* The Center Square…
With few other outlets, statehouse Republicans are considering their own public hearings with stakeholders if Democrats won’t address Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. […]
State Rep. Tim Butler, R-Springfield, floated the idea with his fellow House Republicans to let their Democratic colleagues know they want public hearings. If there’s no response, he said the GOP needs to hold their own public hearings “where we have people in to talk about these issues.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty of people involved that would want to talk about these issues,” Butler told WMAY. “If the Democrats don’t want to join us in holding people responsible, I think we need to have our own, and get the issues out there, and hold our own hearings.” […]
State Rep. Blaine Wilhour, R-Beecher City, said having the GOP lawmakers hold their own hearings is a good idea, but there are other avenues to put pressure on the Pritzker administration to be transparent.
“Ultimately, the people of Illinois, they’re the ones that need to stand up and say ‘enough’s enough,’” Wilhour said.
The House Republicans used to do this sort of thing a lot, but several Republicans are busy with their campaigns and there is this little issue with the virus.
* Not to mention that the whole thing could easily turn into a circus…
* All that being said, we do need some answers on things like this…
The Illinois Department of Public Health has hired a former U.S. Attorney to review the department’s failure to investigate complaints of abuse and neglect in long-term care facilities for more than three months during the pandemic, but some lawmakers want public hearings on the issue. […]
[Rep. Tom Demmer, R-Dixon] said public hearings are needed.
“They should be honest about the fact, and they were, that they dropped the ball on this, they’re trying to take some corrective steps,” Demmer said. “I think it will be really good to have those discussions in public and talk about what we can do and some of the lessons learned to make sure that if we find ourselves in this circumstance like this again that we can make good on the investigation portion.”
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Question of the day
Wednesday, Aug 26, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Today is National Dog Day, so here’s Oscar…
* The Question: What is/was your favorite dog? Tell us the story.
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* Jeanne Ives campaign press release..
In another unhinged tweet on Friday, Sean Casten mocked Marco Rubio, a Cuban American Republican Senator, for tweeting out a Bible verse. In his tweet, Casten equated an expression of faith with mental illness.
“Does Sean Casten think people of faith are mentally ill,” asked Jeanne Ives, a West Point graduate and candidate for Congress in Illinois’ 6th Congressional District. “Why would an expression of faith on Twitter be met with mockery and shaming by a public official? Apparently Sean Casten wants to Keep Twitter Toxic.
“The media chooses to ignore Sean Casten’s extremely questionable behavior, but the truth is people of all religions should be concerned about the Congressman’s disdain for people of faith and his objections to the free expression of that faith. Especially given the Casten family’s large donations to the Center for Inquiry (CFI), an organization which states as its mission, ‘encourage[ing] effective action to keep religion from infecting public policy…’, Sean Casten represents a district where there are numerous churches, mosques, temples, faith-based schools and service organizations, like Catholic Charities, St. Vincent DePaul, Wheaton College, BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Bartlett. Does he think these organizations should lose their (c)3 status if they have conscientious objection to a policy Sean Casten advocates? It is a legitimate question on which he should have to face his constituents and answer. Maybe that’s why he’s hiding from a real debate with me.”
* Jeanne Ives campaign…
Sean Casten should either stop talking or start debating. He continues to make radical, weird and concerning statements and issue unhinged tweets.
In a webinar with college students over the weekend, Congressman Casten told young voters: “Having small genitals is not a sufficient reason to own a gun.” Perhaps Sean Casten is unaware that first-time gun ownership among women spiked amid the COVID shutdown and riots.
On the same call, he made an argument for decriminalizing all drugs by referencing his own college drug use, ignoring the fact that college students make up one of the largest groups of drug abusers nationwide, and are among the most at risk of addiction.
“Maybe Sean Casten thinks overgrown frat boys are cool,” said Jeanne Ives, candidate for Congress (IL-06). “On behalf of women everywhere: overgrown frat boys are not cool. They are pathetic, and they can’t be trusted to make sound decisions on other people’s lives. It is clear he is not the moderate we were sold in 2018. It’s well past time that Sean Casten answered for his deeply concerning rhetoric and radical policy positions.”
His genitals joke is here. The drugs comment is here. He was talking about not ruining lives with criminalization.
