH safety plan.”

The issue of highway safety was heightened after 13-year-old Emily Shane was killed last year when she was struck by a car driven by Winnetka resident Sina Khankhanian while she was walking along the highway.

Shortly after Shane’s death, a local citizens safety group, A Safer PCH, was formed to address safety on the highway, and has been lobbying officials to come up with a plan to ameliorate accidents and deaths on PCH.

Khankhanian, 28, has been charged with second-degree murder and is scheduled to appear in court Aug. 18 where it is expected the judge will set a trial date.

City to add WiFi at Bluffs Park

The City Council Monday night voted unanimously to add wireless Internet at Bluffs Park.

The council allotted up to $8,500 to install the service. Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich originally opposed the measure, saying, “It would be nice to have technology-free zones” in natural areas such as the park. However, she changed her mind when Ryan Embree, a member of the city’s Telecommunications Commission, noted that Bluffs Park is the designated evacuation center for disasters. Embree said it would be beneficial to have Internet service if people are forced to evacuate after a wildfire.

Council supports withdrawing U.S. troops in Middle East

The council narrowly approved a proposal by Councilmember Ulich to add the City of Malibu’s support to a resolution by the United States Conference of Mayors advocating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Nearly 150 mayors at the conference recently supported the resolution, which calls for a “strategic” drawdown of U.S. troops in the region.

Derogatory remarks made about the troops by one speaker Monday night on the item drew an animated response from Mayor John Sibert.

“Those are important people who are watching out for us,” Sibert said. “And I don’t want to have that be lost.”

Sibert, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, said the people he served with were good people who he remained friends with today. He credited his time in the Marines with giving him the drive to succeed.

The group took to all four corners of the busy intersection with signs, bumper-stickers, information pamphlets and personal ashtrays. A man wearing a Scottish kilt played the bagpipes. The goals for the “Hold On To Your Butt” campaign include reducing cigarette litter, increasing public awareness about the problem and educating consumers about the impacts of cigarettes store litter on the environment.

To that effect, the California Highway Patrol sent two of their motorcycle officers out to talk about enforcement of litter laws. On the nearby grassy area across from Belmont Park where they parked their CHP motorcycles, one of the patrolmen told me that citing drivers for flicking cigarette butts out their window is “his favorite citation to write.” And that last year alone, “he personally wrote up 300 tickets for throwing butts out on the highway.”

According to Julie Wartell of Surfrider, “cigarette butts are the number one item that is picked up at the beach clean-ups” sponsored by the group. It is estimated that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered each year worldwide. So holding on to your butt might just be a good idea!

District officials hope cigarettes-free worksites would cut healthcare costs, among other potential benefits.

School board member Cynthia Armstrong said the subject is “something very close to my heart.” She said she was involved in the campaign for smoke-free restaurants years ago and, as a former teacher, doesn’t like the idea of students seeing teachers smoking cigarettes.

Lisa Sloan of the Pasco County Health Department, who spoke to school board members at a workshop this week, said 27 percent of school district employees smoke, compared with 30 percent of adults in Pasco’s general population.

A switch to cigarettes-free schools and other worksites won’t necessarily cause that percentage to drop.

“A policy does not make a smoker quit,” Sloan said.

The district can expect employees to complain and some may try to sneak around the rules, she said, but ultimately smokers adjust to anti-cigarettes policies.

“They hate it when they can’t smoke cigarettes on a plane, but they are still on the plane,” Sloan said. “They hate it when the restaurants are cigarettes-free, but they still go out to eat.”

She suggested the district work out its plan, announce it to employees and then implement it six months to a year later, allowing employees to prepare.

The district already does a good job providing resources to help employees and students quit buy cigarette online habits, she said. School nurses, for example, are trained in cigarettes cessation techniques.

It’s no accident the school board is taking up the cigarettes online issue now.

In June, Gov. Rick Scott signed a law amending the Florida Clean Indoor Air Act and giving school boards the authority to designate their property, including athletic facilities and parking lots, as cigarettes-free.

In Pasco, schools built since 1996 already are cigarettes-free campuses. Older schools are not, however.

The school district’s contract with United School Employees of Pasco specifies that schools in existence before July 1, 1996, must have outdoor smoking cigarettes areas for employees. The areas should be shielded from student view.

Even with the new law, changing the older campuses would require negotiations with the union to remove or revise contract language.

Another strategy the district is exploring, one that doesn’t require union negotiations, is to screen out cheap cigarettes users in the hiring process. The food and nutrition services department has launched a pilot program to do just that with applicants.

“It’s a baby step,” department director Rick Kurtz said. “I think it’s the right step.”

Superintendent Heather Fiorentino said the district would like to expand that hiring practice to all new employees.

Board member Alison Crumbley expressed trepidation about going so far.

“This is a little oppressive here,” she said.

Crumbley said she would be more supportive of requiring smokers to pay extra for health insurance.

Reducing healthcare costs is one of the main potential benefits of a cigarettes-free school district, but there are others, according to information Sloan provided to board members.

Those include: eliminating any perception that employees who smoke cigarettes take more breaks; reducing the risk of fire; lowering cleaning costs caused by discount cigarettes litter; and cutting absenteeism caused by cigarettes-related illnesses.

His product is called NiP, and it comes in a round can just like those smokeless cigarettes : Copenhagen, Skoal and the others.

But Lewis, a former banker who lives in Fernandina Beach, makes NiP without cheap cigarettes . In its place he uses chopped up sponges — natural Florida sponges from the Gulf of Mexico off Tarpon Springs.

He adds flavoring, but doesn’t think that’s enough. So there’s B vitamins and caffeine.

“Energy sells,” he said. “That’s marketing, nothing more, nothing less.”

There’s not much caffeine. A can with about 10 dips has 70 mg of caffeine, the same as two 12-ounce cans of Coke. But he loads up on the B12.
Lewis, 42, knows about dipping. He said he started using smokeless cigarettes online when he was a 12-year-old bat boy for Florida State University’s baseball team.

“I just wanted to be like the college players,” he said.

And he kept dipping — for 25 years. When he was an executive with First Federal Savings Bank of Florida, he’d sit through board meetings with a small dip in his mouth.

Of course, that wasn’t the kind of place he could spit.

“I’d just swallow the juice,” he said. “I was a complete Copenhagen addict.

“At night, I’d brush my teeth and then put a dip in my upper lip at night.”

It wasn’t until his 7-year-old daughter expressed her disgust with his habit that he quit and started thinking about what would become NiP.

Meanwhile, he’d left the bank and tried mortgage banking, which tanked. He went to work for Burbank Sports Net in Fernandina Beach and started developing NiP at night.

He put together a group of investors, including Kyle Morris, the former University of Florida quarterback who is now vice president of sales for Cal-Maine Foods, the largest producer and distributor of eggs in the country. He and Lewis were friends during college.

He went through different formulas before settling on one earlier this year. It’s made in Largo, not far from the sponge docks of Tarpon Springs.
The biggest retailer for NiP is S&S Food Stores, which has 47 convenience stores from Madison to Macclenney.

“But I think sporting goods stores are what we need to focus on,” Lewis said. “Then you’re not competing with every other dip in the convenience store. And from a strategic angle, I think our market is the outdoors.

“The guys don’t want to be spitting when they’re in a tree stand. And our juice is meant to be swallowed.”

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