A judge found probable cause Wednesday to support an accusation that a 28-year-old Seattle woman was one of two women who burglarized Gov. Jay Inslee’s private office in the Legislative Building in Olympia on June 15.
Thurston County Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor said there is probable cause to support accusations that Rachel Kamiya committed second-degree burglary, third-degree theft and third-degree possession of stolen property. However, Tabor allowed Kamiya to be released on her personal recognizance, meaning she was released from custody at the Thurston County Jail without having to post bail.
Kamiya, who has no prior criminal record, was arrested Tuesday afternoon at a coffee shop in Capitol Hill in Seattle where she works.
On Monday night, a Washington State Patrol segreant arrested the other suspect, Emily Huntzicker, 22. The sergeant arrested Huntzicker when he pulled her vehicle over for speeding on Interstate 5 in Chehalis. During the stop, the sergeant noticed a ceremonial WSP campaign hat lying on the floor of Huntzicker’s vehicle that was similar to a WSP hat reported stolen during the burglary of Inslee’s office.
Huntzicker gave a full confession, and helped State Patrol detectives find Kamiya, court papers state. As of Tuesday afternoon, Huntzicker, who is from Beaverton, Oregon, had been released from the Thurston County Jail after posting $2,000 bail.
WSP spokesman Bob Calkins said Tuesday that neither of the suspects realized they had burglarized the governor’s office.
Items reported stolen during the burglary included the WSP hat, a Native American blanket from the Squaxin Island Tribe, a bottle of wine, a Native American mask and a framed photo of Inslee and retired basketball star Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
According to court papers, Kamiya also stole a framed photo of Inslee and former President Bill Clinton. Kamiya recognized Clinton, but “could not recognize the second male in the photograph (Governor Inslee),” court papers state.
Huntzicker has told detectives that she and her friend had been drinking alcohol and were walking on the Capitol Campus about 7 p.m., when they came to an open window on the second floor of the Legislative Building, court papers state. Calkins has said that the suspects had to have boosted one or the other up onto the ledge in order to enter Inslee’s second-floor office.
WSP has clear surveillance footage of the women rummaging around Inslee’s office for about 10 minutes, taking items, court papers state. Calkins has said high-value items were passed up in favor of the seemingly random items that were stolen.
When a trooper visited Kamiya Tuesday at the Capitol Hill coffee shop where she works, Kamiya said “she had intended on returning the items back to the Capitol building and turning herself in to law enforcement,” court papers state.
Both suspects are tentatively scheduled for arraignments in Thurston County Superior Court in Olympia on July 8.
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/06/25/3199633/second-suspect-in-break-in-of.html#storylink=cpy
A woman carries a girl from their home as a SWAT team searching for a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings enters the building in Watertown, Mass., Friday, April 19, 2013. (AP/Charles Krupa)
SWAT teams were designed to capture dangerous criminals, but unnecessary SWAT deployments are putting innocent lives at risk.
A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union compares U.S. police officers’ treatment of American citizens to the U.S. military’s treatment of the country’s enemies in 800 different instances.
In its report, “War Comes Home,” the ACLU determined that police departments throughout the U.S. are growing increasingly militarized.
State and local law enforcement agencies are unnecessarily employing military-grade weapons and tactics used in war zones to police American citizens — especially in communities of color — without first obtaining public permission or implementing any sort of oversight program. This is happening even though law enforcement agencies are supposed to use the minimum amount of force necessary and not violate the civil rights of any individual.
From 2011 to 2012, 50 percent of Americans affected by unnecessary SWAT deployments were black or Latino, according to the report, while whites were only affected about 20 percent of the time.
Of all SWAT deployments in that same year, 62 percent were for drug-related searches in which heavily armed SWAT teams, which often included 20 or more officers outfitted with assault rifles and grenades, served search warrants to homes.
Officers would sometimes use dangerous equipment such as flashbang grenades to temporarily blind and deafen residents before searching a home.
