Board of Health submits report endorsing tobacco, e-cig rules
The Board of Health completed its report for the Columbia City Council regarding three smoking-related ordinances.
The Board endorsed raising the legal age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21 in Columbia, raising the same age requirement for vapor products and e-cigarettes and banning the use of vapor products indoors.
“One of the major reasons [for raising the legal age] has occurred is concern about teenage smoking,” the report said. “We know that the majority of long term smokers begin as teenagers. We know that nicotine has a greater addictive potential in the young developing brain. We know that 90% of adult smokers regret ever starting. It only makes sense that, as a community, we should look for ways to prevent teenagers from becoming addicted.”
The Board of Health voted 8-2 at its November meeting to endorse the ordinance, proposed by First Ward Councilwoman Ginny Chadwick, to raise the age from 18 to 21.
Opponents of raising the age on the Board of Health cited personal liberty. While Dr. Colin Malaker did not personally cast a vote at the November meeting, he wrote an email speaking against the ordinance.
“At age eighteen a person can vote, and being able to vote is being able to cast an educated opinion for who you want to govern you and why,” board member Dr. Colin Malaker wrote in the email, according to the minutes approved at the meeting. “If someone at that age can handle that responsibility, then surely they have the sense to know the health consequences of what we eat, drink, and put into our bodies.”
Dr. Michael Szewczyk told ABC 17 News Thursday night the board looked at the lowering of the drinking age in the 1970s, and the higher rate of DWI crashes that occurred with the ages involved in the change.
“While cigarettes don’t have that immediate effect where you’re going to take a cigarette and get in an accident and kill somebody, you are going to hurt yourself,” Dr. Szewczyk said.
The Board held three meetings this fall to discuss the proposed ordinances. Many people spoke during the public comment sections of the meetings about the effect on vapor products and e-cigarettes. Some said at the October meeting that those products help them get away from their tobacco addiction.
Dr. Szewczyk said since the products are still fairly new, more research is needed to determine the potential long-term effects of vapor products.
“We really don’t know for sure what’s going to happen,” Dr. Szewczyk said about vapor products. “But we made a mistake with cigarettes, you know, we put those out there, promoted them, people smoked them, twenty, thirty years later, we’ve got people with lung cancer.”
The Columbia City Council will also vote on extending the city’s ban on indoor smoking to vapor products. The Board of Health voted unanimously in November to endorse that ordinance.
