Youth smoking on the increase

by Peg O'Connell, healthcare analyst with Fuquay Solutions and NC SPIN panelist, April 12, 2018

I promised myself that I was not going to let myself get outraged in 2018.  Everybody is outraged about something these days, so what’s the point?  But a presentation at the recent North Carolina Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Task Force has caused me to break my New Year’s resolution.

For years, North Carolina has been making steady progress in reducing the number of high school students who are starting to smoke, from a high of 31% in 1999 to a low of 9.3% in 2015. This dramatic health benefit was achieved through an evidence-based set of youth prevention programs, funded by money from the Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco companies. Sadly, the funding for these programs was eliminated in 2013, and guess what, tobacco use among high schooler and middle schoolers has started to increase.

The outrageous thing about all this is that the money for these programs went away just as e-cigarettes were coming on the scene.  Between 2011 and 2013, the use of electronic cigarettes among North Carolina high school students has jumped by 888% to 16.8% and e-cigarette use among middle school students—yes, middle school—has increased by 599% to 6.9%.  Our kids are being targeted with slick ads, cool looking devices and flavors like bubble gum and gummy bears.  I don’t believe for a minute that a lot of 40 year old men are choosing bubble gum flavored e-cigarettes.

Despite the claims of some, these e-cigarettes and there new evolved cousins, are not safe alternatives to smoking. They are brightly colored, candy flavored, addiction causing nicotine delivery systems and kids are snapping them up.  The latest version looks like a computer flash drive and is being used by kids while they are sitting in class.  Are you starting to feel outraged?

Every year on April 15, North Carolina gets in excess of $140 million from the Master Settlement Agreement.  This year will be no different.  We need to take some of that money and put it back where it belongs, into youth tobacco use prevention programs.  If we don’t, we will condemn this new generation to a life time of addiction and poor health—as well as put them at risk for early death from heart disease, cancer and a variety of other illnesses. We owe are kids better than this.