Save our kids from nicotine
teens who smoke e-cigarettes go on to smoke traditional tobacco.
Smoking costs our state $844 million in direct health care and Medicaid every year, resulting in countless deaths, diseases and cancers. The overall cost to our state is an astronomical $1.4 billion. This is a tax on all of us that we pay one way or another — all for profits for the tobacco companies.
We can no longer afford to idly sit by as a younger generation is tricked into nicotine addiction. That is why in the coming meeting of the state Legislature, I will push strong preventive measures to keep kids safe.
First, we should increase the tax on cigarettes and especially e-cigarettes by $1.50. The tax would increase from $1.66 to $3.16 in New Mexico, generating $90 million annually. The connection between the price of cigarettes and people actually smoking is well established. It would keep thousands of kids from ever taking up smoking or e-cigarettes, and save the state millions of dollars in public health, insurance, lost wages and all the other associated costs. We have seen this legislation before, but now is the time to enact it.
Second, clean air is a basic human right of everyone. The health dangers of secondhand smoke from traditional cigarettes is well known, but what about vaping substances? Reform is needed to prohibit e-cigarette use in all public places, including government buildings, public schools and universities.
Lastly, without a change to the policy that ignores the use of kid-friendly flavorings in vapor products, the soaring growth in the use of dangerous e-cigarettes by children will continue. We must ban flavored liquids in electronic cigarettes once and for all.
New Mexico, with its high rate of poverty and large population of atrisk children, is on the front line of the surging threat to health caused by e-cigarettes. We cannot wait for the FDA to address every problem associated with it, and we cannot cede authority to the industry to police itself.
Epidemics demand strong action. If we care about the children of New Mexico as much as we say we do, then let’s put the brakes on vaping now.
Cisco McSorley is a Democratic member of the New Mexico Senate, representing District 16 since 1997.