SWAT teams often conducted no-knock raids if the homeowner was suspected of possessing a weapon — even a legally-owned firearm. In these no-knock raids, officers broke down doors and smashed windows in order to enter homes. They screamed at the people inside, telling them to get on the floor, while often pointing weapons at the individuals, even when there were children present.
Due to the violent nature of the SWAT teams entrances, many innocent people were seriously hurt or even killed. For example, Tarika Wilson, 26, was holding her 14-month-old son when the SWAT team broke down the front door of her home and began shooting. Wilson’s son was shot, but survived, and she was fatally wounded in the officers’ search for her boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer.
Other victims who were not suspects included Eurie Stampe, 68, who was shot and killed while watching a baseball in his pajamas when a SWAT team entered his home, and 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavanh, who was put into a medically induced coma after a flash grenade was thrown into his crib, piercing his cheek and chest and scarring his body with third-degree burns.
Although SWAT teams were designed to apprehend school shooters, hostage takers and escaped felons, 8 in 10 SWAT raids were initiated solely for the purpose of serving a search warrant. Only about 7 percent of the SWAT raids were “for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios.”
As the ACLU reported, “Law enforcement agencies have become equipped to carry out these SWAT missions in part by federal programs such as the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, the Department of Homeland Security’s grants to local law enforcement agencies, and the Department of Justice’s Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program.”
In 36 percent of the SWAT raids, no contraband was found, but the ACLU noted that this figure may be closer to 65 percent, since there are incomplete police reports for a number of raids that produced nothing.
While the ACLU’s report is full of startling data proving the existence of an increasingly militarized law enforcement community throughout the U.S., the advocacy group ultimately concluded that the report was incomplete because “[d]ata collecting and reporting in the context of SWAT was at best sporadic and at worst virtually nonexistent.”
An inspirational video featuring Native American youth from this year’s Leadership Development Camp shows viewers who the youth are and who they are not—mascots, savages, alcoholics, drug addicts.
A black and white silent portion of the video has students each holding up a sign saying what they are not, like “I am not a mascot,” and “I am not a savage.” The students are then seen in color and explaining what they are—beautiful, a basketball player, a dreamer, a leader, the next cultural generation.
“We’re proud of our culture and never will ever hide it,” one of the students in the video says.
The Leadership Development Camp is designed for youth ages 13 to 17 from the Coeur d’Alene Reservation. Its goal is to develop leadership skills, resiliency, and strengthen academic skills.
The camp brings the students to the Washington State University Pullman campus for a week-long stay.
“Through participation in team building and sports activities and culturally responsive specialized academic seminars, this one-week residential camp offers students a chance to develop new skills, experience college life, and reflect upon and prepare to meet their goals for the future,” says information with the video.
Klickitat County in south-central Washington sees the most traffic, with 19 trains of over 1 million gallons per week passing through. Adams, Franklin, Skamania and Clark counties each have a listed count of 18 trains per week. More than 10 trains per week also pass through King, Pierce, Snohomish and Spokane counties.
The notifications were provided as part of an emergency order from the U.S. Department of Transportation, meant to ensure state regulators and emergency responders were well informed about the shipments of particularly volatile Bakken oil, which has been involved in a string of fiery explosions.
Those notifications became the subject of a transparency debate after the railroads asked states to sign nondisclosure agreements. Washington refused to sign the agreement, saying it would violate the state’s public records law. But upon receiving public records requests the state gave the railroads a 10-day window to seek court injunctions.
After no railroads sought injunctions, the state posted all of the records online Tuesday.
Three other railroads also filed notifications. Union Pacific informed the state it does carry enough Bakken crude — meaning no shipments of more than 1 million gallons or roughly 35 tank cars — to be required to disclose. Portland and Western Railroad carries trains three trains per week from Vancouver across the Columbia river and into Clatskanie, Oregon. Tacoma Rail handles three trains per week in Pierce County received from BNSF.