* Jeanne Ives campaign…
Yesterday morning Congressman Sean Casten tweeted out a statement referencing Cardi B.’s controversial new music video (W.A.P). before his campaign pulled it down [the tweet is still up]. The article Casten posted contained a link to the video.
Jeanne Ives, candidate for Congress (IL-06), said in a statement: “Once again, Congressman Sean Casten puts forth a deeply concerning statement and the media says nothing. He is a sitting Congressman who represents decent, professional people. And he seems to think using a sexually explicit music video to make a point about home weatherization is appropriate. This is gratuitous, attention-seeking behavior that is beneath the office. If you can’t make a public policy argument without Cardi B. in leather and fishnets, then you can’t make an argument. If he were a Republican, a powerful man objectifying women for personal gain would be headline news. But the media chooses to ignore Leftist Sean Casten’s deeply concerning character and comments.”
Among the remarks Casten has made that have received little to no media scrutiny:
When asked to identify a leader he looks to for guidance, Sean Casten selected a virulent, profane bigot named Dan Savage who has called evangelical Christians “pieces of sh*t” and said of Republicans, “I wish they were all f**king dead.”
Sean Casten doesn’t disavow such language, he doubles down on it as he did when he compared the President of the United States to Osama bin Laden.
Recently, Congressman Sean Casten, in an interview with supporters on discussing environmental and racial justice, stated, “The first places to fall are the places white, wealthy people move away from…” [”and we know how that movie plays out, unfortunately”]
In the another interview with Indivisible DuPage, Casten bragged about using his Twitter account to cyberbully his political opponents and implied that his GOP opponents were Nazi sympathizers. [“come 2021, the majority of my colleagues believe that Democracy is a good thing; that the Enlightenment was a good thing, that the good guys won World War II.”]
And in the same weekend, Casten put out a tweet likening those who disagreed with him politically to traitors [”To be on Trump is to bet against the American people”] and Indivisible DuPage called all Republicans “killers.”
Sean Casten is not at all the moderate he portrayed himself to be in 2018. His most recent tweet makes it clear Sean Casten is not making America better. He is only making it bitter, and more cynical. And the liberal Chicago and suburban press have given Casten a pass by not reporting his hateful and really strange comments.
“Reasonable people can disagree on policy and politicians,” Ives continued. “But there can be no disagreement over how out-of-step Sean Casten is with this district - and, frankly, with the suburban women who elected him. Casten isn’t the anti-Trump dignitary they bargained for. The guy is weird as hell. And the fact that Chicago and Suburban media continue to ignore his radical ideas and whacky statements just shows how illiberal, unbalanced and unfair these outlets have become, and how disinterested they are in the truth.”
* Jeanne Ives fundraising email…
Dear Friend,
There’s a word I have for when a politician gets a taste of their own medicine.
It’s called a Boomerang.
Just two years ago, Casten demanded five debates against his opponent- one for each of the five counties in IL-06.
He said: ‘Debates are healthy and important for our democracy, and voters demand them because they want to participate in the election process…I believe voters deserve the opportunity to see and hear us where they live.’
In a recent letter to the Casten campaign, I asked for 5 debates - one for each county in IL-06.
No response. Crickets.
Chip in $5, 10, $25, $50, or $100 right now to tell Sean Casten that you want to see him try to debate me.
Our campaign is working day-in and day-out to make sure voters understand the truth about Sean Casten.
With your help, they will know better than to take what Sean says at face value in 2020.
In 2018, he said “voters deserve the opportunity to see and hear us where they live.” In 2020, the prospect of a debate sent him into hiding.
Sean Casten is afraid to debate me on his own terms.
And this only means one thing.
Sean Casten Boomeranged himself. Hard.
Someone get him some ice.
Donate to my campaign right now to tell Representative Casten that the people of IL-06 deserve debates!
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* Press release…
Governor JB Pritzker today announced Illinois was chosen to host two of the five new National Quantum Information Science Research Centers led by Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in affiliation with the University of Chicago. Each project is projected to received $115 million in federal funding to support breakthroughs in quantum information and science. As part of the state’s historic Rebuild Illinois capital program, Gov. Pritzker made sure the state invested $200 million in the Quantum Exchange to put Illinois at the forefront of creating jobs for the next century. The Quantum Exchange is hub for researchers, both academic and industrial, oriented around the goal of advancing efforts in the science and engineering of quantum information.
