Tobacco companies Innovation to push an new demographic of users.

Vaping in itself is an innovation of technology. Tobacco companies had to innovate to move their product into a new generation of users. They have done this by focusing on products and innovating to market to youth. They make products to look sexy. Vaping companies make products and reviews to “make mods sexy” and “hot as hell”. What these companies are doing is making products designed to target our youth.

This is reinforced after an interview with The Vice President of Academics of a local southern Arizona chart school and up until mid-2019 a principal for the public school sector in Southern Arizona. In the interview, The VP of Academics stated that vaping companies are absolution marketing to youth. Kids think its cool big clouds and flavoring. We also talked about the design and makeup of vaping devices to “mods” like lights and colors as a marketing tool towards the youth.

When asked about one innovation regarding vaping that they would like to see in the future. The educator stated they would like to see some kind of bigger push to educate the youth of Arizona about the dangers of vaping, sex, and illicit drug use.

My self as a healthcare professional could not agree more with these needs. The Arizona youth get limited access to this kind of information. Young Americans need good information to make the best decision regarding these extremely important subjects that they are dealing with in their lives.

Finally, the blog asked the educator how they would see this innovation become sustainable. the educator reported that they would like to see tax money from things like vaping, tobacco, and legal marijuana go directly to these kinds of education programs.

As a healthcare provider, I agree The use of tax money coming from these negative lifestyle choices should be what funds the prevention of them. Colorado made 247 million dollars in marijuana tax licensing and fees. Why can’t Arizona do the same for vaping and tobacco? A tax to help stop this epidemic before it gets any worse would be life-changing for so many of Arizona’s youth. Currently, tax money is spent on tobacco is going to programs but also goes to fund other state programs.

Colorado Marijuana tax “cash” fund budget

Critics of this kind of state taxing feel, without direct laws stating exactly how taxes are to be spent, states become overly reliant on these kinds of taxing and divert money from their intended goals to other projects. Tax law needs to state that spending is specifically on the intended use of tax money. An example would be, taxes on tobacco only go to funding the taxing process of tobacco/vaping and the rest going to prevention education. This would mean the more users spend on vaping/tobacco the more money would go to stopping its use. As vaping/tobacco use decreases so does funding. It would be a self-balancing system and that would be one great innovation.

References

Atkins, C. (2006). Arizona is Hooked on Cigarette Tax Revenue. Retrived from https://taxfoundation.org/arizona-hooked-cigarette-tax-revenue

Marie, A. (2018). Where Does All The Marijuana Money Go? Colorado’s Pot Taxes, Explained. Colorado Public Radio News. Retried from https://www.cpr.org/2018/10/22/where-does-all-the-marijuana-money-go-colorados-pot-taxes-explained/

Melero, A. (2018). 5 innovations that might change vaping in 2018. The Vaping Times. retrieved from http://www.thevapingtimes.com/5-innovations-that-might-change-vaping-in-2018/