Opinion: Denver Should Vote Yes on 310

In November, Denver voters will have the opportunity to end the sale of flavored tobacco and protect kids by voting yes on Referendum 310.

Why take these products off the shelves? It’s simple: Flavors hook kids. Four out of every five kids who use tobacco started with a flavored product.

Gummy bear, root beer float, fruit punch. These sound like candy, but they’re also tobacco. Sweet-tasting vapes that draw kids in, only to hook them to a lifetime of addiction.

The consequences can be deadly. When kids use vapes, along with breathing in nicotine, they are inhaling other toxic chemicals like formaldehyde and lead. Nicotine itself is highly addictive and can have lasting effects on adolescent brain development, impacting attention, mood and impulse control. The Surgeon General has called e-cigarette use by American youth to be “an epidemic.”

Maybe most critically, e-cigarette use among youth and young adults increases their risk of ever using regular cigarettes. And smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.

Tobacco companies know exactly what they are doing. Their candy-flavored products are wrapped in glossy packaging. They smell sweet, taste like treats and addict the next generation of users.

Their marketing tactics toward kids today have echoes of their marketing efforts in the past: targeting communities with aggressive campaigns designed to hook them to particularly addictive products.

For decades, tobacco companies marketed menthol cigarettes and other products like flavored cigars to Black communities, with devastating consequences. Tobacco use takes 45,000 Black lives every year. And the menthol cigarettes that they push are particularly deadly. In the 1950s, less than 10 percent of Black smokers used menthols; today, it is 85 percent Like other flavored products, menthols are easier to start smoking compared to cigarettes that taste like tobacco. They are also more addictive and harder to quit.

I know all this first-hand. My wife, Dr. Sharon Bailey, died at the age of 68 as a direct result of tobacco use.

Sharon served on the board of Denver Public Schools and dedicated her career to lifting up Denver’s young people, especially Black students. So it is painful – and personal – to know that while she was working tirelessly to advocate for youth in our community, tobacco was adversely impacting her.

Big Tobacco and the opponents of this ballot measure – Phillip Morris, Altria, Smoker Friendly, vape-shop owners – have no shame when it comes to targeting our communities, addicting our children and making money. And they have no plans to stop. It is up to us to say enough is enough and to get their candy-flavored products out of stores and out of our kids’ hands. It is up to us to put the well-being of our children over their profits.

Reject the tactics of Big Tobacco and vote yes on Referendum 310.