CALIFORNIA — The governor of California has raised the legal age to buy tobacco for smoking, dipping, chewing and vaping from 18 to 21.

Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown announced Wednesday, May 4th he signed a bill calling for the change.

Supporters of the law aimed to deter adolescents from the harmful, sometimes fatal effects of nicotine addiction. The Institute of Medicine reports 90 percent of daily smokers began using tobacco before turning 19.

Veterans organizations and Republican lawmakers in California objected to the bill, saying people old enough to die for their country are old enough to use tobacco.

Hawaii officials decided last April to become the first state in the nation to increase its legal smoking age to 21.

More than 100 local jurisdictions around the country have made the change, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

We know that parents have a profound influence on their child’s life, and increasingly, scientific research is connecting the dots between attention or neglect and behavior.

Children who experience the loss of a father or mother early in life are more likely to smoke and drink before they hit their teens, a new study of English families found. This association between parental absence and risky behavior in childhood occurred no matter whether the cause was death, separation or divorce.

In fact, preteens with an absent parent were more than twice as likely to smoke and drink, the researchers discovered. They defined parental absence as the loss of a biological parent before a child reached age 7.

“We know from previous research that people may take up risky health behaviors as a coping strategy or as a form of self-medication, to help them cope with stressful situations,” noted Rebecca Lacey, an author of the study and a senior research associate at University College London.

Possible evidence of the link between parental absence and behavior comes from an unlikely source from across the pond: President Obama.

In a new MTV documentary, “Prescription for Change: Ending America’s Opioid Crisis,” Obama reveals his past drug use: “When I was a teenager, I used drugs, I drank, I pretty much tried whatever was out there, but I was in Hawaii, and it was a pretty relaxed place. I was lucky that I did not get addicted except to cigarettes, which took me a long time to kick.”

Notably, Obama’s parents divorced around his 3rd birthday, within the parental absence time frame defined by Lacey and her colleagues.

Based on her findings, Lacey says, early life assistance provided to children with an absent parent may help prevent substance use, which might set a pattern and lead to poor fitness later in life.

“Health behaviors established earlier in life are known to track into adulthood,” Lacey and her co-authors wrote in their study, published Monday in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Thousands of children studied over time

The research team examined data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, which records health data for thousands of children born between 2000 and 2002. Among the goals of the study is to collect information on fathers’ involvement in children’s care and development. After a first survey of the children at 9 months old, surveys collected information for each child at ages 3, 5, 7 and 11 years old.

Overall, the researchers examined the records of nearly 11,000 children. Of these thousands of children, more than a quarter had experienced the absence of a biological parent by age 7.

During their age-11 survey, the children were asked whether they had ever smoked cigarettes or drunk alcohol. Those who had tried booze also answered whether they’d had enough to feel drunk.

The results to the smoking question would soothe the nerves of most parents: The overwhelming majority of preteens said they had not smoked. However, 11-year-old boys were more likely than girls to have tried cigarettes: 3.6% versus 1.9%.

Drinking was much more common among the 11-year-olds. Here again, the boys outnumbered the girls, with one in seven boys reporting that they’d tried alcohol, compared with one in 10 of the girls. Of the preteens who tried drinking, nearly twice as many boys (12%) said they’d had enough to feel drunk, compared with slightly less than 7% of the girls.

Lacey and her colleagues calculated that preteens who had experienced parental absence before the age of 7 were more than twice as likely to have taken up smoking and 46% more likely to have started drinking.

Although the boys were more likely to have reported smoking or drinking, they weren’t any more likely than girls to have reported smoking or drinking as a consequence of parental absence, explained Lacey.

Is death more significant than divorce?

One interesting datapoint in the study showed that kids whose parent had died were less likely to have tried alcohol by the age of 11; however, those who had tried it were more than 12 times as likely to get drunk than kids with absent parents due to separation or divorce.

“We need to be a little bit cautious about overinterpreting this result,” Lacey said, since the sample population contained very few children who had experienced parental death.

Overall, Lacey and her colleagues believe that a range of factors — including less parental supervision and unhealthy coping mechanisms on the part of the kids — may contribute to the association between parental absence and risk behaviors.

Mitch Prinstein, a professor and the director of clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, believes the study covers “an extraordinarily important topic.”

“The rate of health risk behaviors like smoking and consumption of alcohol is a serious concern, not just in the UK but in many nations, especially here in the US,” said Prinstein, who was not an author of the study. Prinstein added that anything to help us understand which kids are at risk at the earliest age “deserves our attention.”

Other adults can make a difference

Though it’s “exciting,” Prinstein noted that the study had one weakness in that the researchers could not control for factors such as parental depression or physical illness. As a result, no one can say whether a parent’s absence was the cause of a child’s risky behavior or whether other factors, such as a parent’s depression, might have played a more direct role.

“All studies have limitations, of course, so this is not to suggest this (research) is not an important contribution,” he said, adding that previous research suggests parental neglect can be a factor leading to risky behavior in children. Though the study focuses on children in the UK, Prinstein also believes the results “might not be culturally bound” and so probably apply to American families.

Still, Prinstein cautions against misinterpreting the results since past studies revealed that “aunts, uncles, grandparents, coaches, members of the neighborhood community can serve a very important role for kids.”

Someone who is not in the “formal role of a parent” can still have a “dramatic” and positive influence in the life of a child, he said, and they may even help a child resist peers who have begun to experiment with substances.

Prinstein concluded, “I would hate for anyone to feel stigmatized that what they’re providing for a child is not OK if they are offering that child access to other adults, like grandparents and aunts and uncles — because we know that is very helpful.”

MILWAUKEE -- The American Cancer Society has some stark numbers when it comes to the rate that Wisconsinites die each year from smoking.

Jennifer Washington-McMurray

Jennifer Washington-McMurray says this Thursday, November 17th will be a big day for millions of people. It is the 40th annual Great American Smokeout.

"So, you'll see and hear about events taking place at UW-M," Washington-McMurray said.

Doctors and healthcare advocates know in the real world, quitting smoking probably will not happen on the first, second or even third try.

"But for those who have to try over and over again, it may not work on this Thursday. But maybe it will work next Thursday. Maybe it will work on Thanksgiving," Washington-McMurray said.