Today’s announcement builds on the progress Illinois has made to create an ecosystem to support groundbreaking advances in science and innovation. In addition, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will receive federal funding for two research institutes focused on artificial intelligence. Seven AI institutes will receive federal funding in partnership with existing academic research groups. With the new investments, Illinois is the only state nationwide to receive funding for two hubs.
“This is one of the most exciting developments for the economic vitality and prestige of our state. I could not be more delighted that Illinois will be home to not one, but two of the five quantum research centers in the U.S.— opening the newest chapter in the storied history of scientific and technological innovation in the state of Illinois,” said Governor J.B. Pritzker. “I’m also proud to see one of our world class public universities, the University of Illinois, recognized for their groundbreaking research on artificial intelligence that will revolutionize industry. Our outstanding ecosystem of world-class academic institutions, national labs, Fortune 500 companies and tech startups has changed the world before, and it is poised to do so again. With our state’s investment in science and technology alongside the university and the Department of Energy, we lay the groundwork for scientific achievements that will shape Illinois, the nation—and the globe—for decades to come.”
* I wrote about the governor’s interest in this topic last year…
In 2017, the University of Chicago invested $100 million and partnered with Argonne and Fermilab on a project called the Chicago Quantum Exchange.
While the University of Illinois may be better known for its supercomputing and internet breakthroughs, which led to pretty much everything digital that we take for granted today, the institution has been studying quantum physics since the early 1950s. It joined the exchange in October. […]
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been involved with high-tech development for years in the private sector, and he says he’s familiar with quantum physics. He also knew about U of C’s $100 million investment and its search for more partners. So he decided to commit $100 million from his $45 billion infrastructure bill to the U of I in hopes of not only bringing some of the best minds in the world to Illinois, but also possibly creating an economic boom along the lines of Silicon Valley, the Boston area’s Biomedical Corridor and Boulder, Colo.’s gigantic data storage industry.
“If you catch the wave of a technology as it’s being commercialized, there is really endless opportunity,” Pritzker tells me.
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* The attorney general’s office sent me a list of active cases it’s handling. Click the pic for a larger image…
Whew.
* Meanwhile, as you’ll recall, the governor obtained a TRO against a handful of schools which refused to implement the state’s mask requirement. Those schools have since appealed. The state’s conclusion…
Finally, it is worth pointing out that Defendants’ argument that the TRO is really a preliminary injunction actually undermines their position in this appeal. If that were true, their appeal lies under Supreme Court Rule 307(a), not Rule 307(d), and this appeal should be dismissed. In any event, Defendants have not identified any basis to conclude that the circuit court’s order under review, if deemed a preliminary injunction, is invalid.
The schools are represented by Thomas DeVore, who is also handling Rep. Darren Bailey’s case.
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* Press release…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 2,157 new confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 37 additional confirmed deaths.
- Bureau County: 1 male 90s
- Cook County: 1 female under 20, 1 female 70s, 2 males 70s, 4 females 80s, 1 male 90s
- DuPage County: 1 male 70s
- Kane County: 2 males 70s, 2 females 90s
- Lake County: 1 male 50s
- LaSalle County: 1 female 80s
- Livingston County: 1 female 80s
- Macon County: 1 female 60s, 1 female 70s
- Morgan County: 1 female 80s
- Peoria County: 1 female 90s
- Perry County: 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s
- Pope County: 1 female 60s
- Rock Island County: 1 female 60s, 2 females 80s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s
- St. Clair County: 1 female 70s, 1 female 90s
- Warren County: 1 male 70s
- Will County: 1 male 60s, 1 female 90s
- Williamson County: 1 male 80s
- Winnebago County: 1 female 70s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 225,627 cases, including 7,954 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 50,362 specimens for a total of 3,831,412. The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from August 19 – August 25 is 4.0%. As of last night, 1,573 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 350 patients were in the ICU and 132 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
Following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IDPH is now reporting both confirmed and probable cases and deaths on its website. Reporting probable cases will help show the potential burden of COVID-19 illness and efficacy of population-based non-pharmaceutical interventions. IDPH will update these data once a week.
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered. For health questions about COVID-19, call the hotline at 1-800-889-3931 or email dph.sick@illinois.gov.
