Momentum is building in the push to raise the minimum age for tobacco sales in Connecticut from 18 to 21, spurred on by anxiety around the national rise in youth vaping and the successful passage of a string of local Tobacco 21 laws.
With growing pressure to stem the tide of underage smoking, the national Tobacco 21 movement has even garnered the support of Altria, one of the largest global producers of tobacco and e-cigarettes. In Connecticut, that sense of urgency has led to broad bipartisan support in the General Assembly for raising the minimum age to buy tobacco, including vaping products. One bill passed through the public health committee last month by a vote of 20-1.
“I think the time is right,” state Sen. Mae Flexer, D-29th, one of the Democratic sponsors, said Wednesday.
“I think people recognize that tobacco use is going up among our youth again, particularly around vaping,” said Flexer, of Killingly. “It’s really important that we limit the access of teenagers to these products so we don’t have a new generation of kids addicted to nicotine.”
One in five high schoolers reported currently using e-cigarettes in 2018, up from 11.7 percent the year before, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also found that 3.6 million middle and high school students used vaping products in 2018.
The main Tobacco 21 bill has 53 co-sponsors so far, up from the 43 lawmakers who backed last year’s proposal, says Bryte Johnson, director of government relations for the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network.
“And we still have many, many more to go,” Johnson said.
On Wednesday, the annual lobbing day around tobacco legislation, advocates were on the hunt for those new supporters.
Amanda Campagna, chaperoning a group of 30 students from Wolcott, was new to the cause. Her uncle died last year from complications of his lifelong smoking habit, which he’d quit 10 years prior. He was 61.
Knowing her uncle started smoking at the age of 11, Campagna wants to see a crackdown on the e-cigarettes now tempting children just as young across the U.S.
“It’s still addictive, it’s still nicotine,” she said, “It really should be treated the same.”
In the Legislative Office Building, state Rep. Jack Hennessy, of Bridgeport, briefly left a legislative meeting to talk with students from his own city, 16-year-old Jessica Silva and 22-year-old Gabrielle Diaz.
Hennessy knows firsthand how effective public policy can be in fighting tobacco use, the Democratic lawmaker told the young women, both volunteers with the American Cancer Society.
Hennessy started smoking at the age of 14 but managed to quit in 2008, after Connecticut passed a 49-cent tax hike on cigarettes.
“It just kind of killed my enjoyment,” Hennessy told the students, volunteers with the American Cancer Society. “I work too hard for my money. I’m not gonna throw it away.”
Connecticut’s cigarette tax has gone up five times since then, and at $4.35 per pack, its tied with New York for the highest state cigarette tax in the country.
The state has been less of a leader in the Tobacco 21 movement. Nine other states — including Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey — and more than 430 municipalities have already raised the smoking age, according to Jim Williams, director of government relations for the American Heart Association.
It’s time for Connecticut to pass that “lifesaving” legislation, Williams said.
Each year in Connecticut, 4,900 adults die because of their smoking, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids says. And 95 percent of adult smokers started before they were 21, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
One of those was Roger Levesque, Connecticut’s lead volunteer for the American Cancer Society. He was a freshman when he started smoking, picking up the habit on bus rides to his New Britain technical high school, and he didn’t quit until his father-in-law died of lung cancer 25 years later.
His wife, daughter and mother-in-law “just looked at me and said, ‘What else do you need?'” Levesque recalls. “It’s crazy that it took something like that for me- I should have known better. Why wouldn’t I want to be there for (my daughter’s) wedding and my son getting married?”
“Every day I smoked was an opportunity for me to get sick.”
Now he advocates for tobacco restrictions with his daughter, Evelyn. On Wednesday, the 16-year-old joined him at the State House wearing a T-shirt she made three years earlier, with the words, “I didn’t get enough time with my grandpa or aunt” — who died of melanoma — written on the chest.
Evelyn knows her grandpa was a plumber, and remembers him smoking cigarettes and cigars. But she missed out on so much else when he died at 55, from his fondness for racetracks to the years of summer camping trips he’d planned to take with his grandchildren.
Roger Levesque said he could tell his his father-in-law was disappointed in himself when he entered the hospital for the last time, though he would be proud of his granddaughter today. And at 45, Levesque is still smoke free.
But Evelyn says her advocacy is not just a way to honor their loss. She still has cousins and friends who smoke cigarettes and vape, and watches kids at school get sick from nicotine and withdrawal. One classmate keeps trying to quit Juul, a popular brand of e-cigarette, but can’t stay off.
“It’s like a never-ending battle,” Evelyn said. “It’s not a very difficult thing to understand, but they just don’t get it, how bad it is for them and all the bad things they’re doing to their bodies and how it could all easily be prevented.”
That’s why the state is finally stepping in, says state Sen. Saud Anwar, a medical doctor who specializes in lung diseases.
“We owe it to the youth of today, to protect them any way we can, and this legislation does just that,” he said. “It will prevent these harmful products from falling in the hands of our youth, helping ensure the health of future generations.”
Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.
