For 16 years, Julia Hesse has been battling cigarettes.
And over those years, Hesse, who works with the Target Tobacco Action Group and the Montezuma County Public Health Department, has seen the use of cigarettes go down over the years.
A study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently pointed to a decline in cigarette smoking among high school students. Nationwide, the number of traditional cigarette smokers plummeted to 9.2 percent from more than 13 percent last year.
But a new cigarette, an electronic one, has Hesse worried.
“Tobacco industries have always been looking for safer cigarettes,” Hesse said. “This is the first product I’ve seen that is supposedly safer. But they don’t know yet if it’s safer. There are a lot of unknowns, and they can’t claim if it’s a good way to stop smoking.”
The CDC report stated that the number of high school students nationwide who tried e-cigarettes tripled in one year to more than 13 percent.
Some call it vaping, and it’s big right now – nearly 200 companies are producing them, Hesse said.
“They are pushing it as a safe alternative, and it is spreading like wildfire,” Hesse said.
Yet, it is too soon to know if that claim is correct, and Hesse worries that it will get children addicted to nicotine.
“They are seeing it more, so kids think it’s normal behavior,” she said.
Flavors for the e-cigarettes also concern Hesse. There are candy and bubble gum flavors.
“They are targeting kids,” she said.
According to Montezuma County numbers from the 2013-14 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, 27 percent of the 11th-grade students surveyed had tried electronic cigarettes. When the statistics were broken down further, 40 percent of the 11th-grade males responded to the survey had used e-cigarettes, while only 14 percent have tried spitless tobacco or Skoal Dry.
On the positive side, 44 percent of 12th-graders responding to the survey said they had never tried any tobacco products.
The e-cigarettes contain nicotine, something that is still highly addictive, Hesse said.
“Nicotine is not a carcinogen, but it is a poison and it’s addictive,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report