Oregon is one of 16 states that adopted a statewide smoking ban in restaurants and bars this year, but a bill in the state legislature could make Oregon the first state to raise the minimum age for tobacco possession from 18 to 21.
Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland) said he sponsored the bill in an attempt to decrease the instances of underage tobacco use.
“I am doing anything I can to stop smoking in the state,” he said. “I was addicted at the age of 15 and quickly started smoking three packs a day until I was 26 … It is so much easier to just never start, and that is why I have made it my mission to ensure that the state of Oregon makes it tougher for young people to get a hold of tobacco.”
Greenlick has proposed an amendment for the bill that would make it illegal to acquire tobacco without a doctor’s prescription. However, he said the bill is not likely to pass this session and said he sponsored it to get the state thinking about what it can do to be less dependent on tobacco tax money and ensure fewer people start smoking.
“Tobacco is one of the most addictive drugs available and it is legalized, while marijuana is much less addictive and harmful than tobacco and is illegal,” Greenlick said. “We spend $100 million a year on state medicaid for people who have smoked, and that money comes from tobacco taxes. The way I see it, if we just get rid of tobacco, we will eradicate the problem of sickness caused by it and save the state money in the end.”
Greenlick also has sponsored a 60-cent tobacco tax increase and said the state’s reliance on the tobacco tax will make that proposal much more likely to pass this session.
Business major Jake Turner offered mixed feelings about the bill’s intent.
“I think the smoking age should stay the same because otherwise, smoking becomes the forbidden fruit,” Turner said. “However, I do think raising the cigarette tax would help our state’s economy and I am all for taxing people who smoke.”
ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz said the law would be ineffective.
“I think a further regression of our civil liberties, especially severe restrictions such as (raising the age to buy tobacco), is something that in my position as ASUO president and as a resident of a state I could never support,” he said.
However, Paula Staight, health promotional director of the University Health Center, said many studies have proven people are less likely to start smoking as they get older. “We know that 4.4 percent of students at the University smoke every day and a majority of them started before they came to college,” she said. “If we could just postpone when they are able to start, it might lower the number even more.”
Another anti-smoking bill would make it illegal to smoke in cars when children under 17 years of age are present. The bill would impose a fine of $90 on the first offense and up to $360 by the third.
“A lot of people are against something that takes away their rights in their private sphere, but when kids are in the car, their rights are being taken away because they don’t have a choice,” said Stephanie Young-Peterson, tobacco prevention coordinator for Lane County.
While Oregon wrestles with the politics of smoking in its own legislature, Congress has proposed a law that would give the Food and Drug Administration power to oversee tobacco companies and force them to eliminate dangerous marketing strategies, require them to include all ingredients on tobacco product labels and remove deceiving language such as “light” from cigarette packaging.
“In the long run, a smoke-free country might be where we are headed,” Young-Peterson said.
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Young smokers getting burned?
Daily Emerald
April 7, 2009
Mike Perrault
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