Oklahoma is spending more on tobacco prevention.
State spending this fiscal year is $21.3 million, up more than 12 percent from last year. Oklahoma ranks fourth in the U.S. for percentage of tobacco prevention funding recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Even at that, it’s still only spending about half of what the CDC recommends that the state spends on tobacco prevention. So, there’s still room for improvement even though it’s doing better than most states," said Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Director of State Communications John Schachter.
Oklahoma smoking rates are still high: 20 percent of adults and 13 percent of high school students smoke, and 16 percent of high schoolers use e-cigarettes.
"So, we really still face quite a crisis when it comes to youth and adult use of regular cigarettes as well as e-cigarettes. So, there’s still a lot of work to be done in Oklahoma," Schachter said.
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids National Youth Ambassador Aditi Vankatesh said part of problem is flavored products.
"I think the most important thing we can do to prevent kids from using e-cigarettes is to ban all these enticing flavors. We also need the FDA to ban flavored tobacco products nationwide," Vankatesh said.
Oklahoma’s Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust has proposed banning flavored products as part of a broad plan to cut state smoking rates in half over the next decade. TSET is also pushing for other measures the Campaign said will curb smoking rates, including raising cigarette taxes.
