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It occurs when blood flow to the brain is interrupted or severely reduced, depriving brain tissue of oxygen and nutrients.
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Savitz said the trial's first patient, Roland Henrich, is stable and doing well, though he cautioned it's too early to attribute his condition to the stem cell treatment.
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Houston doctors have launched the nation's first experimental trial treating stroke with a patient's own stem cells, following similar pioneering work in the Texas Medical Center with heart patients and brain-damaged children.
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The stroke study builds on two previous research projects in Houston. One, conducted by Texas Heart Institute doctors, involves heart failure patients and heart attack survivors; and the other, conducted by UT-Houston doctors, involves treating patients between the ages of 4 and 14 within 48 hours of a head injury. Both are ongoing.
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The trial is a Phase I study, meaning its purpose is to establish the procedure's safety.
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Savitz said it should take about a year to enroll its 10 patients, who must arrive at Memorial Hermann more than three hours after suffering a stroke but within three days.
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Free care is being offered to spouses, same-sex domestic partners and children if they have no other health coverage.
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Quest Diagnostics also won't charge for tests Take Care commonly uses to diagnose strep throat and bladder infections.
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Otherwise Take Care, which treats most minor ailments, is waiving $59 to $80 fees depending on the type of service through the rest of 2009.
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Take Care Clinics, located inside Walgreens drugstores, are offering free medical care to families of people who lost jobs and have no health coverage.
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Visits are limited to between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. weekdays.
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There are some catches. Patients have to have lost their jobs after March 30. If patients have never been treated by Take Care before, they must pay for the first visit. Prescriptions are not part of the deal.
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(727) 893-8252.
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"We cannot stand idly as individuals are forced by the hardships of the economy to choose between basic necessities such as health care, housing and food," said Gregory Wasson , Walgreen's president.
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The draft measure, written by Reps. Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sets a slightly more ambitious goal for capping heat-trapping gases than Obama's proposal. The bill requires that emissions be reduced 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, while Obama's plan calls for a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases by roughly 80 percent by 2050.
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But the Waxman-Markey proposal does not address the distribution of pollution allowances. It also does not say how most of the tens of billions of dollars raised from pollution permits would be spent, or whether the revenue would be returned to consumers to compensate for higher energy bills. Those matters have been left to negotiations, which will begin when Congress returns from its Easter recess on April 20.
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The bill would require every region of the country to produce a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal by 2025. A number of lawmakers around the country, particularly in the Southeast, call that goal unrealistic because the natural resources and technology to meet it do not yet exist.
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The bill also calls for modernization of the electrical grid, production of more electric vehicles and significant increases in efficiency in buildings, appliances and the generation of electricity.
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The debate on global warming and energy policy accelerated on Tuesday as two senior House Democrats unveiled a far-reaching bill to cap heat-trapping gases and quicken the country's move away from dependence on coal and oil.
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The Waxman-Markey bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, emerges at a time when many Americans, and their representatives in Congress, are wary of wide-ranging environmental legislation that could raise energy costs and potentially cripple industry. The bill also comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is about to exert regulatory authority over heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act. The bill could pre-empt that effort and create a new cap-and-trade scheme to control carbon emissions.
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But the bill leaves critical questions unanswered and has no Republican support. It is thus the beginning, not the end, of the debate in Congress on how to deal with two of President Barack Obama's priorities, climate change and energy.
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Orlando is more of a tourist destination, he noted. Also, the U.S. is in a recession and attending WrestleMania is "really discretionary."
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When WrestleMania came to Houston in 2001, it set an attendance record for the Astrodome.
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The economic impact for Houston that year was more than $13 million, according to the University of Houston Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management. There were fewer WrestleMania events in 2001 than there are now, Saboor noted.
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Many people don't realize that WrestleMania is on the scale of a Major League Baseball or NBA All-Star game, said John Saboor, WWE's senior vice president of special events.
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Saboor disagreed, noting that many die-hard WWE fans make WrestleMania their one vacation of the year.
