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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

As Expected: Cigarette Tax Pays Off

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Friday, October 5, 2007   

Des Moines IA – Before lawmakers approved it, advocates of an increase in the state's cigarette tax, including the American Cancer Society(/em>, assured the public that it would generate more revenue, while encouraging smokers to quit and discouraging new smokers -- all at the same time.

The latest information indicates they were right. Quitline Iowa reports a 30 percent reduction in cigarette sales. Ester Baker, deputy director of Quitline Iowa and the Iowa Tobacco Research Center, says in the weeks following the new dollar-a-pack tax hike, calls from smokers tripled.

"Most of the people who called said it was because cigarettes are becoming less affordable and, 'I need to really try to quit.'"

Despite the decline in smoking, the revenue generated by the tax is far greater than state officials expected. Christopher Squire, director of the Iowa Commission for Tobacco Use and Control, says the next battle will be over legislation that would allow local control in determining restrictions on secondhand smoke. It reminds Squire of where Iowa stood before passing the tobacco tax.

"As with the tobacco tax, we are now an island again. Minnesota and Illinois have strong smoke-free legislation."

Squire says the advocacy groups were right about the concurrent increase in revenue and drop in smoking in Iowa. He believes they're also right in opposing the local-control approach. He feels a consistent, statewide policy makes more sense.



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