5,000 Wisconsin residents die each year from tobacco-related illnesses. Nationally, cigarettes contribute to one-third of all cancer deaths each year.

"They need to know about experiences, about facts about education and they want to know about stories. They want to hear from other individuals who have succeeded," Washington-McMurray said.

Washington-McMurray said smokers should not be discouraged and create a plan to quit for good. This coming Thursday is the perfect opportunity to get started.

"Everyone is working together to help individuals stop smoking," Washington-McMurray said.

The American Cancer Society has many tools and tips on practical ways to quit smoking. CLICK HERE to view those resources.

More bad news for smokers, this time for those who think that cutting back will help their health.

It turns out that while people who smoke between one and 10 cigarettes a day have an 87% higher risk of earlier death compared to those who've never smoked, people who average less than one cigarette a day still have a 64% higher risk of earlier death than those who never smoke.

Reporting in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers add that when looking at the nearly 300,000 people aged 59 to 82 whose smoking habits they analyzed, the younger someone was when they quit, and the earlier they were into their habit, the lower their risks of, say, death from lung cancer or cardiovascular disease.

"The results of this study support health warnings that there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke," the study's lead author says in a National Institutes of Health news release.

"Smoking even a small number of cigarettes per day has substantial negative health effects and [the study provides] further evidence that smoking cessation benefits all smokers, regardless of how few cigarettes they smoke." NBC News reports that smoking is the top cause of preventable death in the US, and that it kills nearly half a million Americans every year, while it claims more than 6 million lives a year worldwide.

What's more, the researchers note that their large study likely underestimates the risks, given that smokers are less likely to live long enough to have even entered the study.

(Check out what smoking does to your DNA.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Smoke Just a Little Bit? It'll Still Kill You

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It’s that time of year when many of us take a cold, hard look at our lives — and, more important, our vices — to set a goal we believe will make us healthier or happier in the year ahead.

There are 1 billion smokers worldwide, and one resolution in the top 10 each year is the intention to kick the habit for good.

But this goal is the most difficult of all resolutions to keep, with three in five people in the United Kingdom who resolved to quit taking the habit up again by the end of January, according to new data released by the Royal Society of Public Health in the UK.

Of more than 2,000 people surveyed about their resolutions at the end of 2016 by research consultancy Populus, 175 (8%) had chosen to quit smoking, but only 41% of those 175 kept it going until January 31. Just 13% remained smoke-free at the end of the year.

“One of the main challenges of smoking is that it’s a chemical addiction,” said Duncan Stephenson, director of external affairs at the Royal Society of Public Health. Quitting “takes huge amounts of willpower.”

Stephenson was unsurprised by the findings. They’re an important reminder that people should not to give up after the first hurdle or slip-up. They can use support services or quitting aids, such as nicotine replacement therapy or e-cigarettes, to improve their chances of success, he said.

“Rather than setting unrealistic goals and making huge changes to lifestyle, we suggest people make small changes using a step-wise approach,” he said. “During the new year, lots of people want to reinvent themselves … but people shouldn’t set themselves up to fail.”

Stephenson likened quitting smoking to the challenge of going on a diet in which people set unrealistic targets by making dramatic — and often short-lived — changes.

“Christmas is one of the most calorific periods of the year, and then you put yourself in a straitjacket when you go on a crash diet,” he said. “In most cases, 95% of diets fail.”

In the organization’s survey, dieting was second from last in terms of resolution success, with 65% of people lasting one month and just 16% making it to the end of the year.

“The most difficult resolutions to keep were the consumptive, addictive behaviors, such as smoking and dieting,” said John Norcross, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Scranton and author of the behavior change book “Changeology.” Norcross has been exploring resolutions and the factors impacting people’s ability to change for more almost 30 years.

“The easiest ones are the realistic, attainable resolutions that can be accomplished permanently in the first three or four weeks,” he said.

Be realistic

The most successful resolutions in 2016 were among people who had chosen to improve relationships with friends and family, followed by shaping a healthier work-life balance.

More than 80% of people who resolved to improve relationships reported doing so by the end of January, with 58% having stuck with it to the end of the year. A better work-life balance came in second, with 75% keeping this resolution for one month and 43% still feeling they were doing this at the end of the year.

“It’s not so much the topic, it’s how realistic the goal is,” Norcross said, adding that for the most successful resolution, “it doesn’t say ‘fix,’ it says ‘improve’ … so they will have a much higher success rate.”

The fact that people self-reported their success inevitably brings some bias to the findings, in addition to the fact that people had to recall things from earlier in the year, said Norcross.

But also worth noting is the broadness of the data.

“We don’t know how people characterize their success rates. … We don’t have a sense of magnitude for improvement,” said Norcross, giving the example of playing sports and not knowing whether people played once a week or every few months.

For its next survey, Stephenson said, the Royal Society of Public Health will be asking participants for more detail and will inquire further about what threw people off their resolutions.

Global similarities

These findings are likely to be reflected in other countries, including the United States, Stephenson said, underscoring “some of the challenges individuals face in both changing behavior and maintaining” their resolutions.

A 2017 Marist Institute of Public Opinion resolution poll of more than 400 people in the United States found smoking to be the seventh most popular resolution, chosen by 6% of those polled. The most common resolution was wanting to be a better person (16%), followed by wanting to lose weight.

In earlier studies by Norcross in 2002, the most popular resolutions still related to stopping smoking, weight loss and increasing exercise.

Tips for success

To prepare your mind to succeed in maintaining your resolution, Norcross uses the analogy of learning a new sport or skill. A person doing that is likely to slip up and make mistakes — but they should then learn from those slip-ups.

“Let’s say you wanted to learn tennis,” he said. “People say they would have to take lessons, it would take some time, and they are likely to make mistakes, and that’s right.” The same is true when quitting smoking or committing to eating healthier foods.

Successful people know that a slip is not a fall, he said, and relapses are common — and expected. “It’s like someone missing a shot in tennis and not playing again. It’s really quite silly when you think about it,” he said.

But people should be encouraged by the survey numbers, Norcross said, adding that averaging across all resolutions, about 40% of people remain successful at six months. Once there, they are more likely to last the year.

