Ohio needs to do more to stop youths from smoking

In the last several weeks,

there have been two great annual tobacco “check-ups” that can tell us a lot about the state of Ohio. The first is the “Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids: Broken Promises to Our Children”. This report highlights that Ohio ranks 31st in its spending on tobacco prevention and cessation. This is only a little over 11% of what the CDC recommended spending amount is. The state brings in $1.2 billion in tobacco revenue and the tobacco industry spends almost $430 million to market its products in Ohio. What is the real cost to our state? Residents’ state and federal tax burdens from smoking-caused expenditures is $1,186 per household. Tobacco killed 20,200 Ohio citizens last year. Let’s now turn to the American

Lung Association “State of Tobacco Control Grade Card.” When I was a child, my teacher handed my grade card to me, and I then handed it to my parents. Here are Ohio’s grades: Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: F; Smoke-free Air: A; Tobacco Taxes: F; Access to Cessation Services: C; Flavored Tobacco Products: F. That’s 3 Fs, a C and an A. They gave Ohio an overall grade of F. The ALA’s Ohio annual healthcare cost due to smoking is over $5.6 billion. The last number I will share is the high school tobacco use rate. It is 36.70%. That is staggering. What do we do with a diagnosis like this? We need to let our local elected officials know our concerns, and most importantly, let our state and federal elected officials know. In Montgomery County, Public Health Dayton and Montgomery County must implement a Tobacco Retail License program. Over 17 communities in Ohio have already done so. All the large communities have implemented a Tobacco Retail License program, but Dayton is the only large city in Ohio that has not done so. I was honored to be part of the city of Columbus’ efforts to implement a full tobacco flavor ban. Now the cities of Cincinnati and Cleveland are reviewing a similar policy while Dayton and Montgomery County continue to fall further behind.

BRUCE BARCELO,

CHAIRPERSON OF THE TOBACCO-FREE OHIO ALLIANCE, DAYTON

I am so sick of the Republican response

to the train derailment. They keep blaming Biden’s administration, saying they didn’t respond quickly enough. Even though FEMA and other response teams were there immediately after the preventable accident occurred. The whole disaster would never have happened but for the Republicans and former administrations actions to remove regulations for safe rail transportation of toxic chemicals and safety measures! Their constant gaslighting and hypocrisy about making this a “political” thing is ludicrous at best! You want to talk about “politicizing” a situation? Trump showing up for a photo op, and handing out a few things that were donated, claiming they were from him, to give a political speech for his bid for president is the ultimate political stunt! Here is a man, that helped create this disaster, blaming the current administration for his failure to protect a community he could not care less about if it wasn’t for the fact they voted for him! The whole Republican response, instead of just helping, was to blame others for their failures in keeping Americans safe. It sickens me.