Sensible tobacco law should protect kids -- if adults help

The new law that prohibits children under 18 from buying, possessing or using tobacco in any form should be welcomed by parents and health-conscious Ohioans. With 3,000 American children a day becoming hooked on tobacco, states will continue to pay a high price for the health care many of these young people will need when they become older unless the addictive cycle can be broken.
The American Cancer Society estimates that for every 1 percent that tobacco use can be reduced, Ohio will save $10 million in state Medicaid costs.
Disincentives to smoke: Although Ohio has had a law forbidding the sale of tobacco products to those under age, so long as there was no companion law forbidding youth from buying or using tobacco, kids who smoked or chewed tobacco quickly learned which stores or vendors conveniently ignored the law. Those kids will now find both their wallets and their driving privileges at risk. If bad breath, cancer risks and early wrinkling don't stop young people from smoking, perhaps the $100 fines, community service hours and driver's license suspensions will.
Massive education programs in places like California have resulted in a precipitous drop in all smoking and especially that of kids.
Unfortunately in Ohio, tobacco suit money that should have been spent on smoking prevention and cessation programs has yet to be allocated by the governing board of the Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Trust Fund.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that Ohio spend a minimum of $60 million a year -- the state's tobacco use and prevention fund should be receiving an estimated $1 billion in nine installments -- on community programs, school-based programs, countermarketing and cessation programs and others.
As Massachusetts, Florida and Oregon have found, the combination of public education, school-based programs and strict enforcement of laws prohibiting youth tobacco has led to a welcome change in teen attitudes about smoking.
Success story: Less than two years after Florida began its tobacco pilot program, smoking among middle school children was reduced by 40 percent and by high school students, 18 percent.
In one year of the Oregon program, smoking declined by 31 percent among 8th graders and by 17 percent among 11th graders.
Such results in Ohio, where tobacco use is considerably higher than the national average, would be welcome.
Even if the anti-smoking programs are initiated, winning the battle for children's lives won't be easy.
Between a 22 percent increase in tobacco industry advertising -- $8.4 billion in 1999 -- and millions given by the industry to candidates and political parties since 1995 -- the pressure to keep kids smoking is strong.
We urge the members of the trust fund board to waste no more time in initiating programs to prevent or stop smoking among youth. The new law is only part of the solution.