We all know the terrible statistics about smoking.\u00a0 Hundreds of thousands of Americans die each year due to tobacco use.\u00a0 It is the leading cause of cancer deaths among men and women.\u00a0 Tobacco use is also addicting.\u00a0 It\u2019s an unusual product, that when used as directed, addicts and kills.
The problem for the tobacco industry is getting people hooked.\u00a0 Starting to smoke or chew tobacco is not fun; it tastes awful, it hurts your throat and makes you cough.\u00a0 The industry knows this and glamorized tobacco use through such images as the Marlboro Man to lure people into the habit.
We know that the vast majority of tobacco users start before the age of 18.\u00a0 Nearly 90 percent of all tobacco users start before the age of 18 with the average age of initiation being 14.
How does the industry get children to not only try tobacco products, but to actually be able to tolerate those initial experiences?\u00a0 They do it by offering tobacco products with candy and other sweet flavors.\u00a0 The evidence of the tobacco industry\u2019s strategies was so compelling that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of candy-flavored cigarettes, although continues to allow it for small cigars, known as cigarillos, and pipe tobacco.
Yet, smart public health strategies like raising the price of tobacco products through higher levels of taxation, restricting the use of tobacco products in public and work places, as well as funding aggressive public health marketing, particularly to kids, has drastically reduced the rate of tobacco use in the United States.\u00a0 The rate of tobacco use among teens has dropped dramatically as well.
And without teens taking up this deadly addiction, the tobacco industry has seen the writing on the wall.\u00a0 Without youthful \u201creplacement smokers,\u201d the tobacco industry will eventually die off.
So they have embraced a new product, while employing the same tactics.
The new products are electronic cigarettes, or \u201ce-cigarettes.\u201d\u00a0 E-cigs are a new technology in which the user does not inhale smoke, but the vapor from an electronic device.\u00a0 E-cigarettes are sleek, high tech and easy to hide. They look like USB flash drives and can be charged in the USB port of a computer.\u00a0 They don\u2019t look anything like a traditional tobacco product.\u00a0 And they\u2019re small enough to fit in a closed hand.
E-cigarettes deliver nicotine in the same way as cigarettes do, but without all of the smoke.\u00a0 They also pack quite a punch; e-cigarettes deliver a much higher dose of nicotine than traditional burned cigarettes.
The tobacco industry has seen the potential; they have invested billions of dollars in the e-cigarette industry.
E-cigarette companies are using a tactic used for decades by the tobacco industry: heavy advertising and offering \u201cstarter\u201d products with sweet tastes.\u00a0\u00a0
As a result, e-cigarettes have flooded the market in recent years, contributing to skyrocketing rates of youth tobacco product use.\u00a0 Vaping among high school students increased nationally nearly 80 percent from 2017 to 2018, with 1 in 5 high schoolers using these products.\u00a0
How did a generation become hooked on e-cigarettes so quickly? A major factor has been flavored products. With flavors like mango, vanilla, and mint, e-cigarette makers have created a line of products with massive appeal to teens.\u00a0 A Surgeon General\u2019s report cited a study that found 81.5 percent of current youth e-cigarette users said they use the products because \u201cthey come in flavors that I like.\u201d\u00a0
Because these candy-like flavors mask the nasty taste, kids often don\u2019t realize that they\u2019re using nicotine, or understand how dangerous it is. The Surgeon General\u2019s office recently found that over 60 percent of high schoolers believe occasional use of e-cigarettes causes little harm \u2013 a claim that the medical community has refuted time and again \u2013 and another survey found that more than 60 percent of young adult users didn\u2019t know the product always contains nicotine.\u00a0 In fact, one e-cig pod can contain as much nicotine as an entire pack of twenty cigarettes.\u00a0
For years, tobacco use among young people saw a steady decline.\u00a0 However, that progress is now at risk due to the rapid rise of e-cigarettes.\u00a0 As the U.S. Surgeon General has commented, \u201cThe recent surge in e-cigarette use among youth, which has been fueled by new types of e-cigarettes that have recently entered the market, is a cause for great concern. We must take action now to protect the health of our nation\u2019s young people.\u201d
New York lawmakers can show the nation how to take action by starting to ban the use of candy-flavored tobacco and e-cigarettes products.\u00a0 We must do what we can to prevent children from getting hooked on this lethal nicotine addiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We all know the terrible statistics about smoking.\u00a0 Hundreds of thousands of Americans die each year due to tobacco use.\u00a0 It is the leading cause of cancer deaths among men and women.\u00a0 Tobacco use is also addicting.\u00a0 It\u2019s an unusual product, that when used as directed, addicts and kills. The problem for the tobacco industry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}