Both Norcross and Stephenson stress that willpower is not enough, not matter how much you may hear otherwise.

“In our studies, people who primarily relied on willpower failed at three times the rate of everyone else,” Norcross said, adding that many steps are needed to make a resolution last. “It starts with getting prepared, rewarding yourself, developing a flourishing environment that supports you and creating the behavior.”

Stephenson agrees, adding that people should “not be discouraged if they relapse,” he said. “It is difficult to maintain behavior change, but if you make small changes, it can have a huge effect.”

NEW JERSEY — New Jersey is set to become the third state to raise its smoking age to 21, after Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill Friday, July 21st that hikes the minimum age to buy tobacco products from 19.

We “are giving young people more time to develop a maturity and better understanding of how dangerous smoking can be and that it is better to not start smoking in the first place,” Christie said in a statement. “My mother died from the effects of smoking, and no one should lose their life due to any addictive substance.”

A reduction in smoking-related health problems also would ease the strain on the state’s health care system, Christie said.

Cities, states jump on board

New York City in 2013 raised its smoking age to 21, making it the largest of a cadre of local jurisdictions to raise the standard.

Hawaii, in 2015, became the first state to do so. California followed suit a year later. A bill that raises the minimum age to 21 to purchase tobacco products in Oregon is awaiting the signature of Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat.

Raising the minimum age to 21 nationwide would result in almost 250,000 fewer premature deaths and 45,000 fewer lung cancer deaths among people born between 2000 and 2019, a 2015 study by National Institute of Medicine found.

New Jersey’s new law applies to e-cigarettes, as well as conventional tobacco products, and triggers fines against anyone who sells, gives or offers such products to someone younger than 21. It goes into effect November 1.

OREGON — The new year means you must be at least 21 years of age to purchase tobacco products in Oregon. The smoking age was raised to 21 from 18 — with some saying the move will save lives, and other saying it won’t stop young people from getting their hands on tobacco products. Oregon has become the fifth state in the country to adopt this law.

The law calls for fines for businesses that sell tobacco products to people under the age of 21. The fines range from $50 to $1,000.

“If you can go to war, you can vote, you can do all that, you wait till you turn 18 to get some type of freedom and they want to take it away from you. I don’t think it’s right,” Troy Wines said.

Wines shops at Timber Valley Tobaccos, a small business in Beaverton, Oregon. Customers under the age of 21 can no longer walk through the doors.

“I think it’s redundant to spend time making a law or, you know, changing it because people are gonna get it anyways,” Brittany Parriett said.

Timber Valley employees didn’t want to speak out on camera, but did say they don’t believe it will hurt business too badly. An 18-year-old customer shopping on New Year’s Eve echoed that sentiment.

“Just have a friend pick it up. I mean, it’s not gonna change anything for anyone who smokes. It’s not like you want to stop because it’s illegal now,” he said.

But people and organizations in support of the change said it’ll save lives. The American Lung Association launched Tobacco 21, an initiative to increase the minimum age for tobacco sales to 21 nationwide — noting the below facts:

• Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the United States.
• The most adult smokers began smoking before they turned 21.
• Younger kids often rely on older classmates, ages 18 and 19, to supply them with tobacco products.
• Since few students reach 21 while still in high school, raising the minimum sales age to 21 virtually eliminates high school students from legally buying tobacco, and helps break the peer supply chain to many of these younger smokers.

Doing this, they say, could save as many as 223,000 lives for babies born between 2000 and 2019.

“I think that maybe it’ll benefit the youth of not being able to get their hands on it as soon,” Kelsey Conkling said.

MILWAUKEE -- Smoking cigarettes is the most preventable cause of death and disease in the United States, killing about 500,000 Americans each year. A new study from the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention aims to help more than 1,000 people in the state finally quit -- for free!

“Quitting smoking is the single-best thing that someone can do for their health," said Dr. James Stein, director of the UW Health Preventive Cardiology Program.

A $7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund "QUITS," the Quitting Using Intensive Treatments Study. Researchers will recruit around 1,100 smokers from the Milwaukee and Madison areas.

Dr. James Stein and Dr. Megan Piper

“One of the big differences about this study is its size," Stein said. "And the second big difference is that we’re taking the best therapy that we have available, Varenicline, and trying to see how we can make it better.”

The participants will all receive a proven addiction-fighting drug called Varenicline, but the length of time they get the drug and whether or not that’s paired with a nicotine patch will vary.

"That kind of information is really going to help clinicians help their smokers make the best possible quit attempts," said Dr. Megan Piper, associate director of research.

Inda Lampkin

The study is free of charge, and also comes with coaching to help you quit. That made a difference for Milwaukee resident Inda Lampkins, who finally shook her addiction 4 years ago after smoking for almost 2 decades.

“It was a big help, because before you get up in the morning, they would call you, and they’d try to redirect you. The coach really helps," Lampkins said.

Dr. Piper said smoking takes 10-15 years off your life.

“And if you think about what those 10 or 15 years might include -- retirement, grandchildren, all sorts of life opportunities. I really feel like they need to have those 10 or 15 years," Dr. Piper said.

It's a new study offering a new lease on life.

If you are a smoker looking to quit, CLICK HERE to sign up for the free study.

At least three out of five people who experiment with a cigarette end up becoming daily smokers at some point, a new study finds.

UK researchers analyzed responses from 215,000 people across eight surveys conducted in the UK, the United States, Australia and New Zealand that were included in the Global Health Data Exchange.

Of the responses, just over 60% had ever tried a cigarette, and among those, almost 69% reported that they had gone on to become daily smokers.

“This is the first time that the remarkable hold that cigarettes can establish after a single experience has been documented from such a large set of data,” said Peter Hajek, professor of clinical psychology and director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London, who led the research.

A woman smokes a cigarette on September 6, 2012 in Paris. AFP PHOTO ERIC FEFERBERG (Photo credit should read ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/GettyImages)

“In the development of any addictive behavior, the move from experimentation to daily practice is an important landmark, as it implies that a recreational activity is turning into a compulsive need,” he said in a statement.

As different surveys were included and analyzed, with different methods and styles, the researchers note that the percentage of people who become regular smokers had confidence intervals between 60% and 76.9%.

