{"id":61722,"date":"2014-03-19T21:38:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T03:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/legislators-turn-back-effort-to-raise-state-smoking-age\/"},"modified":"2014-03-20T03:38:42","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T03:38:42","slug":"legislators-turn-back-effort-to-raise-state-smoking-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/legislators-turn-back-effort-to-raise-state-smoking-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislators turn back effort to raise state smoking age"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Customers
Customers roll their own cigarettes by using the machines at Smoke Roll with It on Thursday. Smoke Roll With It is a retail store that provides allows smokers to roll their own cigarettes. With the store\u2019s machines, people can get cigarettes without the chemicals that big tobacco includes, and without paying the taxes that come with packaged smokes.<\/span>Hyoung Chang\/The Denver Post<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rep. Daniel Kagan, D-Cherry Hills Village, provided the decisive vote when he joined six Republicans on the House Finance Committee to vote down the bill. All other Democrats on the panel voted to raise the smoking age, which is currently 18.<\/p>\n

Kagan said there are better ways to reduce smoking among young people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come down on the side of treating 18- to 20-year-olds as adults,\u201d Kagan said.<\/p>\n

But sponsors argued that most adults who smoke started young.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a public health issue. It\u2019s not really choice issue,\u201d said Rep. Beth McCann, D-Denver, when she presented the bill to the committee last week. The panel ran out of time last week and concluded its hearing Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Smoking costs Colorado taxpayers $300 million a year in Medicaid bills, and it costs the state economy more than $1 billion in lost productivity, said Jodi Radke of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should do everything we can to reduce the tobacco toll for the people of Colorado. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing an industry that addicts our kids,\u201d Radke said.<\/p>\n

Several opponents argued that at 18, people are old enough to fight in the military. One witness, combat veteran Brian Soule, said it\u2019s insulting to say 18-year-olds aren\u2019t mature enough to make important decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen 18-year-old kids in firefights in 60 seconds have to make more life-and-death decisions than most Americans do in their lives,\u201d Soule said.<\/p>\n

House Bill 1263 would have made it a petty offense to sell tobacco to anyone under 21. It also would have been illegal for people under 21 to possess tobacco, but there would not have been a penalty.<\/p>\n

Rep. Jim Wilson, R-Salida, said the lack of a penalty would have made the bill meaningless.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese young people out here are smarter than we are. They\u2019ll find ways to get it if there is no penalty involved,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n

joeh@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Customers roll their own cigarettes by using the machines at Smoke Roll with It on Thursday. Smoke Roll With It is a retail store that provides allows smokers to roll their own cigarettes. With the store\u2019s machines, people can get cigarettes without the chemicals that big tobacco includes, and without paying the taxes that come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,3495],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-61722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-tobacco"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61722"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=61722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}