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City officials could know this week whether Appleton will receive $3 million in federal stimulus money to fight a new form of tobacco product seen as threatening children with nicotine addiction.
Accepting the grant would mean creating four full-time jobs, including a police officer and a school health and tobacco educator, and filling several part-time positions. Wage and benefit costs would total nearly $1 million, including $52,000 for the current city health officer, during the two-year life of the grant.
The program focuses on preventing youth from using and getting addicted to nicotine embedded in dissolvable tobacco products. The products are made from finely ground tobacco and shaped to look like breath mints, chewing gum and toothpicks, Appleton Health Officer Kurt Eggebrecht said.
“It could be very appealing to youth,” he said.
The money is part of $8 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requested by the state to help stop the flow of dissolvable tobacco products into Wisconsin. Appleton’s grant would include $1 million for a media advertising blitz.
“We’ve done a good job of educating people on the harmful effects of cigarettes, but an unsuspecting user of the new dissolvable products may not realize they are getting hooked on nicotine,” Eggebrecht said.
Ald. Peter Stueck said the price tag seems steep.
“It’s a shame we have to take $3 million from the federal government when we already have an ordinance banning the sale of tobacco to children,” he said.
Of the remaining stimulus money, La Crosse County would get $3 million and the state $2 million.
The state Department of Health Services would funnel the money as part of the federal Communities Putting Prevention to Work program. The state’s grant application says dissolvable tobacco products “threaten to weaken the intended impact of Wisconsin’s smoke-free air law,” a ban on smoking in workplaces that takes effect July 5. Appleton enacted a smoke-free workplace ban in 2005.
In the past three years, the nation’s two largest cigarette companies, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris USA, have moved into the smokeless tobacco market as smoke-free laws sweep the nation and cigarette sales continue to fall.
A year ago, R.J. Reynolds debuted a new aspirin-sized tablet, called “Camel Orbs,” that lets tobacco melt in the mouth. The dissolvable product was the first such product by a major tobacco company.
“It’s meeting the needs of smokers,” Rob Dunham, of R.J. Reynolds, said at the time.
Eggebrecht calls it “a shrewd strategy by tobacco companies who are trying to maintain their market share.”
He said school counselors told him recently the products are showing up in classrooms in Appleton.
“It’s illegal to sell cigarettes to minors, but they still get and smoke cigarettes,” he said, noting that one store in Appleton has the products readily available on racks accessible to children.
Eggebrecht said a steering committee is being formed to work with two local coalitions — Community Action for Healthy Living (which grew out of the Community Action for Tobacco Free Living group) and Activate Fox Cities, formed in 2007 as part of a national effort by the YMCA and CDC to attract key community leaders to support health improvement in the Fox Cities.
Also, he said Appleton could team with La Crosse County to bring $2 million to the media blitz.
If Appleton is awarded the money, the Common Council would have to amend the city budget to authorize spending it, city Finance Director Lisa Remiker said.
Ald. Jim Clemons said aldermen also would have to decide whether to create and fill the jobs required by the grant. “We’ll decide when we receive the grant if we are going to accept it with all the contingencies,” he said.
Among the conditions:
# Within 30 days, the city would have to hire two full-time employees — a project coordinator and project health coordinator.
# Within 90 days, several other full- or part-time positions would need to be filled by new employees or existing staff of the city and Appleton Area School District.
Federal funding fully covers the jobs for two years, Eggebrecht said. “When the money goes away, the jobs go away,” he said.
Ald. Joe Martin is wary of any such promise. “Once we have people on staff I find it’s hard to get rid of them,” he said.
Martin said the issue of dissolvable tobacco products would better be handled by the school district or community groups like the Boys’ and Girls’ Club.
In addition to his concern about the cost, Stueck said he worries that the products could be banned for sale to adults.
“It gets back to regulation of a legal product. I’m 100 percent against getting these products in kids’ hands, but I don’t want to ban adults from buying them.”
source: smokersinfo.net