By The Herald Editorial Board
Perhaps an indication of how far smoking has fallen as a go-to pop culture reference, during the opening of Sunday’s 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter sang Simon’s “Homeward Bound,” but with a slight change in lyrics. Carpenter sang that “Every day’s an endless stream of airport lounges and magazines,” dropping cigarettes from the longing lyric.
Tobacco is still with us, but definitely on the decline. A study of more than 350,000 American adults by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that between 2011 and 2022, smoking declined dramatically among adults younger than 40; for adults 18 to 24, smoking decreased to just 5 percent in 2022, from 19 percent in 2011.
Yet the tobacco industry hasn’t given up, introducing new products — prior and during the same time period as the JAMA study — to find new consumers of tobacco and its addictive compound of nicotine. What was initially introduced as an alternative to cigarettes for those wanting to quit smoking, electronic cigarettes were by 2009, re-engineered with the addition of flavors that — not by accident —introduced nicotine to new, younger tobacco users, including underage youths.
That targeting of youths to find new consumers for tobacco has alarmed health and disease experts, parental groups and children’s advocates, coalitions of communities of color and others, who in recent years have sought restrictions on youths’ use of cigarettes, electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products.
Since 2020, the sale of cigarettes, e-cigarettes — also known as vaping products — and other tobacco products have been prohibited to those younger than 21. But that restriction has been hard to enforce with the lure of flavors and marketing aimed at youths, including the newest twist of adding phone-like games to vape devices.
The flavors used in vaping products hare drawn significant scrutiny in recent years, as well as new information that indicates new concerns for the health effects of vaping.
With a wider variety of candy and fruit flavors than you’d find in a roll of Lifesavers, including kiwi-melon, blue raspberry ice, banana freeze, creme brulee and sour grape and names such as “Jimmy the Juice Man’s Peachy Strawberry” and “Suicide Bunny’s Mother’s Mike and Cookies,” it’s hard to deny that such flavors are aimed at anyone other than adolescents.
“Flavors like cotton candy, mango and mint mask the harshness of tobacco, making it easier for kids to start using and harder for them to quit,” said state Sen. T’wina Nobles, D-Fircrest, at a recent hearing of the Senate’s health committee, calling the products “a deliberate attempt by the tobacco industry to target young people and keep them addicted.”
Nobles and Rep. Kristine Reeves, D-Federal Way, have introduced legislation — Senate Bill 5183 and House Bill 1203 — that would prohibit the sale, display and advertisement of flavored tobacco and vape products, with penalties enforced by the state’s Liquor and Cannabis Board.
Noble’s legislation has earned support from 16 other Senate lawmakers, including Sen. John Lovick, D-Mill Creek. The House bill has 23 co-sponsors.
“What really stood out for me is we know that 80 percent of the young people who start using nicotine, they start with flavored tobacco products,” Lovick said in an interview last week. “And this bill, to me, is about prevention, protecting our children, and putting the health of our kids above profit.”
Compared to the long history of tobacco, vaping is a relative newcomer, and has benefited from its early reputation as a smoking-cessation tool, a reputation that now is being challenged.
“Vaping is often billed as a safe alternative to combustible cigarettes, but it’s not,” said Dr. Ruchi Kapoor, a cardiologist and cardiology professor at the University of Washington Medical School, who also testified at the Feb. 14 committee hearing. “It increases blood pressure, heart rate and stiffness of the blood vessels in the body. The only reason we don’t have a lot of data on the long-term cardiovascular outcomes is because e-cigarettes haven’t been on the market for that long.”
Yet that data is starting to emerge.
Aside from the highly addictive nicotine that almost all vaping products contain, the products contain chemicals with known health effects, including propylene glycol — used in antifreeze — glycerin, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, herbicides, benzene and heavy metals, including nickel, tin and lead, warns the American Lung Association.
Recent research announced this autumn at a conference in Chicago, which examined adults using vaping products with and without nicotine, found immediate effects on the users’ blood vessels, including decreased flow of blood and decreased oxygen content in the blood stream.
Poor vascular function, the report reminded, can lead to problems with blood clots, high blood pressure and stroke.
Critics of the legislation have pointed to the financial hit that retail outlets in the state would experience, as well as a considerable loss of tax revenue to the state — about $212 million annually — should the flavor ban result in reduced sales of tobacco products.
But that concern ignores the costs that the state, its taxpayers and residents already are paying because of tobacco’s economic effects.
Figures from the state Department of Health show that the state spends an average of $2.8 billion in health care costs each year, with another $2.2 billion by employers in lost productivity, both associated with tobacco use. At the same time, each household in the state foots the bill for $722 annually in state and federal tax burdens from government spending on the health effects of tobacco.
Beyond financial losses, tobacco is responsible for 8,300 deaths in the state each year, about 1 in 5 deaths. An estimated 104,00 youths alive today will die prematurely from tobacco use.
“We should learn our lesson from combustible cigarettes and not wait 30 years before finding out that these nicotine-addicted kids are now going to be my patients,” Dr. Kapoor warned. “Flavors are the gateway to nicotine addiction.”
It’s a gateway to disease, deaths and unnecessary health care costs that should be closed with a good, hard slam.
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