Why
It is Critical to Reduce Children's Access to Tobacco
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United
States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, on average,
over 440,000 deaths and $76 billion in medical expenditures were attributable to cigarette
smoking each year from 1995 through 1999.
Unfortunately, forty-six million
people in the U.S. smoke cigarettes, and Texas adults and high school students account for
3,744,900 of them. Each year in Texas, about 24,100 adults die from their own smoking,
while 4,600 adults, children and babies die as a result of secondhand smoke.
Reducing tobacco-related deaths
and the incidence of disease, along with the associated costs, represents a significant
public health challenge for the federal and all state governments.
Most adults who use tobacco
started using it between the ages of 10 and 18. According to a Surgeon
General’s report, if children and adolescents can be prevented from using tobacco
products before they become adults, they are likely to remain tobacco-free for the rest of
their lives.
When Texas STEP was created in 1993, Texas
surveys reported that children were successful 60-80% of the time when attempting to
purchase tobacco products. Contributing factors appeared to be 1) a lack of
knowledge of the law by tobacco retailers and their employees, 2) a lack of knowledge and
enforcement of the law by law enforcement officials, and 3) a general attitude that
tobacco law enforcement was not a state or local community priority issue.
With the passage of Senate Bill #55,
75th Legislature (1997), Texas enacted some of the strictest laws in the nation
regarding the sale of tobacco to children, and the possession of tobacco by children.
There are some very strong motivations to enforce these laws. Primarily these
motivations are:
- The use of tobacco is a health issue for all our children. In 1989, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a report that concluded
that cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, such as cigars, pipe tobacco, and chewing
tobacco, are addictive and that nicotine is the drug in tobacco that causes addiction. In
addition, the report determined that smoking was a major cause of stroke and the third
leading cause of death in the United States. Read more...
- The sale or delivery of any
tobacco product to a child is a crime!
It is as simple as that. Any Texas law enforcement officer can and should
enforce this law by the filing of a complaint and/or the issuance of a citation.
Read
more...
- Tobacco is considered a "gateway" drug for teenagers as the amount of tobacco use is
directly related to other drug use. Illegal drug use is rare among those who
have never smoked and cigarette smoking is likely to precede the use of alcohol and
illicit drugs. (National Survey Results on Drug Use from the Monitoring the
Future Study, 1975," The University of Michigan). Read more...
By enforcing existing Texas
tobacco laws, law enforcement officers can address these problems early with both
proactive prevention and interdiction, and have a positive impact on many associated community problems.
It is important to the state of Texas to act
against youth access to tobacco due to stipulations on federal funding for statewide
substance abuse prevention and treatment efforts. Failure to meet federal standards
of maintaining a "buy rate" of less than 20% can have financial penalties as
high as 40%, about $55,000,000 dollars, of Texas' Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment
(SAPT) block grant lost to prevention and treatment programs.
This loss of federal funding would directly
impact communities throughout Texas with an increase of the population unable to receive
alcohol and drug addiction treatment. Failure to receive ongoing addiction treatment
for this population group can result in corresponding increases in job failures, increases
in domestic strife, increases in personal financial failure incidents, and increases in
overall crime rates. Texas can ill afford to allow this to occur.
Remember, our
primary concern is about children's access to, and use of a dangerous and highly addictive
drug. |
An estimated three million
American children under 18 years of age consume 947 million packs of cigarettes and 26
million containers of smokeless tobacco yearly. These tobacco products account for
annual sales of $1.26 billion. Approximately 3% of tobacco industry profits derive
directly from the sale of cigarettes to children...an activity that is illegal throughout
the country. Approximately half of the tobacco industry's profits or $3.35 billion
annually, derives from sales to people who became addicted to nicotine as children.
The highest motivation to act and reduce this
problem evolves from the desire by Texas law enforcement officers and concerned parents
and other adults to protect Texas children from alcohol, tobacco and other drugs known to
harm them physically, psychologically and mentally. It is simply another important
step to include in taking our responsibility for protecting our children seriously.
Tobacco is generally the first
drug used by young people who enter a sequence of drug use that can include tobacco,
alcohol, marijuana, and harder drugs. Other problem behaviors may be associated as
well as illustrated in the table below.
Youth Smoking &
Relationship to Other Problem Behaviors of Youth
1992 National Health Interview
Survey of Youth Risk Behavior
National Center for Health Statistics
| Other
Problem Behavior |
Youth Never Smoked |
Youth Current Smoker |
| Alcohol use
in past month |
23.0% |
74.4% |
| Five or more
drinks in a row |
9.5% |
50.3% |
| Marijuana
use in past month |
1.5% |
26.5% |
| Smokeless
tobacco use in past month (boys) |
4.1% |
28.1% |
| Carried a
weapon |
9.5% |
25.6% |
| Physical
fight in past year |
29.0% |
54.7% |
*N=10,645
persons, age 12-21 years of age
Read more... |
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