In Oregon, Union Pacific, Portland and Western and BNSF all filed notifications. Oregon has yet to decide whether it will release the information to the public. Richard Hoover, spokesman for the State Fire Marshal’s office, said a decision is still likely a week or more away.
Data Sources: BNSF, Energy Information Administration, National Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau. Map by Jordan Wirfs-Brock, courtesy of Inside Energy.
FILE — In this file photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and shot Oct. 29, 2013, orca whales from the J and K pods swim past a small research boat on Puget Sound in view of downtown Seattle. AP Photo/NOAA Fisheries Service, Candice Emmons
Following the release of a federal report on the state of endangered orcas, one local researcher says there’s one factor that matters more to the whales’ wellness than toxins and vessel traffic: fish.
Ken Balcomb, whom many regard as the godfather of whale conservation, is the director of the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor. For almost 40 years now, the center has been keeping track of every individual whale in the three pods that make up the southern resident population of the iconic orcas that live in Puget Sound.
Balcomb says among the risk factors outlined in the report summarizing a decade of research, the orcas’ food is what matters most. They are very picky eaters, and scientists now know that about 80 percent of their diet consists of chinook salmon, another endangered species. So, if we want to recover orcas, says Balcomb, we need to focus on recovering that specific species of salmon.
“They need food. And that’s where the emphasis should be, is on enhancement of the chinook salmon stocks in the Salish Sea and the whole eastern Pacific,” he said. “We’re just not going to have a predator population without a sufficient food population.”
The research also shows the orcas hunt less and call louder when vessels are in the area, and they head to the outer coast during the winter, foraging as far south as central California. Toxins are also a factor in whale mortality, says Balcomb; high levels are found in their blubber.
But he says transient orcas are surviving in growing numbers despite these conditions, because their diet includes seals and porpoises, and they have plenty to eat. The toxins only become a critical factor when the whales are going hungry and living off their fat, triggering the toxins’ release, according to Balcomb.
Notah Begay III tees off, Saturday, on the 15th hole during the San Juan Open golf tournament at San Juan Country Club (AP Photo/The Daily Times, Jon Austria)
The greatest tip I ever received on a golf course happens to have come from the same guy who gave me the greatest quote I ever got while covering an event:
Notah Begay III.
As a senior at Albuquerque Academy during the 36-hole state golf championships in 1990, Begay had taken an ungodly lead after the opening round.
I knew there was no way he could lose, but I also knew – despite his remarkable skills – he was still just a high school kid.
So I tossed him a softball. Something like, “You’re up by double-digits, but you still need to just focus on your game and not worry about anyone else, right? I guess anything can still happen, right?”
Wrong.
Begay said something along the lines of “the only thing that can happen is I’m going to win. The only thing in doubt is if I will break the scoring record.”
Then came a quip for the ages:
“Today I waxed ‘em – tomorrow I’m going to buff ‘em.”
I didn’t want to bury the kid, so I called his dad, Notah Jr., and asked him what he thought.
“Print it,” Begay Jr., said with a belly laugh. “Print it. I love it.”
Sure enough, Begay III got the evil eye from just about every other kid, while they grumbled and stumbled through round 2. Begay III, meanwhile, went on to his second straight state title in record-setting fashion.
As for the tip, it came a few years later while playing a round of golf together. I hit an unlucky shot that bounced off a pole or sign or something, which started my usual whining about my bad luck.
Begay turned to me, held up his index finger and said “The game gives you what you deserve.”
I thought, “How true.”
If you’re playing well, the score almost always reflects it – and vice versa. More importantly, there are as many fortunate bounces in golf as unfortunate ones. They truly do even out in the long run.
That was more than 20 years ago, and I haven’t complained about a bad bounce since.
