Emanuel takes another step to reduce teen tobacco use

For more than seven years as mayor, Rahm Emanuel has pursued a sweeping anti-smoking agenda that has more than cut Chicago’s teen smoking rate in half, to 6 percent.

Now the mayor wants to get even tougher, by requiring health-risk warning signs at the doors to all tobacco dealers and closing a legal loophole that has allowed Big Tobacco to distribute free samples at “qualified adult facilities.”

The warning signs would be designed by the Chicago Department of Public Health. They would contain “factual information” about the health risks posed by e-cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, smokeless tobacco and other tobacco products that do not include cigarettes.

The signs will also include a “quit-line” phone number users can call if they need help in kicking the tobacco habit.

Kate McMahon, director of chronic disease prevention and health promotion, acknowledged that federal law already prohibits much of the distribution of free samples that Big Tobacco uses to lure young people into a lifetime of nicotine addiction.

But there are still too many places where smokeless tobacco samples can be distributed at “qualified adult facilities.”

“What this ordinance is doing is strengthening our local protections to ensure that can’t happen,” McMahon said.

Emanuel talks about creating a “smoke-free generation” in Chicago and he has made great strides toward that ambitious goal.

Teen smoking has dropped from 13.6 percent when the mayor took office in 2011 to 6 percent today.

But McMahon noted that Chicago high school students have a higher rate of using e-cigarettes, 6.6 percent, and cigars, 7.2 percent.

“We’ve seen a dramatic decline in cigarette use among youth in particular. But what we see in other categories [of tobacco products] is sort of a flat-lining. And nationally, what we see is an uptick in e-cigarette use,” she said. “What this is designed to do is extend information and protections to the other tobacco products so that youth can have factual information and make informed decisions.”

Emanuel has crusaded against smoking for much of his professional life.

Locally, those efforts have included: imposing the nation’s highest cigarette tax; banning e-cigarettes wherever smoking is prohibited; moving them behind the counter of retail stores, snuffing out sales to minors, banning the sale of flavored tobacco products within 500 feet of schools and taxing e-cigarettes.

The City Council also raised Chicago’s smoking age to 21, slapped a $6 million tax on cigars, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco, and banned coupons and discounts that Big Tobacco uses to drive down the price of a pack of cigarettes to lure teens to take up the habit.

Emanuel salvaged the higher smoking age, only after cracking the whip on illegal tobacco sales in an apparent attempt to appease African-American aldermen concerned about the illegal sale of single cigarettes, known as “loosies.”

Last year, a Tobacco Sales to Minors Team within the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection investigated 1,237 tobacco retailers, found 13 percent in violation and issued 165 citations.

After the City Council moved to prohibit the sale of flavored tobacco within 500 feet of high schools, the the department also cited 16 retailers for selling cigarette liquids and products to minors.

“Chicago has been a national leader on keeping cigarettes out of the hands of youth. Now, it’s time to step up our fight against the next generation of products that Big Tobacco uses to hook people, including e-cigarettes,” the mayor was quoted as saying in a press release.