COLUMBUS, Ohio — Gov. Mike DeWine and his top public-health officials decried teen vaping on Wednesday as an emerging “public health crisis,” as state legislators consider DeWine’s proposal to raise Ohio’s legal age to buy products containing nicotine from 18 to 21.

“We’re not talking about an adult, longtime smoker who makes a conscious decision to move over to e-cigarettes,” DeWine said. “… What we’re talking about is young people, many of whom have no idea what they’re using has nicotine, or if they do, they have no idea how addictive nicotine is. We’re talking about people who have no idea what they’re inhaling. This is a public health crisis.”

DeWine, Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton and Lori Criss, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services, held a Columbus news conference to in part promote his administration’s proposal to raise the legal age to buy tobacco and “alternative nicotine products” — e.g., e-cigarettes, vape pens, etc. — from 18 to 21.

The proposal is part of DeWine’s state-budget plan, rolled out earlier this year. Leaders in the Ohio House of Representatives are considering the plan, and are expected to introduce changes later this month.

DeWine said raising the smoking age is driven by research showing that people are less likely to become addicted to nicotine if they haven’t started smoking by the time they’ve turned 21. Acton also said raising the legal age to purchase tobacco products also will help keep vaping out of middle schools and high schools, which she said research shows have seen a huge increase in student vaping in just the past year.

Acton said a recent CDC study found the number of high-school age youth who reported using e-cigarettes in the past month increased by 78% — from 11.7% of teens in 2017 to 20.8% in 2018. And unpublished data compiled by Ohio State University researchers shows that nearly 28% of incoming OSU freshmen in 2018 said they’d used e-cigarettes within the past month.

“Make no mistake. The e-cigarette industry is intentionally targeting our youth with the goal of addicting the next generation,” Acton said.

So what does raising the tobacco-product purchase age for adults have to do with teen vaping?

“A lot of this is about the social influencer,” Acton said. “So 18-year-olds on your kid’s high-school soccer team are buying these things, and selling these things for the middle-schoolers.”

The proposal has drawn pushback from the Ohio Vapor Trade Association, which represents retail stores that sell vaping products. The group argues its products are less harmful than cigarettes, cigars and other traditional smoking products.

“Work must be done to stop youth from using and getting vapor products, but raising the age of use will only stop those 18, 19, and 20 from having a less harmful product to switch to end their dependency on traditional tobacco,” James Jarvis, the vaping association’s president, said in a statement.

The DeWine administration officials said the long-term effects of vaping are unknown. They said vaping poses a poisoning risk and other harmful effects for children, including a link to eventually starting smoking traditional tobacco products.

They particularly called negative attention to JUUL, an e-cigarette market leader in which tobacco giant Altria recently purchased a 35% stake. Maddy Mayer, a 17-year-old Dublin Coffman High School student whom the DeWine administration invited to speak at the press conference, used “JUUL” as a verb, as she described an “exponential” increase in the number of kids at her school sneaking into the bathrooms “to juul or vape,” or even those who do so in class.

But a JUUL Labs spokesperson said in a statement the company supports nationwide efforts to raise the age for using tobacco products to 21. An increasing number of states have done so, including Illinois, which did so earlier this month. A number of local governments in Ohio similarly have done so, including Akron, Columbus, Cleveland and Summit County.

“We cannot fulfill our mission to provide the world’s one billion adult smokers with a true alternative to combustible cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death in this country, if youth-use continues unabated,” the spokesperson said. “Tobacco 21 laws fight one of the largest contributors to this problem – sharing by legal-age peers – and they have been shown to dramatically reduce youth-use rates.”

DeWine said e-cigarette manufacturers and producers of concentrated nicotine that fill them remind him of a fight from a generation ago, when he served in the U.S. Senate.

He said the federal government needs to crack down on marketing of e-cigarette products as they did in the 1990s when they outlawed marketing geared toward children, like candy cigarettes and Joe Camel, the cartoon character that promoted Camel cigarettes.

DeWine looked angry as, camera lenses clicking, he held up a chart his administration produced showing flavors of liquid tobacco that resemble Life Savers, Froot Loops or other brands that appeal to children. As a photo-op for TV cameras, DeWine administration officials also displayed bowls of gummy worms and gummy bears next to candy-scented bottles of liquid nicotine concentrate.

DeWine said he wants to use the “bully pulpit” of his office to call attention to the issue.

”We’ve changed the culture among young people, at least the majority of young people, when it comes to cigarettes,” DeWine said. “Now, these manufacturers have figured it out, and they’ve found a huge loophole that they’re driving a Mack truck through.”

The DeWine administration officials were also joined at the Wednesday press conference, held at a Nationwide Children’s Hospital near Downtown Columbus, by Alex Fischer, the influential leader of the Columbus Partnership, a chamber of commerce group, and Dr. Sarah Denny, a Nationwide physician who serves on the board for the Ohio chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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