Thrive has requested that the city of Iola enact a Tobacco 21 ordinance. The Iola City Council will consider the request at their February 8 meeting at 6pm at the Riverside Park community building. Here is why this issue is important to the health of the Iola community.

…because Cigarettes are the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, kill up to half of regular users!

Thrive believes that Allen County can be the healthiest and most vibrant rural community in Kansas and that our county’s best days are ahead of us. To continue our county’s momentum, we support healthy initiatives such as Tobacco 21.

The best way to stop tobacco addiction is to prevent it in the first place. With as many as 95% of smokers becoming addicted by age 21, it is imperative that we derail that tendency by curtailing the ability of young adults to buy tobacco and tobacco products legally.

Allen County has higher rates of both smoking and smokeless tobacco use than the state of Kansas as a whole, particularly among young adults. According to the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System’s (BRFSS) 2013 report, 23.2% of Allen County adults smoke compared with 20% of those statewide. The same report shows that Allen County also has significantly more smokeless tobacco use with 27.8% of adult males who “chew” compared to 10.4% statewide.

The ages of 18 to 21 are a critical period when many smokers move from experimental smoking to regular, daily use. Alcohol consumption and sales to those under 21 have been prohibited since 1984; when this occurred, the rate of Drunk Driving plummeted by 50%. According to the National Institute of Health, drunk-driving accidents have dropped by 50 percent since the law was passed. The greatest proportion of this decline was among 16 to 20 year olds: approximately 37 percent of traffic fatalities in this age group were alcohol related in 2013 compared to more than 75 percent in the 1970s.

Yet when it comes to tobacco we still allow young people to purchase something deadlier than alcohol that has equally far-reaching health and financial implications. Nicotine is addictive, and adolescents and young adults are more susceptible to its effects because their brains are still developing. Delaying the age when young people first experiment with or begin using tobacco can reduce the risk that they will become addicted smokers. Tobacco use is an epidemic and in Allen County smokeless tobacco use is of particular concern. It is time we took a stand to restrict the sale of all tobacco products, including electronic and vaping devices, to anyone under the age of 21.

Tobacco use is one of the few public health epidemics that CAN be improved by government leadership. Tobacco companies intentionally market to kids and young adults in order to recruit “replacement smokers” and protect company profits. They know nearly all users become addicted before age 21 and they spend a million dollars a day to make sure they get fresh new users. Increasing the tobacco sale age to 21 will help counter the efforts of the tobacco companies that target young people at a critical time when many move from experimenting with tobacco to regular smoking.

About 580 kids under the age of 18 become regular smokers each day – one in three will eventually die as result. Cigarettes kill more soldiers and sailors than wars do (Dec 8, 2013. “Cigarettes or War: which is the biggest killer?”) We should do everything we can to prevent young people from smoking and save lives in doing so.

Increasing the minimum legal age of sale for tobacco products to 21 will help achieve these goals.
The trend of the future is clear, and the public health crisis in Allen County is equally clear.

The following are some of the many Kansas-based organizations that have endorsed the Tobacco 21 initiative: