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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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James Layman: Big Tobacco cannot keep harming our students

James Layman

By James Layman

As director of the Association of Washington Student Leaders, I speak with students every day who are horrified by the kid-friendly products that their peers are becoming more addicted to than ever. E-cigarette devices, also known as vapes, come in thousands of fun flavors, deliver massive doses of nicotine, and some even include built-in video games. You can currently find 6,000 e-cigarette products down the street from our schools – and they are all being sold illegally. Nearly all e-cigarettes being used by students are not authorized for sale in the United States by the Food & Drug Administration. How can this be allowed?

This school year, approximately 10,000 kids in Washington state will try cigarettes for the first time and thousands more will try e-cigarettes. Nearly 8% of Washington state high school students are current e-cigarette users. The reason is quite simple: Tobacco companies are strategically targeting kids. We know this because 89% of kids using e-cigs are using flavored tobacco products.

There is a lie spreading among students that products that are fruit or mint flavored are less dangerous than cigarettes. This is a lie, and, in fact, some e-cigs contain more nicotine than 200 cigarettes. The average nicotine strength of these products has nearly tripled, and the average e-liquid capacity has increased five-fold in recent years. This is not common knowledge, and it needs to be!

This is why the Association of Washington Student Leaders is calling on the Washington state Legislature to end the sale of flavored tobacco and help prevent a new generation of young people from becoming addicted to nicotine.

The U.S. Surgeon General reports that nicotine can have damaging effects on adolescent brain development, particularly the parts of the brain responsible for attention, learning, mood and impulse control. We are witnessing the rampant use of e-cigarettes creating infrastructure issues and causing bathroom closures in some schools. Some students even avoid the school bathrooms altogether. We are witnessing our classmates struggling to make it through one class without needing to hit their vape.

Flavored tobacco is not a new concept. The tobacco industry developed menthol cigarettes decades ago as a means of more gently introducing new consumers to nicotine. Menthol’s minty flavor and cooling characteristics make it easier to start smoking and, more importantly for tobacco companies, much harder to quit. Half of all teenagers begin smoking with menthols and 85% of Black smokers smoke menthol cigarettes. This leads to the exorbitant disparities in tobacco-related death and disease and health equity in the Black community.

Now, with cotton candy, watermelon and other kid-friendly flavors, Big Tobacco has made it easier than ever to become addicted. And the kids who use them are only getting younger and younger. Students in elementary schools have even begun vaping.

We have seen this before: The tobacco industry needed to pivot after declining sales in combustible cigarettes and worked to find new customers. Products like e-cigs and nicotine pouches, like Zyn, are new to the market and creating lifelong customers. To increase profits, they strategically target kids and our Black, Latino and LBGTQ+ communities.

While e-cigarettes are the most popular and marketed product among students, other flavored tobacco products are designed to appeal to youth, such as flavored tobacco pouches. To protect all kids, the sale of all flavored tobacco products must be prohibited.

AWSL is urging our leaders in Olympia to hear concerns of students and stop the industry’s relentless targeting of our students by ending the sale of all flavored tobacco products in our state.

Our schools should be safe areas for us to learn and grow. History is repeating itself with the tobacco industry’s marketing playbook of attracting and addicting students to products with long term health issues. Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in this country – more than alcohol, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Students should be learning, not asking the Washington State legislature to do something to help our generation.

James Layman is director of the Association of Washington Student Leaders. He lives and works in Spokane.