Cigarette tax raises for second time in 5 years

INDIANAPOLIS – Smokers will pay more to puff and almost everyone will be required to wear seat belts under dozens of new state laws that take effect Sunday.\nLawmakers raised the cigarette tax for the second time in five years, this time from 55.5 cents per pack to 99.5 cents. Smokers might not like the hike, but Gov. Mitch Daniels does. The state plans to use the extra money – and hopefully matching federal dollars – to provide health insurance to more than 100,000 low-income Hoosiers and fund other health initiatives.\n"Today we are taking a long step toward the dream of a healthier Indiana," Daniels said when he signed the bill. "We are taking the longest single step Indiana has ever taken in this direction."\nMore people will have to buckle up under a law that some legislators spent years trying to enact.\nCurrent law doesn't require back-seat passengers age 16 or older or occupants in vehicles plated as trucks, which can include pickups, SUVs and minivans, to be restrained. That will change July 1, but the new law will no longer allow police to use check points to enforce seat-belt compliance.\nDemocratic Rep. Peggy Welch of Bloomington said federal experts believe the new law will prevent 20 deaths, 330 hospitalizations and more than $65 million in injury-related costs each year.\n"Those cold numbers don't tell the real story of the hundreds of Hoosiers who have lost friends and family members because seat belts were not used," she said.\nThe change will leave Georgia as the only state with a primary seat belt law that does not apply to vehicles with truck plates.\nStudents and some parents will notice new laws when school starts in a couple of months.\nAll high schools will be required to include a study of the Holocaust in each U.S. history course. Schools must give parents of girls entering the sixth grade information about the link between human papillomavirus and cervical cancer and the availability of an immunization.\nAnd all schools must hold a tornado drill and manmade disaster drill once a semester.\nThose who install mobile homes after June 30 must equip them with special radios that alert people to pending dangerous weather.\nThe bill stems from a Nov. 6, 2005, tornado that wiped out a mobile home park in Evansville and killed 25 people in Southwestern Indiana. It was initiated by Kathryn Martin, whose 2-year-old son, C.J, and two other family members died in the tornado. Daniels phoned Martin as he signed the bill so she would know it was law.\nCongressman Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., who led storm-relief efforts after the tornado as Vanderburgh County sheriff, introduced a national version of the bill on Thursday.\nA case of mistaken identity led to a new law that requires coroners to use one of four methods to identify a dead person: fingerprints, DNA analysis, dental records or positive identification by an immediate family member.\nNone of those methods were used after a crash in April 2006 that killed four students and a staff member from Taylor University. After the wreck, the Grant County coroner's office said Whitney Cerak had died and that classmate Laura VanRyn was severely injured. VanRyn's parents sat by the injured woman's hospital bed for five weeks, only realizing that she was not their daughter when Cerak emerged from her coma.\nRenters tired of landlords letting themselves in unannounced also will get some relief. A new law will now require landlords to give tenants reasonable notice before entering a rental unit, except \nin emergencies.\n"There is a tendency to think that renters deserve to have the same kind of rights that property owners have, but the old saying about your home being a castle should be true whether you write a monthly check to a mortgage company or a landlord," said Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington.\nIn all, the Indiana General Assembly enacted more than 230 laws during the session that ended April 29.