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Last year's WrestleMania pumped more than $50 million into the Orlando-area economy. While it is uncertain whether Houston will fare as well, WrestleMania will certainly provide a boost to the city, said Greg Ortale, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau.
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Many will stay from Thursday until Monday, he said.
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The main event Sunday at Reliant Stadium is expected to draw 70,000 fans.
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It's the type of drama that keeps millions of World Wrestling Entertainment fans hooked and will be on full display at WrestleMania 25 and surrounding events in Houston starting today.
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White, in a dark suit and red tie, addressed an audience made up mostly of screaming wrestling fans.
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Houstonians who don't follow wrestling might enjoy another story line: WWE fans pouring in for WrestleMania Week could bring tens of millions of dollars to the city.
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Houston is in serious contention to host another WrestleMania Week sometime between 2011 and 2014, Saboor said.
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White, who typically holds news conferences with national leaders, scientists and Fortune 500 CEOs, was this time joined by WWE divas and superstars including masked man Rey Mysterio and black-clad CM Punk.
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"It couldn't come at a better time," Ortale said. "The hotel industry has been in free fall" as the recession causes corporations to cut back on travel.
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Professional wrestler Randy Orton was getting ready to pound Triple H with a sledgehammer during a recent match when his foe's wife stepped into the ring. In a flash, Orton head-dropped the woman to the mat and then kissed her, while Triple H, handcuffed to the ropes, had to watch.
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John Keeling, senior vice president of PKF Consulting, a hotel consulting firm, doesn't believe Houston's economic benefit will be equal to Orlando's.
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JURY CHALLENGES
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The Supreme Court ruled only on the impact of the resolution. It sent the case back to the state Supreme Court for consideration of property rights under state law and what a brief from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state-created body representing Native Hawaiians, called "broader moral and political claims for compensation for the wrongs of the past."
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The court ruled unanimously that a judge's mistake in failing to exclude a juror did not require automatic reversal of a conviction.
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The Illinois Supreme Court agreed that the trial judge had erred in seating the juror. But it said there was no evidence that the juror had been biased or the jury's verdict tainted. It therefore upheld the conviction, a ruling affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Rivera v. Illinois, No.07-9995.
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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the Constitution does not require a state to provide defendants peremptory challenges at all. It follows, Ginsburg wrote, that "if a defendant is tried before a qualified jury composed of individuals not challengeable for cause, the loss of a peremptory challenge due to a state court's good-faith error is not a matter of federal constitutional concern."
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And, he said, had the resolution meant what the state court believed it did, it would "raise grave constitutional concerns if it purported to 'cloud' Hawaii's title to its sovereign lands more than three decades after the state's admission to the Union."
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The state Supreme Court relied on that and similar language to find that the Maui land in dispute could not be transferred to a state housing agency without a disclaimer preserving the potential claims of Native Hawaiians. The court said the congressional resolution dictated that result.
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A 1993 congressional apology for the United States' role in overthrowing Hawaii's monarchy a century earlier does not prohibit Hawaiian officials from selling or transferring state land, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.
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Michael Rivera, who murdered a 16-year-old after mistaking him for a member of a rival gang, challenged his conviction because the judge had denied his request to exclude a potential juror by using a peremptory strike -- the kind that does not ordinarily require giving a reason.
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"Demand for petroleum-based gasoline will continue to wither," Milne said, noting the increasing amount of ethanol replacing gasoline in the nation's fuel supply, rising fuel imports and other factors.
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High gasoline prices, much like 100-degree July days in Houston, have become a fairly predictable part of the summer in recent years.
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or three times the rate seen in 2008 to reach the statewide record of $4 a gallon set July 17, 2008, she said.
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Some analysts say the U.S. may have even hit its peak in gasoline usage and will never return to previous levels.
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But this year, Americans should get some relief, if not from the heat, then at the pump.
