INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana  March 5, 2010 – Rep. Charlie Brown just doesn’t get it.  Legislated smoking bans are not only unnecessary, they are an affront to the personal rights of smokers and non-smokers, alike, and they cost tax revenues and jobs and result in more failed businesses, says the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.

Brown keeps introducing bills like a current amendment to Senate Bill 175 that bans smoking in all public places except casinos and horse tracks.  He has been voted down repeatedly in the past without serious consideration.  This time, the bill – complete with Brown’s amendment - is headed for debate in a conference committee hearing scheduled for next week.

Chris McCalla, legislative director for the IPCPR, called Brown “misguided and misinformed.”

“Rep. Brown is wrong when he says there is a ‘dire need’ to protect Indiana’s citizens from secondhand smoke.  Study after study exists that prove secondhand smoke is not harmful.  Even the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says so.  OSHA has established safe levels for secondhand smoke that are 25,000 times safer than air quality in most bars and restaurants,” said McCalla.

McCalla said it is the right of every business owner to declare their businesses smoke-free or not. 

“It is not up to government to make that decision,” he declared. “And customers can decide for themselves if they want to patronize a place that does or does not allow smoking on the premises.  I think people are getting fed up with government telling them what they can and cannot do,” McCalla said.

In response to Brown’s claims that smoking bans do not hurt revenue at bars and restaurants, McCalla cited the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis regarding the proven negative effects on businesses from legislated smoking bans.

“The Fed has found that, based on impartial data generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, significant employment declines result from forced smoking bans, especially in bars and restaurants due to lost revenues,” he said.

McCalla also said a smoking ban that includes cigar stores, smoke shops and cigar bars would have a ruinous effect on those family-owned neighborhood businesses.

“Twenty-six percent of Hoosier adults smoke,” said McCalla.  “That may not be a majority of Indiana voters, but it’s more than enough to make a difference come election time.  Legislators need to remember that.”

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Topeka, Kansas  March 5, 2010 – It may sound like the theme of a Jim Carrey comedy – First, we ban smoking, then we raise tobacco taxes – but members of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association in Kansas aren’t finding this ironic potential scenario very funny.

Last month, the Kansas legislature passed and Gov. Mark Parkinson signed a comprehensive ban against smoking in restaurants, bars and most workplaces.  Now, with the governor’s support, some state lawmakers are poised to increase taxes on most tobacco products from 10 percent to 40 percent.  The Senate Committee on Assessment and Taxation will hear public testimony for SB516 on Wednesday, March 10.  Several IPCPR members plan to testify against the bill.

“It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.  Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR.

“Legislated smoking bans violate the personal rights of everyone – smokers and non-smokers, alike - and everyone knows that increased taxes on tobacco products result in lower tax revenues because they encourage illegal sales of bootlegged tobacco products.  People also cross borders and use the Internet to purchase their tobacco products which eliminates all tobacco taxes from the state’s coffers,” said McCalla.

“All legislated smoking bans should be abolished, and a tobacco tax increase is wrong for the times and wrong for Kansas,” said McCalla.  His organization is a not-for-profit group of more than 2,000 cigar store owners and manufacturers and distributors of premium cigars and pipe tobacco.

McCalla said most IPCPR members are owners of small, mom-and-pop operations that pay taxes and employ local people.  Legislated smoking bans and higher tobacco taxes, he said, result in lower sales of premium cigars, pipe tobacco and other tobacco products which, in turn, reduce tax revenues for the state and, more importantly, result in lost jobs and failed businesses.

“The last thing Kansas needs is lower tax revenues, lost jobs and closed businesses,” McCalla said.

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Atlanta, Georgia  March 4, 2010 – The Georgia House of Representatives is mounting a move to increase state excise taxes on cigarettes by 270 percent and pipe and smokeless tobacco by 150 percent that the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association and Americans for Tax Reform are having none of.

House Bill 39, with more than 60 sponsors, aims to increase state cigarette taxes from the current $.37 per pack to $1.37 per pack and smokeless tobacco state tax would go up 150 percent from 10 percent of wholesale value to 25 percent of wholesale cost.

