It was unfortunate to see the Maine Legislature reject proposals to raise the tax on tobacco products this year.

Raising prices on tobacco products is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention best-practice measure for keeping tobacco out of the hands of kids — something we all can support.

The Legislature’s unwillingness to increase the tobacco tax makes it harder for families and the state to reduce youth smoking.

Unlike several of the tax proposals before the Legislature this year, tobacco taxes are first and foremost a public health tool with the potential to help get and keep families healthy and businesses thriving.

Plus, Maine voters, in a February 2011 survey, acknowledged the importance of tobacco tax policies, with 66 percent supporting a $1.50 tax for the purpose of preventing youth smoking and helping people to quit.

Once a leader in tobacco tax policy, Maine is now has the second-lowest cigarette tax in New England and taxes other tobacco products lower than more than half of the other states.

As a result, kids are using tobacco — including little cigars and smokeless products — at much higher rates than adults, and Maine’s youth smoking rate has begun to increase for the first time in more than 10 years.

In future years I hope that Maine lawmakers correct their misconceptions that tobacco taxes are “just like any other tax,” and instead look at multitude of benefits — and support — such policies have on the public health and health care costs to businesses.

Tina Pettingill

Scarborough

Abandoning past safeguards makes economy far worse

We are currently witnessing an economic system that if left unchecked will continue to assume massive amounts of debt. Considering three-fourths of our U.S. economic growth is consumer spending, Congress must reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act (which was repealed in 1999).

The legislation, which established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and barred investment banks from merging with depository institutions, was introduced by Sen. Carter Glass (former treasury secretary and founder, U.S. Federal Reserve System) and Rep. Henry Steagall (chairman, House Banking and Currency Committee) in response to the 1929 stock market crash.

The nation had experienced a commercial banking failure associated with improper banking activities and speculation, which led to the Great Depression.

The world is on the same path, the only difference is we have not said the “D-word” yet.

Free trade should be able to exist without trade surpluses becoming so imbalanced.

The debt associated with the current framework has helped China grow but has become too expensive for the American People. The economic relationship with China should be altered in order to help both countries’ economies provide for their people.

The G-20 (20 finance ministers and central bank governors of the major nations) should meet to relieve the world debt. Each nation would benefit from debt reduction.

The world should study debt levels in association with growth. In this country, the federal government should assume the outstanding debt of each state (similar in dollar amount to the banking bailout).

Every taxpayer should receive a one-time write-off of a percentage of personal debt. Every small and large business in the nation should be able to eliminate the same percentage of debt.

Only real legislation will keep debt levels at a manageable level within the international economy. Debt will always be the problem until someone offers the same approach as in 1929.

Steven Willette

Portland

Passing a bill to favor DeCoster reprehensible

Type the name “DeCoster” into any search engine. What you will find are many articles about workers having been found to work in terrible, unsafe and unhealthy conditions, and people becoming sick from the eggs produced in these circumstances.

This is not only in Maine, but in the Midwest and elsewhere. DeCoster has a long record of being one of the worst employers and producers of eggs in the nation.

The Republicans in the state Legislature have identified a way to deal with this situation: They passed a bill that will deprive employees of the right to collectively bargain.

It is astonishing to me that a body that is elected to represent the people of Maine will take action to reward an unscrupulous employer who doesn’t think twice about harming his employees by rendering the employees that much more vulnerable to his depredations.

Is this what they mean by job creation? Bad, poorly paid, unsafe jobs? If this is the Maine that the Republicans in power want to subject us to, the citizens of the state are in trouble.

The Legislature’s action in this instance is unconscionable and reprehensible.

Reid Scher

Windham

Gov. LePage’s promises as solid as a fairy tale

Thank you, Gov. LePage, for your claim to have brought down health insurance costs!

I also believe in the tooth fairy.

Larry Johnson

New Gloucester

Why are drug-sniffing dogs like a tinfoil hat?

I guess we should not be surprised to see the arrival of the day when government policy officially takes on the form of an old joke.

School officials in Portland and its superintendent, James Morse, will consider the use of drug sniffer dogs for school lockers and parking lots (“Portland police want dogs to sniff in school lockers, cars,” June 23).

Presumably in support of the policy, Superintendent Morse said that drug-sniffing dogs were used in the school district where he was superintendent before he came to Portland, and served as a successful deterrent.

He also said the searches never turned up any drugs.

One version of the ancient joke goes: Tom sees a man wearing a hat made out of aluminum foil.

He asks: “Why are you wearing an aluminum-foil hat?”

The man says: “To keep the elephants away.”

Tom says: “There are no elephants anywhere around here.”

The man exclaims: “See, it works!”

Edmund R. Peay

Brunswick

 

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