ND State Update
By Rob Port
May 5, 2014
BISMARCK, N.D. — Spending in North Dakota on so-called “risky behavior” programs is increasing more than 20 percent in the current biennium.
One of the biggest spenders is the North Dakota Center for Tobacco Prevention and Control Policy, an entity of the state government created when voters approved a ballot measure in 2008.
The center, also known as BreatheND, has more than $15 million to spend this biennium, and spending they are.
In their cross hairs — smoking in apartment buildings.
From March 31 through April 27, the committee spent more than $108,000 on radio and television advertising in markets across the state, running ads encouraging smoke-free housing, according to information obtained through an open records request
The organization also has launched SmokeFreeHousingND.com.
“People recognize the importance of eliminating secondhand smoke from public places, but smoke in apartment buildings is just as dangerous and a large percent of North Dakota’s population remains unprotected,” the group states in a media release posted on the BreatheND website. “The Center is encouraging people to talk with their local public health unit to learn more about smoke-free multi-unit housing in their communities.”
Smoking in public places, including private businesses open to the public, and places of employment already is illegal thanks to a ballot measure passed by North Dakota voters in 2012. That ban also includes vaping, or the use of so-called e-cigarettes, which have gained popularity as an alternative to traditional smoking.
As Watchdog reported previously, spending on programs addressing “risky behavior” has increased significantly in North Dakota. The state appropriated more than $122 million in combined state and federal funds to address risky behavior in the 2011-13 biennium, but that total increased that to more than $148 million in the current biennium,up about $26 million.
Most of the spending is on programs addressing alcohol and tobacco use.
A Challenge to ND’s Antismokers
July 15th, 2009
By Michael J. McFadden
“If residents support ‘smoke free’ so passionately, why not lift smoking bans?”
The Herald’s July 7 story on the North Dakota tobacco board quotes Bette Deede, Fargo Cass Public Health tobacco prevention coordinator, as saying that the bans are so popular that, “Once people have smoke-free, they love smoke-free. They don’t want to go back” (“No-tobacco plan includes tripling tax,” Page A1).
I’ve heard the same claim here in Philadelphia and in my neighboring New York, so I’d like to offer the same challenge to North Dakota I have here.
The challenge is this. Is Deede telling the truth? There’s a very simple test:
Deede should push to have Fargo’s smoking ban rescinded and thereby prove the truth of her statement to the rest of North Dakota, as the state would watch Fargo’s restaurants, bars and everyone else continue to ban smoking on their own without the law.
On the other hand, if she’s NOT telling the truth, then she’ll resist any efforts to rescind smoking bans because she knows full well just how unpopular they actually are.
So how about it, Ms. Deede? Care to stand behind your words? Or were you just blowing smoke?
McFadden is the author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains,” a book about the psychology of antismoking activists and activism.
Lawmaker questions effect of tobacco measure
By DALE WETZEL Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press – Saturday, October 11, 2008
BISMARCK, N.D.
North Dakota’s House majority leader has requested a legal opinion about whether a proposed ballot measure would give a federal agency power to dictate state spending on anti-tobacco efforts.
The measure’s chairwoman, former Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, said the timing of the request by Rep. Rick Berg, R-Fargo, was meant “to throw sand in everybody’s face, thinking that some of it might blind people to what actually is happening.”
Berg on Friday asked Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem to answer a series of questions about Measure 3, which would establish a new fund for some of the money North Dakota is receiving from a lawsuit settlement against the nation’s largest tobacco companies.
The measure puts a committee in charge of establishing a comprehensive plan to reduce tobacco use in North Dakota.
It says the effort should be financed using recommendations by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is presently recommending $18.6 million in anti-tobacco expenditures every two years in North Dakota.
“I don’t think it’s constitutional to allow some agency outside of our state to set the level of state spending,” Berg said. “My concerns, when I look at this, is either these (provisions) were poorly thought through when it was drafted, or done intentionally, to give authority that goes beyond what normal agencies have.”
For example, the measure says executive committee members of a proposed tobacco control board may take actions that any private individual may do, Berg said. That would include making political contributions, he said.
Heitkamp said the measure requires the Legislature to set money aside in a fund that may be spent only on approved anti-tobacco programs.
Lawmakers are not ordered to spend the money, but the alternative would be to do nothing, Heitkamp said. “It wouldn’t make any sense to have it just sit there,” she said.
She said the measure’s drafters were sensitive to the Legislature’s budget perogatives. Language describing the executive committee’s powers was taken from state laws that govern the operation of the state Mill and Elevator, she said. She said the fund could not be used to make political donations.
“Everyone … completely understands that this is public money, and the restrictions that you typically would have regarding public money,” she said.
Heitkamp said she believed Berg was attempting to generate opposition to the measure by raising questions about it shortly before the election. Its language and provisions have been known since last spring, she said.
