Small fry, sittin’ by the pool room
Small fry, should be in the school room
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My, my, put down that cigarette
You ain’t a-grown up high and mighty yet
Frank Loesser, 1938
Sure, I know this is a losing battle. But the biggest losers are those who defy it. So on we fight.
The sad reality is that half a century after the U.S. surgeon general reported unequivocally that cigarettes were causing lots and lots of people to die, smoking is still a killer. Yes, it’s encouraging that smoking rates among grown ups have gone down by more than 50 percent since that report, but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says 42 million American adults still puff away. You don’t need me to tell you it’s a bad thing, but after losing one father and one mother-in-law to tobacco’s killer instincts, I’ll probably tell you about it again and again anyhow.
And yes, I know that for too many of our kids, cigarettes still equate to coolness. Every day, 700 American teens and adolescents make the shift from occasionally puffing to doing so habitually, according to the American Lung Association. So I’ll fight to keep telling you what a bad idea the whole thing really is.
I also know, let the record reflect, that these goofy fake cigarettes being discussed at the local level aren’t tobacco, and apparently they don’t kill you as efficiently as the old-fashioned sort of cig. I just think these “vaping” alternatives to conventional cancer sticks are kind of dumb.
Naperville policy makers are waiting to see what the state does about regulating electronic cigarettes, which in most cases apparently offer the nicotine kick without the nasty tar that gums up smokers’ lungs. Some have voiced concern that acting on the issue, which is being regulated to a degree by the state, exposes the city to the risk of the dreaded “nanny state” label. Others, I’m willing to speculate, are loath to honk anybody off with Election Day right there on the horizon, but that’s just a guess.
I’m not saying it’s nonsense to hold off on adding another thing to local cops’ to-do lists. Even though city prosecutor Mike DiSanto said enforcement of restrictions on the vapor-spewing sticks – which currently are being puffed on legally within the friendly confines your local supermarket and other indoor spaces – is driven by complaints, it seems like police have enough to do. But still.
City Councilman Bob Fieseler, who’s one of the few current office holders not running for something on April 7, argues against adding a new layer of local regulation. He urged his peers Tuesday to avoid “putting measures in place that ensnare people,” invoking the city’s unfortunate experiences in recent years with local laws that tried to clamp down on underage drinking with presence restriction and traffic hazards with red-light cameras.
The presence-restriction ordinance, you may recall, on one occasion led to the arrests of 69 teens at a local party, one of whom was an unconscious 16-year-old girl. A lot of people still hated the idea of punishing non-drinking kids for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And those intersection cameras, you probably also remember, have vanished.
“We realized that was just too much of a ‘gotcha,'” said Fieseler, whose suggestion to table the matter until after Election Day drew support from the dais.
Other council members voiced reluctance as well. Tom Miers said he has some qualms about forbidding e-cigs in public places, as the city already does with tobacco. Steve Chirico hesitated too, saying smokers “feel like second-class citizens as it is.” In my humbly jaded opinion, they should.
Let’s be clear: the people who manufacture these silly faux smokes have our kids in their crosshairs. Take a look at what’s out there: you can buy versions of vape cigs flavored like root beer floats, Rice Krispie treats, cookie dough, Jolly Ranchers. There’s a variety ostensibly marketed to adults that bears the very same graphics as what they might recognize from days gone by as the guy on the Zig-Zag rolling papers package, and another that calls itself “Big Melons.” Really?
It just seems we can do a better job of conveying the message to our future adults that smoking anything is stupid and wrong – and I’m not sure it’s wise to let the General Assembly take the lead on that. The American Lung Association’s “State of Tobacco Control 2015” report gave Illinois a solid F on prevention, taxes and access to resources that help people quit smoking. The fiscal 2015 state allocation for tobacco control programs is $11.1 million. That sounds like a generous sum, but it’s just one percent of the $1.1 billion Springfield receives annually in tobacco-related revenue. Surely we can do better than that.
Does local control translate to greater vigilance, to making a statement, to standing up for the idea that it’s time we all got over our curious affinity for breathing in stuff our lungs really don’t want or need in there? I honestly don’t know, but I don’t get to make the decisions around here.
I do know that discouraging kids from taking it up makes sense intuitively and empirically. Just last week, the Institute of Medicine released findings suggesting that raising the minimum legal age for buying cigarettes from 18 to 21 would add a collective 4.2 million years of longevity to the U.S. populace. What does that have to do with vaping? Well, it’s about the stuff that’s in there besides the cotton-candy flavoring: nicotine, in nearly all forms of e-cigs.
“A critical component in the development of dependence and continued tobacco use is the reinforcing effects of nicotine,” the report says. “Adolescent brains have a heightened sensitivity to the rewarding effects of nicotine.”
Nanny state? It seems worth considering that a nanny’s job is to protect kids. I can live with that. And so can they.
Gotcha.
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