Hajek added that this high “conversion rate” to smoking highlights the importance of preventing people trying cigarettes in the first place and that some of the reduction in terms of numbers of smokers in more recent years is probably aided by fewer teens trying it.

Almost nine out of 10 cigarette smokers in the US first tried smoking before they were 18, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

2016 National Health Service data found that 19% of 11- to 15-year-olds in England had ever smoked.

Trends in the United States have shown decline, with 8% of high school students reporting in 2016 that they had smoked cigarettes in the previous 30 days — down from almost 16% in 2011.

“The finding provides strong support for the current efforts to reduce cigarette experimentation among adolescents,” the new study’s authors write.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the nonprofit Action on Smoking and Health, said the research “highlights the risks children run of entering into a life of addiction when they experiment with smoking. And make no mistake, this is an addiction of childhood. Two-thirds of adult smokers started smoking for the first time when they were children.”

NEW YORK — If you quit smoking and gain weight, it may seem like you’re trading one set of health problems for another. But a new U.S. study finds you’re still better off in the long run.

Compared with smokers, even the quitters who gained the most weight had at least a 50 percent lower risk of dying prematurely from heart disease and other causes, the Harvard-led study found.

The study is impressive in its size and scope and should put to rest any myth that there are prohibitive weight-related health consequences to quitting cigarettes, said Dr. William Dietz, a public health expert at George Washington University.

“The paper makes pretty clear that your health improves, even if you gain weight,” said Dietz, who was not involved in the research. “I don’t think we knew that with the assurance that this paper provides.”

The New England Journal of Medicine published the study Wednesday. The journal also published a Swedish study that found quitting smoking seems to be the best thing diabetics can do to cut their risk of dying prematurely.

The nicotine in cigarettes can suppress appetite and boost metabolism. Many smokers who quit and don’t step up their exercise find they eat more and gain weight — typically less than 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms), but in some cases three times that much.

A lot of weight gain is a cause of the most common form of diabetes, a disease in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal. Diabetes can lead to problems including blindness, nerve damage, heart and kidney disease and poor blood flow to the legs and feet.

In the U.S. study, researchers tracked more than 170,000 men and women over roughly 20 years, looking at what they said in health questionnaires given every two years.

The people enrolled in the studies were all health professionals, and did not mirror current smokers in the general population, who are disproportionately low-income, less-educated and more likely to smoke heavily.

The researchers checked which study participants quit smoking and followed whether they gained weight and developed diabetes, heart disease or other conditions.

Quitters saw their risk of diabetes increase by 22 percent in the six years after they kicked the habit. An editorial in the journal characterized it as “a mild elevation” in the diabetes risk.

Studies previously showed that people who quit have an elevated risk of developing diabetes, said Dr. Qi Sun, one the study’s authors. He is a researcher at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

But that risk doesn’t endure, and it never leads to a higher premature death rate than what smokers face, he said.

“Regardless of the amount of weight gain, quitters always have a lower risk of dying” prematurely, Sun said.

Cigarette smoking may be declining worldwide, but tobacco use is still responsible for the deaths of about 6 million people globally each year, according to the World Health Organization.

For most, tobacco use probably started in childhood. So, at what age do most people start smoking?

In the United States and much of Europe, research suggests that regular lighting up typically begins between 15 and 16 years old.

In the US, 15.3 was the average age when adult smokers reported smoking initiation, according to a 2014 surgeon general’s report. The data in the report came from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in which adults who had ever smoked cigarettes daily were asked about their first experiences with smoking.

Across European countries, the rates of smoking initiation peaked at 16 among boys and 15 among girls in the 2000s, according to a study published in the journal PLOS One on Wednesday.

Girls might start smoking earlier than boys because they might mature earlier, said Alessandro Marcon, first author of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Diagnostics and Public Health at the University of Verona in Italy.

“Puberty may widen the gap between physical and social maturity at young ages, leading to bad behaviours like smoking that are maybe perceived to be ‘adult,’ ” he wrote in an email.

The study, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, was based on pooled data from six studies that were a part of the Ageing Lungs in European Cohorts consortium and included 119,104 people from 17 countries.

Using those data, the researchers examined trends in smoking between 1970 and 2009.

They classified their findings into four regions: North Europe, which included Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom; East Europe, which included Estonia, Macedonia and Poland; South Europe, which included Italy, Portugal and Spain; and West Europe, which included Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Among those who ever smoked for as long as a year, the researchers found that smoking initiation rates were highest during late adolescence.

Around 2005, initiation rates during late adolescence were lowest in boys and girls in North Europe, with 20 smoking initiations per 1,000 teens each year, and the highest rates were in boys from South Europe, with 80 initiations per 1,000 teens each year.

“It was not surprising to see the lowest rates of smoking initiation in North European countries, which are at the forefront of tobacco control policies and research on smoking,” Marcon said.

The researchers found that smoking initiation rates among older teens dropped substantially between 1970 and 2009 across Europe, except in South Europe, where the decline leveled off after 1990.

The researchers also found that a marked increase was observed after 1990 in smoking initiation among early adolescent boys and girls, 11 to 15 years old, in all European regions, except among boys in North Europe.

“We were quite surprised for the marked increase in smoking initiation in young adolescents,” Marcon said.

“In girls from West Europe — Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland — the rate of smoking initiation in young adolescents reached the rate observed in late adolescents, age 16 to 20, around year 2005, although for the latter group the rate was declining,” he said.

The study had some limitations, including that multiple random samples of people from various studies were used, which may not be representative of all of Europe. Also, there was no distinction between the use of boxed cigarettes, hand-rolled cigarettes or electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes.

The data in the new study also were based on retrospective questionnaires and self-reports, which poses another limitation.

“This study suggests that more needs to be done to prevent smoking initiation in children and young boys and girls in many European countries,” Marcon said.

“At very young ages nicotine may cause more addiction,” he said. “Many European countries should intensify the implementation of tobacco control policies that are effective to reach the youngsters, in particular increases in the price of tobacco products, enforced legislation on sales to minors, plain packaging, and bans on advertising.”

Dr. James Sargent, professor of pediatrics at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine in New Hampshire, pointed out that the new study was not about experimentation. Rather, it focused on children who use cigarettes regularly and are likely to grow up to be regular smokers.

