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BreatheND is efficient government

Mike and Brenda Donohue

Minot

Legislators who are thinking about getting rid of BreatheND do not have our best interests in mind.

Some say it’s a duplicate of the Department of Health and a waste of money. Not true. In fact, it’s the opposite. BreatheND is an example of government efficiency.

This is a small agency, focused solely on preventing tobacco use. They follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control to guarantee their work is as effective as possible. Even regular audits posted on BreatheND’s website prove the agency shows no signs of a lack of efficiency.

BreatheND is doing what no other state department could do before. Youth smoking rates are half what they were when this agency started. I want to remind our legislators there is a reason North Dakotans voted to create BreatheND, and sending tobacco prevention efforts back to the Department of Health is a step backward.

My wife and I have felt the pain of losing parents on both sides of our family to lung cancer caused by smoking. Tobacco use kills 1,000 people every year in North Dakota. There are many more families like ours, who know that tobacco prevention is an investment in our future.

We are all for limited government. We want to see everyone doing their part to get our state through this budget crisis. Successful tobacco prevention has to be a part of that solution. We need BreatheND to stick around so we can raise healthier kids and reduce the financial impact tobacco has on our healthcare and Medicaid systems.

We want our legislators to know, we can honor the memories of all the North Dakotans we lost to tobacco use and we can make our state stronger by continuing successful prevention efforts through BreatheND.

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