I’ve lost friend due to vaping obsession. Tabacco industry must be stopped.

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Marianna Packer is a high school senior living in Pickaway County.

I was exposed to my first vape in middle school. A boy in the back of my classroom was caught vaping, and it was a big deal.

I was confused because everyone around me kept repeating what I thought was the word “jewel,” unaware of the popular e-cigarette brand.

I started learning about the health dangers of tobacco that day in middle school when I got home and looked up “Juul” on the internet.

The boy in my class received detention and was kicked off the school basketball team for possession of a prohibited substance.

How I got a spark

As for the folks at Juul — who marketed its product to my classmate and millions of other kids who have gotten hooked on nicotine — they weren’t punished.

This incident several years ago is what sparked my activism against tobacco targeting and why I joined more than a dozen other youth this week in Columbus for Ohio Youth Advocacy Day at the Statehouse.

On Tuesday, we met with state lawmakers and asked them to support Gov. Mike DeWine’s proposal to fund a child tax credit by increasing Ohio’s cigarette tax along with taxes on all tobacco products.

We are being targeted

Most kids have limited funds, so raising the prices of cigarettes and vapes is a smart and proven way to keep us from buying them in the first place. Decades of evidence shows that increasing tobacco product prices is one of the most effective ways to reduce tobacco use, especially among kids.

A $1.50 per pack cigarette tax increase, as proposed by DeWine, will improve health in Ohio by preventing 11,800 Ohio kids from becoming smokers, helping 43,900 current adult smokers to quit, and saving 14,200 Ohioans from premature, smoking-caused deaths.

The tobacco industry targets children through marketing, product development and sales locations to lure customers to nicotine at a young age.

Nearly 19% of Ohio high schoolers are current e-cigarette users, and nearly 90% of youth e-cigarette users in the U.S. report using a flavored product. 

When I got to high school, I had the opportunity to join various organizations that were fighting against tobacco addiction in youth.

The more I advocated, the more I saw it around me in my everyday life.

The tobacco industry is winning new customers

My school had to close the student restrooms because of how many kids went in to smoke.

I see vapes getting bought and traded at school. I even see kids stealing vapes because they are seriously addicted and they do not have the money to buy them.

Sadly enough, I’ve lost friends because they become too obsessed with how to get their next puff or high to even notice they are putting that before everything else in their lives. I have asked some of my peers why they partake in vaping activities and they give me replies such as, “The flavors taste really good,” “It calms me down,” or “I simply cannot stop.”

But they’re not the bad guys. The bad guys are the companies who target my classmates and me every day with sophisticated marketing tactics and candy-flavored products, hoping to get us addicted for life.

This week, we took a stand for what’s right. We hope our Ohio lawmakers will too.

Marianna Packer is a high school senior living in Pickaway County.