Tobacco’s grip hard to break

Robert Legge
Published: February 27, 2008

Newsflash. Smoking is bad for you. OK, everyone knows that, save a few tobacco executives. As a child in the '60s, my doctor would smoke in the examining room. In the '70s, my high school had a student "smoking court." In the '80s, airlines allowed in-flight smoking.

Times have changed. The most visible smokers today gather outside their workplace having a smoke before they are allowed back inside. It's almost like the new segregation.

Smokers have been made to feel socially ostracized. But some of my best friends are smokers. Many want to quit, but the addictive qualities of nicotine make it really hard. Most still do enjoy the smoking experience.

In spite of how unpleasant most of us find smoking, we should be nice to smokers. After all, they're not going to live very long.
But the negative health aspects of smoking cannot be denied. In spite of the reduced number of smokers in America, tobacco still kills 400,000 mostly nice people a year. Regardless, about one in five adults continue to smoke.

In 1989, the tobacco industry and 46 states entered into a $250 billion agreement with Big Tobacco, primarily to reimburse the states for medical care costs for their residents sickened by tobacco.

Virginia's portion of the settlement was $4 billion.

Ten percent goes to the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation, whose job is primarily to discourage teens from initiating smoking. Forty percent goes toward offsetting health care costs incurred by state government. But the largest share (50 percent) goes to "community development that some call "pork barrel."

This tobacco settlement money isn't going to last forever.

Fifteen years from now when the money is all gone, we are going to look pretty foolish having a bunch of additions on museums but still millions in annual Medicaid bills from smoking.

Far more needs to be done to reduce the number of people taking up smoking.

Virginia lawmakers have long been in bed with Big Tobacco.

Until recently the tax on cigarettes was 2.5 cents per pack.

Even at the now 30 cents a pack, Virginia still ranks 46th lowest in cigarette tax rate. Higher prices for cigarettes are one of the chief barriers for teens to experiment with cigarettes.

In this tight budget year, there wasn't even a mention of another increase in cigarette taxes. A bill that would allow counties to raise an additional 5 cents a pack was stillborn.

But the one measure I think would make even more of a difference isn't even being promoted by anti-smoking groups. That is raising the minimum age to purchase tobacco to 21. Not a single state has even seriously contemplated that. Of the people I've talked to, most didn't begin full time pack-a-day smoking until after they left home. If legal purchase wasn't possible until 21, that would make it less convenient for most teen smokers to get the smokes they need to develop their habit.

While many underage teens know an 18-year-old who would buy them tobacco, they are far less likely to know a similar 21-year-old. Incidentally, stores which sell cigarettes are not required to sell to 18-year olds. They may choose 21 as a minimum age if they want. Might be good for their public image.

With a combination of the right kind of ad campaigns aimed at teens, higher taxes, an increase in the minimum age to purchase to 21, more smoke-free public places, and FDA jurisdiction over nicotine, smoking in America could become rare.

But shed not a tear for the tobacco companies.
Almost 90 percent of the of the world's smokers live outside the U.S., mostly in developing countries where there's little government effort to curb smoking.

The World Health Organization estimates that one billion people may die from smoking this century. This industry needs to be put out of business.

Robert Legge is an independent columnist and resident of Madison County. His column appears on Thursday. E-mail