I am a resident of Hallowell and a retired public health professional with over 40 years of involvement in tobacco policy in Maine. Throughout my career I have heard countless doomsday predictions from the tobacco industry and their surrogates. When Maine last raised the tobacco tax over 15 years ago, they predicted mass smuggling and armed gangs would threaten law and order. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Some of their more dire warnings were made about the very smoke-free laws we wouldn’t consider overturning today. Their claims at the time seem ridiculous today, but here are a few: Banning indoor smoking would end public participation in town meetings; juries would be unable to deliberate, workplace productivity would tumble; grocery stores and malls would lose customers; restaurants and bars would fail and tourists would go elsewhere to vacation.

This industry and its allies focus their creativity on addicting people to nicotine then maintaining that addiction. Flavors are only one of their strategies. As the public became more concerned about the health effects of smoking, they invented “light” cigarettes to give smokers a false sense of security, even though the menthol in “light” made them more dangerous. When youth smoking rates began to drop dramatically in the early 1980s, they recreated Joe Camel as their cartoon mascot.

Don’t be fooled by their arguments today. Ending the sale of flavored tobacco products is a game-changing response to the increasing epidemic of youth nicotine addiction. That’s what worries them.

 

Edward Miller

Hallowell

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