Home again
Begay, an Albuquerque native who now makes his home in Dallas, has been in town the past few weeks preparing for his inaugural Rio Grande Charity Slam. The event – with a junior golf clinic and banquet on Thursday and a celebrity golf tournament on Friday at Santa Ana Golf Club – is raising money for the Notah Begay III Foundation and the Jewish Community Center. His foundation raises thousands of dollars to launch, sustain and expand programming to combat health issues threatening Native children – more than 20,000 in 13 states of whom have benefited from the programs, and 75 percent of those in New Mexico.
Begay, a four-time PGA Tour winner and a full-blooded Native American, has been in the news a great deal the past year. He became an analyst for Golf Channel, has stayed very active with his foundation and made national headlines with a comment about Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder.
And – despite being just 41 – he suffered a heart attack in April.
On Saturday, after the third round of the 72-hole San Juan Open in Farmington, Begay and I shared a few laughs and a lot of thoughts.
Mark Smith: First off, how is your health?
Notah Begay III: Good. I mean, you wouldn’t be able to tell two months ago that I had a heart attack. I’m a little weak, I lost a little bit of distance in terms of my golf. But I got a lot back in terms of my health. I’ve gotten better, I’ve got more energy. I feel pretty lucky to have gone through it so well.
MS: Not to be too dramatic, but what was going through your mind when you were having the heart attack?
NB: Just shear shock. ‘How did I end up here?’ It was a complete surprise, in terms of, ‘I’m 41-years-old, I exercise on a regular basis, I eat well – and I had a heart attack.’ It wasn’t really until about three or four days after that I really started to ascertain all of the possibilities and outcomes that could have been. There’s been a lot of people in my situation that could have died, because they weren’t close to a hospital, or had more arteries blocked. I’m really lucky that it worked out.
MS: Your father also has serious health issues. (He recently became visually impaired, and last month was hospitalized for a couple weeks after falling down some stairs at home.) How much tougher has that made things?
NB: One of the toughest things with dealing with the heart attack, was my dad took that spill and broke his ribs. It all makes me realize even more so, what we teach (in the NB3F) about eating better, staying healthy, getting exercise. It’s been a tough time for sure. It opens your eyes even more so.
MS: This week you have your event at Santa Ana. Are you ready?
NB: I can’t wait. It looks like (former Lobo and PGA Tour pro) Tim Herron’s going to be here. We have a nice group of celebrities, and people who support what we’re doing. That’s all you can ask for.
MS: In April, you made news by telling USA Today you are against the Washington Redskins keeping their nickname, and you said owner Dan Snyder’s Original Americans Foundation was “more of a gimmick.” Did you have much controversy over your comments?
NB: No, not at all. I think most people would agree that the Washington football team needs to change its mascot name. Some would argue they should keep it. The simplest argument, which is not necessarily the right one, is it’s not an issue of being politically correct. Being politically correct is vastly different than using a dictionary-defined racial slur as a representation of a national franchise. I’m not trying to nit-pick on the political correctness, I just think we’re at a day and age that we should be demonstrating to the younger generations that we’re willing to embrace all the cultures.
MS: You and your brother Clint were raised in a house (on the 14th fairway) at Ladera (Golf Course). Do you ever go look from the backyard and think about old times there?
“My dad (and his wife, Claire) lives on the sixth green now, and I go to that back patio and watch people play the sixth green. And I think of how many times I’ve played the sixth hole. All the skins games, all the calcuttas, all the high school tournaments, the city tournaments – ever since I was 9 years old. Going from a junior playing in the Sun Country, to Stanford, to the PGA Tour to an analyst on the Golf Channel now? You couldn’t have written this script. Ever.
MS: You told me 20 years ago that you’d never forget your roots. This week shows you haven’t.
NB: A lot of that comes from my respect for the culture and tradition I came from, my dad and mom and the Native American heritage. I’ve since transposed that to the respect and admiration for 71 years at the City (Amateur) tournament, or 50 years (at San Juan Open), and how much goes into these events; how much the community and sponsors put into these events. These things don’t just happen by themselves. It’s a reflection of our love for the game. And so much has been given to me through golf, it would be very unappreciative for me not to give back through the game.
