(NETWORK INDIANA) The State Department of Health has kicked off a two-million-dollar youth-focused ad blitz on both traditional and social media, warning of health dangers of e-cigarettes. Health commissioner Kristina Box says e-cigarette manufacturers have targeted the youth market, both with their choice of vape flavorings and their ad campaigns on social media. She says the state needs to respond on the same turf.
200 severe respiratory illnesses among e-cigarette users, including 24 in Indiana, have raised worries about health risks from vaping. That’s out of thousands of vapers, and Box concedes a link between vaping and those illnesses hasn’t been firmly established. But she says there is conclusive evidence that e-cigarettes make still-developing teenage brains more susceptible to addiction, to nicotine and other chemicals. She says soaring e-cigarette use threatens to undo progress the state had made in reducing teenage smoking.
The state’s annual youth tobacco survey finds vaping among Hoosier middle and high school students has increased nearly fivefold in six years.
A proposal to tax e-cigarettes died on the final day of this year’s legislative session when legislators couldn’t resolve an impasse over whether to tax e-cigarettes by the amount of liquid, by the amount of nicotine, or at a flat percentage of the purchase price. Governor Holcomb says there should be “parity” between taxes on cigarettes and other forms of nicotine. He says he’ll be talking to legislators about reviving the issue either next year or in 2021, when legislators write the next state budget.