In a letter to Georgia House and Senate Taxpayer Protection Pledge signers, the ATR said, “A vote in favor of this tax hike would be a violation of the… commitment you made to your constituents to oppose any and all tax increases.”

The letter also pointed out that Georgia’s nearby states have an average cigarette tax of $.36 per pack.  If the tax hike is passed, Georgians will have to pay $1.37 per pack, nearly quadruple that of their neighbors.  In a similar situation, Maryland raised the tobacco tax last year to cover a projected budget shortfall.  However, the problem was only made worse when tobacco sales fell 25% after consumers drove to nearby states with lower tax rates to make their tobacco purchases.

Chris McCalla, legislative director of the Columbus, Georgia-based IPCPR, agreed with the ATR’s position that, “It is critical to revitalize Georgia’s economy with tax cuts, not tax increases.  We must lift the burden of larger government from the backs of hardworking taxpayers and consumers instead of further depressing economic activity.”

Although premium cigars are not included in the proposed tax hike, McCalla said the IPCPR’s position was preemptive and aimed at attempting to protect the long-range business interests of its members and the rights of Georgia consumers.

McCalla recounted a story told to him by Brett Chastain, owner of the Sweetbriar Smoke Shop in Columbus, Georgia.  Chastain’s location serves the Ft. Benning area and many of his pipe tobacco customers are retired military on fixed income.

“These people, our heroes, are very sensitive to tax increases.  The proposed state tax increase would further exacerbate the pricing issues of pipe tobacco brought on earlier this year by a 2,000 percent tax increase on tobacco that raised federal pipe tobacco taxes from $2.8311 per pound to $24.78 per pound.  And Georgia wants to add another 150 percent increase to that?  What are they thinking?” McCalla asked.

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Columbus, Georgia  March 3, 2010 -- Conclusions made by a new study of cigar and pipe smoking by researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center are not supported by the study’s findings, says the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association, a not-for-profit group of premium cigar retailers and manufacturers. 

The study, published last month in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was funded primarily by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the National Institutes of Health.  The study concludes that “physicians should… counsel cessation of pipe and cigar smoking….”  

“Nothing in the study justifies this erroneous conclusion.  It is prejudicial and preconceived, thereby justifying the labeling of the survey as being a corrupt misuse of junk science,” said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR which is comprised largely of some 2,000 neighborhood mom-and-pop retail stores and family-owned manufacturers of premium cigars, pipes, tobacco and related accoutrements.

McCalla cited several features of the study that he said support his group’s position:

1. Of 3,528 participants in the study, only 58 had ever smoked cigars or pipes and not cigarettes, and only 428 had smoked pipes or cigars along with cigarettes.
2. Only 47 of the subjects were current cigar smokers, of which only 16 were current cigar smokers who had never smoked cigarettes.
3. Of the cigar smokers, 95 percent were male, but only 34 percent of non-smokers were men.
4. There was no effort in the study to determine the type of cigar smoked – machine-made or premium, hand-made cigars.
5. The study showed no clinical effect on lung function in cigar smokers.
6. There were no differences in airflow obstruction between cigar smokers and non-smokers.
7. Cotinine levels (a form of nicotine) were similar in cigar smokers and non-smokers.

“The study found no clinical differences between cigar smokers and non-smokers and to draw conclusions to the contrary is to participate in a conspiracy of public disinformation and deception,” McCalla said.

http://www.annals.org/content/152/4/201.abstract?aimhp

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St. Louis, Missouri  February 26, 2010 – With Missouri’s unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent, the state’s legislators have taken their eyes off job creation as a priority and are pandering to powerful neo-prohibitionists and anti-tobacco interests instead, said the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.

Statewide smoking bans have been proposed in the Missouri Senate and House of Representatives that would prohibit smoking in restaurant, bars, shopping malls, gambling facilities and other public places.  The House bill was crafted by the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society, two organizations that receive millions of dollars from companies that produce nicotine replacement products.

“Jobs are lost and businesses suffer as a result of legislated smoking bans, and a statewide ban would further add to Missouri’s labor miseries,” said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR.

McCalla cited the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis regarding the proven negative effects on businesses from legislated smoking bans.