MS: Speaking of the San Juan, they listed the (third-round) cut as being the top 26 and ties. Initially, you missed by a shot. But then they decided to let in 33 players, including you, causing some players to call it “The Notah Rule.” But the sponsors enjoyed it.
NB: That’s too funny (laugh). On the PGA Tour, they always talk about “The Tiger Rules.” Now there’s “The Notah Rules.” I guess I’ve arrived.
MS: One last thing. We’ve talked about it before – the greatest quote in the history of sport. You remember it?
NB: (Belly laugh). I was a cocky senior at Albuquerque Academy (laugh). ‘Today I’m going to wax ‘em and tomorrow I’m going to ‘buff em (laugh).’ And I backed it up.
Tester Remains Committed to Finding a Path to Improving Economic Conditions Across Indian Country
Source: Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Chairman Jon Tester
U.S. SENATE – Today, Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chairman Jon Tester (D – Mont.) held a hearing on economic and business conditions in Indian country. Access to capital remains a primary factor leading to stagnant economic growth on reservations.
“Over the last few months, I’ve highlighted the need for better education for Indian children. However, better learning opportunities will go for naught if tribal economies are struggling – forcing students to take their skills and find jobs elsewhere,” Tester said. “We can’t let that happen. Our First Americans should not have to choose between making a good living away from their family and homelands or living in poverty.”
According to the 2013 American Indian Population and Labor Force Report, only 50% of all Native Americans living in or near tribal areas, who are 16 years or older, are employed. Additionally, an estimated 23% of all Native American families in the United States in 2010 earned income below the poverty line.
“Despite notable progress over recent years, there still remains private sector uncertainty about whether Indian Country is a good investment,” said William Lettig, Executive Vice President of KeyBank. “This uncertainty, which I believe is based on lack of information and understanding about Indian Country, has a chilling effect on capital markets’ appetite for investing in Indian Country.”
Kevin J. Allis, Executive Director, Native American Contractors Association, said, “The communities which Native enterprises serve remain some of the poorest and most underserved groups in the United States. There is still tremendous work to be done in effecting positive and sustainable benefits for these communities.”
Gerald Sherman, Vice Chairman, Native CDFI Network, outlined the challenges, “Native communities experience substantially higher rates of poverty and unemployment than mainstream America and face a unique set of challenges to economic growth. Lack of physical, legal, and telecommunications infrastructure; access to affordable financial products and services; and limited workforce development strategies are common challenges that Native entrepreneurs, homebuyers, and consumers face and must overcome.”
Tester focused on programs that have shown results in Indian Country, “There are success stories out there. We have programs, such as the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and the Department of the Interiors’ Indian Loan Guarantee Program, that, when well-executed and properly funded, are attracting investment into tribal communities.”
Dennis Nolan, Acting Director of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund), provided an overview of the impact of the federal program he leads. “The Fund’s work in Indian Country is born of an awareness that Native communities all across the nation continue to face extraordinary economic challenges that limit access to capital. Since it was launched in 2001, the Native American CDFI Assistance Program has provided awards totaling more than $93 million to help Native CDFIs deliver financial services and financial products to their communities. What started as just a few Native CDFIs ten years ago has now grown to 68, headquartered in 21 states.”
Gary Davis, President and CEO of The National Center for American Indian Enterprise
Development, said, “The more successful federal business development programs are those that are specifically designed to help startups and larger companies in Indian Country. What does not work well is the ‘square peg – round hole’ approach of repackaging legacy federal programs and dictating how assistance must be delivered and to what size of business.”
Tester vowed to continue to examine solutions to unlock potential investment and development in Indian Country. The Committee has already adopted significant legislation that will directly impact and assist economic development in Indian Country such as the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act, the Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act, and the Carcieri fix.
