Kentucky kids need environments free from nicotine products to learn, grow, and thrive. Availability of products with high nicotine content is growing rapidly and marketing with bright colors and alluring flavors targets kids in stores across the state.

Although Kentucky lawmakers have taken important steps to limit youth access to these products, like raising the legal purchase age to 21, action is still needed.  

Griffin Nemeth testifying at the Interim Joint Committee on Licensing and Occupations

Read below testimony from Griffin Nemeth, Youth Advisory Board Coordinator for the #iCANendthetrend program, recently shared with the Interim Joint Committee on Licensing and Occupations about the challenges with enforcing tobacco sales age laws and what they can do to better protect our kids.  

My name is Griffin Nemeth, and I am the Youth Advisory Board Coordinator for the #iCANendthetrend program, which is a youth tobacco prevention and education program at the University of Kentucky.

Our peer-to-peer education model allows college facilitators to educate younger students on the various health effects, social, and financial effects of vaping with the goal of reducing youth vape/e-cigarette use in schools and communities. Since 2019, our program has reached over 19,000 students across the commonwealth, and I would like to share today a little of what we’ve learned from these students about their schools and communities. 

Under manipulation and strategic targeting by the industry, Kentucky is suffering, and its youth are no exception. This past year, the rate of Kentucky high school student e-cigarette usage has surpassed that of the national adult rate for traditional cigarette usage. What we, as a state, have worked so hard for, for so many decades, has been tarnished by the corrupt practices of an industry which disproportionately targets youth: without shame, without denial, and without any sign of stopping. And it is not just words taken from the mouths of these industry executives from which this has been made apparent.  

A quick conversation with staff or faculty from any number of Kentucky schools or colleges, or a quick walk around any of Kentucky’s beautiful communities will draw you to an uncanny sight and the true extent of this epidemic. These products were not “made available” to young people but placed in their hands. And the decision of whether or not they would use them, well, that was never really theirs. 

Our Youth Advisory Board is a dedicated group of high school advocates, such as Sydney, who we transform into better preventionists and professionals through mentorship and skill-building. Students like these wonderful advocates exist in every school – and they are concerned.  

It is our job, as adults, to worry about this issue, but nicotine use has once again become the social norm, and our students are worried. They are worried about their classmates and the futures which they may never achieve thanks to the deceit and manipulation they’ve been subjected to through social media advertising, retailer noncompliance with Kentucky law, and misinformation they’ve been unable to discern from truth because they are 9, 10 years old and they are kids. It is our job to protect them, and thus far we have failed. 

What we are here to ask of you today is simple. We know that proper enforcement of the minimum legal sales age, be it with regular compliance monitoring and strong penalties for violations, is the most effective way to combat this issue before it has the chance to become any worse. Ask our neighbors in Ohio, Indiana, or West Virginia, or look as far as Massachusetts or California, but see that their actions to combat youth nicotine access have made a difference. We understand that many of you support this effort, and we are now kindly asking that you see it through.