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Prices could potentially reach $2.50 a gallon by the time July starts, but only if wholesale gasoline prices rise higher than expected, he said.
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That's good news to Justin Sherrill, a Houston resident who said filling up his Chevy pickup was a burden when pump prices hit records last year.
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Big savings for motorists
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In 2008, U.S. gasoline demand fell 3.3 percent, its first annual decline since 1991, and utilization at the nation's refineries slipped to its lowest point since 1988, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
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Lower prices come as a U.S. recession continues to weaken demand for gasoline and as crude oil prices hover near $50 a barrel, down roughly $100 from their peak last summer.
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"For retail prices, I expect we'll see the national average for regular grade gasoline near $2.25 gallon by the May-June period, and about $2.25 to $2.35 a gallon for the July-August period," said Brian Milne, refined fuels editor at DTN, an Omaha, Neb.-based commodity tracker.
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On Tuesday, for example, the national average for regular unleaded was $2.05 a gallon, up 8 cents from a week ago, and stood at an average $1.98 in Texas and Houston, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report.
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Prices nationwide have jumped about 45 cents since late December amid a small uptick in crude prices but still remain more than a dollar per gallon below where they were a year ago.
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Demand slumps
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Gasoline prices would have to go up nearly 2 cents per day beginning now
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Gasoline prices will continue to increase as the summer driving season approaches but should still remain well below levels seen in recent years, when prices broke first the $3, and then the $4 a gallon barriers.
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A police officer at a checkpoint on the perimeter of the building said that a man driving a large flatbed truck normally used for transporting construction materials had approached the rear gate and asked him if he could make a U-turn. The front entrance to the headquarters, like the entrances of most government buildings, was barricaded with tall concrete blast walls.
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On the same day as the transfer in Iraq's south, a suicide truck bomber killed at least seven people and wounded 38 in the fractious northern city of Mosul, underscoring the uneven nature of the security gains in the country.
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The successes in Basra were achieved because of cooperation between the British, Iraqi and U.S. armies, Ibrahim said. But, like so many other residents here, he noted the differences between the British and U.S. forces. The Americans have been good at attacking militias, but bad at dealing with civilians; the British are easygoing with civilians, but too passive in facing up to extremists, he said.
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Along the waterfront boulevards of Basra, which is much busier and safer than it was last year, the transfer was met largely with indifference. Many people credited the improved security to the Iraqi army, which led a major operation last spring to clean the city of militants loyal to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
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Despite numerous U.S. and Iraqi military operations, Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, remains a center for the insurgency. Since last Thursday, at least 29 people have been killed and 85 wounded in violence in the city and its outskirts.
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The situation in Mosul is further complicated by its nearness to the poorly controlled Syrian border and by a bitter political struggle between the province's staunchly nationalist Sunni Arab leaders, made up of tribal chiefs and former loyalists of Saddam Hussein, and their Kurdish opponents. Arabs accuse Kurds of seeking to annex many parts of the province adjacent to the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.
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With the end of the British-led southeast division on Tuesday, Basra became the headquarters of a new division for U.S.-led forces that stretches all the way from Baghdad's southern suburbs to the Kuwaiti border, encompassing Iraq's nine southern provinces.
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After the truck was permitted to enter, it drove to the building's courtyard, and its payload detonated, the police officer said.
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At a ceremony at a civilian air terminal on Tuesday, during which Winston Churchill was quoted liberally, British, U.S. and Iraqi officials trumpeted the security gains in Basra over the past year and hailed its potential as a capital of commerce.
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While all British combat forces must be withdrawn by July 31, 300 to 400 British troops will remain to train Iraqi forces, British military officials said.
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After six years as America's staunchest ally in the Iraq war, Britain handed over command of Basra province to the U.S. military on Tuesday, marking the first step in the withdrawal of most of Britain's 4,100 remaining troops.
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Under the terms of an agreement with the Iraqi government, Britain will cease combat operations on May 31; until then, British troops will be under the command of an American, Maj. Gen. Michael L. Oates.
