DETROIT — Kassie Weje, a 16-year-old junior at University High School in Ferndale, said her little sister was first exposed to other kids vaping at school when she was in fifth grade.
"It's not good for you and I think it shouldn't be easily accessible for kids, ... so they won't get addicted to it," Weje said.
Weje was one of over 30 youth activists who met with Detroit City Council member Scott Benson at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center Friday morning to advocate for a statewide ban on flavored tobacco products in Michigan.
In 2019, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an emergency ban on flavored vaping products in Michigan following an uptick in presumed vaping-related illnesses. But Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens issued a preliminary injunction against the ban, noting an Upper Peninsula business that sued the state would not be able to resume business at the end of the emergency order and its customers had already begun to purchase from out-of-state vendors. Stephens ruled that the vaping businesses had a "likelihood of success" on arguments that there was "no genuine emergency."
Benson signed a resolution of support to ban tobacco flavored tobacco products statewide. City Council member Latisha Johnson also spoke to the young advocates about reducing air pollution and asthma rates in Detroit, issues which are intertwined with efforts to reduce tobacco use by young people, she said. The event was part of Take Down Tobacco Day, a national day of action during which young people across the country encourage local politicians to support legislative action against tobacco.
Almost all of the youth in attendance were familiar with long-term, smoking-related health effects and knew someone with asthma, diabetes or hypertension, had lost a loved one to a cancer-related illness or knew someone who had suffered from a stroke. Detroiter Laniyah Brown, 13, an eighth grader at Blackwell Institute, said smoking or vaping is "pretty common" among young people.
"It is really dangerous to smoke because somebody who I really care about or somebody that I love the most or some of my friends could die from cancer from smoking," Brown said. "I don't want any people in the younger generation to be dying from sicknesses like... cancer, lung cancers or lung diseases."
Flavored tobacco products, including vapes, hookah pens and menthol cigarettes, disproportionally affect young people and the Black community, said Michael Emanuel Smith, a 17-year-old senior at Ferndale High School.
"Commercial tobacco is the No. 1 one cause of preventable diseases and death. It hurts the health and futures of young people. We are the future and if we can't lead in the future, who's going to lead?" Emanuel Smith said.
Sweet-tasting flavors are particularly appealing to youth, and some flavored vapes are made to look like pens or USB thumb drives, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
African Americans are more likely to die from smoking-related diseases and have health-related problems, despite starting to smoke later in life compared with other racial and ethnic groups, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The FDA banned flavored cigarettes in 2009, with the exception of menthol flavors. Nearly 85% of African American smokers use menthol cigarettes, more than double the portion of White smokers that use them, according to the FDA.
Local municipalities in Michigan are barred from imposing new requirements or prohibitions pertaining to the sale or licensure of tobacco products for distribution purposes, according to the 1993 Tobacco Products Tax Act. This pre-emptive language needs to be removed at the state level, said Minou Jones, chair of the Detroit, Wayne County, Oakland County tobacco-free coalition.
"We would love for the Legislature to just ban flavored tobacco products," Jones said. "But at minimum, they should give the power back to local communities so that they can pass those laws to protect their residents and citizens."
The city of Detroit is "flooded with tobacco retailers," Jones said. Eight-five percent of the city's population lives within a 10-minute walk of a tobacco retailer, according to ASPiRE, a center funded by the National Cancer Institute.
Tobacco is one of the No. 1 killers and destroys the health of Black communities, said Benson, the City Council member. He said he hopes the Democratic state legislative majorities will remove the pre-emptive language from Michigan's tobacco law, which would allow Detroit to enact its own ban on flavored tobacco products within city limits.
"We would be showing that we prioritize the health of our youth because that's who this is geared towards, and that will then stop the generational movement of tobacco addiction," Benson said. "Families would know that we are a family-focused and centered municipality and we take the health of our residents seriously."
In 2019, a group of small businesses opposing a vaping ban called the Defend MI Rights Coalition said they would be willing to work through the normal legislative process to create a "balanced solution" that protects the rights of adults to use vaping products while keeping the products out of the children's hands.