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* Charlie Schlenker at WGLT…
Illinois State University President Larry Dietz said Monday he’s closely monitoring the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases among students.
The current tally is 273 ISU student cases in just over a week of classes. Dietz said several things in addition to the raw case count affect any potential decision whether to close the campus.
“It will have to do with isolation capacity. It will have to do with how many folks are hospitalized, and thankfully at this point I’m not aware of any. It’s a moving target we’re monitoring, so I don’t have any specific date or time,” said Dietz.
Dietz said there are 24 students in isolation through on-campus housing, and the campus has plenty of space left for more isolation cases.
Dietz said he believes on-campus behavior by students and staff is in good compliance with mask and social distancing policy. He said he’s aware that off campus and on the weekends, that behavior has not been as consistently safe. He urged students to observe safety protocols and avoid large gatherings.
* Wall St. Journal…
(A)t the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, between 35,000 and 40,000 students returned to campus to begin a mix of online and in-person classes that started Monday. The university has said it believes it can contain the virus, partly by testing students twice a week and processing 10,000 tests a day on campus.
The university expected that between 200 and 300 students would arrive on campus already infected with Covid-19 and that total new cases among students, faculty and staff would reach about 500 this semester. Two university professors, Nigel Goldenfeld, a professor of physics, and Sergei Maslov, a professor of bioengineering and physics, estimated that without the school’s program of frequent testing, contact tracing and isolation, the virus would spread to 20,000 students within a month.
The university’s modeling predicts that most transmission of the virus will occur at restaurants, bars and parties and in classrooms. Its saliva-based test received emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month.
* News-Gazette…
According to UI campus testing data, there were 263 positive cases in the five days from Wednesday through Sunday, with the average rolling positivity rate for the most recent five days being 0.74 percent.
New cases from campus testing for the five days included 30 cases Wednesday, 59 cases Thursday, 65 cases Friday, 50 cases Saturday and 59 cases Sunday.
* Illinois Radio Network…
The mayors of both Champaign and Urbana, the home of the University of Illinois, have issued orders requiring bar and restaurant patrons to to stay seated most of the time. In Champaign, Mayor Deb Feinen issued an order limiting customer seating at Campustown restaurants and bars to outdoors areas only now through Labor Day. Emergency orders from the two mayors also set crowd limits and require face masks and social distancing at private parties on and near the U of I campus.
The University of Illinois requires all students and staff to be tested for COVID-19 twice a week. A study from Harvard and Yale suggests that is the minimum threshold to safely open.
* DeKalb Daily Chronicle…
DeKalb Mayor Jerry Smith said Monday that ’several large gatherings’ were held around Northern Illinois University campus over the weekend, and said he met Monday with NIU President Lisa Freeman and other leaders to talk COVID-19 virus prevention.
“I think everybody is concerned about Northern,” Smith said. “And the fact that there may be not only some positivity but over the weekend there were several large gatherings.” […]
For students, they can pay a $7.90 per credit hour health fee to utilize nasal swab testing services at Northwestern Medicine Student Health Center in the Health Services Building on campus. Testing for students living off campus or in Greek housing is not required, the website states.
“Those who do not should seek out testing from their local providers,” she said.
* WNIU…
Rockford University is a much smaller private school but have had to take their own precautions. Randy Worden is the university’s VP for Student Life. They have 350 students living on-campus, which is what they expected. Over the summer, he says they thought it could be much fewer because of safety restrictions.
“The actual reality has been kind of the opposite of that,” he said. “It seems like people were so ready to have a different experience than what they were having, maybe at home. Students were willing to say, ‘Okay, I understand it’s not going to be 100% of normal kind of collegiate experience, but if it’s 70 or 75, that’s good enough.”
RU removed around half of the furniture in common areas. Buildings cut occupancy in half or capped them at 50 people.
In classes, available seats have signs taped to them to try and ensure distancing. RU has installed yards of plexiglass around campus, especially in buildings and offices where hundreds of students have to interact with one person.
* Tribune…
Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston is going to feel less crowded this fall, with residence hall capacity reduced to about 70% and more than half of all employees still working from home, school officials said Tuesday.
