With elected state leaders only able to blow smoke this legislative session, cities are taking needed steps to improve health, clear the air, and prevent young Minnesotans from being ensnared by the deadly dangers of cigarettes and tobacco use.
In May, Edina became the first city in Minnesota to raise the legal age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21. This week, the Minnesota cities of St. Louis Park and Mankato publicly initiated city council action to follow suit.
"And there are other cities throughout the state who are considering it also and who are discussing what it would mean for their community," Anne Mason of the Minneapolis-based smoking-cessation ClearWay Minnesota group said in an interview Wednesday with the News Tribune Opinion page. "Seeing local entities take charge of tobacco-prevention measures in their communities: That is so encouraging to us. This is how great policies have passed in the past, and clearly Duluth has been a leader in this, in protecting clean indoor air, even with e-cigarettes, before the state had acted."
But Duluth hasn't yet followed Edina's lead on raising the legal age to purchase tobacco, and that's disappointing.
And neither has the state, even though an estimated 25 percent fewer young Minnesotans would take up the deadly habit if the so-called tobacco age was raised to 21 statewide. That's according to a study commissioned by ClearWay and by the Minnesota Department of Health. That's 30,000 Minnesota kids over a 15-year period who wouldn't end up addicted, as Mason told the Opinion page previously.
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An estimated 95 percent of adults who smoke or use tobacco started before they were 21, according to ClearWay. Once hooked, smokers and other tobacco users face the likelihood of lung cancer, throat cancer, and other deadly ailments. An estimated 5,100 to 5,500 Minnesotans die every year from smoking. The habit accounts for 1 in 5 U.S. deaths annually. Tobacco kills more people every year than alcohol, murders, car crashes, AIDS, illegal drugs, and suicides - combined, according to ClearWay.
And smokers and other tobacco users aren't the only ones who pay a price. A 2013 estimate found that Minnesotans dole out $3 billion a year to cover excess health care costs related to smoking. That comes to about $554 from every man, woman and child in the state.
Despite all of that, the Legislature this year didn't even hold a hearing on a bill to raise the age statewide, a bill co-authored by Sen. Erik Simonson of Duluth. The measure remains alive through the 2018 session, but the prospect of it getting a hearing next year "seems unlikely," Simonson told the Opinion page this week.
State-level action wouldn't be unprecedented. Like Duluth, Minnesota has been a pioneer, beginning with our state's groundbreaking 1975 Clean Indoor Air Act. The state's Freedom to Breathe Act followed in 2007, banning smoking in all public places, including even restaurants, bars and bowling alleys. More recently, lawmakers jacked up the state's tobacco tax in an attempt to make tobacco use cost-prohibitive, especially to young people.
Duluth and Minnesota both can continue to be leaders and can be embarrassed, sitting idly by and watching as places like Edina, Mankato, and St. Louis Park take up the torch. The sooner we do the better. The health of all Duluthians and Minnesotans, especially young people, is at stake.
-- Duluth News Tribune