MIAMI — In a lab on Virginia Key, a group of baby fish are being put through their paces on a tiny fish treadmill.
The inch-long mahi-mahi, being used as part of a study to assess damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that spread crude across the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days in 2010, were exposed when they were embryos to oil collected during the cleanup. Now, at 25 days old, the oil is doing exactly what scientists suspected it would do: hamper the swimming of one of the ocean’s fastest fish.
And significantly so. Young mahi usually swim at a rate of five body lengths per second. For perspective, imagine a 6-foot man swimming 30 feet in a second. The fish, struggling against a current in a little tube attached to a propeller called a swim tunnel, can only muster three body lengths.
For a fish that needs speed to survive, this could mean bad news. Mahi, one of the most popular fish on menus, is already heavily fished. So losing a generation to an oil spill could take a toll. It also suggests that other fish suffered from the spill.
“Any life form is optimized compromise,” Martin Grosell, one of the study’s authors, said as a way of explaining physiology perfectly evolved to maximize speed. And if you mess with that treaty of parts, he said, “you’re going to increase its vulnerability.”
The treadmill study marks the second in recent months by the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science that has found that oil from the largest spill in U.S. history damages young pelagic fish, the large predators found in the open ocean. In March, UM researchers working with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists determined that the BP oil also damaged the hearts of tuna embryos, a condition that likely killed them in the wild.
Both studies – disputed by BP – are worrisome because tuna, whose numbers have dropped by as much as 75 percent in the last 40 years, and mahi began their spring spawning just as the spill occurred, sending fragile embryos across warm surface waters and into a patchwork of oil slicks that covered more than six square miles.
These newest findings, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, build on that earlier report by looking at fish as they age.
BP says the study is invalid because, according to the company, the tests used concentrations of oil not found in the Gulf during or after the spill. Researchers also failed to look at adult fish, spokesman Jason Ryan said in a statement.
“The tests only looked at impacts to fish under one year of age,” he said. “Even if there had been an effect on a single-year class of such fish, the study does not provide any evidence to show that an effect on that group of fish would have had a population-level impact.”
After the spill, NOAA began enlisting scientists to investigate the damage it caused – so far, the studies range from the acoustic damage done to endangered sperm whales to oil in fiddler crabs. For pelagic fish, which are particularly sensitive to changes in their near-constant deep-water environment, scientists want to know how much oil it takes to affect the fish and what those effects are.
To test the mahi, researcher Ed Mager first mixed oil from the spill and seawater in a Waring blender at concentrations replicating the spill. He exposed one group of embryos to the mix for two days and then raised them in clean seawater. Another group was raised in clean water and exposed to oil when they reached about 25 days.
Mager also wanted to ensure that no other factors stressed their performance. Like all babies, the mahi startle easily. So he wrapped the treadmill – a clear, four-inch swim tunnel outfitted with a propeller and immersed in a two-foot tank – in black plastic. Mager, who studied deadly respiratory viruses in premature human babies before he switched to fish, then curtained off the area and monitored his little subjects with a video camera.
Mahi are carnivores and foragers, so they swim fast. But when he turned on the treadmill, Mager was surprised to see that the outwardly healthy fish swam much slower. The ones exposed as embryos swam 37 percent slower. Those exposed as juveniles dropped 22 percent.
Because they are so sensitive to change, pelagic fish – and particularly fragile embryos and juveniles – can act as a kind of canary in a coal mine. So the information that Mager and the team have collected for the study, one of several ongoing at the school, will be fed to modelers to determine a more expansive view of the ecosystem after the spill and help figure out the limits for how much oil it can tolerate before damage happens.
“We’ll be a little closer to knowing what to look for and how bad when, I cynically say, the next spill happens. Because it will,” Grosell said.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/24/4197992/study-finds-oil-from-bp-spill.html#storylink=cpy
Indian activists in Illinois are planning to file a lawsuit against the Cleveland Major League Baseball team.
