A Call for State Unity:

This examiner has previously reported on the day the Tobacco deal blew up.  This followed by the USFDA's call to arms and the signing of three heroic states into union with Health and Human Services, Division, The United States Food and Drug Administration.   InfoJustice has been fighting in the trenches to get this message out and am proud to say, the home state of a Board to which this examiner is a member has contracted to enforce the new regulations. 

To review it is against federal law to sell cigarettes or smokeless tobacco to anyone younger than 18.  Minors, accompanied by adults, will attempt to buy the prohibited items from retailers in the middle of unannounced compliance checks. 

Partly to the massive posting and call to patriotic arms from the InfoJustice Journal this examiner is proud to say that North Carolina is the 11th state to contract with FDA.

January 14, 1998 Jama reported that secondhand smoke exposure or even a past habit of Tobacco smoking can thicken arteries, damaging them to the extent that the condition is irreversible, according to research conducted at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, M.C., and elsewhere.  The study base was 11,00 middle-aged men and women followed over three years.  The startling evidence discovered was that arteries in the smokers thickened 50 percent faster than in those who had never smoked.   Previous abusers' arteries thickened 25 percent faster, and nonsmokers exposed to the secondhand smoke thickened 20 percent faster.  Thickened arteries can lead to heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure.

Initially, the first provision of FDA's final rule to protect children from tobacco took effect February 28, 1997.  The age of 18 is the minimum to purchase tobacco products and requiring retailers to check photo IDs of anyone under age 27. 

The aforementioned is only a part of the comprehensive program designed to reduce by 50% the number of young people who smoke in the next seven years. 

For more in-depth information about children's Tobacco please read the InfoJustice Article US Food and Drug Annonce three contracts with American states to protect children from Tobacco. Fiscal Year 1999 Performance Plan begins now.  $34 million budgeted this year available to assist states in enforcing the regulation.   President Clinton has requested $134 million more for 1999 budget. InfoJustice calls to all states for "Justice Through Science."

"You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time".  Abraham Lincoln.