Man About Canton: Raise Tobacco Age?
By Joe DeFeliceDID YOU KNOW …
The town of Canton may become only the second community in Massachusetts to raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products from 18 to 21. As first reported by the Canton Citizen last month, the Canton Board of Health verbally agreed to increase the age after hearing about the hazards of underage smoking from Dr. Jonathan Winickoff, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Lester Hartman, a senior associate with Westwood-Mansfield Pediatrics and a self-proclaimed antismoking crusader. MAC agrees and has always been completely against smoking. Needham, the first town in the state to raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes to 21, saw the high school smoking rate drop from 13 percent to 5.5 percent since implementing the age increase in 2006.
It looks like it worked in Needham; however, on the other hand, research is replete with explanations for why some people start to smoke and others do not, and none of it relates to the age limit. Research found that peer pressure, a youngster’s social group, and the influence of friends, particularly for girls, is the single most important factor in the decision to smoke. Public health officials and antismoking advocates still agree that by raising the minimum age to 21, it will drop the number of cigarette users, and that is a good thing.
The Canton Rotary Club will hold a 75th anniversary gala on June 11 at the Blue Hills Country Club. This year, retired Fire Chief James Fitzpatrick will be honored with Rotary’s “Service Above Self Award.” Tickets are $40 per person and available at the Canton Fire Department, Pratt Realty and Maxie’s Deli, or by calling 781-575-6557.
The second annual Canton Lions Club Yard Sale will be held this Saturday, May 18, from 9 a.m. to noon at Galvin Insurance, 1209 Washington Street.
The Electrical Workers Union recently picketed the new $30 million South Shore YMCA facility being built in Quincy. Sean Callaghan, business agent for IBEW Local 103, said the winning $1.6 million bid submitted by Suburban Electric of Canton includes substandard wages and benefits while Y officials say it was simply the best deal. The initial Local 103 bid was $2 million while Aspire Electrical, also from Canton, a union contractor, came in second with a bid of $1.7 million. Some people say that the union crosses the line into bullying and intimidation when picketing business and job sites. Last year, Local 103 of the IBEW also questioned the construction of the solar farm built in Canton on the property of the old town dump off Pine Street. Canton townspeople, as well as the Board of Selectmen, and in particular its chairman at the time, John Connolly, had to endure weeks of letters to the editor and postcards sent out by the IBEW Local 103 denouncing the construction of the solar farm by non-union contractors. Today, the project has been completed and is up and running — and the town seems to be reaping the benefits.
On April 24, the Federal Reserve unveiled its redesigned $100 bill complete with several new security features. The coolest part of the new bill is the 3D vertical ribbon just to the right of Ben Franklin. You will see little bells inside it, but if you tilt the note up and down, they change to “100” images. You can also get the bells and 100s to move side by side or up and down. It is interesting to note that two out of every three $100 bills are believed to be held overseas, and that several million dollars worth of bogus “Benjamins” are smuggled into the United States yearly by our good friends in North Korea. The new $100 bill will go into circulation starting on October 8, 2013.
The General Motors battery-powered Chevrolet Spark mini-car can travel up to 82 miles on a single charge. It will go on sale in July for about $30,000.
The price of oil has dropped this past month due to lower-than-expected demand in the world’s largest economies, the United States and China. According to oil experts, a decline of 10 cents per gallon translates to $13 billion in savings at the pump.
Absolute Landscaping of Canton will be cleaning up and taking care of the flower beds in the center of Canton. The company will donate their time and materials to beautify downtown Canton.
Most of us probably never heard of Stanley A. Dashew, an inventor and entrepreneur who recently died at the age of 96, but MAC is sure that most of us carry in our wallets his invention: the plastic credit card. Mr. Dashew and a team of engineers developed a machine with a keyboard that could emboss plastic cards with a customer’s name, account number, and an expiration date. They also built an imprinting machine that could capture all the information contained on the card and print out a receipt to be signed by the customer. Mr. Dashew holds 40 patents. At the age of 94, he instilled his insights about life and business in a book entitled “You Can Do It: Inspiration and Lessons from an Inventor, Entrepreneur and Sailor.”
Mr. Dashew once said, “It is about whether you pick yourself up after a failure and proceed forward anyway. Anything is possible with the right attitude and a dose of hard work.”
This is all for now folks. See you next week.
Joe DeFelice can be reached at manaboutcanton@aol.com.
Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=20596
Posted by Joe DeFelice
on May 16 2013. Filed under Featured Content, Man About Canton, Opinion.
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