Activists have been protesting the team’s Chief Wahoo mascot for decades. They hope the lawsuit leads to the elimination of the racist symbol.
“We’re going to be asking for $9 billion and we’re basing it on a hundred years of disparity, racism, exploitation and profiteering,” Robert Roche, the director of the American Indian Education Center and one of the plaintiffs in the forthcoming suit, told ABC News.
Roche, who can be seen in the photo above on the opening day of the team’s season, said the lawsuit will be filed by the end of July.
“The cigarettes sold today are quite different from the cigarettes that were on the market five decades ago, according to the new report, and that’s because tobacco companies have done extensive research to figure out how to make smoking appealing for new customers. “
Fifty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general tied tobacco to lung cancer for the first time. Since then, additional scientific research has linked smoking with a host of other health issues, and efforts to publicize those harmful side effects helped spur a historic decline in the number of Americans who regularly smoke. Nonetheless, more than 42 million adults remain addicted to cigarettes, and the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that tobacco is still the greatest public health challenge of our time.
Why is tobacco still at the top of the CDC’s list? Why haven’t we moved past this yet? Largely because cigarette manufacturers have worked hard to keep their products relevant even in the midst of aggressive public health campaigns to crack down on smoking, according to a new report released on Monday by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
The cigarettes sold today are quite different from the cigarettes that were on the market five decades ago, according to the new report, and that’s because tobacco companies have done extensive research to figure out how to make smoking appealing for new customers. They’ve essentially made it easier to get hooked on their products by increasing the levels of nicotine — the addictive chemical in cigarettes — and using new additives to help enhance nicotine’s impact. They’ve also added flavoring, sugars, and menthol to mask the effect of inhaling smoke, ultimately hoping that will make it more pleasurable to use cigarettes:
“Most people would think that 50 years after we learned that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, cigarettes would be safer. What’s shocking about the report we issued today is that we’ve found that a smoker today has more than twice the risk of lung cancer than a smoker fifty years ago, as a direct result of design changes made by the industry,” Matt Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in an interview with ThinkProgress.
On top of that, Myers’ organization notes that these corporations have made calculated moves to create the next generation of smokers, according to internal marketing documents from tobacco companies that have been made public as a result of litigation against them. Brands like Marlboro, Newport, and Camel have specifically worked to attract younger customers in order to remain viable, citing statistics that most regular smokers pick up the habit before they turn 18.
Most people know that cigarette makers have historically worked to target young people with their advertising. Indeed, before increased regulation attempted to rein in this practice, it used to be even more explicit than it is now. For instance, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company infamously used the cartoon character Joe Camel to help sell their cigarettes in the 1990s, a practice that mobilized anti-tobacco advocates to fight hard against marketing aimed at younger Americans.
But the new report finds that tobacco companies have actually gone even further to woo teens. The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company didn’t just rely on its camel; it also looked to change its cigarettes to appeal to a younger demographic. “Two key areas identified for improvement were smoothness and sweetness delivery. Smoothness is an identified opportunity area for improvement versus Marlboro, and sweetness can impart a different delivery taste dimension which younger adult smokers may be receptive to,” a 1985 product development plan for the company noted.
“We would have thought, with the tobacco industry claiming they don’t market to kids, that they wouldn’t be making design changes that increase the number of our kids who smoke,” Myers said. “But they have, quietly and behind the scenes.”
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids’ report was released to coincide with the five year anniversary of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, historic legislation that gave the FDA power to regulate tobacco products and marketing efforts. At the time, that measure was hailed as the “toughest anti-tobacco bill in American history” — and Myers’ group wants the government to use it to undo some of the changes that have been made to cigarettes over the past several decades.
“At a very minimum, the FDA should act swiftly to require the tobacco industry to reverse all the steps they’ve taken to make these products more dangerous, more addictive, and more appealing to our kids,” Myers said. “I think this report tells us that the tobacco industry has not reformed over the last 50 years.”
