The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to approve a bill to prohibit the sale of betel nut to minors.<\/p>\n
All House of Representatives members present voted to pass the bill, House Bill 19-65, Senate Substitute 1, in their session last week.<\/p>\n
The bill, introduced by Rep. Lorenzo Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) with Rep. Vinson Sablan (Ind-Saipan) last year, prohibits the sale of Areca Nut, or betel nut, to any person under the age of 18.<\/p>\n
Among other provisions, the bill requires business to post signs reading \u201cBETEL NUT SALE IS PROHIBETED TO PERSON UNDER THE AGE OF 18,\u201d and enforces fines ranging from $100 to $500 and a revocation of the license to sell betel nut.<\/p>\n
The bill is intended to protect the youth from the dangers of developing oral cancer, amid the public health concern of rising oral cancer cases in the community.<\/p>\n
Studies conducted in 2003 and 2009 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer confirmed that betel nut chewing, with or without tobacco, could cause oral cancer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to approve a bill to prohibit the sale…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12951,56,194,12952],"class_list":["post-234260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-areca-nut","tag-business-3","tag-house-bill","tag-senate-substitute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234260","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}