EDITORIAL: Raising age to buy cigarettes helps public health

March 03-- Mar. 3--We didn't really require more evidence, but the latest statistics reinforce the need for Washington to increase the minimum age for purchasing cigarettes and vaping devices.

In a recent report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said nearly 5 million middle- and high-school students nationwide were using tobacco in 2018 -- an increase from 3.6 million the previous year. Nicotine is the addictive property in tobacco, and research -- along with common sense -- tells us that the earlier somebody gets hooked, the more likely they are to be lifelong users and to incur the health problems that come along with that use.

All of which offers support for a bill led by Rep. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver. House Bill 1074 would increase the minimum age for cigarettes or vaping products from 18 to 21, a move that Harris has advocated for several years. The measure passed the House by a vote of 66-30, with Harris and fellow Republican Vicki Kraft being joined by Democrats Monica Stonier and Sharon Wylie in voting yes. "If we can keep kids, young adults, from smoking before the age of 21, 95 percent will never smoke," Harris said.

A companion bill in the Senate, co-sponsored by Southwest Washington legislators Ann Rivers and Annette Cleveland, is in the Ways and Means Committee.

The prevalence of e-cigarettes lends a sense of urgency to the legislation. According to CDC numbers, there were 1.5 million more youth users of e-cigarettes -- a practice called "vaping" -- in 2018 when compared to the previous year, accounting for all the increase in tobacco use. E-cigarettes are battery-operated devices that vaporize a liquid nicotine solution, and they have become more popular among teenagers than traditional cigarettes.

While some mistakenly believe that vaping is not as harmful as smoking cigarettes, the dangers are clear. The CDC reports that e-cigarettes can harm developing brains; can harm parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood and impulse control; and might increase the risk of future addiction to other drugs.

Nicotine addiction in any form, according to the National Institutes of Health, has "serious systemic side effects in addition to being highly addictive. It adversely affects the heart, reproductive system, lung, kidney, etc." Because of that, it also generates extensive health care costs for users.

There are, indeed, some good arguments against raising the age for cigarettes in Washington. Concern about a loss of tax revenue, however, is not one of them. Placing a priority on tax revenue at the expense of the health of young adults is a moral failing.

But the argument that 18-year-olds are adults and eligible to, for example, join the military warrants discussion. While we can see the merits of that argument, we believe they are outweighed by the state's public-health interests. There are good reasons that alcohol and recreational marijuana are prohibited for those under 21, and the same logic should apply to cigarettes and e-cigarettes.

For more than 50 years, public information campaigns have stressed the dangers of smoking, resulting in a sharp decline in cigarette use. That has been accompanied by reductions in the rates of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, along with other health problems.

The recent invention of vaping threatens to turn back some of that progress and should provide the impetus for the Legislature to increase the age for purchasing cigarettes or e-cigarettes.

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