But those estimates didn’t fully assuage concerns from residents that students will instead move into neighborhood apartments and throw raucous parties, potentially accelerating the spread of COVID-19 in a suburb that has so far avoided an uncontrollable outbreak.
Residents raised the issue Tuesday evening during a 90-minute Zoom meeting, billed as a “community town hall,” to discuss NU’s plan for repopulating its suburban campus when classes begin next month.
* Block Club Chicago…
In Chicago, Loyola University has closed its dorms and plans to host most classes online. DePaul University plans to offer classes in-person and online.
* Peoria Journal Star…
Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington reported 40 total COVID cases among its student population. They have returned home to isolate or are doing so in off-campus housing of their own or in university-provided housing.
* Daily Eastern News…
Two Eastern unions are urging Eastern to “put the safety of students, employees and the community first” as the university opens this semester.
The two unions, AFSCME Local 981, which represents building service, clerical, technical and food service workers, and University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100’s Eastern chapter which represents faculty and academic support professionals, are contacting Eastern after the university’s administration ordered clerical and technical employees back to campus after months of successful work from home. […]
“We’ve tried to work with the EIU administration to protect employees, students and the community, but the answer to our proposals has consistently been ‘No’,” AFSCME Council 31 staff representative Natalie Nagel said. “EIU claims it treats employees like family. So why aren’t they enacting common-sense health and safety protocols?”
* WJBC…
Officials at Illinois Wesleyan University announced 11 additional students have tested positive for coronavirus.
“We determined that all 11 new cases are connected to the outbreak announced last week, stemming from off-campus social gatherings in the week before classes began, where the consistent use of masks and physical distancing did not occur,” according to a news release Monday.
The outbreak now consists of 30 students.
* Daily Egyptian editorial…
Originally, SIU was not going to inform the public of COVID-19 outbreaks on campus. It cited privacy concerns as the reason and refused to even release general numbers.
Although SIU eventually reversed its decision, the university will only provide one weekly generic update.
These weekly updates provide a false sense of security. The statistics published do not show every positive case on or off campus, as it is optional for students, faculty and staff who test positive for COVID to report that they work at or attend the university. Currently, the updates do not disclose any locations or the number of students in quarantine.
Additionally, anyone not living in Jackson County will not be included in the SIU count if they test positive for the virus and inform the university.
*** UPDATE *** WILL reporter…
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* WBBM…
George Pearson, Will County Republican Chairman, told a livestream that the state GOP has helped launch the Illinois Black Republican Coalition. He and other black party leaders mean for this to be a working group for people who believe in free enterprise, school choice and self-reliance.
Bremen Township GOP Committeeman Kevin Suggs said black Republicans will combine their expertise to, in his words, “turn Illinois around.”
He said the Illinois Black Republican Coalition will be an alliance of people who share values like entrepreneurship and educational excellence.
“This is not just something we are redoing, or retooling, recreating. This is something that we believe in that we are going to make happen and we have the right people, at the right time, and are going to let the past go, we are going to move forward, in saying, ‘hey what are the key plans and steps we need to take to turn Illinois around?’” Suggs said.
“It is not about outreach. We know that there are a lot of blacks and African Americans that are out there that live this principle every single day - their business life, their family life, every single day. We are trying to build a coalition to show that you have support out here to say if you are a Republican,” he said. […]
He said the Illinois Black Republican Coalition will be an alliance of people who share values like entrepreneurship and educational excellence.
The Illinois Black Republican Coalition will supposedly be launched next month. It has no website and no Facebook page.
The Will County Republicans do appear to be walking the walk. The county party chairman, George Pearson, is an African-American as is its executive director Alyssia Benford (who ran against Rep. Natalie Manley in 2018 and got just 36 percent of the vote). And Cook County’s Bremen Township GOP Committeeman Kevin Suggs is as well. McHenry County Board member Chuck Wheeler, a Black man, also attended the announcement.
Illinois being Illinois, there are undoubtedly those who think this new project is just some election-year vaporware. We’ll see soon enough.
* Meanwhile…
Illinois Republicans, facing the tug of appealing to their base and the pull of trying to grow, acknowledged the need to reach out to Hispanics and Blacks on Tuesday as part of their second-day events tied to the Republican National Convention.
But a conversation on GOP outreach hosted on Facebook by the Illinois Republican Party turned introspective with the admission that the party needs to do more to encourage support among minority communities.