He added that the findings probably would differ if the study measured cigarette smoking rates among children in the United States today.

“Kids smoke less in the US than they do in Europe, and adults smoke less too in the US than they do in most European countries,” said Sargent, who was not involved in the study but has conducted research on tobacco control.

“States and local municipalities in this country have done a good job at working on policies that make it harder to smoke — indoor air laws and taxes on tobacco,” he said of the US.

Yet in the future, Sargent said, it would be helpful to study at what age children start using other products, such as e-cigarettes.

There was a 900% increase in e-cigarette use by high school students from 2011 to 2015, according to a 2016 report from the US surgeon general.

“E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product now among American adolescents, more so than cigarettes,” Sargent said. “These are the products that young people seem to be turning to, and they continue to turn away from cigarettes.”

Cigarette use among American adults is at the lowest it’s been since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started collecting data on the issue in 1965, according to a report released Thursday.

“The good news is that cigarette smoking has reached unprecedented lows, which is a tremendous public health win, down to 14 percent from over 40 percent in the mid-1960s,” said Brian King, senior author of the report and deputy director for research translation at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. About 47.4 million Americans, or 19.3%, used any tobacco product in 2017, the report says.

He believes that the decline is due to proven interventions, such as smoke-free policies and rises in the price of tobacco products.

As stated in the report, the data is from the National Health Interview Survey, “an annual, nationally representative, in-person survey of the noninstitutionalized U.S. civilian population.” The 2017 sample included 26,742 adults and had a response rate of 53%.

Researchers assessed the use of five types of tobacco products: cigarettes, cigars, pipes (including water pipes and hookahs), e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco (such as snuff or dip).

“During 2016-2017 declines occurred in current use of any tobacco product; any combustible tobacco product, [two or more] tobacco products; cigarettes; and smokeless tobacco,” the report says.

King added, “on balance, we still have some public health hurdles in that there is still 47 million Americans that are using some form of tobacco products, and we still have significant disparities among the groups in the country in terms of tobacco product use.”

So, who is still using these products, and what are they using?

Beyond the 14% of Americans smoking cigarettes, 3.8% are smoking cigars, 2.8% are using e-cigarettes or vaping, 2.1% use smokeless tobacco products, and 1% are using pipes.

Males (24.8%) were more likely to be smoking than females (14.2%). The highest age group for smoking was among those between 25 to 44 (22.5%); those 65 and older smoked the least (11%). Southerners and Midwesterners (20.8% and 23.5%, respectively) smoked more than those in the Northeast (15.6%) and the West (15.9%)

The researchers also looked at race, education level, income level, sexuality, insurance provider and marital status to determine smoking rates.

Although cigarettes are the leading cause of tobacco-related deaths and diseases in the country, according to King, he also believes other tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes, need to be considered to continue declining rates of overall tobacco product use.

“It’s critical that we not only modernize our strategies in terms of population but also modernize our interventions to be sure that we are capturing the full diversity of tobacco products that the American public are using,” King said.

NEW YORK — Smoking even one cigarette a day during pregnancy can double the chance of sudden unexpected death for your baby, according to a new study analyzing over 20 million births, including over 19,000 unexpected infant deaths.

The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed data on smoking during pregnancy from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s birth/infant death data set between 2007 and 2011 and found that the risk of death rises by .07 for each additional cigarette smoked, up to 20 a day, a typical pack of cigarettes.

By the time you smoke a pack a day, the study found, your baby’s risk of unexpected sudden death has nearly tripled compared with infants of nonsmokers.

“One of the most compelling and most important points that I would take away from the study is that even smoking one or two cigarettes still had an effect on sudden infant death,” said pulmonologist Dr. Cedric “Jamie” Rutland, a national spokesman for the American Lung Association.

“Every cigarette counts,” said lead study author Tatiana Anderson, a neuroscientist at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. “And doctors should be having these conversations with their patients and saying, ‘Look, you should quit. That’s your best odds for decreasing sudden infant death. But if you can’t, every cigarette that you can reduce does help.’ ”

SIDS and SUID

Sudden infant death syndrome, known as SIDS, was a frightening, unexplained phenomenon for parents for decades until research discovered a connection between a baby’s sleeping position and the sudden deaths. If babies between 1 month and 1 year of age were put to sleep on their stomachs, the risk of dying of SIDS doubled, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The introduction of the “back to sleep” campaign in 1994 educated parents about the dangers, and the rate of deaths dropped by about 50% when parents began putting babies to sleep on their backs. That was soon followed by recommendations to remove bumpers, blankets, toys and other potentially suffocating clutter from the crib.

By 2010, the rates of SIDS in the United States had fallen to about 2,000 a year, compared with nearly 4,700 in 1993, the American Academy of Pediatrics says.

But while the numbers of babies dying of SIDS decreased, two other types of sudden infant death — ill-defined causes and accidental suffocation — have risen over the past two decades, Anderson said, bringing totaldeaths to approximately 3,700 a year.

Today, researchers combine the three types of death and call it SUID, short for sudden unexpected infant death.

The link to smoking

Research has shown a direct link between mother’s smoking and SUID. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 23% to 34% cases of SIDS and 5% to 7% of preterm-related infant deaths can be attributed to prenatal smoking.

The costs to children born to smokers are also high. Research has shown a connection between smoking during pregnancy and a higher risk of asthma, infantile colic and childhood obesity. Even secondhand smoke is dangerous to the developing fetus, increasing the risk of low birth weight by as much as 20%.

Just how smoking contributes to SUID is being heavily researched, but a prevailing theory is that it increases levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in behavioral arousal and activity. In susceptible infants, it’s possible that serotonin affects the ability of the brain stem to regulate the respiratory system during sleep.

“And maybe that leads to the infant stopping to breathe at night,” said Rutland, who is also an assistant clinical professor of internal medicine at the University of California’s UCRiverside School of Medicine.

Rates of smoking in pregnancy still high

Despite a significant drop in smoking rates in the United States, Anderson says, self-reported statistics show that about 338,000 women smoke during pregnancy each year.

“These numbers are probably on the conservative side,” Anderson said. “Women know they shouldn’t be smoking during pregnancy, and there is a certain population that either denies that they smoke or underestimates the number of cigarettes they smoke.”

