âIâll see you in heaven.â
It was the last thing Al Braccolino, 90, of Crown Point, told one of his daughters as paramedics loaded him into an ambulance Nov. 16. COVID-19 forced him into the final fight of his life.
Ten days later, the chair Al usually occupied at the Thanksgiving table would sit empty. The husband to his wife of 70 years, father of three and grandfather of six died on the holiday.
Alâs daughter, Sandra Noe, was herself suffering from COVID-19, which she contracted while caring for her sick parents, when the virus forced Alâs hospitalization.
Noe, 66, is no stranger to helping elderly shut-ins weather isolation.
House Republicans vote to hike Indiana cigarette tax by 50 cents per pack
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The two-year state budget proposal crafted by House Republicans prioritizes one-time spending focused on helping students and businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic over the state debt paydown preferred by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb.
The House GOP plan unveiled Thursday allocates $150 million to fund grants to school corporations, colleges and universities, community organizations, current or retired teachers, and pretty much any entity prepared to assist Indiana elementary and high school students overcome pandemic-related âlearning lossâ and help them return to grade-level achievement.
Similarly, the spending plan creates a $30 million Hoosier Hospitality Small Business Restart Grant Program to assist restaurants, hotels and transportation businesses with fewer than 100 full-time employees to carry on operations as the Hoosier State advances toward a post-pandemic economy.
Connor Burge, The Times
State Rep. Julie Olthoff, R-Crown Point, is leading a Statehouse effort to reduce Hoosier smoking rates by seeking to increase Indianaâs cigarette tax by $1 per pack.
Olthoff told the House Public Health Committee on Monday that 1 in 5 Indiana adults are smokers, along with 23% of high school students, and theyâre disproportionately driving up health care costs and cancer rates in the state, while reducing worker productivity. Our desire is to drive a new wave of smoking cessation and prevention, especially for our Indiana youth, Olthoff said.
The Republican explained the $1 per pack cigarette tax hike in House Bill 1434 is high enough to discourage younger Hoosiers from continuing or taking up the habit, and likewise should spur many adult smokers to consider scaling back or quitting smoking altogether.
die. we need solutions, not just prohibitions on safe products. how did people get off smoking before this? nicotine gum, patch, lozenge, cold turkey. from 2003 to 2009, the adult smoking rate stagnated. even through a recession with a cigarette tax hike. do you have kids? the smoking rate barely went down. no, i do not. if you had kids i don t care if you have kids or not. would you let your kids vape. no, right? no, like i wouldn t let them smoke or use marijuana in any form. i would parent them if i had children. that does not mean because some parents are not preventing their youth from so you don t think everything that i see on social media all the time, i got a 16-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 9-year-old. they all know what vaping is. they all see it online. they see it running through companies that are marketing them products that go through
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