{"id":200064,"date":"2015-04-24T04:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T18:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=200064"},"modified":"2015-04-24T04:00:10","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T18:00:10","slug":"bill-seeks-to-regulate-lime-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/bill-seeks-to-regulate-lime-production\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill seeks to regulate lime production"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bill introduced by Sen. Teresita A. Santos (R-Rota) seeks to regulate the manufacture of lime, an ingredient in betel nut chew.<\/p>\n

Santos said Senate Bill 19-37 also seeks to include lime\u2014locally known as afok\u2014into certain sections of the CNMI\u2019s existing laws on food and drug control.<\/p>\n

\"Santos\"<\/a>
Santos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Santos said the ingredients in manufacturing lime have changed over time. It is traditionally produced using coral.<\/p>\n

The inception of Public Law 3-47 gave the Coastal Resource Management the authority to oversee and protect all coastal resources including coral. \u201cAs a result, the harvesting of corals to manufacture and produce afok or bweesch for personal and commercial use was eventually restricted,\u201d the bill said.<\/p>\n

The bill also stated that \u201calthough afok or bweesch may not have a direct link to oral cancer or other deadly diseases, there is a great need to protect the people until concrete studies are done pertaining to afok and its link to oral cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Santos\u2019 proposed legislation comes after several lawmakers said they are eyeing the idea of drafting a bill that will mandate stricter policies on betel nut chewing.<\/p>\n

This comes after several members of the 19th House of Representatives attended the recent Oral Cancer Health Forum during which attendees called for legislation against betel nut chewing.<\/p>\n

Reps. John Paul Sablan (R-Saipan), Blas Jonathan \u201cB.J.\u201d Attao (Ind-Saipan), Ed Propst (Ind-Saipan), and Anthony Benavente (Ind-Saipan) agreed that drafting legislation against betel nut chewing might be a good proposition for the CNMI.<\/p>\n

However, they aren\u2019t looking to ban betel nut chewing altogether.<\/p>\n

Benavente and Attao said that taxing betel nut, creating violation fees, and other policies that may be similar to Public Law 16-46 or the Smoke-Free Air Act of 2008 may help cut down on chewing betel nut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill introduced by Sen. Teresita A. Santos (R-Rota) seeks to regulate the manufacture of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":200065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,2718,1275,1411],"class_list":["post-200064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-coastal-resource-management","tag-public-law","tag-senate-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}