Selling candy – or cancer?

Super Sour Apple. Cherry Dynamite. Mango Papaya Twist. Tropical Gummi Bear. It may sound like a pile of leftover Halloween treats, but these flavors are actually being used to market a lethal product to children: tobacco.

Increasingly, the tobacco industry is using sweet flavors, fun names, and bright packaging to make its deadly products more appealing to young people. Fruit and candy-flavored cigars, dipping tobacco, little cigars, hookah shishas, cigarillos and e-juices are sold all across North Carolina, and their widespread availability is directly contributing to tobacco use and smoking initiation among young people in our state.

For the first time in a decade, tobacco use among North Carolina high school students has increased. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ most recent Youth Tobacco Survey found that 27.5 percent of high school students and 11.6 percent of middle school students were using tobacco. These figures are particularly concerning given that tobacco use remains the No. 1 preventable cause of early death and disease in North Carolina, where it is responsible for 1 out of every 5 deaths. Tobacco’s toll on our state can be measured not only in lives lost but also in dollars spent, with the Centers for Disease Control estimating that tobacco use costs North Carolina more than $8 billion every year.

Despite these staggering figures, little action has been taken to curb tobacco use and smoking initiation among youth in our state. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, passed by Congress almost a decade ago, was the last major piece of legislation to directly address the issue. This federal law prohibited the sale of candy and fruit flavored cigarettes and effectively disrupted one of the tobacco industry’s main means of appealing to youth. But tobacco companies adapted, and began rebranding and reengineering non-cigarette products to attract younger customers. They expanded their flavor selections for little cigars and cigarillos, and they even developed entirely new, flavor-focused tobacco products such as e-juice. One study by researchers at the University of California found that the industry pushes more than 240 new flavors of tobacco products into the market every month.

It is no surprise that this surge in the availability and selection of flavored tobacco products has coincided with an increase in overall tobacco use among young people – not just in North Carolina, but all across the country. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 80 percent of children ages 12-17 who use tobacco start by using a flavored product. Additionally, according to the CDC, more than 70 percent of youth tobacco users report using a flavored product in the past 30 days.

Local governments, public health practitioners and community advocates across the nation have been working hard to fight the tobacco industry’s deceptive flavor strategy and protect youth. In the last several years, scores of municipalities have prohibited the sale of some or all flavored tobacco products in their jurisdictions. “Flavor bans,” as these ordinances are commonly called, have been passed by several major cities – including Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco – and a statewide ban was voted into law in Maine.

As a state that cares about the health and well-being of all its citizens, the North Carolina General Assembly should move to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products. Preemption precludes localities from enacting local flavor bans, so it is up to state legislators to take action on this issue. The N.C. House of Representatives has recently signaled that it is open to such legislation, as earlier this year a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill that would raise the minimum purchasing age for tobacco to 21. Such age restriction laws are commonly paired with flavor bans, making this the ideal time for action.

The General Assembly has the opportunity to positively impact the health of our communities by removing these deceptive products from store shelves and reducing the rate of smoking initiation and tobacco use among youth. It is imperative that we demand action on this issue, because we know that the problem will not go away on its own. As long as the tobacco industry continues to kill off its most loyal customers, it will continue to target our children: It is the only way it can stay in business.

Alison Salomon is a graduate student in Public Health and City & Regional Planning at UNC Chapel Hill.

This story was originally published November 22, 2017 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Selling candy – or cancer?."