LIHU‘E — Valerie Saiki remembers walking her son to school with a group of kids when a passing car filled the air with the smell of cotton candy-flavored e-cigarette smoke.
“All the kids were like, ‘oooh cotton candy,’” said Saiki, who works as the Kaua‘i Community Coordinator for the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Hawai‘i. “And they started breathing in deeper.”
Her son, who Saiki had taught about the harms of smoking, warned the other kids that the smoke was dangerous.
Saiki says that this story highlights the appeal of flavored tobacco products, which are currently the target of two bills in the state legislature — Senate Bill 3118 and House Bill 1570 — that would ban flavored tobacco products and enact stricter regulation on vaping. Both bills have passed first readings and are currently in committee.
“I was told that elementary school students were caught vaping and selling vaping products at school,” said state Rep. Nadine Nakamura, who was one of the introducers of HB1570. “We have to stop companies from targeting our youth with flavored tobacco products of all kinds.”
Richard Present, co-owner of the Righteous Roots Smoke Shop in Koloa, is worried about the detrimental effect that a ban would have on his business.
“We would lose 65%-70% of our revenue,” he said. “It would probably make us close the doors. We also sell products like cigarettes, of course, but we can’t survive on those products because you have Texaco on the corner who has bigger buying power than us.”
For him, education would be more effective and less harmful than an outright ban.
“Anything that kids aren’t allowed to have, they’re going to get it anyway,” said Present. “It really doesn’t matter if it’s legal or illegal. It’s the American way.”
Youth use of e-cigarettes is particularly pronounced on Kaua‘i, with a 2019 report from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System reporting that 22.5% of middle-school-aged teens on Kaua‘i use e-cigarettes compared to 17.7% statewide.
Meanwhile, 35.9% of Kaua‘i high-school-aged teens used e-cigarettes compared to 30.6% statewide.
“Because we’re ‘ohana-driven, a lot of time we have teenagers watching elementary school kids,” said Saiki. “Sometimes they’ll be using those products and they’ll say, ‘Do you want to try?’”
Amidst nationwide concern over the effects of vaping on kids, the Food and Drug Administration banned fruit, mint, and other dessert-flavored refillable cartridge-based cigarettes in 2020. Companies quickly found a loophole, simply selling flavored products that are not refillable or cartridge-based.
Anti-vaping advocates worry that flavored e-cigarettes can act as a palatable introduction to other tobacco products and carry additional long-term health risks.
“Nicotine can prime the brain for future addiction,” said Lola Irvin, Administrator of the Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion with the state Department of Health’s Healthy Hawai‘i Initiative. “And it can interrupt memory attention, affect sleep cycles, and contribute to mood disorders.”
More than four out of five young adults ages 18 to 24 who have ever used tobacco reported that their first product was flavored, according to the Truth Initiative, an anti-tobacco non-profit.
Irvin explained that, unlike cigarettes, e-cigarettes can be bought online, can use flavors that appeal to children, and do not require licenses and permits to sell.
“We don’t have policies in place equal to the policies for cigarettes,” said Irvin.
The American Lung Association’s 20th annual “State of Tobacco Control” report released last week gave the state decent grades, aside from an “F” when it comes to banning flavored tobacco products.
“While we have seen considerable progress in Hawai‘i, tobacco use remains our leading cause of preventable death and disease, taking over 1,400 estimated lives each year,” said Pedro Haro, Executive Director of the American Lung Association in Hawai‘i. “Unfortunately, with the lack of state regulations on e-cigarettes and restrictions on tobacco flavors that addict youth, we are seeing a recession of the gains we had made over the last decades of tobacco control.”
Earlier this week, the DOH and the Hawai‘i Public Health Institute launched a new public service announcement campaign to call attention to strategies used by tobacco companies that target children and youth.
“Stronger Together: We See/They See” reminds Hawai‘i residents of the need to protect keiki from tobacco industry tactics. The campaign is slated to run through April and includes TV, radio, digital, social media, and print advertisements.
Saiki, who conducts her own tobacco education efforts, says that programs like this are vital.
“For me, it’s all about prevention and education,” said Saiki.
This story was updated to correct the House bill number. It is House Bill 1570, not House Bill 1507.