“Republicans in a lot of ways have not gone to these communities. Republicans have not addressed the Hispanic community or marginalized communities,” said Catalina Lauf, an unsuccessful northwest suburban congressional candidate featured during prime time on the convention’s opening night broadcast.
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* Greg Hinz…
A whopping 87 percent of communities replying to an Illinois Municipal League survey say they have suffered revenue losses so far, with the median decline 20 percent to 30 percent.
That’s a big, big number when most budgets generally don’t change more than a few percentage points year to year. And there are indications the figure will rise because some revenues lag and the full impact is not yet known, says league Executive Director Brad Cole.
According to the survey—227 municipalities around the state replied—reduced sales tax income is the most common source of problems, with 21.2 percent of municipalities reporting it as a “significant” cause of revenue woes in the period since March 1. Lagging gaming tax and motor-fuel tax revenues followed, at about 17 percent each, with receipts from income taxes collected by the state and passed on to local communities at 14.7 percent.
Cole said his group projects that when the money actually is passed on, his members will see an average drop of 10 percent in income tax receipts.
Survey results are here. 46.5 percent say they plan to reduce municipal personnel and/or services.
And the US Senate and House are still on vacation.
Heckuva job.
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Trouble brewing in Effingham County?
Wednesday, Aug 26, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Wall St. Journal…
As new coronavirus cases continue to decline nationally, health officials and business leaders in rural parts of Illinois are raising alarms about rising infection rates that are fueling a steady increase in positive cases statewide.
In the past two weeks, eight of the 10 counties in Illinois with the fastest rates of new Covid-19 cases per capita were in smaller nonmetropolitan counties across the state, compared with two metro counties, according to an analysis of data tracked by Johns Hopkins University.
This is a reversal from an earlier trend, which saw Cook County, which includes Chicago, leading the state in coronavirus infections. Since March, Cook County has accounted for about 55% of the state’s Covid-19 cases. But its contribution has slowed as cases have spread to other corners of the state. In the week prior to Aug. 17, Cook County accounted for 38% of the state’s new cases.
In rural Effingham County, with a population of 34,000, cases recently surged from a few dozen in mid-July to 427 as of Sunday. That increase gave the county the highest rate of cases by population for the week ended Aug. 17, with more than 400 cases per 100,000 residents. By contrast, Cook County had a rate of about 100 cases per 100,000 residents for that week.
Effingham County had a 7.7 percent test positivity rate last week, according to IDPH data. Chicago’s rate was 5 percent. Effingham County reported 251 new cases per 100k population, while Chicago reported 84.
…Adding… 97.9 FM…
There will be a local Republican gathering on the final night of the Republican National Convention.
The event is planned for 7 pm Thursday at the [Effingham] Holiday Inn.
State Representatives Blaine Wilhour, Darren Bailey, and Brad Halbrook are scheduled to attend, along with Congressional candidate Mary Miller and Judge David Overstreet.
The public is invited.
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* Rebecca Anzel at Capitol News Illinois…
Half of Illinois high school students reported using an electronic tobacco product last year, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey found, “erasing gains” made by health advocates in recent years to curb tobacco use.
That trend of increasing e-cigarette, hookah and vape pen use is on par with the U.S. at large, which the nation’s wellness protection agency noted was a factor that prompted the surgeon general to proclaim electronic tobacco use an “epidemic.”
Fighting traditional cigarette, cigar and smokeless tobacco use “has always been a multi-prong approach,” Shana Crews, Illinois government relations director for the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network, said in an interview. State officials and advocates passed “strong smoke-free laws” and secured increased funding for tobacco cessation and education programs.
But in Illinois, electronic cigarettes are not included in a statewide ban of smoking at virtually all public places, taxes on the products are not “at parity” with traditional tobacco products and legislative proposals to ban flavored electronic products were not addressed by the General Assembly this session.
“We need to make sure that we’re treating electronic cigarettes just as we are combustible cigarettes,” Sen. Julie Morrison, a Democrat from Deerfield and long-time anti-tobacco advocate, said in a phone interview. “We were doing so well on changing the culture of smoking and now, especially the younger generation has gone backward.”
The study is here.
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Open thread
Wednesday, Aug 26, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Anybody see that no-hitter last night?
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