“His motivation is that he doesn’t want to spend tobacco money on tobacco control. He does not want to invest in those programs,” Heitkamp said. “I don’t know how to state it any clearer than that.”
Sewage nourishes their bias
Ross Nelson,
June 29, 2008
Ross Nelson sorts mail at the post office. To delay total brain atrophy he writes an occasional column for the Forum. He also reads on his breaks when he’s not arguing politics or epistemological first principles with his co-workers.
Junkyards and smoking bans? I have a working hypothesis about the desire to step on others’ necks. For most people, the desire stays the same size and intensity no matter what, and if it’s squeezed in one part, it bulges in another, like a balloon. Thus many years ago we had extensive economic liberty in America but strict codes about pregnancy, dress, even booze, at one time prohibited. Now we’re much freer about these and other things such as killing nearly born children, countenancing the high farce of gay parades (a clue to the clueless: fighting gay stereotypes by organizing drag contests is, um, counterproductive), and pushing smokers around.
Interestingly, as social license goes up, economic liberty falls. Take the recent stir over junkyards in rural Cass County, a controversy whose root is watered by the same sewage nourishing smoking bans. An owner of old cars, I’ve been to Dave Habiger’s yard a number of times. His place is remote, not next to any body of water, and provides useful services both to our industrial society and to those who need parts in an era when some car companies won’t make replacements after 10 years. It beggars belief that there are those out in the middle of nowhere who bellyache about junkyards.
The arguments are ridiculous. Mosquitoes spawning in old car tires? It is to laugh. My township, one of dozens, has perhaps 30 miles of raised roads, which means twice that in ditches. Drain 52 runs through it. One heavy rainfall likely leaves more standing water in this township alone than in all the discarded tires, refrigerators and cars in the entire state.
Those who complain about possible pollution from what few rural junkyards there are, and even about neatly lined up and maintained machines parked outdoors, must be joking. This county is full of cultivated land that is soaked with herbicides and insecticides. Have we forgotten The Forum article from a couple of years back about evidence of these chemicals retarding farm children’s intelligence? And let’s not forget the nitrogen sprayed everywhere. All of these chemicals find their way into the rivers around here, so spare us the hypocrisy about trivialities.
There are those whose inner despots must be made to feel warm and fuzzy by inflicting their bias on others. They don’t even bother with reasons; “I don’t like it” is reason enough to force others to bend to their wills.
Medical people seem to be in the forefront of the smoking bans, as if their training has the slightest relevance to whether adults should be coerced for their own good. Here’s news for the medical profession: You are completely unauthorized, and often utterly incompetent, to dictate to people as to how they choose to live. Don’t misunderstand. You’ve pulled glass out of my head after a car accident, excised my wife’s appendix, and saved the life of my newborn, not to mention dozens of lesser healing incidents. But many of you can’t make even simple distinctions or reason from a principle other than, “This is what I think, and if I have the power, you will obey.”
You’re also bullies and hypocrites, since you will take up smoking as a “public health issue” but refuse to condemn gay sex, which is a superb way to spread AIDS and other diseases. A consenting adult can’t be in the presence of another smoking adult, for health reasons you say, but consensual gay sex that leads to many thousands of deaths is quite all right.
So here’s my proposition to lifestyle dictators everywhere: Why not inform us adults, and then leave us alone?
Nelson is a Fargo postal worker and regular contributor to The Forum’s commentary pages. He can be reached at r.cnelson@702com.net
Senate Defeats Smoking Ban
2/8/2007
Brandi Powell?
You can`t smoke in most public buildings in the state. An effort to make all buildings smoke-free if they offer access to the public has failed. Bismarck Senator Ralph Kilzer sponsored the bill, and he says smoking is the nation`s top health hazard.
But today the state Senate defeated a bill to ban smoking in bars and truck stops, 30-15. Opponents of the smoking ban said it`s a person`s choice whether or not to go into a bar.? Supporters say it`s a reasonable intrusion into private business.
“I think this situation clearly a public health issue involved here that warrants that kind of common sense and reasonable intrusion,” says Senator Thomas Fiebiger of Fargo. “And for that reason I am in support of this bill. I think that our North Dakota workers should not have to choose between their job and their health.”
Jamestown Senator Dave Nething says many people work in bars by choice, and they don`t want the Legislature to take away smoking.
N.D. House defeats smoking ban on Capitol grounds
DALE WETZEL
01-12-2007
DALE WETZEL
Supporters of a smoking ban on the 132-acre North Dakota Capitol grounds say it will help safeguard the health of employees and visitors and prevent some building entrances from resembling a pool hall.
Others argued Thursday that the sweeping prohibition, which includes the governor’s residence and the Capitol’s parking lots, walking trails and mall, goes too far.
“I don’t think I’d like to be busted on the way to my car, when I leave work, lighting up a cigarette to go home,” said Lee Lundberg, a training officer and mediator in the state Office of Management and Budget’s human resources division.
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