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Every parent needs to be aware of the insidious targeting of our kids by the tobacco industry. As traditional cigarette smokers die, this industry is desperate to recruit future nicotine-addicted customers. Menthol and flavored tobacco are luring them in. Each day, more than 4,300 kids under 18 try an e-cigarette for the first time.
If you haven’t talked to your kid about e-cigarettes yet, it’s time. Odds are they know someone who is using e-cigarettes and probably has been offered the chance to try it – especially among middle schoolers who reported a significant increase in tobacco use this year. Flavors like Ice, Bubblegum, and Wild Cherry make tobacco products seem harmless. But the number one goal of promoting flavors is to attract kids, addict them to nicotine, and create lifelong customers.
“It tastes like candy,” confesses Marcus Aloisi who grew up in Georgia, VT and now lives in Burlington. Across Vermont, kids like Marcus start using e-cigarettes or flavored tobacco in-part because it tastes good. According to this year’s National Youth Tobacco Survey, 87% of youth tobacco users use flavored products. Here in Vermont, 16.1% of high schoolers use e-cigarettes and 5.4% smoke cigarettes. And tobacco use is still the number one cause of preventable death in this country and kills more than 1,000 Vermont residents each year.
“Every time I breathe, I feel a crackle run up my chest. I noticed it a few years back when I got sick, every time I took a breath, I felt my windpipe quake. I hated it then. I hate it now. I’m 21 years-old, and I’m addicted to tobacco,” continued Marcus, who started using e-cigarettes in high school, but he was first offered an e-cigarette in the eighth grade.
“We need to stop it at the source. Ending the sale of flavored tobacco, including menthol, is key to preventing a generation of addiction,” said Marcus. And we agree. It’s time for the flavors to go. Our kids are too important to let Big Tobacco continue to target them.
Pediatricians, teachers, and parents in Vermont are dealing with kids using e-cigarettes in school, at home, and startling high levels of nicotine dependence. That isn’t surprising when an e-cigarette cartridge can contain as much or even more nicotine as a pack of traditional cigarettes. Every day they are seeing kids who are addicted to nicotine and can’t stop using tobacco.
Here’s the good news for parents and families. We can stop the sale of flavored tobacco in Vermont and drastically reduce the rate of tobacco addiction among our kids. In fact, Vermont’s State Senate passed S.18 last year, which could end the sale of menthol and flavored tobacco in the state, but now it must pass the Vermont House. The House will take up the bill in January.
Vermonters are on board with this legislative effort. In fact, recent polling by the Flavors Hook Kids Vermont Campaign and the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Vermont shows that 79% of Vermont voters are concerned about young people in their community smoking cigarettes, using vapes, or other forms of tobacco.
That same poll tells us that 68% of Vermont voters support legislation to end the sale of flavored tobacco products here in the state. Pediatricians, teachers, and parents across the state agree and it’s time to act.
S.18 has the support of more than 50 Vermont organizations including the American Heart Association, the Vermont-NEA, the Vermont Medical Society, the University of Vermont Medical Center, Recovery VT, the Windham County NAACP, and the YMCA Alliance of Northern New England.
You can support this work too. We have a youth tobacco epidemic in Vermont, and flavored tobacco is the reason kids get hooked. Join our fight to end the sales of flavored tobacco. We urge you to contact your legislators in the Vermont House and tell them to support S.18.
To find out more about S.18 and the impacts of flavored tobacco on kids’ health, visit: https://flavorshookkidsvt.org/
