A couple of weeks ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spent redacted Mueller report reveal day by announcing his reelection campaign, and showcased what was going to be his new big push: raising the legal age for the purchase of cigarettes to 21, couching it as a public health issue. But McConnell being McConnell, you might suspect that's not going to be the altruistic, smart public policy thing he couched it as.
It's not. Public health and anti-tobacco advocates tell Politico that they fear "the tobacco industry might use the bill to block other, more proven measures to reduce youth smoking." The enthusiasm from cigarette and vaping manufacturers to McConnell's announcement was their first clue that something was up with this. Because what's been happening in some states has been legislation to raise the legal smoking age to supplant legislation focused on stopping the ballooning use of vaping among young people. So instead of banning flavored vaping products, or menthol cigarettes, or higher sales taxes on tobacco—all of which cut into tobacco company profits—state legislatures are going after the smoking age, an easier limit for people to get around. Now McConnell seems to be taking that to the federal level.
John Schachter, director of state communications for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, says "They are turning these Tobacco 21 bills into Trojan horses. […] The industry is positioning Tobacco 21 as the only thing that needs to be done on tobacco prevention," but "Tobacco 21 needs to be a complement" to other bans and taxes. Family medicine professor Rob Crane is even more blunt, saying when he heard about McConnell's legislation "the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I said, 'This is really terrible.'"
Of course, McConnell's home state of Kentucky is one of the states where big tobacco is winning. Last year the legislature raised the cigarette tax by 50 cents, but that provision was somehow left out of the states's final budget. Former member of Congress Ben Chandler, who is currently president and CEO of the Foundation for a Health Kentucky told Politico "We had it in the bill and it mysteriously disappeared on the last day of the session. We're still not entirely sure where it went."
Even when it comes to reducing youth smoking, McConnell is on the side of evil.