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Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, prides itself on being a cosmopolitan port city, a gateway to the Persian Gulf and Iraq's engine of economic development because of the vast oil reserves nearby. Basra province has further strategic significance as the land route to Kuwait for U.S. forces as they withdraw over the next 17 months.
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U.S. forces will begin arriving in greater numbers in Basra as the British drawdown proceeds. Oates estimated that by the end of the summer, around 5,000 U.S. troops will have joined the nearly 2,000 already here, most of them training the Iraqi police and border patrol agents.
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A municipal cleaning crew was working near the building's back entrance at the moment of the explosion. "We were sweeping the street and suddenly we saw a ball of fire and there was an explosion," said Salwan Ahmed, 18, one of the cleaners. "It knocked us off our feet."
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On Monday evening at the Tistahel al-Basrah, a garishly decorated floating restaurant on the Shatt al Arab waterway, Ali Ibrahim, the manager, watched a steady stream of customers arrive, proof of Basra's newfound security.
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In Mosul on Tuesday, the suicide truck bomber attacked the headquarters of a unit of the local police force in the early morning, witnesses and security officials said.
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"We view this not as a tax, but as a surcharge," Altman said. "It's a historic day for Florida."
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If approved, the state tax on cigarettes would go from 34 cents per pack to $1.34 a pack. Those fees would be on top of the federal excise tax hike of 62 cents a pack, which takes effect today, to pay for children's health care programs.
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TALLAHASSEE A Senate committee ended a nearly 15-year freeze on tax hike proposals in Florida Tuesday, unanimously voting to raise the cigarette tax $1 per pack and increase the tax on cigars and smokeless tobacco $1 per ounce.
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Deutch said that while 1.2 million cigarettes are sold in Florida, economists calculated the lost sales when they projected the new tax will raise only $870?million. He said the price hike will most affect the age group that is price sensitive, teenagers and children.
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Although a cigarette tax hike has been sponsored by Deutch for two years, and pushed by Democrats and health groups for years before him, it was never even considered an option when Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles successfully sued the tobacco industry in 1994 and won a historic settlement against it in 1997.
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Will Senate leadership be able to persuade the House? "Hope springs eternal," Altman said.
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"Obviously that's an industry in Florida that has a great tradition, especially in the Tampa Bay area and probably some other parts of the state," he said. "I would like to see that removed, if possible."
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Altman said the change of heart has come about because Senate Republican leaders want it and because there is "the growing understanding and enlightenment that this behavior is very detrimental to the people of our state."
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Opponents include the nation's largest tobacco companies, Associated Industries of Florida, retailers, cigarette distributors and convenience stores.
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Opponents warned it would devastate Florida's hometown cigar business and kill retail jobs. They blasted the revenue projections as bogus numbers that won't realize the savings lawmakers expect.
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"There are 5 million people living today who will die prematurely because they use tobacco," Deutch said. "Tobacco is absolutely a choice. The consequences of that should not be foisted upon the citizens of this state."
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Supporters called it a historic opportunity to raise more than $870 million in new revenue, discourage smoking, and offset the state's Medicaid program that pays to treat sick smokers.
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The Senate bill is supported by the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Association, the League of Women Voters, AARP, medical school deans and the Florida Association of Counties.
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Members of the Senate Finance and Tax Committee defended the proposal, pushed by Boca Raton Democratic Sen. Ted Deutch and Melbourne Republican Thad Altman, and stood by the revenue projections.
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Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
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Gov. Charlie Crist said Tuesday he was warming to the idea of taxing cigarettes as one way to fill Florida's $3 billion budget gap, as long as it was called a user fee.
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While some smokers will try to escape the tax by getting cigarettes from out of state, those who quit "will save the Medicaid budget in this state millions of dollars."
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In the House, however, the tobacco tax hike faces long odds. Fort Lauderdale Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, who chairs the Finance and Tax Committee, is aggressively opposing it.
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