Despite the knowledge that smoking can harm their baby, Anderson said, statistics show that 55% of those 338,000 pregnant women are unwilling or unable to stop.

“They do not reduce or quit smoking,” she said. “They just continue smoking at the same rate throughout their pregnancy.”

Yet if no women smoked during pregnancy, the study’s computational models estimate, 800 infant deaths each year could be avoided, Anderson said.

Smoking before pregnancy

The new research, the first to be done in conjunction with Microsoft data scientists who volunteer their time as part of the Aaron Matthew SIDS Research Guild, was also the first to look at the impact of smoking before pregnancy.

It wasn’t good news for women who smoke and suddenly find out that they are pregnant.

“If you smoke in the three months before pregnancy and quit by the end of the first trimester, you have more than a 50% greater risk of SUID compared to nonsmokers,” Anderson said.

That risk is still lower than if you smoked throughout pregnancy, she explained, but the overall risk is greater than for those who smoked only before pregnancy or never smoked at all.

“That’s the other take-home message,” Anderson said: “Women who are planning on getting pregnant and are smokers should quit well before they even try to get pregnant, because smoking in the first three months before you get pregnant can have a detrimental effect.”

For Rutland, the pulmonologist, that makes sense.

“What it tells you is that when you smoke a cigarette, the physiologic consequences don’t stop just because you quit for several weeks,” he said. “It just shows you how powerful something like smoking is and the lasting effects it can have on your body.”

Reducing risk

Many women who want to stop smoking for the baby’s health find it’s harder than they thought it would be, said Laurie Adams, founder and executive director of Baby & Me Tobacco Free Program, a smoking cessation program.

“What we find nowadays is that there are fewer women who are casual or social smokers,” Adams said. “The level of nicotine in most cigarettes really has hooked them. And so most of the women that we serve that are daily smokers, smoking anywhere from a half to a pack of cigarettes a day. They’re definitely hooked.”

Women who want to use FDA-approved smoking cessation products should be aware that most are safe during pregnancy, Rutland said.

“The only one that we say is not safe during pregnancy is Chantix, and that’s just because it hasn’t been studied, ” Rutland said. “Wellbutrin [bupropion] and the nicotine replacement strategies such as the nicotine-replacement gum and patch are safe.”

For women who want to use non-medical approaches, evidence-based counseling and support techniques are available through the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. There are smoking quit-line services in all 50 states that can be accessed via a toll-free national portal provided by the National Cancer Institute at 1-800-QUIT NOW.

A counseling-based program, like Baby and Me, will often focus on a positive approach, offering information and support to prepare a woman for what she will experience during nicotine withdrawal, Adams said.

“We’ll help her set up a quit plan,” she said. “We’ll give her things to do instead of smoking when the urge hits, such as deep breathing, drinking water to flush out toxins and reaching out to a support system. We’ll teach her how to reduce stress and avoid triggers.”

The important thing for women in this situation is to reach out and get help, Adams stressed.

“They can break free from this nicotine addiction,” Adams said. “Not only can they have a healthy baby born on time, they can continue their recovery and not go back to smoking so that the risk of SUID is dramatically reduced.”

LONDON – Philip Morris International, the company that sells Marlboro, Chesterfield, Parliaments and other brands internationally, has a new product set to launch in the UK – life insurance.

The company says the insurance provider, reviti, will offer “highly competitive” premiums with incentives for quitting cigarettes, or for giving up tobacco and nicotine entirely.

Reviti insurance, which will start at $6.47 per month, “plans to launch a range of insurance policies that incentivise better lifestyle choices, such as improving your diet, cutting down on alcohol or getting fit,” according to a press release.

Philip Morris International – a separate company from U.S.-based Philip Morris USA, which is owned by Altria – has not announced specific plans or timelines to expand reviti to additional markets.

“It was time the insurance business caught up with its customers. The life insurance product we offer is a win-win for reviti and our customers,” CEO Daniel Pender said in a statement. “They get competitive premiums and, with a little help from us, a better lifestyle. We get to help millions of people who have never had access to life insurance before and who will benefit from positive lifestyle changes we’re helping them make.”

Philip Morris has been trying to transition to smoke-free products as a possible solution to the company’s longstanding cigarette problem.

The company’s cigarette shipment volumes have faltered as more smokers ditch the habit. But shipments of the company’s heated tobacco devices, called IQOS, are soaring.

To bolster the trend, Philip Morris is leaning heavily into its “anti-smoking” effors. Earlier this month, the company launched a “Year of Unsmoke” campaign, which encourages people who don’t smoke not to start, those who do to quit — and those who can’t quit, to “change,” presumably by switching to IQOS.

So far, the efforts are paying off. In the first quarter of 2019, the company had “more than 10 million IQOS users worldwide,” CEO André Calantzopoulos said in a statement Thursday. He called the figure “an important milestone.” In that period, the shipment volume of PMI’s so-called heated tobacco units grew 20.2%.

The company says that people are converting from cigarettes to heated tobacco — at the end of last year, Philip Morris counted 9.6 million IQOS users, noting that 70% of them had quit smoking cigarettes.

For companies like PMI, e-cigarettes and other smoke-free nicotine vehicles could offer an image makeover and a financial lifeline.

Vivien Azer, an analyst who covers tobacco for Cowen, wrote in a note in March that “Philip Morris has improved its retailer perceptions in Japan and Korea where it remains the market leader in both markets.” She added that “continued progress in Italy leaves us optimistic about European markets.”

PMI’s interest in smoke-free alternatives to cigarettes is part of a sector-wide shift. Last year Altria, which spun off from Philip Morris International in 2008 and now sells cigarettes in the United States, took a 35% stake in e-cigarette maker Juul, in a deal worth $12.8 billion.

But hazards remain. As much as Philip Morris may tout vaping as a healthier alternative to smoking, long-term effects of vaping are unclear. The FDA is eyeing regulation of the products as US teen vaping soars.

Altria wants to bring Philip Morris International’s IQOS tobacco-heating device to the US market, but it has not yet received government approval. The company has not shown that IQOS is a safer alternative to cigarettes, the FDA said last year.

CNN Wire contribute to this report.

