IOWA

Alabama: News

TOBACCO HARM REDUCTION 101: IOWA

Key Points:

Iowa’s vaping industry provided more than $191 million in economic activity in 2018 while generating 820 direct vaping-related jobs. Sales of disposables and prefilled cartridges in Iowa exceeded $4.2 million in 2016.
As of January 7, 2020, IDPH has reported 56 confirmed and probable cases of vaping-related lung illnesses, with 77 percent of patients reporting use of THC-containing vapor products. IDPH earns a B for its reporting on vaping-related lung illnesses.
In 2017, only 0.9 percent of Iowa high school students reported daily e-cigarette use. More data is needed.
Only 3 percent of FDA retail compliance checks in Iowa resulted in sales of e-cigarettes to minors from January 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019.
Iowa spends very little on tobacco prevention. In 2019, Iowa dedicated only $4 million on tobacco control, or 1 percent of what the state received in tobacco settlement payments and taxes.

By the end of February 2019, more than 200 bills had been introduced in multiple states aimed at regulating, taxing, or prohibiting e-cigarettes.
In response to media campaigns by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Surgeon General, state lawmakers have introduced flavor bans, draconian taxes, and proposals to restrict access to tobacco products to persons 21 years old or older.
Strangely, legislators in Connecticut, Iowa, and Nebraska are proposing to increase the age to purchase e-cigarettes and vaping devices from 18 to 21
- But they are not proposing a similar increase to the age required to purchase combustible tobacco cigarettes—even though these products are significantly more harmful.
E-cigarette devices have helped an estimated three million U.S. adults quit smoking combustible tobacco cigarettes. A 2019 study found e-cigarettes are “twice as effective” as traditional nicotine replacement therapy in helping smokers quit.
Many public health groups have found e-cigarettes to be substantially less harmful than traditional tobacco cigarettes, including Public Health England; Royal College of Physicians; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; and the American Cancer Society.
Even Mitch Zeller, director of the Center for Tobacco Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has noted that people switching from combustible cigarettes to e-cigarettes “would be good for public health.”