“The Fed has found that, based on impartial data generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, significant employment declines result from forced smoking bans, especially in bars and restaurants,” he said.

“The marketplace is deciding what businesses should allow smoking or not, and that’s the way it should be.  Government shouldn’t be taking away the rights of business owners to run their enterprises as the market dictates, not big government.  There are plenty of restaurants and other businesses that already have declared themselves smoke-free, so there’s no need to take away the rights of other business owners by forcing them to ban smoking on their premises,” McCalla said.

“For those questioning overstated claims regarding the health aspects of incidental secondhand smoke, I would refer them to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  OSHA has set acceptable levels for secondhand smoke up to 25,000 safer than normally found in restaurants and bars,” he added.

McCalla explained that the IPCPR is a group of some 2,000 retailers, manufacturers and distributors of premium cigars, pipes and related items, most of whom are mom-and-pop operators – small business owners whose neighborhood businesses serve their respective communities.   

“We do not represent ‘big tobacco.’ Our members have every right to sell their legal products to adults and their customers should have every right to enjoy those products on premise and off where permitted by business owners, not by legislated decrees.  The legislature should be spending their time creating jobs, not sacrificing them to special interest groups,” McCalla said.

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Salt Lake City, Utah February 25, 2010 – The efforts of some Utah state legislators to out-do one another in their efforts to ban and tax legal tobacco products work against each other and are going to backfire, says the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.

“These kinds of proposals are ill-advised and should be dumped as bad ideas,” according to Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR which maintains that business owners should be left to decide for themselves to ban or not to ban and that Governor Gary R. Herbert has promised “no new taxes of any kind.”

“Increased tobacco taxes would bring a burden of higher costs and broken promises to nearly 10 percent of the Utah adult population that smokes, most of whom will simply buy their tobacco online or out of state to avoid paying these new taxes,” according to McCalla.

“Not all tobacco products are the same. Premium cigars and pipes are different from, say, cigarettes in that they are discretionary products enjoyed only occasionally like a fine wine or single-malt scotch. As a result, they should be taxed differently.”

McCalla suggested that the current 35 percent excise tax on tobacco products other than cigarettes could be replaced by a 50 cent tax cap per hand-made cigar. He said such a tax is generating positive results in five other states, including Oregon, Washington, Rhode Island, Iowa and Wisconsin.

The IPCPR is a non-profit organization of more than 2,000 cigar store owners and manufacturers and distributors of premium cigars and pipe tobacco.

McCalla said most IPCPR members are owners of small, mom-and-pop operations that pay taxes and employ local people. Legislated smoking bans, he said, result in lower sales of premium cigars, pipe tobacco and other tobacco products which reduce tax revenues for the state and, more importantly, result in lost jobs and failed businesses.

“The last thing Utah needs is lower tax revenues, lost jobs and closed businesses,” McCalla said.

The public is being scammed by what McCalla called “neo-prohibitionists and tobaccophiles hell-bent on spreading lies to build their own power.”

“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has, indeed, established safe levels of tobacco smoke and those levels are up to 25,000 higher than normally found in any bar or restaurant,” McCalla pointed out.

Instead, McCalla suggested that the free market continue to set its own rules by having business owners decide whether or not their establishments should be smoke-free.

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St. Louis, Missouri February 15, 2010 – St. Louis, Missouri will be a center of the pipe smoking world at noon this Saturday, February 20.

That’s when International Pipe Smoking Day will be celebrated at the 22nd Annual Gateway Area Pipe Show at the Heart of St. Charles Banquet Center. Local briar lovers will be raising their pipes in a salute to their pipe smoking brothers and sisters around the world as a show of friendship and unity that reaches across all borders, according to the Bob Callaway, spokesperson for the St. Louis Pipe Club, sponsor of the show.

International Pipe Smoking Day was designated by a group on Smokers Forums three years ago as a day on which pipe smokers everywhere could tell their story and educate others about the rich history and traditions of the noble art of pipe smoking. The group dedicated it to the worldwide community of pipe smokers that is bound together by a shared love of pipes, pipe collecting and the social aspect of pipe smoking. They respect informed choice and the responsible adult use of smoking tobacco and envision a world where governments act in good faith and integrity.