GLENVIEW, Ill. — Smoking is bad for your heart, especially if you are a young woman. Women under 50 who smoke may face a higher risk of a serious type of heart attack compared to men, according to a new study published Monday in the the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Every 40 seconds someone in the United States has a heart attack, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart disease is already the top killer of women and men, and smoking, which is a strong risk factor for heart disease, is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.

This is one of the first studies to quantify just how bad smoking is for the hearts of women compared to men, particularly among patients who had what’s known as acute ST segment elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI, a serious type of heart attack.

STEMI is when one of the heart’s major arteries, the one that supplies oxygen and blood to the heart, is blocked. It’s one of the most life-threatening forms of heart disease.

STEMI has always been a big problem for smokers. Smoking is the cause of 50% of STEMI cases, earlier research has shown.

In this case, researchers at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with the University of Sheffield, did a retrospective study of 3,343 STEMI patients who were treated between 2009 and July 2014. More than 46% of female patients and more than 47% of male patients were smokers.

The study found smoking increased patients’ risk of this heart problem regardless of gender or age, but the risk was much higher in women than it was in men, no matter their age.

Among smokers, the highest risk increase in both genders was in the 18 to 49 age range. Women in this younger group had a greater than 13 times higher risk of STEMI compared to non-smokers in that same age range. Young male smokers had an increased risk of 8.6 times compared to non-smokers.

The researchers think smoking is worse for women’s hearts because it lowers their production of estrogen. Estrogen has protective qualities for women’s hearts, studies show. Chronic inflammation from smoking also stresses the heart. Women’s hearts are much smaller, compared to men’s, and may not be able to take as much stress.

The good news is that if patients quit smoking, the damage done to their heart can be reversed.

Netflix has promised to curb depictions of smoking in new programs following a report that pointed a finger at its hit series “Stranger Things,” whose first two seasons featured tobacco in every episode.

“Going forward, all new projects that we commission with ratings of TV-14 or below for series or PG-13 or below for films, will be smoking and e-cigarette free — except for reasons of historical or factual accuracy,” said a statement shared with CNN by a Netflix spokesperson.

For new projects rated for older audiences, characters will steer clear of these products “unless it’s essential to the creative vision of the artist or because it’s character-defining (historically or culturally important).”

Later this year, the streaming giant also plans to start including smoking information in the ratings box that appears in the upper left corner when users begin watching a show.

The company’s policy on newly commissioned programs will not directly affect existing shows like “Stranger Things.”

“Netflix strongly supports artistic expression,” the statement says. “We also recognize that smoking is harmful and when portrayed positively on screen can adversely influence young people.”

The Truth Initiative, an anti-tobacco advocacy group, released its latest report on tobacco use in TV and streaming programs ahead of the release of the third season of “Stranger Things” this week. Looking at 13 Netflix and broadcast series, the report found that images of tobacco were up overall in the 2016-17 season compared with the year prior. The Netflix shows depicted smoking more often than broadcast shows.

The report counted a jump in the number of tobacco depictions from the first season of “Stranger Things” to the second — from 182 to 262. It also looked at Netflix shows such as “Orange is the New Black” and “House of Cards,” comparing them with broadcast series including “The Walking Dead,” “Modern Family” and “American Horror Story.” Overall, cigarettes accounted for nearly three-quarters of tobacco depictions in these shows, whereas e-cigarettes hardly appeared at all.

The Truth Initiative report says that, while it decided to focus on Netflix, tobacco-related images are not limited to just that streaming platform. It cited other examples of characters smoking in Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and Hulu’s “Gap Year” but didn’t include them in its analysis. CNN reached out to Amazon and Hulu for comment.

Experts say that young people who see images of tobacco use in the media are more likely to use it themselves. According to the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States, youth “who get the most exposure to onscreen smoking [in movies] are about twice as likely to begin smoking as those who get the least exposure.”

Researchers have looked at smoking in other kinds of media, as well. A study published last year found that nearly half of R&B and hip-hop music videos from 2013 to 2017 showed some type of smoking or vaping. Another study found that 42% of video games featured characters doing the same.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also studied trends in tobacco use in movies. According to the CDC, 56% of PG-13 movies from 2002 to 2018 show tobacco use. While the percentage of PG-13 movies featuring tobacco use was down from 2017 to 2018, the number of incidents per movie was up.

“We’ve known for a while that the more you see smoking on screen, the more likely you are to see youth smoking cigarettes in real life,” Michael Tynan, a public health analyst at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, previously told CNN. “There’s a causal relationship between the two.”

As for why, some experts say these depictions can normalize tobacco use — or even glamorize it.

Dan Romer, director of the Adolescent Communication Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, previously told CNN that movies may use smoking “as a cue to say that this person is a risk-taker and kind of an edgy character.

“And so an adolescent that finds that appealing might say, ‘I want to be like that person. I’m going to smoke,'” he said.

MARYLAND — Warning labels on cigarette packages could soon be more graphic, warning that “Smoking reduces blood flow to the limbs, which can require amputation,” and “Smoking causes bladder cancer, which can lead to bloody urine.”

The US Food and Drug Administration on Thursday issued a proposed rule that requires tobacco companies to place new graphic health warnings on cigarette packages and in advertisements. The proposed warnings feature color images and describe the health risks of smoking.

The new cigarette health warnings, once finalized, would appear on cigarette packages and in advertisements, occupying the top 50% of the area of the front and back panels of packages and at least 20% of the area at the top of cigarette ads, according to the FDA.

This draft version of the rule comes after a judge ordered last year that the FDA has “delayed” issuing a rule mandating such graphic warnings. The final version of the rule is due to be issued by March 15, 2020. The warnings then would appear on products and in advertisements 15 months after the final rule is issued.

There are 13 proposed warnings, which feature text statements accompanied by color images, and they represent the most significant change to cigarette labels in the United States in 35 years, according to the FDA.

“While most people assume the public knows all they need to understand about the harms of cigarette smoking, there’s a surprising number of lesser-known risks that both youth and adult smokers and nonsmokers may simply not be aware of, such as bladder cancer, diabetes and conditions that can cause blindness,” Dr. Ned Sharpless, acting FDA commissioner, said in a written statement on Thursday.

