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Tobacco hooks them now and kills them later.

•  90% of smokers start before they are old enough to buy tobacco legally. 1
•  One in four high school students in Oregon smokes. 2
•  Every day in the US, 3,000 underage teenagers start smoking. A thousand of them will eventually be killed by a tobacco-related disease. 3   In Oregon, 14,000 children begin daily smoking each year. That’s more than a classroom full every day. 4
•  It costs the US more than $50 billion dollars a year to treat illnesses caused by tobacco. 5
•  In Oregon the total economic cost (treatment, lost productivity, etc.) of tobacco use is $1.5 billion a year. 6
•  Tobacco kills more than 400,000 Americans each year, more people than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides, and fires---combined! 7
•  The annual tobacco death toll in Oregon is almost 7,000, about a quarter of all deaths here. That means tobacco kills someone in Oregon every 80 minutes. 8

Self-Service Tobacco Displays are a common problem in Multnomah County.

•  97% of stores sell tobacco and half of them use self-service displays.
•  Stores with self-service displays are more likely to illegally sell tobacco to minors.
•  Increasing county controls of tobacco sales is favored by more than half the retailers who expressed an opinion.

Removing Self-Service Tobacco Displays cuts both illegal sales and thefts.

•  In one month, 20,000 children in Oregon got cigarettes from a store, including 2,000 who stole them from store shelves. 10
•  Cigarettes are the most frequently shoplifted item in many stores, particularly by juveniles. 11
•  Removing Self-Service Tobacco Displays can reduce illegal sales up to 80%. 12

Sources:

2.  Oregon Health Division, Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregon Tobacco Facts, April 1999.

3.  C Crump, L Packer, J Gfroerer. Incidence of Initiation of Cigarette Smoking — United States, 1965–1996. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. October 9, 1998;47(39). 837-8. http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00055070.htm

4.  The Toll of Tobacco in Oregon. Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. http://tobaccofreekids.org/reports/settlements/TobaccoToll.php3?StateID=OR

5.  Kenneth E Warner, Thomas A Hodgson, Caitlin E Carroll. Medical costs of smoking in the United States: estimates, their validity, and their implications. Tobacco Control 1999;8:290-300 (Autumn)
contact: Dr. Kenneth Warner, Department of Health Management and Policy, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 109 South Observatory, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2029, USA; kwarner@umich.edu

6. This calculation is based on 1996 statistics. Oregon Health Division, Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregon Tobacco Facts, April 1999.

7.  http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/issue.htm

8.  Oregon Health Division, Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregon Tobacco Facts, April 1999. In 1996, tobacco killed 6,668 Oregonians.

9.  1998 Multnomah County Retailer Survey information is available from Tami Hart-Johnson, (503) 731-4434.

10.  Oregon Health Division, Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregon Tobacco Facts, April 1999.

11.  1997 National Retail Theft Trends Report

12.  U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Executive Summary: The Regulations Restricting the Sale and Distribution of Cigarettes and Smokeless Tobacco to Protect Children and Adolescents. August 1996. http://www.fda.gov/opacom/campaigns/tobacco/execrule.html