Michael Brandon Jack - Comment

The implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act is one that should be considered strongly and given a great amount of attention. I strongly agree with the effort of eliminating the advertisement advocating the use of tobacco towards any levels of education (k-12), parks, and or any other location where large populations of the youth can be found. According to The Center for Disease Control (CDC) website, "Smoking and smokeless tobacco use are almost always initiated and established during adolescence. Most people who begin smoking during adolescence are addicted by the age of 20" (CDC.gov/tobacco). By taking a stand as a society and placing a bad stigma on the product and reinforcing the bad stigma to our youth by not allowing the industry to freely advertise we can reduce the number of users and or possible future users. Smoking has been proven, scientifically proven to cause health problems anywhere from high blood pressure to lung cancer. Why then would we want to allow the tobacco industry the luxury of targeting our youth? Especially in areas that of communities that advocate smoke free behavior: schools, playgrounds, parks. Eliminating the industries resource to any billboards, posters, or signs within the proposed 1000ft of any of the designated areas is a key way to fight the battle against the dangers of promoting smoking and the use of tobacco.