“With these new proposed cigarette health warnings, we have an enormous public health opportunity to fulfill our statutory mandate and increase the public’s understanding of the full scope of serious negative health consequences of cigarette smoking,” he said. “Given that tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., there’s a lot at stake to ensure the public understands these risks.”

‘It’s way past time for this to happen’

The United States will join at least 120 other countries and jurisdictions that have finalized requirements for warning labels that include pictures to be printed on cigarette packages, according to the advocacy organization Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Pictorial warning labels on cigarette packs could reduce smoking prevalence by 5% in the short term and 10% over the long term in the United States, according to a study published in the journal Tobacco Control in 2016.

The study projected that over the next 50 years, pictorial warning labels could avert 652,800 smoking-attributable deaths, 46,600 cases of low birth weight, 73,600 preterm births and 1,000 cases of sudden infant death syndrome.

“It’s very clear that half of the people who currently use tobacco products die from using them. It’s 480,000 people each year in the United States,” said Mary Rouvelas, senior counsel for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, which is the advocacy affiliate of the society.

“This is a proven mechanism that keeps people from picking up cigarettes and helps them quit — or I should say helps increase the number of quit attempts,” she said about graphic warning labels.

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability and death in the United States, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We just believe that it’s way past time for this to happen and we’re very glad that the FDA looks like it’s moving forward,” Rouvelas said.

American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network was among physician groups, anti-tobacco groups and others that sued the FDA in 2016 claiming that the agency delayed taking action on a rule to implement graphic warnings as required under the Tobacco Control Act, which became law in 2009.

American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown said in a statement Thursday, “The FDA’s years-long delay in issuing these proposed warnings extended the life of the old, ineffective labels for far too long.”

Tobacco companies respond

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which is among the tobacco companies that would be impacted by this FDA rule, said in a statement on Thursday that the company is reviewing the FDA’s latest proposal for graphic warnings.

“We firmly support public awareness of the harms of smoking cigarettes, but the manner in which those messages are delivered to the public cannot run afoul of the First Amendment protections that apply to all speakers, including cigarette manufacturers,” Kaelan Hollon, a spokesperson for Reynolds American Inc., said in the emailed statement. RAI is the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the United States.

“As FDA considers how it chooses to communicate cigarette information, we encourage the agency to publicize the comparative risks of other tobacco products to the public so that adults who wish to continue to use them can make fully informed decisions between product options in the tobacco category,” the statement said in part. “RAI is committed to promoting tobacco harm reduction, in other words, identifying consumer-acceptable tobacco products that may present less harm than conventional tobacco-burning cigarettes.”

Altria, which owns Philip Morris USA, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, said in a separate emailed statement that the company “will carefully review the proposed rule and its implications to our businesses and submit comments.”

More than 40 million adults in the United States still smoke cigarettes, according to the CDC, and about 4.7 million middle and high school students use at least one type of tobacco product, including e-cigarettes.

MADISON -- A bill introduced in Madison, supported by the American Lung Association, aims to treat e-cigarettes like regular cigarettes. It would mean that e-cigarette use would be banned anywhere traditional smoking is prohibited.

On July 5, 2010, Wisconsin effectively went smoke-free. The indoor smoking ban put an end to smoking inside bars, restaurants, and workplaces. Nearly a decade later, the new bill adds another product to the list.

"We've had smoke free air for nine years, and that's really what the public expects," said Dona Wininsky with the American Lung Association. "It would open up the state's smoke-free air law, and it would include e-cigarettes -- all vaping devices so that they would be prohibited anywhere that smoking is presently prohibited."

It would mean if you cannot use traditional smoking products in certain spaces, vaping devices would also be prohibited.

"This time, I asked a Republican to be the main author," said Rep. Debra Kolste.

Rep. Kolste, one of the bill's sponsors, said there wasn't immediately any pushback at the Capitol.

"There's 33 cosponsors from the Assembly, and it's very bipartisan," said Kolste.

The reason for such support, Kolste said, is because of the 1,604 lung injury cases (as of Tuesday, Oct. 22) associated with e-cigarette products in 49 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC on Thursday, Oct. 24 identified 34 vaping-related deaths in 24 states: Three each from California, Indiana and Minnesota; two each from Georgia, Illinois, Kansas and Oregon; and one each from Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

The patients who died ranged in age from 17 to 75.

In July, Children's Wisconsin officials reported eight cases of hospitalized teenagers with seriously damaged lungs to the Wisconsin Department Health Services.

"So the immediate symptoms that might pose a warning that there's a concern would be significant coughing, shortness of breath, weight loss, reduced eating, severe fatigue," said Dr. Michael Gutzeit.

While the specific cause of these illnesses was under investigation, supports of the bill said they're eager to move forward.

"I think there is an overwhelming sense that something needs to be done," said Kolste.

Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association issued this statement to FOX6 News:

"Despite recent illnesses and deaths linked to the use of illicit marijuana oil products, there is no evidence of a secondhand risk from being around someone using a nicotine vaping product. While it is common courtesy to not vape in a business establishment without permission, state lawmakers should be legislating based on risk, not good decorum. Many bars and other business owners permit the respectful use of vaping products and there is no scientific basis for legislators to force them to stop with the threat of fines."

MADISON — No one under 21 would be allowed to purchase cigarettes or vaping products under a bill the state Assembly approved Thursday.

Currently a person must be at least 18 to purchase cigarettes, tobacco, nicotine or vaping products.

President Donald Trump signed a law last year that bars tobacco sales to anyone under 21 but local police can’t enforce it since it’s a federal law. The Wisconsin bill would allow local law enforcement to enforce the new minimum age by placing it in state law.

The measure’s chief Assembly sponsor, Republican John Spiros, left vaping products out of the bill but amended it on the Assembly floor to include them. He said on the floor that the federal law’s definition of tobacco products including vaping products and he wants state law to conform fully to the federal statutes.

Spiros took plenty of heat for leaving vaping products out of the bill. Sixteen groups led by the American Heart Association sent an email to legislators on Monday urging them to reinsert vaping products in the bill, saying the products can cause cancer and lung disease and exempting them would confuse police.

The Assembly passed the bill on a voice vote. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said that chamber may consider the bill on its final session day in March.