Tobacco-Free Marion County
GRASSROOTS
NEWSLETTER
November-December
2005
Volume 4 Number 3
Dear TFMC Members and
Friends,
Thanks and Wishes The
holidays are often an occasion to list things we’re thankful for and things for
which we wish. Let’s celebrate some of
our wishes come true. In the last letter,
we shared statistics about the national rise in tobacco marketing targeting
youth, and how that was reflected right here in Marion County. The Marion
County HomeTown Health, Inc. Board of Directors met
this issue head on and perhaps others of you did, too. During the last month, White Oak Station
in Yellville and Town and Country and the Snappy Food Mart in Flippin made significant reductions in their outdoor and
indoor tobacco promotional advertising!
The bright and colorful tobacco ads placed in the candy section and
plastering the windows of one store, the wall of advertisements at the check
out stand, and the pervasive ads on the windows, doors, and on the outbuildings
of another have been removed.
Call to Action PLEASE,
PLEASE go to these stores, observe what they’ve done, and give them
thanks. Also, there may be stores that
have removed or at least reduced their tobacco promotions which we haven’t
noted yet. If you see tobacco moved to
behind the counter or fewer signs in stores, please thank those retailers, too,
then let me know so we can give them public recognition. We all know children and youth look at what
the adults in the community do, turn around and do the opposite of what they are
told, then eventually most adopt the standard of how that community behaves. If we accept the open promotion of the
leading cause of disease and death in our nation, our youth will most likely
accept the normalcy of tobacco use. For
the grassroots activists, especially the Board of Directors, who spoke to store
owners and managers and asked them to reduce the commercial impact of tobacco
advertising in Marion County, THANK YOU!
For the retailers, most of which are paid by the tobacco companies for
the child-eye high and outdoor advertising space and product placement near the
chips and candy or right on the counter top, please go to them and give them
your thanks AND SUPPORT.
It is important that
retailers do not feel a negative economic impact from doing the right thing,
which is protecting our youth from exploitation. A
candid tobacco retailer in a neighboring county said on 11/21/05 that competing tobacco company representatives offer
various discounts based on advertising and product placement requirements. Phillip Morris (Altria)
offers retailers $5 off per carton if the store puts tobacco products behind
the counter or only within clerk-reach, if they have access to outdoor and
window advertising but the store doesn’t put tobacco ads inside, and if their
products are placed in the preferred 60% of retail display space. RJ Reynolds will accept relegation to the
remaining 40% of retail space allotted to tobacco, and still offers $8 off per
carton if stores allow countermats and other indoor
advertising, along with the signs posted on windows and exteriors of
buildings. This puts our business owners
in a difficult position: increase their profit
margins or exploit our community’s children.
If they don’t get your feedback in the form of “thank you’s” and dollar bills, they may well
decide the community doesn’t care enough to stand behind the children.
4-H Community Service
More thanks go to the Marion County 4-H County
Council and their participating clubs whose members created graphic and eye-catching
signs suggesting better, more nutritious purchases to make than tobacco and
discouraging tobacco sales to minors.
Thanks also to these businesses in downtown Yellville who displayed the
signs during Turkey Trot: Karen’s Beauty
Shop, Burn’s Funeral Home, Tobacco Outlet, El Burro Loco, Needfull
Things, Sharon’s Salon, Shelter Insurance, the corner Art Gallery, Yellville
Insurance Agency, Arkansas Revenue Office, Christopher Carter Law Office,
Michael Kelly Law Office, Yellville Auto Supply, Church on the Rock, Fred’s,
and Harps Market.
Y.E.S! Team Bruno-Pyatt Senior
Shelley Hadley distributed hundreds of “Don’t be a dum-dum, don’t smoke”
suckers in a youth outreach from our booth at Turkey Trot as part of her
Arkansans for Drug Free Youth, Youth Extinguishing Smoking Team
activities. Thanks, Shelley, for your
time and energy!
Local Quit Class
Planned A cessation class is forming now to commence on
December 22, 2005 to help Marion County residents realize their wishes to be
free from tobacco for their New Year’s Resolution. Please call our office ASAP at (870)
427-2620, e-mail tfmc@marioncounty.com
, or write PO
Box 188 Pyatt, AR 72672 to register for this limited enrollment class.
Cessation Help During the
American Cancer Society’s Great American Smoke Out, encouraging tobacco users
that if they can quit for the day they can quit for good, the following Marion
County agencies and businesses distributed Arkansas Division of Health Quit
Line Brochures: Pyatt USPS; Miller’s Hardware and Saw
and Wheel Shop; Marion County Library; Bank of the Ozarks; Yellville City Hall;
Arvest Bank branches in Yellville, Bull Shoals, and Flippin; Bull Shoals Chamber of Commerce; Thomas Lakeside
Pharmacy; Bull Shoals Library; Village Wheel Restaurant; Orscheln’s;
Flippin City Hall; NATCO; and the Marion County
Health Unit. These brochures give
helpful hints for quitting tobacco use and the free phone line for all Arkansas residents for cessation help, 1-866-NOW-QUIT.
Setting Good Examples Another success, a little farther from home, is Pine Bluff’s healthy influence.
After that city voted this summer to protect all indoor work
environments from secondhand smoke pollution, employers outside the city limits
have been voluntarily adopting smokefree workplace
policies. With International Paper
finally making the healthy decision, the 15 largest employers in Jefferson County now offer their 13,600 employees and also their
customers clean indoor air. Add this
success to Fayetteville’s stories of economic growth following their
city-wide smokefree (including restaurants, of
course) workplace law, and Fairfield Bay’s upcoming ballot opportunity for voters to decide to
join the thousands of communities, some entire states, and even whole countries
with laws protecting all workers and citizens with clean indoor air free from
tobacco smoke pollution. Little Rock, North LR, Jonesboro, Texarkana, AR (Texarkana, TX is already smokefree), and Baxter County are all working toward legal guarantees for smokefree air in Arkansas. Not only does
secondhand smoke cause cancers, but heart disease and stroke, respiratory
disorders, complications during pregnancy and developmental deficiencies after
birth, too. Diseases arising from exposure
to tobacco smoke are the leading cause of hospitalization of children. Smoking is estimated to cost Arkansas businesses a 1.12 BILLION DOLLAR LOSS of productivity
every year. To those who would argue
they cannot afford to create a smokefree business environment,
we ask, how they can afford not to?
Updates in the News Heart
disease in the general population of Pueblo,
CO dropped 27% in the 18 months after enactment of their
smokefree workplace law, 40% in Helena,
Montana. The
University of Arkansas Walton School of Business economic impact report,
tracking sales tax receipts (the business bottom line) in that city, shows
rapid growth in the businesses open at least one year following their law’s
enactment. The Governors of North
Arkansas College in Harrison adopted a campus-wide tobacco-free policy which
coincided with the statewide law in effect since October 1st which
created completely smokefree indoor and outdoor
premises on all non-psychiatric hospital property in the state. Smokefree air is
good for people and good for business.
It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the benefits.
Happy Holidays from:
Tobacco-Free Marion County
PO
Box 188
Pyatt, AR 72672