"International Pipe Smoking Day provides an opportunity for briar lovers everywhere to stand up and demonstrate with pride that we are still enjoying our pipes despite all the restrictions and increased tobacco taxes that the anti-tobacco forces have imposed on us. They just don't understand the significant benefits that pipe smoking offers," Callaway said.

International Pipe Smoking Day is supported by the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association of some 2,000 retailers of premium tobacco products; the International Committee of Pipe Clubs, which has members in more than 25 countries; and by the United Pipe Clubs of America, with its more than 20 member clubs in the United States. Many other pipe clubs in this country and abroad also will hold special events on or around February 20 to mark the day.

"Our motto is 'Relax with Your Pipe' and that's the idea we want to get across," says Vernon Vig, President of UPCA which, according to the organization’s website was founded in 2002 to promote and protect the interests of the American pipe smoking community.

"Pipe smokers are mature, considerate adults. We don't want to bother anyone, and all we ask in return is a little common sense and consideration on the part of others," said Vig.

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“There are no safe levels of secondhand smoke in the workplace.”

The next time you hear someone say this, tell the speaker he or she is misinformed, flat out wrong or full of crap, depending on your mood and the occasion.  Tell him or her that there, indeed, are safe levels of secondhand smoke as established by no less an authority than the United States Government.  In fact, it was the United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration that set the safe air quality standard for secondhand smoke. 

OSHA  has established safe levels (otherwise known as permissible exposure limits or PELs) of secondhand smoke in the workplace and those safe levels are up to 25,000 times higher than are normally found in bars and restaurants.

Let’s take that last statement apart to be sure we understand its component facts.

What’s is a PEL?  PEL stands for permissible exposure limit.  PELs are OSHA safe acceptable levels of exposure to humans for an eight hour day, 40 hours per week time period.  The PEL for nicotine as established by OSHA is .5 mg.

Why measure nicotine?  Why not measure formaldehyde or benzene which are also found in secondhand smoke?  Nicotine is the only unique trace chemical in secondhand smoke.  If you measured for formaldehyde, for example, the carpet and other interior sources of formaldehyde would corrupt the test result.  Besides, formaldehyde is formed naturally in the atmosphere due to photochemical oxidation.  Benzene? Benzene is given off from burning foods in the kitchen or diesel exhaust outdoors so, again, a false reading would be obtained. 

Therefore, nicotine is the ideal chemical to measure to determine secondhand smoke concentrations in the air. 

Actually, you could measure every airborne chemical in secondhand smoke and compare them to OSHA guidelines for each specific chemical and you would find the results to be the same, if not even more dramatic. 

What studies prove air quality standards in the workplace are within the OSHA PEL for secondhand smoke?   There are  many.  For one, Oak Ridge National Laboratory testing confirms that air quality testing of secondhand smoke in bars and restaurants "...concluded that exposures to respirable suspended particulate matter (RSP), for example, were considerably below limits (safer than) established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for the workplace....." 

OSHA, itself, says "Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."

In fact, our claim that ‘OSHA’s safe level of secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times higher than is normally found in bars and restaurants’ is based primarily on studies by the American Cancer Society.

What the American Cancer Society has proven in conducting air quality testing of secondhand smoke is that secondhand smoke absolutely does not constitute a health hazard justifying a government mandated smoking ban.

The American Cancer Society measured the air quality for secondhand smoke in several venues.  ACS tested by measuring the "marker" chemical in secondhand smoke -nicotine.  The results ranged from 20 -940 nanograms / cu. M.  (A nanogram is 10 (-9) of a gram or 0.000000001 of a gram which is also 0.000001 of a mg (milligram).   OSHA safe level 0.5 mg divided by ACS result 20 nanograms, which is also 0.000020 of a mg. Thus, 0.5 /0.00002 = 25,000 times safer than OSHA regulations.

