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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

America’s First Smokers Also The Heaviest Tribes Would Be Held Accountable For Goals To Reduce Teen Smoking.

Associated Press

America’s first smokers, the Indians, use tobacco at twice the rate of the general population and that’s costing taxpayers some $200 million a year in hospital bills, a Senate committee was told Wednesday.

Indian smoking is “clearly a major public health problem,” said Craig Vanderwagen, director of clinical and preventive health for the Indian Health Service.

Among Plains tribes, 57 percent of females and 48 percent of males smoke, Vanderwagen told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Studies also have shown high rates of tobacco use among Indian children.

“If we’re serious about reducing tobacco use, … we’re going to have to make a triple effort in Indian country,” said Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn.

Vanderwagen estimated that a fourth of hospitalizations in Indian Health Service facilities are smoking-related, the same percentage attributed to alcohol, which costs the government $200 million a year.

“That’s $200 million we could be putting toward Indian education and other needs out there,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo.

The agreement reached this summer between state attorneys general and the tobacco industry would force tribes, as well as states, to crack down on cigarette sales to teen-agers. In turn, tribes would get to share in the settlement money going to their respective states. Like states, tribes also would get financial help to regulate tobacco sales.

And tribes would be held accountable for meeting goals to reduce teen smoking, said Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton. “If the goals are not met, funding for enforcement could be withheld from the tribes, just as from the states,” she said.

Tribes would be required to inspect each retailer 25 times a year.

Some Indian legal experts says the settlement would erode tribal powers, essentially allowing states to decide how tobacco sales will be regulated on reservations. Under the settlement, a tribe’s regulations would have to be as strict as its state’s.

“This, in effect, completely subrogates the tribal interests to the interests of the states,” said Alexander Tallchief Skibine, a University of Utah law professor.

“Tobacco was the first gift of the Creator,” said Jack Chambers, a traditional elder with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians in Michigan.

Chambers, dressed in black, wore lightning bolts on his shoulders and carried a leather ceremonial pouch. Every ceremony on his reservation begins with tobacco smoke, he said.

“Without the offering of tobacco, nothing can be done.”