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/pel/standards.html

http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9992

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2009/12/secondhand-smoke-is-not-workplace.html

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/04/bmj-published-air-quality-test-results.html

Provided by International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers

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Boston, Massachusetts February 1, 2010 – Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick submitted a $28.2 billion state budget for fiscal 2011 last week.  To partially offset the three percent increase over 2010, Patrick’s budget proposal calls for raising the current 30 percent excise tax on cigars and smoking tobacco to 110 percent and 120 percent, respectively.  The International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association respectfully disagrees with this strategy.

“It’s outrageous to put the burden of budget management on the backs of cigar smokers.  They ought to be finding jobs instead of creating job-killing new taxes,” said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR.

The association represents some 2,000 members, most of whom are small business owners of mom-and-pop neighborhood cigar stores along with premium cigar manufacturers and distributors of related merchandise.  Nearly 40 of those members reside, work and run their businesses in the state of Massachusetts.

McCalla pointed out that studies prove that higher taxes on tobacco products like premium cigars never produce the revenues they were designed to bring in.  In fact, he said, they result in lower sales which cost jobs, closed businesses, and significantly reduce the very tax revenues for which they were originally created.

“When tobacco taxes go up, especially those on discretionary products like premium cigars which are enjoyed only occasionally, consumers will find less expensive sources for their favorite cigars.  They will turn to the Internet and mail order as well as go across state borders or even resort to buying bootlegged products.  That creates a  lose-lose situation: neighborhood cigar retailers lose sales and the state loses all that tax revenue,” said McCalla.

According to McCalla, tobacco taxes are regressive and disproportionately burden lower- and middle-income earners, even among premium cigar smokers.

“Tobacco taxes also tend to be unreliable and unsustainable sources of revenue and don’t result in real budget fixes.  They hurt local businesses and the overall economy.  The unintended consequences for individual states and the American society as a whole can be avoided with application of sound fiscal policies and real budget reforms instead of bad tax policy,” McCalla said.

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Salt Lake City, Utah January 27, 2010 – As Utah legislators contemplate raising taxes on tobacco products, the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association is reminding them that voters across the board are against new taxes and favor delivery on campaign promises.

Some Utah state representatives and senators are talking about new tobacco taxes even as Governor Gary Herbert has proclaimed that there shall be no new taxes of any kind.  The IPCPR, a non-profit association of some 2,000 retail tobacconists and manufacturers and distributors of premium cigars, pipes, tobaccos and related accessories, called this the kind of “disconnect” that is leading to voter revolts across America.

“Utah voters are among the most savvy in the country,” said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR.  “They know when they are being led down a primrose path intentionally or otherwise by their legislators who say one thing and do another.  And, when legislators do what the voters don’t want done, new, more responsive legislators are elected by those voters.”

McCalla said it was important for Utah legislators to realize that the reasons they have been given by anti-tobacco groups to call for across the board tax increases on all tobacco products reflect the misguided conclusions of poorly informed special interest groups.

“First, the governor said ‘no new taxes of any kind’.  Increased tobacco taxes would bring a burden of higher costs and broken promises to nearly 10 percent of the Utah adult population that smokes, most of whom will simply buy their tobacco online or out of state to avoid paying these new taxes.

“Second, not all tobacco products are the same.  Premium cigars and pipes are different from, say, cigarettes in that they are discretionary products enjoyed only occasionally like a fine wine or single-malt scotch.  As a result, they should be taxed differently.” 

McCalla suggested that the current 35 percent excise tax on tobacco products other than cigarettes could be replaced by a 50 cent tax cap per hand-made cigar. He said such a tax  is generating positive results in five other states, including Oregon, Washington, Rhode Island, Iowa and Wisconsin.

“Third, human behavior can’t be legislated.  Some lawmakers say increased tobacco taxes will prevent youths from smoking. That would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Our IPCPR retail members are adamantly diligent about selling their products only to age-appropriate adult customers.  For other retailers, there are plenty of laws on the books that, enforced properly, will accomplish that same objective. Besides, those neo-prohibitionists who make unsubstantiated claims of youth smoking are basing their estimates on overly vivid imaginations.”

McCalla urged Utah legislators to drop their consideration of “job-killing higher tobacco taxes that will actually result in lower tax revenues because people will find ways to avoid paying those new taxes.”

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